Progress Illinois

Transit advocates cheered Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn’s announcement Monday that the two plan to fight for federal stimulus funds to upgrade the existing Amtrak line between Chicago and St. Louis. The Daily Herald, however, wasn’t too pleased with the news. This morning, their editorial board issued a misinformed dissent in which they called the project “excessive, meaningless government spending":

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn announced Monday what they characterized as a “unified” push to develop a high-speed corridor between St. Louis and Chicago, a line especially attractive, apparently, because it is entirely enclosed in Illinois. Yet, while we appreciate the project’s potential for jobs creation, we can’t help wondering if there’s not something more urgent and more far-reaching the state could do with more than a half-billion dollars.

The Herald goes on to suggest that Quinn and Durbin instead devote their energy to securing resources for flood control and pothole repairs, problems they consider “immediate and visible.” But in advocating for their own pet projects, the editorial board displays their ignorance about the stimulus bill.

What the editorial board overlooks is that Durbin and Quinn are seeking some of the $8 billion already set aside for high-speed rail. If Illinois doesn’t get the money, some other state will.  Either way, Illinois taxpayers are going to end up paying part of the tab.

Furthermore, some of the $1 billion in infrastructure resources already coming our way as part of the economic recovery will undoubtedly be spent to repave roads. The bill also allocates just over $4 billion nationally for “flood control and water management construction, regulation, and investigations.” Quinn and Durbin should lobby for some of those dollars as well, but rail and flood prevention projects aren’t mutually exclusive. And the Obama administration isn’t just dropping a bag of money in Quinn’s lap for any purpose he sees fit.

The editorial also makes this rather naive point about the future of transit:

Let’s be clear. We like high-speed rail. The nation needs a well-planned, comprehensive network of truly high-speed trains as a significant component of its transportation system. But an expensive proposal that would trim the travel time of just one stretch of rail from five and a half hours to four hours seems hardly to suggest the start of a well-planned rail network.

For too long, transit projects have been pushed aside by lawmakers unwilling to rethink how we should move goods and people. At the current rate of federal spending, it would take 77 years to complete $248 billion worth of projects that have already been proposed. If years of disinvestment have shown us anything, it’s that transit money for comprehensive plans just don’t rise out of thin air. These projects need seed funding to develop.  If and when their merits are proven, the likelihood of receiving additional high speed rail resources will grow larger. That doesn’t seem excessive to us.

UPDATE: More from Archpundit.