A story of that can repeated in every state, and is

thelma and louise come to bangor

In their never-ending quest for taxpayers’ money to redistribute to favored constituencies and campaign donors, politicians are always pitching boondoggles. Some want high-speed ferries, others windmill and solar farms, still others will settle for just increasing unionized teachers’ pay to $500,000, and most want all of the above, and more. Maine wants a train

Maine DOT Pitches $900M Portland-Bangor Amtrak Train Expansion

The Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) is considering ways to make traveling from Portland to Bangor easier.

One option is spending $2 million to operate four coach buses on an expanded schedule.

The other is to spend between $628 million and $900 million to expand Amtrack’s Downeaster trainline from Brunswick to Augusta, Waterville, and Bangor.

Maine, naturally, is going with the second option.

We can ignore the following factoid, because the state spenders certainly are: According to data provided by MDOT, in 2019 the average daily ridership for the Downeaster north of Portland was 112 passengers.

That’s about how many people are taking advantage of Connecticut’s own billion-dollar train that whisks passengers from New Haven to Hartford, or, as it’s known among the cognoscenti, “The Rolling Pork Barrel From Nowhere to Nowhere”, but hey, it’s other people’s money, eh?