15 States (Not Florida) Take a Flier on Runaway Trains to Fantasyland

In a display of bitter Monday moaning, Florida's high-speed rail enthusiasts are shedding tears over the $2 billion in federal stimulus funds turned down by Gov. Rick Scott going to 15 other states.

Good riddance, skeptics say.

As California laps up some of the leftovers, that state's high-speed rail venture is going deeper into debt -- even before it starts. Now pegged at $43 billion, the price tag continues to escalate, and no one is talking about temporary construction jobs as a cost-effective return on investment there.

Slightly more promising is the Northeast Corridor, where planners envision a dedicated line for Amtrak's Acela (a so-called high-speed train that actually averages just 70 mph). But building a true high-speed corridor will cost an estimated $117 billion and take 25 years to complete.

The Congressional Research Service estimated that 6 million to 9 million riders would need to take the train each year to justify the cost. Acela carries fewer than 4 million annually. To partially recover the higher costs, other studies say that future ticket prices will have to increase dramatically, which will retard ridership.

"Until the proponents of high-speed rail solve the problem of runaway costs, we'll stick with the train in Disney's Fantasyland. Who knows, maybe 80 percent of the country has taken it for a ride by now," wryly observed the Wall Street Journal.

By the way, Scott wasn't the only fiscally astute governor to pass on ObamaRail. So did Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Ohio's John Kasich.

The citizen activist group, Ax the Tax, which has fought rail proposals since 1997 and helped defeat seven rail referendums in Florida, took the occasion to applaud Scott:

"Receiving that federally borrowed money would have ushered in a never-ending mandate to raise taxes to support a system that continually would operate at a deficit. Gov. Scott has relieved Florida taxpayers of funding this boondoggle in perpetuity, and we thank him for it," said Doug Guetzloe.

In a small victory for U.S. taxpayers, $400 million of the $2.4 billion initially earmarked for Florida will stay in Washington as part of the federal budget-cutting deal reached last month.