(The following editorial appeared on the Star-Tribune website on December 7.)
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — As any Keetac employee would attest, the U.S. needs jobs, and there’s good news in a plan being developed to create them via highway and other transportation construction projects. But would the proposed $45 billion stimulus package … snub high-speed rail projects, including the Northern Lights Express between Duluth and Minneapolis? A nonprofit advocate of fast-moving passenger trains, called the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, certainly thinks so.
“Rail being overlooked is an understatement,” the association’s executive director, Richard Harnish, told the News Tribune editorial page. His association said money in the stimulus package for trains was “pathetically small — just $100 million.”
The group added, “California’s high-speed rail project alone will require at least $15 billion from the federal government. How can Congress even consider spending only $100 million for the entire nation?”
Harnish said, “There’s no money for Duluth to get service started. It’s absolutely essential that folks along your lines make a lot of noise, saying it’s time to fund this thing.”
We’re all for noise and funding and “this thing,” but to claim there’s “no money for Duluth” seems a bit of an overstatement. True, no money has recently been appropriated by Washington for Duluth and the rest of the nation’s rail needs. But billions have been authorized or proposed.