High-speed rail funds may go to incremental improvements

Money is long overdue

Steve Hawley, Feb 23, 09.

The $8 billion in stimulus funding slated for high-speed rail is much-needed, but the money will likely go to incremental improvements rather than building new high-speed lines, according to the New York Times. The article notes that these improvements could help current trains “reach speeds of 90 to 110 miles per hour, which is much faster than they currently go. It is much slower, however, than high-speed trains elsewhere, like the 180 mph of the newest Japanese bullet train.”

According to the article, California is the closest to building a high-speed line (but not the Los Angeles to Las Vegas line). The state’s voters recently approved $9 billion in bonds for a high-speed train that would link the northern and southern parts of the state and operate at speeds of 220 miles per hour. The California High-Speed Rail Authority has also outlined plans to use up to $2 billion of the stimulus money by the 2012 deadline, but the money still falls far short of the $45 billion needed to complete the system. Other states seeking high-speed rail funding include North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Alabama. However, even with full funding, it could take ten years or more to build a single high-speed rail line.

The article notes, “Many rail advocates said that it would make sense to move to higher-speed rail before building true high-speed rail, and that getting the nation’s long-neglected rail system into working order could lay the foundation for future high-speed projects. ‘You’ve got to walk before you can run, and we’ve just been crawling up to now,’ said Ross B. Capon, the president of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, an advocacy group for riders.” However, at least one high-speed rail advocate argued that most of the money should be spent on the Northeast Corridor connecting Washington, D.C. to Boston, rather than spreading the money across the country, saying that incremental improvements would not convince more people to ride trains.

Comments

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:

Although I have long advocated High Speed Rail, I think the major emphasis should be on improving and greatly expanding urban mass transit and conventional intercity passenger rail service. There are three major problems with HSR. To achieve true high speeds, rail lines must be constructed to very high engineering standards, be completely separated from all highway traffic, avoid all small and medium-sized towns, and except for a very few miles within the largest cities, they must also be completely separated from all other rail lines. This means that HSR lines must be about 99% brand new routes which drives up the cost and the planning and construction time.

If we woke up tomorrow with HSR lines connecting all our major cities, the other two problems would be evident. It does little good to connect the auto-dependent sprawl of one city with the sprawl of another city. Only about four to six US cities have mature transit systems. A couple dozen cities have starter transit lines like Houston and Phoenix, remnant systems like New Orleans and Pittsburgh, or intermediate systems like Dallas and Denver. All the rest have crappy bus systems that barely provide token service to the underclass.

HSR can move a huge volume of passengers between major cities at high speed and high frequency only if the new lines avoid smaller towns. To superimpose HSR without first improving passenger service on our existing rail network would not serve small town America at all and would avoid our resorts and scenic attractions.

So far, the high pricetag and long lead time has stopped any HSR projects from being constructed. The Northeast Corridor is not true HSR. By European standards, the NEC is only improved intercity service, and most American passenger advocates are tired of spending money on the NEC and relatively little elsewhere.

Transportation policy not only affects mobility (or lack of), but it greatly influences energy use and land use. To achieve a balanced transportation system, we must immediately assign a wartime style priority to build urban mass transit sytems that are based on electric rail transit with connecting local bus service in all of our cities and connect all our cities and smaller towns with reasonably fast, frequent intercity passenger service using existing rail lines with traffic capacity improvements. All of that can be done in the ten years or so it takes to build a HSR line, and only then can HSR become the crown jewel in our transportation system.

Posted on Mar 07, 09 at 9:22 pm

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