August 07, 2014
The NYT had an interesting piece on the progress of high-speed rail under President Obama. As the headline tells it, we’ve spent $11 billion without all that much to show.
Just in case readers didn’t know offhand, the federal government has spent roughly $550 billion on transportation over the last six years, so spending on high speed rail would be roughly 2.0 percent of total transportation spending. If you think this spending has been driving up your tax bill, this comes to roughly 0.05 percent of total federal spending over the last six years.While it would require a careful analysis to make a full assessment of whether the money devoted to high-speed rail has produced good results compared to alternative uses it would have been helpful to express this spending in a way that would be meaningful to most readers.
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