High Speed Rail Going Nowhere Fast

National Review: Obama's Promises For High Speed Trains Would Cost A Lot More Than He Is Allocating

(National Review Online)  This column was written by David Freddoso.

---

Book a train from Washington, D.C., to Chicago, and you’re in for a ride that takes 17 hours, 35 minutes. Given the choice between that and a two-hour plane trip, it’s little wonder that most Washingtonians prefer to fly, despite the security searches and the long lines at Reagan National. It is also little wonder that some airlines still make money, whereas Amtrak, America’s near-monopoly provider of inter-city passenger rail service, requires huge annual subsidies.

But what if inter-city train service became much faster? President Obama wants to offer Americans such an option, and to that end he has promised an $8-billion federal investment in high-speed rail, plus $5 billion more over the next five years. That’s just $13 billion in all, and for that, Obama promises to start building ten different rail corridors, each between 100 and 600 miles long.

“What we're talking about,” he says, “is a vision for high-speed rail in America. Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes. Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination.”

It sounds lovely, but before you go to sleep with visions of bullet trains dancing in your head, it’s worth examining the numbers more closely. Any real-life high-speed rail system on the scale Obama is promising would be vastly more expensive than the $13 billion he has committed; in fact, it would require close to half of the $787 billion contained in his recently passed stimulus package.

We know this because high-speed rail systems in other nations were not built, and are not operated, anywhere near so cheaply as Obama suggests. In the past decade, Taiwan built a single 215-mile high-speed passenger route for $15 billion. Germany, France, and Italy, often cited as advanced railroad nations, subsidize their rail systems heavily: Between 1995 and 2003, Germany spent $104 billion on subsidies, France spent $75 billion, and Italy spent $64 billion, according to a 2008 study by Amtrak’s inspector general. Rail ridership in Europe far outpaces that in the U.S., but in spite of these huge subsidies, trains have lost a significant portion of their market share to automobiles and planes since 1980.

Although the U.S. has no true “bullet trains,” at least two states have developed and approved detailed plans for high-speed rail that came with cost analyses. In 2000, Florida voters approved a ballot initiative mandating construction of a 320-mile bullet train from Tampa to Miami via Orlando. The voters repealed it four years later when they saw the price estimate of $25 billion. (Other estimates put the cost as high as $51 billion in 2004 dollars.)

Last year California voters approved a ballot proposition to dedicate $10 billion in bonds to a high-speed rail line slated to cost $45 billion just for its main leg between Los Angeles and San Francisco. If this project is ever completed - which would require tens of billions from the federal government or from private investors - it will probably end up costing more like $65 to $81 billion, according to a study by two rail experts at the Reason Foundation.

These are some benchmarks for the price of high-speed rail. Yet somehow, Obama’s plan envisions spending a mere fraction of the cost of either the Florida or the California plan, while sending trains speeding along both those routes, as well as routes in New England, Texas, upstate New York, Pennsylvania, the Gulf Coast, the Pacific Northwest, the Southeast, and the Midwest. The document outlining Obama’s strategic vision promises express trains running at speeds above 150 miles per hour, rivaling some of the Japanese bullet trains, the French TGV, and the Spanish AVE. Obama is promising such trains virtually everywhere - you could take one from Little Rock to San Antonio, if you chose.

“This plan incorporates all of the high-speed rail routes that were federally approved several years ago,” says Ron Utt, a railroad expert at the Heritage Foundation. “Nobody’s ever invested any money in them because there’s not enough money anywhere to actually build them. This is sort of like a concession to the rail buffs - that now we’ll pretend we’re going to build them.”

In the real world of high-speed rail, Utt said, $13 billion gets you “almost nothing . . . You would build more sidings and a couple of extra double tracks here and there, and reduce the time of some of the trips.”

At the very best, riders can hope that a few lines will get marginally faster, along the lines of Amtrak’s Acela service. For between $133 and $155 (one-and-a-half to two times the price of a regular train ticket), Acela cuts 20 to 27 minutes from the three-and-a-quarter-hour, 230-mile trip between Washington, D.C., and New York City. The trip would cost about $20 by bus, with high-speed Internet service the whole way.

It is perfectly understandable why a politician like President Obama would present a plan like this. In a time of fear and worry, promises of high-speed rail excite the imagination, and Obama’s plan spreads the empty promises among ten different geographic areas for maximum political benefit.

What could be more presidential than promising a chicken in every pot - even if all the plan actually delivers is an egg?

David Freddoso is an NRO staff reporter.

[taxguydave]

" I guess I'm missing something here - the question of why high-speed rail doesn't 'work' in the U.S. assumes that it 'works' someplace else. Other than Japan, where is 'somewhere else?' According to this article, Europeans have been dumping billions into a high-speed rail blackhole, and receiving next to nothing in return - apparently Europeans would prefer to drive or fly, even though the government tells them otherwise. Why in the world would we want to emulate Europe and dump billions of dollars into something that apparently no one wants?
posted by tomthespud"

Yes, you are missing something here. European governments subsidize rail because it's very popular. I've taken high speed rail in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland and Spain . You always need a reservation--they are always packed.

Just like the US, they also subsidize their airlines as well. When was the last time an airline built an airport or an air traffic control tower? Without billions of dollars a year in Federal, state and local subsidies, there would be almost no passenger air transportation in this country at all. Even as we speak, United Airlines is trying to blackmail the city of Denver into building them yet another concourse. If they're so self-sufficient, why don't THEY pony up?

[tomthespud]

I guess I'm missing something here - the question of why high-speed rail doesn't 'work' in the U.S. assumes that it 'works' someplace else. Other than Japan, where is 'somewhere else?' According to this article, Europeans have been dumping billions into a high-speed rail blackhole, and receiving next to nothing in return - apparently Europeans would prefer to drive or fly, even though the government tells them otherwise. Why in the world would we want to emulate Europe and dump billions of dollars into something that apparently no one wants?

[kevboom]

"It is also little wonder that some airlines still make money, whereas Amtrak, America?s near-monopoly provider of inter-city passenger rail service, requires huge annual subsidies."

As if the government hasn't been propping up the airline industry for decades, give me a break. The oil lobby has successfully made sure Amtrak has been underfunded forever, essentially keeping auto travel and more costly airline travel going strong and relegating train travel to a joke. All the while, European countries have built a successful and cheaper infrastructure of trains that can take you anywhere anytime in no time flat. American governmental policy is far too often driven by corporate interests, rather than the good of the people. The president won't likely be able to build a national network of high speed trains, but he's right to be talking about it and planning for it, just as past presidents were right to build the interstate highway system. You have to start somewhere.

[Spokker]

"You can't compare the distances in the US to say Japan, France and Italy which each are as big as some of our states."

So divide up the US into a bunch of France's or Italy's in your mind and build high speed rail where it makes sense, such as between San Francisco and Los Angeles or Dallas and Houston, to give a couple of examples.

[sandycat4]

The reason high speed trains won't work here is because the US is so big and no matter how fast trains are, here it would still take longer than flying. Let's face it. You can't compare the distances in the US to say Japan, France and Italy which each are as big as some of our states. This just shows how out of touch with reality Obama is.

[Spokker]

"'If' it could be shown that high speed trains only 'replace' other means of transportation then they have my vote. Unfortunately that's not the history of transportation advances. We need to stop thinking 'more' and 'bigger' and 'faster' is the sloution to economic woes."

Why do you think that way? One of the best arguments in my opinion for high speed rail travel is the potential induced demand it could create. What it would do is encourage people to make trips they wouldn't have otherwise made if not for the fact that the high speed train exists as a comfortable alternative to driving or flying.

Induced demand increases commerce as those who travel shop, dine or play. Personally, I would take the train to see the Giants. I already take the train to see the Padres when my team is playing in San Diego. I wouldn't make that trip if not for Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner. If a faster train could take me to San Diego, I'd go more often.

High speed rail can also absorb growth. The country is growing whether we like it or not. Highways cannot be widened forever. Airports are having trouble dealing with the amount of existing flights.

And how fast do you think the airlines would improve their operators when they have a 220 MPH bullet train operating in one of their corridors? I think we'd all be surprised.

[Spokker]

Passenger rail in the United States is nothing more than an infant industry today. Much like Japanese automakers in the 1950s, passenger rail in the US cannot become big until it becomes competitive. Paradoxically, it cannot become competitive until it becomes big. Therefore for passenger rail to get off the ground it requires protection.

John Stuart Mill writes in defense of temporary protection for infant industries.

"The only case in which ... protecting duties can be defensible is when they are imposed temporarily in hopes of naturalizing a foreign industry in itself perfectly suitable to the circumstances of the country."

He goes on to say that protection should stop when the industry has been given a fair shot of demonstrating what it can accomplish.

Passenger rail, including HSR, is an infant industry worthy of protection if you believe that the success of HSR in other countries can be replicated here. The first thing we should do is dispense with the notion that the United States is too vast to sustain bullet train operations. No one is talking about building a route from Los Angeles to New York. If you take the United States as a whole it is a country with vast amounts of empty space that is best traversed in the sky. However, connecting metropolitan areas several hundred miles apart where populations have become quite dense, such as Los Angeles, is a goal worthy of investment. Divide the US into a bunch of Koreas and Japans and you'll see a lot of opportunity for HSR.

Driving and flying are mature industries. They enjoy popularity only because their modern infrastructure got its start before modern railroad infrastructure did (19th century rails don't count). Of course driving and flying appear more attractive in most situations than taking the train. In many corridors driving and flying have little to no competition. In many cases driving and flying hold a monopoly on travel between point A and point B. Starving passenger rail of investment is just another way of limiting competition and barring a potential entrant who wishes to do business.

Once passenger rail has been built up to the point where it can be pushed out of the nest, the training wheels can be taken off all three modes of travel, so to speak, and in my opinion, all three will rapidly flourish and innovate.

I don't want to see people get rid of their cars. I don't want to see people stop flying. What I do want to see is people walking, driving, taking the train, or flying when it is appropriate to do so.

It doesn't make sense to build a high speed rail line from Los Angeles to New York any more than it is to fly from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

At the point where high speed rail is self-sustainable and given the proper investment and time to achieve that, I would like to see its operations privatized. Virgin, French operators, or some firm we've never heard of could run trains someday, engage in price wars, and try to outdo each other in the amenities they offer.

But none of that can happen until passenger rail is given the fair shot it deserves. That Amtrak has existed for almost 40 years and hasn't made a dime doesn't count. That wasn't exactly what I would call protecting an infant industry. That was more like infanticide.

[ubrew12]

The reason this transportation option would never work here is, like healthcare, because its already working in every other developed nation on the planet. American's are commited to coming in last: we're getting good at it.

[Independo]

The issue with high speed trains, etc. is that they do not reduce other traffic...they increase the size of the pie. Airplanes did not just replace cross country trains but actually carry 104 times as many passengers as trains ever did. High speed trains are just 'another' reason to travel from point 'a' to point 'b'....whether to shop, take in a ball game, visit the grand kids, etc.

'If' it could be shown that high speed trains only 'replace' other means of transportation then they have my vote. Unfortunately that's not the history of transportation advances. We need to stop thinking 'more' and 'bigger' and 'faster' is the sloution to economic woes.

[ick-oak]

FINALLY we have a President that is looking out for the rest of us! NOT "Anti-rails "or their allies (YOU know who I mean) . I'm tired of hearing you guys crying over the cost of HSR. Give me a fast train over freeway any day--driven any of them lately? Trucks and more trucks-No I'm not anti-Truck they do serve a VITAL PURPOSE but it seems anyone with a decent size (Not locomotive size like the Caddy SUV The choice of the R. Crowd) auto really has to make a run for it. Construction Zones! In Michigan , the Orange Barrel is our State Tree. I'd rather pay my taxes for some like this than sending across the seas to support some tin-pot dictator who only has his own interest at heart. Jobs will be created someone has get out and do the roadbed work. I have seen and have had friends who did go out and work on upgrading the Amtrak line through Michigan. Just because you guys aren't getting your way this time (Stan and Ollie are out of office now) you make it sound un-american almost to invest in anything else that you don't have an interest in. There will be regular people out working on those rails lines, genuine people, who want to work instead being lead like Lemurs off the edge into the valley of fat cats. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden have done more in theses 90+ days than I can ever remember S & O doing in the last 8 years. Oh, finally, no, I don't hate you guys, in fact I really do like Pat Buchannan, you can reason with him.