Passenger Service with Other Peoples' Money

Read it this morning while on the stationary bike...can you imagine not getting the approval from UP before starting this project?

What a mess.  Why doesnt someone forward this to Don Phillips?

Ed

I read the article in the Trib this morning on my ride to work and it seems that a new passenger station in a new location was a small part of the whole project.  It appears that the Village of Bellwood took the lead on a sizable development proposal without due diligence and is now stuck with the bill.

  LMAO - but where do I start ? 

Location, I suppose, for context, esp. with regard to Proviso Yard - approx. Lat./ Long. coords. (per the ACME Mapper 2.0 application):  N 41.88142 W 87.88312

See also: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-0405-bellwood-metra-station-gf20110404,0,3444702.graphic 

greyhounds - What exactly is the parallel that you are intending for us to draw here with regard to passenger rail spending ?  (seriously)  "Beware of locally promoted station development proposals !" ? Yeah, that part I can get.  Also, to "Beware of politicians claiming to bring free money to shower on the local populace !" ?  Yeah, that too. 

But I'm not extending that to publicly vetted and approved funding for Amtrak, local commuter agencies, the carbuilders, improvements to the host railroad, grade crossing eliminations, DOT involvement, etc.  Notably - at least to me, I didn't see any of those major or professional-type organizations mentioned negatively in this article . . .    

Here's an excerpt regarding the Union Pacific's limited involvement:

"As Bellwood was acquiring properties, Union Pacific still wasn't backing the plan, saying in a 2008 letter to town officials, "if we could have made it work, we would have done so."

Within a matter of weeks, though, the railroad met with Bellwood officials and U.S. Rep. Danny Davis in Washington. A deal was struck: The town could build the station if it paid an estimated $13 million to change two impacted rail projects.*

Davis, D-Ill., said he sang the praises of the project until Union Pacific came around. Railroad spokesman Mark Davis said the about-face was normal, the result of negotiations with "high-level" engineers."

*I'm sure one of those projects was the new connection to the IHB that Carl & I discussed back in March in last quarter's version of the "Trackside Lounge" thread.   

Amateurs there, for sure, except at ripping people off.  "I'm shocked - shocked !"  Then again, it's in suburban Chicago - what else did we expect ?  

For fun, start an office pool on the date and time when Bellwood will file for Chapter 9 = Municipal Bankruptcy, just like the office pools when the "ice goes out" on certain rivers and lakes. 

That'll go a long ways towards preventing the next such scheme - bondholders will look for more certainty and professional assurance to protect their investment.    

Wonder what they did for "due diligence" - consultants, advisors, etc.  If so, then maybe some professional liability suits are in order.  If not, then once again, "You get the government you deserve".    Bet the next round of elections are well attended !   

As the Japanese poet Bassho supposedly once said: "A certain number of fleas are good for a dog; otherwise, he forgets he's a dog." (as quoted by the 'Tiger' Tanaka character in late spy fiction writer Ian Fleming's James Bond novel, You Only Live Twice)

$22 to $40 million of debt for a place with 19,000 residents - that's $1,150 to almost $2,000 per capita, or roughly $3,000 to $5,000 per statistical household.  I think that's roughly the proportion of the Federal deficit, this year, though if memory serves the Gross National Debt is about 10 times that . . .  

What is it about places with "Bell" in their names, anyway ? (compare with the recent overpaid town official scandal in Bell, California)

- Paul North.

I can't imagine why anyone would think the UP would be excited about something like this, even if it did call for eliminating two stations in favor of one. 

If we're lucky, here's a URL for the area. 

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Lake+Street+and+25th+Avenue,+Melrose+Park,+IL&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=W+Lake+St+%26+N+25th+Ave,+Melrose+Park,+IL+60160&gl=us&ei=xTWbTc2gEI-gsQOy56mdBA&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ8gEwAA

The station would either be built right at the control point (25th Avenue) or in an area where one or two tracks devoted to freight movements in and out of Proviso occupy the tracks for times (often waiting for the scoots to clear!).  They can't build the station much closer to 25th Avenue (the street), because that's a CREATE-funded grade separation waiting to happen.

The one thing this spot has going for it now is plenty of room for parking.  Or was that where the housing development was going--that's the property that wasn't purchased by the village.  And I'm not sure what anyone would want with that "landfill" surrounded by UP's connecting tracks to the IHB!

"It pretty good for railfans !" (to quote an old Indian chief from New York State to an Erie RR R-O-W agent)    In the middle of a wye, with a driveway that has direct access to the southern side of W. Lake St., abutting the IHB main, overlooking the east end of Proviso Yard and the UP/ Metra main - what's not to like ?

- Paul North.   

Paul:

       You may continue to ROFLYAO!

I am reminded of a situation in 1990 when the IRs branch of Da Federal Gobiment took over a  cat house in Nevada.. Was unable to run it, for fun or profit.Then had to shut down a 'money-maker' putting its money-makers on unimployment . Aftet three months of much hassling and spending money they were not making; sold it at auction to the original owner(?) Whom I guess had more and better business acumen than the IRS.

I guess the only explanation is Illinois politicians engaged in their usual intermural games of getting into the pockets of someone else?

greyhounds

There is sometimes some outrage that some of us would even dare to question the expenditure of taxpayer funds for the development of rail passenger service.

I believe such outrage to be misguided... 

 

Couple of comments.

1) The Trib article conveys no sense that this project ran through the obligatory vetting process with the metropolitan planning organization, or MPO, which for Chicagoland is CATS (or whatever it now styles itself); in fact, it suggests just the opposite.   UP's unwillingness to sign on, and METRA's demeurral on the project both suggest this to be the case.

2) We're not talking passenger srevice here so much as we're talking what seems to be a payoff, for what we don't know, carried out under the guise of urban development.   "[Project Manager] Bruno said he always intended to pay his taxes and didn't mean to file false returns"   -- that says it all.  Another day at the political office, Chicagoland-style.  We get the government we deserve and deserve the government we get.

I take Greyhounds’ intent to be expressed in the unstated axiom implied by the thread title.  That is that people who spend other people’s money will not spend it as wisely as they would spend their own money. 

It is the fundamental problem with public sector spending, and the bigger the project, the bigger the problem.  Corruption happens to be the theme of the article cited in the first post, but that is only one component of the fundamental problem of spending other people’s money.   The problem is broader than just corruption.  And the fundamental problem is not just related to rail expenditures. 

In its broadest terms, the title of this thread could be this:

Amateurs Building Their Empires With Other People’s Money 

I don't know whether to LMAO or scream.

It's about time. I sincerely hope the political folks are thrown out on the street, the developer goes broke and the so-called transportation people (bus people) lose their licensure for practicing in an areawhere they should not have. Paul & I see manifestations of this with frightening regularity.

And the RTD Commuter/Light Rail people here in Denver will blunder onward, ignorant of this.

Paul_D_North_Jr

"It pretty good for railfans !" (to quote an old Indian chief from New York State to an Erie RR R-O-W agent)    In the middle of a wye, with a driveway that has direct access to the southern side of W. Lake St., abutting the IHB main, overlooking the east end of Proviso Yard and the UP/ Metra main - what's not to like ?

- Paul North. 

Wouldn't that be nice? 

But this is rarely the good "business end" of Proviso (as far as the sheer number of moves), and, the last time I saw, that entire wye was on fills (note that it passes over Lake Street and the main line), so you'll either find yourself in a hole or hit with a trespassing charge.

Maybe Bellwood could build a railfan observation tower high enough to overcome the fill (along with a tunnel under the IHB to afford safe access to their new station...).

Hey, everyone, I just had a great idea there!  Where does the line form in front of the bank, hmmm?

How is that "passenger service?"  Looks like just another local town venture with a private developer [PUD with a transportation center at the core] that was a non-starter from the get go.  Some work, some don't.

Lets not confuse two issues, subsidization and very bad planning.

Regarding subsidization, again a motorist pais only about 57% of the total costs of his driving the car, counting police, loss of real estate revenue from super-highway land taking, etc.

mudchicken

I don't know whether to LMAO or scream.

It's about time. I sincerely hope the political folks are thrown out on the street, the developer goes broke and the so-called transportation people (bus people) lose their licensure for practicing in an areawhere they should not have. Paul & I see manifestations of this with frightening regularity.

And the RTD Commuter/Light Rail people here in Denver will blunder onward, ignorant of this.

+1

But don't overlook the increased Real Estate taxes from the increased property values in the proximity of super highway exits, which I suspect more than makes up for the taxes lost on undeveloped land.

I am not arguing that ANYONE pays their actual share of the cost of highways.....however, without all the means of transportation that exist in this country at a affordable cost (governmental subsidy), the place would look like Afghanistan.

daveklepper

Lets not confuse two issues, subsidization and very bad planning.

 

Regarding subsidization, again a motorist pais only about 57% of the total costs of his driving the car, counting police, loss of real estate revenue from super-highway land taking, etc.