Commuter Rail to New Hampshire?

Wow, what a dick move. There is obviously some backroom politicking going on to shoot down a STUDY.
 
^ Probably just typical, misinformed NH-style libertarianism hating on rail because it smacks of something communitarian (as if free public highways were not).
 
It's so odd they hate rail since their bible, Atlas Shrugged, was all about railroads.
 
Private railroads, when tycoons could make a killing off them.

Now that railroads have to be publicly subsidized to compete with publically-subsidized roads and airlines, though, they're, of course, evil.

Part of the issue is probably that cars seem to offer more autonomy because they can be driven by individuals. This sort of masks the more complex questions of financing and confuses everyone into thinking that cars = freedom. Not to mention that cars allow people to live on more space and therefore not be forced into annoying compromises that result from living in clustered TOD-type communities, which can also be equated with a loss in autonomy.

And while airlines force everyone to sit together, the fact that they're exclusively long-distance and so don't force TOD-type cluster development and that it isn't feasible for everyone to own their own means that libertarians have mostly made peace with them, as long as they maintain the facade of being "private" enterprises.

There are clearly plenty of libertarians (the majority of the libertarians on this forum, say) who have thought about these issues hard and have come out preferring rail, density, etc. as something that could emerge naturally from market forces, but many other conservatives are just too easily deceived by more simplistic notions of what freedom is and means in relation to transit and urban design.
 
Really weird that they're worried about "competing" with I-93. Is it a toll road in Southern NH? If you take vehicle miles off I-93, the new widened road will last LONGER.
 
czsz said:
Part of the issue is probably that cars seem to offer more autonomy because they can be driven by individuals. This sort of masks the more complex questions of financing and confuses everyone into thinking that cars = freedom. Not to mention that cars allow people to live on more space and therefore not be forced into annoying compromises that result from living in clustered TOD-type communities, which can also be equated with a loss in autonomy.
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Exactly--I think this really is the mindset of people like UL publisher Joe McQuaid and the current legislative leaders. There are plenty of conservatives--or Republicans at least, like the mayor of Nashua--who understand that the benefits of commuter rail far outweigh any silly, simplistic individualist fantasies, but for the affluent people living in suburbs not on the proposed route who are calling the shots, dogma is more important than actual benefits.
 
FrankLloydMike said:
This is part of the problem--the southern tier towns along I-93 and Route 3 are the most Republican parts of the state, in large part because relatively affluent cheapskates jump the border for lower taxes and then elect people who vote against the interests of the state. Just look at House Majority Leader DJ Bettencourt of Salem or Speaker Bill O'Brien from Mont Vernon for examples. The only two councilors who supported this were those from Manchester and the North Country, the last place to benefit from commuter rail but also the one with the most New Hampshire-born residents.

For several years until 2010, New Hampshire was making real progress on the rail situation--a governor and legislature that supported commuter rail, and the creation of the NHRTA. Since 2010, a group of rail-hating, mostly born-out-of-state (not that it matters until people start throwing around "yokel" terms) people have been leading the legislature against the economic interests of the state and the overwhelming preference of the public.

Part of the problem is that O'Brien's sideshow of passing bills to rescind insurance coverage of contraception (a bill that has no chance of surviving a veto) takes attention away from issues like the Executive Council playing politics with commuter rail. While 75% of New Hampshire residents support commuter rail, I bet the percentage of people aware of the BS that passed as policy yesterday is in the single digits. Unfortunately, the circus is in town at least until November.
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I've noticed that too. In my experience with southern New Hampshirites, a lot of them are bitter Republican transplants from Massachusetts. They flee the state right over the border, go native, and then enjoy yucking it up with their fellows about how miserable MA is. Not that they go far enough away to hinder their commute to Boston/Metro West. They keep the perks of being close to MA while doing everything they can to make sure NH never becomes more like MA...
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
Really weird that they're worried about "competing" with I-93. Is it a toll road in Southern NH? If you take vehicle miles off I-93, the new widened road will last LONGER.
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Yes, but surely someone will shine on us free money to fix the widened 93 when it's pounded to dust and taking out mufflers by the hundreds??? We're just saving our chips...for value!


Drive on some highways up there from time to time and bask in the glory of how well they're maintained in the places where there's no tollbooths to bait out-of-state drivers or no grant-winning bridge projects. There's no 'consistency' in where they spend their own money.
 
czsz said:
Private railroads, when tycoons could make a killing off them.

Now that railroads have to be publicly subsidized to compete with publically-subsidized roads and airlines, though, they're, of course, evil.

Part of the issue is probably that cars seem to offer more autonomy because they can be driven by individuals. This sort of masks the more complex questions of financing and confuses everyone into thinking that cars = freedom. Not to mention that cars allow people to live on more space and therefore not be forced into annoying compromises that result from living in clustered TOD-type communities, which can also be equated with a loss in autonomy.

There are clearly plenty of libertarians (the majority of the libertarians on this forum, say) who have thought about these issues hard and have come out preferring rail, density, etc. as something that could emerge naturally from market forces, but many other conservatives are just too easily deceived by more simplistic notions of what freedom is and means in relation to transit and urban design.
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CZ-- cars and other road, off-road motor vehicles have done more for personal liberty globally since Prometheus stole the fire of the gods for humanity

Even in a place with the motto "Live Free or Die" people have benefited from the car.

Consider the sons and daughters of the sons & daughters of the immigrants who came to places such as Merrimack, Nashua, Manchester to work in the mills in the late 19th Century. Their 1rst gen sons and daughters, born in say Manchester grew-up pre to immediate post WWII and probably still lived within a mile or two of their birthplace. Their sons and daughters (the boomers) 2nd gen NH born could live anywhere they wanted to in NH where there was a road and a place to work either in NH or perhaps in Massachusetts with its much larger economy. The 3rd gen joining the workforce today, can live anywhere they can reach on / off the road and have access to the W3.

This freedom to live and work where you want is not possible if you are constrained to train schedules or forced to live walking / biking distance from train stations, and also have walking / biking distance from your workplace to/from the station.

You can argue that they can always drive to the station and take the train to North Station -- fine if they work in Kendall, Boston FID or the SPID -- what about the person who lives in Derry, NH and works in Waltham -- -which train do they take?

Don't get me wrong -- I like trains -- I'd be all in favor of the Capital Connection -- if a legitimate economic argument can be made for a < 1 hour train (with reasonable frequency) to /from Concord / Manchester including Airport / Nashua as well as Portsmouth and perhaps Rochester. I've been on the Downeaster enough to say that there is already barely adequate in-bound commute service from Exeter and Durham -- but the reverse commute to say UNH is not reasonable.
 
whighlander said:
This freedom to live and work where you want is not possible if you are constrained to train schedules or forced to live walking / biking distance from train stations, and also have walking / biking distance from your workplace to/from the station.
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Nor is it if your commute is so traffic-snarled it takes 2 hours to or from your job. That's the future NH is consigning itself to if it thinks it can pave its way to permanent prosperity. Multimodal is hard. But unimodal is unsustainable. And doubling-down on the fantasy that they don't have to pay or plan their way out of this conundrum is lunacy. A pure fear-based reaction to a future these leaders are terrified they can no longer control.

They can make 93 ten lanes wide if they want. It's still diminishing returns that are going to shut segments of the population out of the Metro Boston job market. It's going to inhibit the economic development in those 3 NH cities from lack of effective reverse-commute option. And it bleeds all the way down to neighborhood-to-neighborhood level when there's no thought of even building sidewalks or bike lanes when local businesses can't sustain well enough and they're locked into the big-box sprawl other parts of New England are trying more now to rein in. All of those growth impediments and weaknesses ripe for slippage further weakens the state's ability to raise any money to address these problems or avoid further paralysis.

And, frankly, if they think widening their roads is going to put it on the backs of MassHighway to follow suit with theirs all the way into Boston...they're going to be rudely upset when MA says it's not up for any widening beyond fixing immediate flow into 128 and is not going to divert scarce percentage of its resource pie away from multimodal for more sprawl. And then says they have no choice but to throw up border tolls on 3, 93, and 95 to mitigate all the wear-and-tear on those roads coming from out of state. If their neighbors have to resort to containment because New Hampshire is too dysfunctional to tackle their own problems and prevent them from bleeding across the border, so be it. But NH residents are the ones who are going to suffer for it with their freedom to move, to live, to work.
 
This freedom to live and work where you want is not possible if you are constrained to train schedules or forced to live walking / biking distance from train stations, and also have walking / biking distance from your workplace to/from the station.
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This "freedom" is also contingent on a lot of tax money being sucked from them and/or diverted from other important needs - to pay for expanded roads that their cars drive on, not to mention the extraordinary per person cost of extending infrastructure like sewage and power across low-density landscapes.

Let's not even mention the laws that force people to live on relatively large lots in many of these towns, or which require living in a single family home, effectively excluding a lot of people from participating in this spurious version of the NH dream you've articulated - both spatially and financially. And which require restricting ways in which people can buy, sell, and combine land.

Exurban sprawl is a landscape forged by draconian laws and subsidies, funded by taxes that also impinge on individual freedoms. Take them the subsidies all away and most people would be clamoring to live closer to cities.
 
czsz said:
This "freedom" is also contingent on a lot of tax money being sucked from them and/or diverted from other important needs - to pay for expanded roads that their cars drive on, not to mention the extraordinary per person cost of extending infrastructure like sewage and power across low-density landscapes.

Let's not even mention the laws that force people to live on relatively large lots in many of these towns, or which require living in a single family home, effectively excluding a lot of people from participating in this spurious version of the NH dream you've articulated - both spatially and financially. And which require restricting ways in which people can buy, sell, and combine land.

Exurban sprawl is a landscape forged by draconian laws and subsidies, funded by taxes that also impinge on individual freedoms. Take them the subsidies all away and most people would be clamoring to live closer to cities.
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CZ -- I'm talking the modern rural lifestyle -- No taxpayers need to contribute except for the town infrastructure already in existence to support the legacy agricultural economy.

The old farm land is subdivided and the roads such as they are a built by the owners / developers -- no town funds are used

There are a lot of people living in the woods of NH in that fashion -- perhaps you don't believe that they should have "Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" without your rigid urban permission -- but they will and in a state such as NH with its citizen Legislature they can

I'm sorry but -- as RR said when asked about what constituted victory in the Cold War -- "We win, they lose"
 
That's fine Whihlander. They can have their dirt roads in the woods and their septic tanks and power generators. I have no objection to any man who decides to live off the grid. But he has to really do it. The minute he starts demanding access to tax payer funded connections to Libertopia, he gives up some of the claim he has to live free or die. Once my taxes and yours are contributing, he enters the communitarian world the rest of us live in. I should be free not to subsidize his lifestyle shouldn't I?
 
whighlander said:
CZ-- cars and other road, off-road motor vehicles have done more for personal liberty globally since Prometheus stole the fire of the gods for humanity

...

This freedom to live and work where you want is not possible if you are constrained to train schedules or forced to live walking / biking distance from train stations, and also have walking / biking distance from your workplace to/from the station.
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I won't repeat the arguments of F-Line and czsz, both of whom have already refuted your claim that the in New Hampshire, car ownership is the only means to economic freedom. I'll just say that, frankly, I have no idea how you can be convinced of that idea, or your claim that taxpayers don't pay for roads in New Hampshire.

What about the freedom to choose your mode of transportation? What about the freedom of people who can't afford costly maintenance and fuel prices to get around their city and region? What about the freedom of people in Manchester, Nashua and Concord to not have to sit in traffic for 2 hours to get to work, or to live in modern (albeit fairly small) cities where they don't need a car to get everywhere? What about the freedom of people in New Hampshire and Massachusetts to choose between two airports without needing to pay for parking at either one?

Freedom of movement not about prioritizing rail over highways, or the opposite as you seem to prefer--it's about providing choices, so that people with diverse lifestyles and economic situations can live in southern New Hampshire. On its current path, the state will continue to lose young people to nearby states that offer better amenities and become a collection of auto-dependent assisted living centers where the residents can't even drive!

Don't get me wrong -- I like trains -- I'd be all in favor of the Capital Connection -- if a legitimate economic argument can be made for a < 1 hour train (with reasonable frequency) to /from Concord / Manchester including Airport / Nashua as well as Portsmouth and perhaps Rochester. I've been on the Downeaster enough to say that there is already barely adequate in-bound commute service from Exeter and Durham -- but the reverse commute to say UNH is not reasonable.
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That's the whole point! This would have funded a study to show whether or not there was economic argument! This wasn't a grant to build commuter rail--this was a grant to tell the state if building commuter rail made sense! And not using some anecdotal information like your claim that there is insufficient ridership from Boston to Durham, but using actual data and planning!

CZ -- I'm talking the modern rural lifestyle -- No taxpayers need to contribute except for the town infrastructure already in existence to support the legacy agricultural economy.

The old farm land is subdivided and the roads such as they are a built by the owners / developers -- no town funds are used

There are a lot of people living in the woods of NH in that fashion -- perhaps you don't believe that they should have "Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" without your rigid urban permission -- but they will and in a state such as NH with its citizen Legislature they can

I'm sorry but -- as RR said when asked about what constituted victory in the Cold War -- "We win, they lose"
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What is this modern rural lifestyle you speak of? Unless people live on farms or in the wilderness, it's not rural; it's just less dense sprawl. Bedford, where (in addition to Manchester) I grew up, and the other Manchester-Nashua-Lowell suburbs like Merrimack, Londonderry, Derry and Salem are not rural places. They are suburbs full of commuters, who (rather ironically) bemoan the loss of the farmland you so eagerly seek to further develop into subdivisions.

I know that in heavily-Republican Bedford, at least, they are seeking to curb growth, because (despite your claim) the influx of land-gobbling developments hugely impacts taxes in the town--more families means more schools, and even roads built by developers must be maintained by the town. Bedford, to its credit, is now promoting greater density, mixed-use and even consider a form-based code for its eastern area near Manchester and the airport. It's no coincidence that this area stands to benefit in terms of development from an airport rail station, and that the town would like to see local bus service running a route from there to downtown Manchester eventually.

The picture you paint of some utopian rural-suburban landscape in southern New Hampshire is entirely inaccurate; it's not how people live there, whether the suburbs are wooded or not. Manchester, Nashua and Concord, of course, are not rural at all, so even if your argument was partially true (which it's not), why should their "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" be beholden to that of their suburban neighbors?
 
whighlander said:
CZ -- I'm talking the modern rural lifestyle -- No taxpayers need to contribute except for the town infrastructure already in existence to support the legacy agricultural economy.

The old farm land is subdivided and the roads such as they are a built by the owners / developers -- no town funds are used

There are a lot of people living in the woods of NH in that fashion -- perhaps you don't believe that they should have "Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" without your rigid urban permission -- but they will and in a state such as NH with its citizen Legislature they can

I'm sorry but -- as RR said when asked about what constituted victory in the Cold War -- "We win, they lose"
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I've spent time in NH, north of Concord, canvassing voters. Working for a Democratic candidate, driving a car with Mass. plates, admitting I lived in Cambridge -- you can imagine how well that went. But I was at least able to absorb the built environment up there.

Maybe 1 out of every 200 people would be living the deep backwoods, fully autonomous, "trespassers will be shot" full NH libterarian dream. The rest were plenty plugged into their communities and definitely didn't have anything like their own private roads or generators. (In fact, quite a few lived in densely-packed trailer parks.) Even those who did live on compounds set far back from public roads with gun-shaped mailboxes (yes, really!) must have used those roads once in awhile to get to somewhere other than the 20 acres of woods surrounding their homes. Very few people were actually farmers or lived off the land they lived on in any way and must have been commuting somewhere.

And this was beyond the southern NH Boston commuter belt, where the libertarian ideal holds even less true. Oh, and I think you're misinformed about the way suburban development works. Sure, private developers often lay down the streets of subdivisions - but then they leave municipalities with the maintenance tab. Sure, you can find exceptions, but most of NH does not live on a private street.
 
The Nashua Telegraph has a great editorial about the Executive Council and the commuter rail study today. Unsurprisingly, the Union Leader has a typically terrible, narrow-minded one. I'll post the one that actually makes sense:

Friday, March 9, 2012
Wheeler let his constituents down

We’ve heard a lot of cockamamie excuses from our elected leaders over the years, but they don’t get much lamer than those offered Wednesday by District 5 Executive Councilor David Wheeler of Milford.

Asked to approve a federally funded, $3.65 million study to help determine the viability of expanded passenger rail service from Concord to Boston, Wheeler joined Councilors Daniel St. Hilaire of Concord and Christopher Sununu of Newfields to block the study, thereby putting $4.1 million in federal grant money in serious jeopardy.

Even though the study had the strong backing of business, civic and municipal, leaders in the district he was elected to represent – or at least so we thought.

Four years in the making, the study had the support of Nashua Mayor Donnalee Lozeau – who made a valiant, last-minute bid before the council Wednesday prior to the vote – and the Board of Aldermen. It had the support of the Greater Nashua and Manchester chambers of commerce. And it had the support of nearly seven of 10 state residents, based on a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll, including a majority of self-identified Republicans.

Still, that wasn’t enough to persuade Wheeler to join with Councilors Raymond Burton of Bath and Raymond Wieczorek of Manchester to fund the study.
Generally, Wheeler and Sununu agreed with St. Hilaire’s contention that the state should be focusing on finding the $300 million it needs to pay for the widening of Interstate 93.

We would like to see I-93 widened, too, but why does this have to be an either or? Why couldn’t the state pursue funding for I-93 and authorize a feasibility study of expanded rail service using the $4.1 million in federal funds the New Hampshire Rail Transit Authority had secured for this very purpose? Why not both?

As for Wheeler, we found his arguments unconvincing, to say the least.
“I have talked to business people in Nashua, and I think this $4 million is way too much money,” he said. “We are spending money we don’t have for a project we can’t afford.”

Too much money? Again, the funds came from the federal government – not from state taxpayers – and, if not used here, are just going to be diverted to a state that better understands the economic and environmental benefits of rail.

Then there was this: “I talked to some Nashua chamber members who privately told me they weren’t for rail,” he said. “The supporters have done an excellent job of PR, but I’ve felt for some time support for this is rather shallow.”

So just because “some” chamber members weren’t behind the study, that outweighs the overwhelming support of the mayor, aldermen and the two predominant chambers of commerce in southern New Hampshire?
Hard as we try, we just don’t get it, which leads us to suspect the vote had less to do with the merits of the study and more to do with politics.
As some have suggested, maybe it was opposition from the highway construction industry. Or the commuter bus business.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was simply a matter of Republicans voting against the rail study because Democratic President Barack Obama is such a strong advocate of expanding high-speed rail service throughout the country.

If that’s the case, we wish Wheeler would have just said so. At least that’s something we can understand.
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whighlander said:
The old farm land is subdivided and the roads such as they are a built by the owners / developers -- no town funds are used
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But once they're accepted by the town, they're town property and taxes are used for future maintenance. Also, the costs of providing services (water/sewer, electric, etc) are subsidized by other ratepayers that are provided the same services at lower costs.
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
Really weird that they're worried about "competing" with I-93. Is it a toll road in Southern NH? If you take vehicle miles off I-93, the new widened road will last LONGER.
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There making the same arguments in Northeast PA against restoring the Lackawanna Railway. Its silly and backwards , both regions are growing at a small but decent clip. People don't realize you can only expand highways a certain number of times before it becomes wasteful and has little impact on the growing traffic demands. A 2 track Railway can handle up to 500 trains a day and over 70,000 based off the Harlem line...
 
Why is anyone surprised by this?

NH for many decades has been the fundamentalist religious parent who refuses to allow its child to have an emergency appendectomy.

They want to remain in 1825 and just mooch money off of Massachusetts.

Why even bother?
 
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