Throughout the world, countries are building or already enjoying high-speed rail networks, but America, once the home of the world’s first railroad barons, has been left in the dust. Now, the Obama Administration is trying to get regional high-speed rail networks off the ground, but poor state finances along with a skeptical public beholden to the auto industry and crushingly high price tags have left these proposals surrounding by question marks.
Not helping the matter is inherent skepticism in the press coverage of the high-speed rail initiative. Take, for instance, a Room for Debate feature from the opinion pages of The Times. Six commentators offered up their views on the future of rail in the U.S., and most of them were bearish on the idea. Robert Puentes from Brookings wants sensible investments that offer smart connections; Jan Brueckner, a U.C. Irvine economist, doubts that Americans will change their transportation patterns; and Sam Staley from the Reason Foundation calls a high-speed rail network “infeasible and not cost-effective.” It’s designed to fail before it even gets off the ground.
Only Bob Yaro, head of New York’s own Regional Plan Association, seems to understand the need for high-speed rail. At $500 billion, a comprehensive rail network “won’t come cheap,” he says, but “we can’t afford not to build a national high-speed system. It’s not the only infrastructure investment needed to secure our economic futures. But it’s one that will be essential to our future mobility and competitiveness.”
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The problem with those NYTimes panels is that the NYTimes feels like it has to have controversy or disagreement, so it looks for people for their viewpoints, not their expertise. Hence they got a clown from Reason, a random academic with no expertise in railroads, and Bob Yaro. The other three seem like they know what they’re doing, and yet not a single one of them seems to have any idea how things are done in countries that already have HSR.
The most annoying thing here is that there are people with real expertise who could articulate strong views on the subject. Would it have killed the NYTimes to drop Bob Yaro for Anthony Perl?
I’d have a heart attack from shock if the Times ever asked a real expert their opinion. They did an article on carpool lanes in LA recently, in which they saw fit to publish the opinions of Joan Didion and an actor, but not a single person remotely expert in transit or highways.
Sadly, I think it’s clear that there’s a very large head-in-the-sand lobby in the US, and the more it wins power, the more this country will sink into third-world status. We’re already heading that way fast. Rule of law is worse than in Mexico according to a recent study; we at blogs like this all know infrastructure is down there at the bottom of the developed-world league.
We can hope to remain an advanced country, but when people are emigrating from the US to Mexico for better opportunities (and they are!), it says something.
There isn’t much precedent in US history for something like a national HSR project. The Interstates took some time getting going but they were backed by a constellation of groups with financial interest in highways. (As well as the need for better highways being apparent to any one of the increasingly numerous citizens who owned a car.) The Moon Race? The Cold War. (Also, it gained some protection as a JFK legacy.)
I don’t know what the European man-on-the-street attitude is toward big, expensive civic projects. In the US, it’s deeply cynical, I believe. The phrase, “civic improvement” almost coexists with the words graft (if anyone actually used that word anymore) and kickbacks and overruns, or even incompetence (“Good enough for government work,” goes the old saw). Remember The Boss’s line from The Great McGinty: “Most people think a dam is something you put a lot of water into. A dam is something you put a lot of concrete into. And there’s always room for more.” Almost everyone knows the term Tammany Hall and what it connotes.
HSR is just a very heavy lift for American politics.
That price tag of $117 billion for Boston–D.C. HSR. Is that totally out of line? I mean, it’s 450 miles, or close to that.
Yes, it’s totally out of line. Per-km, it’s the same as the Gotthard Base Tunnel – or the proposed mostly-underground maglev line in Japan. If you exclude segments where Amtrak plans to run purely on existing tracks, for example all of New Jersey, then it becomes more expensive than both.
In my opinion, anything published by the New York Times is simply meant to stir the pot. Can anyone really name a single story in which ‘credible’ sources have been used? I mean, honestly, who gives them the O.K. to use people who have no experience at all on topics that are semi-important to the rest of America. And one must take into consideration the impact of the opinions of these novices on people who aren’t educated at all on these topics. It disgusts me.
Here in Silicon Valley, the free newspapers offered in the wealthy suburbs along the peninsula daily vilify the California High-Speed Rail authority, arguing that upgrading the commuter train line that currently runs through their communities would split communities in half like the Berlin Wall. (No mention of the multiple highways and freeways that already divide the communities.) The arguments are that the HSR should build an expensive subway through the fault lines beneath their suburban communities, or that the trains should just stop in San Jose and people can take the slow commuter service on up to the Southeast corner of San Francisco. I have heard that this NIMYism gets a lot of press because the newspaper owners are conservatives.
Local politicians occasionally try to obstruct the HSR, but the governor, viewing the project as a component of his legacy, seems to enjoy railroading the project on through.
These same communities rejected a sales tax increase in the sixties that would have brought them improved regional train service, (BART) in order to preserve their then-rural character. I fret that history could repeat and these same communities could yet block high-speed rail from reaching San Francisco. Every mile of progress the trains make despite this obstruction will be one more smile in my heart.
-danny
I think you’re way off base in bashing the HSR skeptics. Yes, The Times should have rounded up more knowledgeable folks, but they would have told you the same thing. At current construction costs, HSR makes zero sense in the U.S. unless you make absolutely absurd estimates about both usage and the benefits per ton of carbon reduction.
This is not coming from a HSR hater. I would love a huge network of rail zipping people across the country (or at least the most densely built parts of it) but the figures just don’t add up. Being mad at the NYT or the Republicans or some other boogie man doesn’t change that.
We need to change the cost structure by looking at what works in other countries and imitating their bests ideas. Then we can talk seriously about HSR (although, when you look at miles traveled, it would still probably make more sense to use capital budgets to improve commuter transit rather than inter-city transit).
In foreign countries, people travel by highspeed rail and freight travels by road. Also, government entities own the tracks.
In America, freight companies own the track, and have the right of way – and they will enforce a top speed of 60-65 mph. (Amtrak owns NY to DC for Acela) – and people travel by road.
If the government takes over the tracks (eminent domain?), the frieght will switch to the roads.
Also, aside from the NE, where else is high speed rail network needed? High speed rail only works in connecting multiple cities that have well established and convenient public transportation (so a car is not required for any part of the trip)
In the EU and Japan, the dominant freight mode is the sea. In China, Russia, and Switzerland, rail dominates. The mode share of trucking is somewhat higher in the EU than in the US, but conversely, rail carries higher-value products. US freight rail has a 37% share of ton-miles, but its share of the value of goods carried is in the single digits.
LA to SF. Chicago to everywhere near Chicago (but particularly Minneapolis).