De-levitating the trains on time

Saturday night, I was lucky enough to come into a free ticket to an exciting inter-sectional college football match-up in Tiger Stadium. The trouble was kickoff was at 6 and I had to work into the afternoon so time was a pressing issue. Baton Rouge isn't exactly right around the corner, nobody trusts my Tercel anymore for some reason, and there was no time to book the next Greyhound Scenicruiser, so we had to jam up there  in Alli's Prius... which is tricky because if you push those too far over the speed limit I think they take you back in time 30 years.

But despite all that, we made it in time to see the band go out on the field.



And as a bonus, it seems we got to see the final athletic performance of Zach Mettenberger's mustache so there's another ticket stub for the scrapbook right there.

But it raises the question, why can't we have a more convenient way of getting to Baton Rouge and back?  It's an especially frustrating question considering we've been kicking this project down the road for a generation now.

If the goal of light rail is to take commuters from Point A to Point B and beyond, then New Orleans remains stuck at or just shy of Point A. But it's not for lack of effort.

Three years ago, as part of President Barack Obama's stimulus package, the feds made money available to build a high-speed rail system between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Public and private groups responded quickly by commissioning studies and forming coalitions. Some state lawmakers got behind the idea as well.

But Gov. Bobby Jindal had other ideas.

This was far from the first time anyone proposed a high-speed rail line between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. But it was the first time a sitting Louisiana governor turned down federal funds for such a project based on a bizarre political calculation that it would be more advantageous for him to bash "levitating trains to Disneyland"


Unfortunately for Jindal, his choice of political snark over substantive governance hasn't yet catapulted his career to national prominence. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it has placed an annoying artificial limitation on our ability to have nice things.

Undaunted, nonprofits in the two cities trudged forward, eventually abandoning the high-speed concept for a commuter rail proposal that's still being discussed.

"High speed rail has become a hot-button political issue," says state Rep. Walt Leger, D-New Orleans. "It just makes more sense to look at light rail."

"Light rail" is technically different from the commuter rail line they're actually talking about building but nevermind that. The point is, we could be building a state-of-the-art supertrain that could get us all to Tiger Stadium in time for kickoff and then the hell out of Baton Rouge without having to balance the pleasures of tailgating with the hazards of highway driving. Instead we have to waste this opportunity on something of lesser value because, thanks to Jindal, "high speed" has come to equal "alien socialist terrorism" politically.

The good news is there still seems to be widespread support for building something... some sub-optimal thing, maybe, but still something. It's far from the most prominent example of Jindal's continued (though sliding) popularity overshadowing the near universal hatred of his policy decisions.  But it may be the most blatantly stupid example of that phenomenon.