by Ben Meyerson
President Barack Obama announced his plan for developing high-speed rail in America this morning, detailing how $13 billion in federal money could act as a "down payment" on bringing the nation's passenger trains up to par with fast, efficient rail travel in Europe and Japan.
"High-speed rail is long-overdue, and this plan lets American travelers know that they are not doomed to a future of long lines at the airports or jammed cars on the highways,'' Obama said. "There's no reason why we can't do this. This is America. There's no reason why the future of travel should lie somewhere else beyond our borders."
The plan includes Chicago as a proposed regional hub for high speed trains going to Detroit, St. Louis, Madison and Indianapolis, among other destinations.
Other networks would expand the nation's only existing high-speed rail corridor, which runs from Washington to Boston, northward and southward, and create new routes in California, Texas, the Pacific Northwest and Florida.
The president touted high-speed rail's stimulative value, as well. Indeed, $8 billion of the money is coming from the stimulus package that he signed into law one month in office. It was slipped into the package in the final hours.
"A major new high-speed rail line will generate many thousands of construction jobs over several years, as well as permanent jobs for rail employees and increased economic activity in the destinations these trains serve," Obama said.
The administration will announce its criteria for high-speed rail applicants this summer, with the goal of releasing money by the end of the summer.
University of Pennsylvania professor of transportation engineering Vukan Vuchic agreed with Obama that high speed rail is long overdue, and praised the administration's use of the money.
"We are, frankly, several decades behind if we compare ourselves with our peer countries," Vuchic said. "The country badly needs high speed rail in all these regions."
Comments
It's about damn time we had a President who was an advocate for high-speed trains in this country. Not to mention the fact that we have a Vice President who actually utilized high-speed trains on a weekly basis for years and years in his commute between Delaware and D.C.
It's sometimes hard to believe that the U.S. has one of the worst train systems in the industrialized world. A comprehensive high-speed train network would ease both ground and air traffic, especially in the urban areas. Trains have the most favorable ratio of person to oil consumption of any major form of transportation.
Posted by: Repugbot | April 16, 2009 3:22 PM
We subsidize roads, and airports so why not the cleaner, quicker, and more comfortable trains? If we invested half of what we invest in building new airports into trains, we would have a first class system. With the added bonus of relieving congestion in the skies and on the roads and running it with cleaner fuel.
Posted by: Drago G | April 16, 2009 3:30 PM
The United States is not Europe.
Germany, for instance, has an excellent intercity passenger rail system, with trains of differing speeds running on dedicated tracks. The service is frequent, fast, smooth, and comfortable. Germany is a little smaller than Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan combined, but has 2.8 times the population density of those three states. Gasoline is about $8 a gallon. Still, Germany comes far from paying for its passenger rail service out of the farebox; it is heavily subsidized from tax money.
In the words of William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is a meager and unsatisfactory kind. It may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter be."
The only number that I see here is $13 billion (that's $13,000,000,000), and that's just the "down payment." How many passengers are going to be redirected from the airlines? How much shorter is that average 13-minute wait in the security line gong to be? How much less traffic is there going to be, how much of an energy and emissions saving would result, and how does that stack up against the energy use and emissions of the high-speed rail system?
In other words, would high-speed rail in the U.S. be a real benefit, even as hub-and-spoke systems in the more poulated areas (and I've long thought that if passenger rail were to succeed in this country it would be as such systems) or is it just some touchy-feely, feels-good pipe dream?
Posted by: DaveB | April 16, 2009 5:42 PM
The high speed system is not intended to cover the country coast to coast. It will be confined to high travel demand regions like the Northeast and the West Coast corridor. Moving avoidable commuter and interregional trips that are now being made by single-occupant cars onto rail means safer highways for trucks and a lower road toll. The greenhouse argument is more complex but in terms of economic we're forgetting US airlines also benefit from billions of dollars in government protection and infrastructure maintenance they don't pay for.
Lord Kelvin's sentiment is right though in that in the end it will come down to price in the mind of the consumer. Making it affordable, with or without government assistance, is the key.
Posted by: onamission | April 17, 2009 4:37 AM
DaveB is right.
We should drop all subsidies to the air traffic control system and air ports and stop funding all highway and bridge repairs. After all air and highway systems don't pay for themselves either.
We can go back to ox carts.
JoeZ
Posted by: JoeZ | April 17, 2009 8:28 AM
This is America. Being railroaded high speed.
Posted by: Harold Reimann | April 17, 2009 4:10 PM
DaveB good points as usual. The devil is in the details and there are few here. While I generally like the idea of high speed rail I would have to know the cost and level of fed govt involvement before I would support it.
Posted by: Herbie H. | April 17, 2009 7:06 PM
Very constructive comment there, JoeZ.
No one, certainly not I, is suggesting that we should stop supporting the existing system because it doesn't pay for itself entirely. The question that must be asked, though, is whether high speed rail would be an improvement. If it's just the government's expensive train set, paid for by tax money, and the total, for example, GHG emissions increase (remember that even electric trains ultimately run mostly on fossil fuel) it's not an improvement. I haven't seen many details to answer that question yet.
Realize also that the primary source of funds for highways is user fees, mostly from fuel taxes. (For example, the U.S. government gets 18.4 cents for every gallon of gasoline sold; that money goes into a "Highway Trust Fund.") The primary source of airport funding is also user fees; there's a tax on every ticket sold that goes to airports. The user fees for passenger rail transport (the fares) don't come as close to paying for the enterprise as the highway and airport user fees do!
Posted by: DaveB | April 17, 2009 9:47 PM