The special interest group ‘OnBoard Midwest‘ is stepping up its efforts to promote a high-speed rail plan that many believe is fundamentally flawed.
The plan that OnBoard Midwest promotes bypasses Rochester, Minnesota’s third-largest city and the home of the Mayo Clinic, in favor of ‘an historic’ route along the Mississippi River that has a total population of fewer than 50,000. Furthermore, the St. Paul terminus of the OnBoard Midwest route would impair existing plans for high-speed rail from Duluth to Minneapolis, since this ‘Northern Lights Express’ from Duluth would be orphaned by it’s fracture with the nation’s high-speed rail hub in Chicago. Because the OnBoard Midwest plan would bypass three of Minnesota’s four largest cities, it is an inferior investment relative to alternatives that are equally feasible; alternatives which DO visit Rochester, and which DO connect Duluth to Chicago through the Twin Cities.
In spite of the deficiencies of its proposed route, the OnBoard Midwest lobbying group continues to promote its flawed plan to the public under the false pretense that it is the only route that could secure federal funding, and worse, the group continues its attempts to undermine the rigorous study and eventual approval of alternative, better investments, since these alternatives would not visit the small river towns that OnBoard Midwest represents.
In addition to OnBoard Midwest’s efforts in the state legislature to preclude even the study of alternative routes, which I described in my previous post, the group recently attempted to add full authorization to begin construction of the river route to Minnesota’s omnibus budget; a clear attempt to sidestep the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s formal process for selecting a high-speed rail plan, and an affront to all of the other state and regional organizations, like the Southeast Minnesota Rail Alliance, whose plans merit full and equal consideration.
Throughout the duration of OnBoard Midwest’s efforts to influence Minnesota’s high-speed rail plans, the organization has attempted to popularize several myths; I aim to address just a few of these below:
MYTH #1: The River Route is the only route that can win federal stimulus funding, because …
MYTH #2: adequate study and preparation of alternative routes would take years to complete.
MYTH #3: If Minnesota doesn’t support the OnBoard Midwest plan, NO high-speed rail will come to Minnesota.
MYTH #4: OnBoard Midwest represents a diverse coalition of parties across Minnesota, and
MYTH #5: the “Minnesota High-Speed Rail Joint Powers Agreement” is not just a redundant adornment that was created by OnBoard Midwest to formally bind the few towns who supported OnBoard Midwest in the first place.
Regarding Myth #1, OnBoard Midwest has repeatedly claimed that because the federal government prefers ‘shovel-ready’ projects, and because OnBoard Midwest considers only its own route to be ‘shovel-ready,’ alternatives which include Rochester could not win federal funding for high-speed rail. OnBoard Midwest justifies this claim principally on the basis of existing rail and easements along the river route, and the fact that, as mentioned previously in my other post, the state legislators from Red Wing and Winona who formed OnBoard Midwest committed over $10 million to studies of the river route while refusing to fund studies of alternatives. (See original story here)
In TRUTH, the river route is NOT the only existing rail or easement in Southeast Minnesota that can be upgraded with high-speed rail, and the Minnesota Department of Transportation is studying several alternatives to the OnBoard Midwest plan which would also be ‘shovel-ready’ and which could include Rochester, thereby increasing the value of the entire project for the vast majority of its stakeholders. Even Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has objected to OnBoard Midwest’s attempts to form public policy around its own route, efforts which strove to hijack the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s ongoing analysis of the state’s high-speed rail opportunities. (See original story here)
Regarding Myth #2, when confronted with the fact that many alternatives exist which do incorporate Minnesota’s major cities and which are being actively studied by the MnDOT and others in order to ensure their compliance with the goals of both the state and federal governments, OnBoard Midwest generally retorts that these studies ‘could take years’, and that while we wait, we should start by completing the river route and add additional ‘spurs’ to Minnesota’s major cities later.
In TRUTH, and unsurprisingly, the May 13th deadline for applications for federal stimulus money is not a drop-dead date for having completed all possible impact studies or easement acquisitions. It is only the date by which the federal government would like to begin deciding how much money to give to each state, with which to pursue the overall mission of investing in high-speed rail connections between America’s centers of innovation and commerce. Ultimately, the Minnesota Department of Transportation will be responsible for the study, development, and construction of whatever high-speed rail is built in Minnesota.
As Frank Douma, a transportation policy expert at the University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, reminds us, an objective poll of Minnesotans might reveal that, in fact, many are simply skeptical of the claim that the benefits of high-speed rail will exceed the costs of the plan at all, irrespective of the route chosen by the Department of Transportation.
With this in mind, it seems plain that if both the federal government and Minnesota residents are to be sold on a high-speed rail plan for the state, the plan that is proposed ought to be the BEST plan that can be achieved within the constraints we are given. Since one would be hard-pressed to argue that the river route proposed by OnBoard Midwest is in any way ideal, and since alternate routes which would provide greater benefits to both the state and the nation are achievable, it stands to reason that these alternatives should be pursued and submitted instead of the inadequate plan that OnBoard Midwest supports.
Regarding Myth #3, OnBoard Midwest, in desperation, claims that if its own plan is not supported, the state will miss out on federal funding for high-speed rail altogether. This is simply false.
In TRUTH, The Obama Administration has articulated a clear vision for high-speed rail from Chicago to the Twin Cities, and has deliberately made no specification for the route between. It is neither the federal government’s jurisdiction nor its ambition to insist upon the particular minutiae of each state’s high-speed rail plan; it only wishes to support the plans which optimize the value of America’s investment in transportation. Minnesota is on the high-speed rail map, and it’s up to us to make the most of it.
Regarding Myth #4, OnBoard Midwest repeatedly lists numerous townships and counties as supporters of its plan in an effort to create an impression of legitimacy and diversity that would lend it a semblance of authority as a mouthpiece for Minnesota as a whole.
In TRUTH, OnBoard Midwest redundantly lists counties, townships within those counties, offices within those townships, etc, none of which are likely to have any meaning to casual readers, in an effort to appear to represent a broader segment of Minnesota than it does. Many of the ‘cities’ that OnBoard Midwest lists as its supporters are towns of fewer than 1000 people, and the aggregate population of the entire zone, with the notable exception of St. Paul, is fewer than 50,000 people. OnBoard Midwest’s membership includes NO counties, cities, towns, or organizations from the rest of the state, hence, the group’s attempt to portray itself to the media and to outsiders at large as a body which is representative of Minnesota’s interests as a whole is utterly fictional and inappropriate.
Regarding Myth #5, need I say more?
In TRUTH the “Minnesota High-Speed Rail Joint Powers Agreement” is just a union of the small towns along OnBoard Midwest’s route that already agreed on this route out of mutual self-interest, and it does NOT constitute a broad consensus among Minnesotans or any sort of authority to speak for the state in any matter at all.
