New Hampshire's current 10-year highway plan starts with the year 2011. In the decade that follows, Gov. John Lynch's administration proposed spending $224.6 million on rail, most of that going to the development of a new commuter rail line. That represents 6.2 percent of the state's entire transportation budget for the decade. Now, only two months into 2012, commuter rail is already out of the 10-year plan. The taxpayers should be thankful.

Transportation Commissioner Chris Clement told the Josiah Bartlett Center's Grant Bosse this week that there simply is not enough money to fund all of the projects the state had hoped to undertake, so commuter rail had to go.

“We don't have the funding to maintain our existing infrastructure,” he said. “Our focus is on roads and bridges.”

Funny thing is, the funding squeeze has existed for years, but that did not stop blinkered state officials from foolishly pursuing passenger rail.

Gov. Lynch and former Transportation Commissioner George Campbell made sure to budget hundreds of millions of dollars on trains that would be used by a handful of commuters and that would cost the state millions of dollars a year to operate. It never made financial or transportation sense. That's why previous DOT commissioners had opposed passenger rail. But Lynch and Campbell simply loved trains.

“To reduce congestion on our highways, I think it is important we explore expanding commuter rail in New Hampshire,” Lynch said in 2007.

This was after the state had eliminated commuter rail as an option for the I-93 corridor, going with highway widening instead, because according to the DOT's own study, a passenger rail line would produce no significant reduction in traffic congestion.

When the federal government was deciding how to direct “stimulus” money in 2008, Campbell said this: “I don't see how you could have a stimulus package that didn't land squarely on rail.”

Thankfully, Commissioner Clement is taking a more objective approach to transportation funding. The taxpayers have been spared a major boondoggle. For now.