Florimorons

Florida gets the booby prize for its handling of the last election. No, we aren’t on about counting dimpled or hung chads or recounting overvotes or the butterfly ballot. [But did you hear that when global warming submerges the low state below sea-level and the 15m Floridians seek refuge on high ground in the US proper, the admission requirement to the US is going to be a civics test in following arrows and punching chads cleanly?]

No, we’re on about how the constitution of the state of Florida was amended to require construction of highspeed rail between the state’s major cities. You’d think such a project has no place in a constitution, but Florida’s amazing supreme court heard that case and approved its placement on the ballot. The measure passed 53/47 and sets a deadline for a start on the project. No source of revenue for this huge white elephant is identified, of course. A highspeed rail project collapsed in 1999 when Gov Jeb Bush sensibly refused government guarantees. Without taxpayer underwriting investors lost interest.

A friend who went down to Florida to fight the project says politicians on both sides were against the thing as absurd. Every newspaper in the state editorialized against it. But, he says it proved impossible to get any serious discussion, let alone criticism of the issue onto TV. And the project’s rich backer proved adept at pitching the ballot as a vote against traffic congestion and in favor of ‘alternatives’ to clogged roads. Momhood & apple pie stuff.

Fact is Florida’s congestion problems are mostly within cities not between them, and where there is congestion between cities – for example between Orlando and Tampa -– it can and is being dealt with economically by a simple lane addition to the highway. Highspeed rail makes no sense as a congestion-fighter. Trains are unlikely to be competitive with air over the longer distances and unlikely to be competitive with road over the shorter distances.

Maybe the Florida constitution will be fulfilled by a little groundbreaking ceremony and the erection of a sign: “In accordance with the silliest constitutional provision ever, a start was made here this day on a highspeed rail but we can’t go any further with it until we can find some source of money in the constitution.”

Other places commonsense mostly prevailed. Anti-development ballots designed to put growth boundaries around Phoenix and other Arizona cities and similar no-growth planning in Colorado were soundly defeated (2 to 1 margins) – a big blow to the unholy alliance of the anti-immigrant populist right and the elitist enviros. Pro-road ballots won in NJ, RI and AL, but lost (coupled with transit) in NY.