Governor Scott Nixes Strange High-Speed Rail Plan

Whenever my sister travels by car from her home near Dallas, Texas to my father's home near Miami, Florida, she spends a very long time within Florida. As a matter of fact, she thinks that most of this cross-country trip occurs within Florida's state boundaries! Which brings up an important point: Florida may not be the largest state, but for its size it has to be the most elongated state. This makes traveling from one end of the state to the other something of an ordeal. For those either living in south Florida or visiting it often, that highly-populated area can be seen as rather isolated from the rest of the state. For that reason, high-speed rail sounds like a reasonable way to connect that area to the rest of the state. And we just had a federally-funded plan for high-speed rail here in Florida. But...

The plan was for this to be America's first truly high-speed rail, destined for opening in 2015 and funded through federal stimulus money. But then teabagger Rick Scott came along and squeaked his way into the governor's seat in a very close election last November. And one of his first actions as governor was to reject federal funding for the project and scrap it outright. What a jerk, right? But...

The $2.6 billion-planned high-speed railway was to be built spanning two central Florida cities: Tampa and Orlando. Two cities that are only 84 miles apart! C'mon, I live in Gainesville and have no trouble driving the 100-plus miles to either city. And Miami, which is about 340 miles from my home? Well, south Florida hasn't had any political clout in Florida since Bob Graham left the Senate. Never mind that a Miami-Tampa or Miami-Orlando high-speed rail system would have closed the distance gap and been used much more heavily: it obviously would have entailed a greater financial investment, and we're supposed to do everything nowadays on a shoestring budget. So now we have nothing.

I have many problems with teabagger Scott being my governor, but the fact is that he is my governor. This is at least one decision he has made that I agree with, though. But his reasons may not have been my reasons. After all, I'm sure that he couldn't care less whether Miami ever got high-speed rail access to the rest of the state. For that matter, I'm not sure that he could care less if Miami just slid into the sea...