{"id":685,"date":"2006-10-09T00:12:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-09T06:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/dendahl-on-spaceport-and-commuter-rail\/"},"modified":"2006-10-09T00:12:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-09T06:12:00","slug":"dendahl-on-spaceport-and-commuter-rail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/dendahl-on-spaceport-and-commuter-rail\/","title":{"rendered":"Dendahl on spaceport and commuter rail"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Since Gov. Bill Richardson has still not agreed to debate Republican challenger John Dendahl, I\u2019m continuing this week to publish articles written by Dendahl on various issues. Here\u2019s a column published Dec. 16, 2005 in the Albuquerque Journal<\/a> about the spaceport and commuter rail, taken directly from Dendahl\u2019s Web site<\/a>: <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Spaceport Is Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>\u2019s Latest Boondoggle<\/p>\n

By John Dendahl<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cAnother day, another road-to-higher-office boondoggle at New Mexicans\u2019 expense. Now Gov. Bill Richardson is proposing to dump $100 million or so into a \u2018commercial spaceport.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cNo wonder this man has a perpetual grin on his face. Despite the intensity with which he seems to despise it, the oil and gas industry is pumping money a politician could only dream of into pockets Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> controls as if they were his own!<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBig taxpayer bucks are going into movies and speculative corporate investments, all raising Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>\u2019s profile among groups from which he raises campaign funds.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThen there\u2019s what Richardson<\/st1:city><\/st1:place> shamelessly calls \u2018my commuter railroad.\u2019 Some legislators are feigning great surprise \u2014 now that equipment and several hundred miles of track have been bought \u2014 that its costs will run hundreds of millions more than they were told at the get-go. Just as with yet another boondoggle, pre-kindergarten, they have been led to the slaughter with estimates that any attentive citizen knew were scandalously low.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cOn Nov. 9, my wife and I attended a dog-and-pony show on the commuter railroad held in the Santa Fe<\/st1:city> suburb of El Dorado<\/st1:city><\/st1:place>. Richardson<\/st1:city><\/st1:place>\u2019s Secretary of Transportation Rhonda Faught spoke briefly, then turned the program over to Pat Oliver-Wright, planner director in the transportation department\u2019s special studies section. Their remarks included a list of options that had been studied to meet transportation needs in the Belen-to-Santa Fe corridor projected over the coming decades.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cCommuter rail is the subject of dozens of studies easily available on the Internet that show it to be a loser on numerous grounds, especially financial and quality of life. So I asked about an option that seemed conspicuously absent from the list of those studied, toll lanes on highways. Oliver-Wright said this option had not been studied.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cRichardson<\/st1:city><\/st1:place>\u2019s enthusiasm for a high-profile railroad project leads one to wonder whether any studies performed weren\u2019t, in fact, designed to lead to rail. Period. Just three months ago, the Reason Foundation released a report recounting many years of study and experience with highway lanes that are reserved for some combination of vans, busses and toll-paying passenger vehicles. While this Reason report isn\u2019t oriented to playing off rail against rubber-tire transportation, one cannot avoid coming away from it with the conclusion that Gov. Richardson\u2019s Commuter Railroad is likely a bad choice made in haste.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cRichardson<\/st1:city><\/st1:place> is frequently lauded by his editorial supporters for getting things done quickly. But haste makes waste. His administration now admits the commuter railroad cost is up around $400 million. That continues to grow, and many fear with good cause that ridership won\u2019t amount to the proverbial hill of beans.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cStand by for a future time when this will be seen as a billion dollar boondoggle.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Gov. Bill Richardson has still not agreed to debate Republican challenger John Dendahl, I\u2019m continuing this week to publish articles written by Dendahl on various issues. Here\u2019s a column published Dec. 16, 2005 in the Albuquerque Journal about the spaceport and commuter rail, taken directly from Dendahl\u2019s Web site: Spaceport Is Richardson\u2019s Latest Boondoggle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}