UPDATE: Tell Governor Sununu to VETO SB 241 or risk a new broadbased (sales or income) tax! Call him at 271-2121
Word has it (not posted yet on bill status page) that the House Public Works and Highways Committee has ‘recommended’ that SB 241 (the Commuter Rail Boondoggle for “project development, analysis, and funding”) “Ought to Pass”.
The House of Representatives is in NO WAY obliged to follow this recommendation.
You can write to the House Public Works and Highways Committee and ask, who voted yes… as we need to know who to blame for this travesty when it fails to deliver. Their contact information is below.
Michael Edgar (D)
John Cloutier (D)
Jack Martin (D)
Karen Ebel (D)
Michael Abbott (D)
Barry Faulkner (D)
Sue Newman (D)
Daniel Eaton (D)
Michael Pedersen (D)
Joshua Query (D)
Matthew Towne (D)
Ivy Vann (D)
John Graham (R)
Walter Kolodziej (R)
Franklin Tilton (R)
David Milz (R)
John Janigian (R)
John O’Connor (R)
Paul Somero (R)
Jim Fedolfi (R)
Richard Beaudoin (R)
Remind them that special interests would not have needed to hire these high-priced lobbyists (same folks who pushed the Balsam’s Boondoggle) if Commuter Rail was really worth NH risking its low-tax, high-livability status!
Cui bono? It’s not you…
Let’s start with the biggest lie:
Recent media reports that that “75.5% of all NH residents want commuter rail” is blatant stretch of the truth when only 668 respondents were polled — by a local college!
Some folks have mistakenly envisioned this as a “high-speed” train, but this in fact would be nothing but an extension of the old, bankrupt MBTA which enjoys average speeds of 33-44 MPH
MBTA extended to Concord, with its limited ridership would NOT do ANY of the following:
– have enough ridership to alleviate traffic
– help the environment (trains use diesel oil, Vermont found its train polluted more!)
– have enough ridership to be sustainable (less than 2% of the population)
– keep youth in NH, when NH is already the top destination for youth
– create jobs (see report on Brunswick, Maine)
According to statistics reported by NHPR, “82,000 people travel from New Hampshire to Massachusetts each day, but only about 2,000 of them take public transit.”
What does that say about transit? It says that transit is a better choice than driving for only two and a half percent of those people. Out of 100 commuters who weigh the advantages and disadvantages of transit versus driving, 97.5 percent of them have concluded that driving is better. This is not the kind of ridership that solves ANYTHING, let alone traffic on Rte 93.
We challenge you to find ANY system in the country that is NOT actually in debt. There are at least 10 links in the information file below with articles that point to those debt-ridden train systems.
Those of us who are wisely opposed have no paid lobbyists. But you can write to the full House of Representatives who will soon vote on SB 241 and ask them to save the NH Advantage by voting NO. You can also ask the Governor to VETO it if it passes the House.
Governor Sununu once admitted it was a ‘boondoggle’. Remind him that it still is and he should not add a third mistake to his legacy.
