Slashdot Mirror
Is a US High-Speed Railway Economically Feasible?
An anonymous reader writes "The federal government has committed at least $8-billion (and counting) for the development of a nationwide high-speed intercity passenger railway system in almost three-dozen states. Rail advocates have long dreamed of an extensive railway grid that will provide clean, speedy, energy-efficient travel. The high-speed rail program is also expected to create thousands of desperately needed jobs, while reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil and easing gridlocked highways and congested air-space. However, this noble, ambitious, multi-year plan faces a multitude of obstacles — including costs that will no doubt escalate as the years pass by; and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train."
Um, use public transportation?
You do know that NY-Washington already has high speed rail, right? It could be better, but it's the only one in the country at the moment, and it makes Amtrack money hand over fist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Now obviously trains cant compete with long-haul air travel such as New York to LA but for short haul, it could really work. (but only if its given proper high speed track and doesn't have to share that track with slow freight trains)
At 200 MPH, the trip would take 15 hours, give or take.
Leave at 5 PM, get in the sleeper, drink some wine that you brought on board, eat your dinner, and go to sleep. At 8AM, you arrive at your destination, in the heart of the city, rested, and ready to go. No need to get your luggage, take a taxi, or a long ride to and from airports.
Now compare this to the red eye flight. Tell me it's not feasible.
We take sleepers in Europe whenever we can; they're so much nicer than planes.
High speed rail is not to replace cars. It is to replace regional airlines.
Germany is 1/2 the size of Texas: 357,022 sq. km. vs. 678,054 sq. km., into which they've jammed a little over a quarter of the population of the U.S. 82,282,988 vs. 310,232,863.
What are you smoking that makes you believe the same transportation economics will apply in the U.S. as in Europe?
-- Terry
Now my understanding is the exact inverse. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16819-city-dwellers-harm-climate-less.html
Though I am open to a rational rebuttal.
Storm
Roadways are entirely paid for through taxes. While I feel that healthy transportation systems take into account many factors (directness, routine travel, occasional travel, one-way and multiway journeys, etc), the subsidy for roadways is simply miles ahead of the subsidy for rail. The Big Dig alone would have run Boston's subway, light-rail, and bus system for 10 years. The Massachusetts Highway Division spent over a billion dollars last year. While numbers for local road maintenance are hard to come by, clearly that number should be even higher.
If land costs are high, a well-thought-out rail system is a better use of those resources. Can you imagine New York traffic if all of those rail-riders were in cars? Even getting into Boston is a nightmare if you're not on the rail. Funds spent on getting commuters onto rail traffic reduces the need to buy more land for road-based commuters at exhorbitant Boston land rate costs. Of course, LA's rail system just goes to prove that you need a well-thought-out rail system, or it will sit by uselessly. It seems like the people there forgot why cars do so well in non-deterministic destination scenarios.
Please, snipe away between urban and rural dwellings. I've lived in both, and can see why people love both (I have no idea why people love the suburbs, though). But the rail-vs-road argument always seems to forget that we entirely subsidize road construction and maintenance, yet we expect rail lines to be entirely self-funding. A more fair comparison would be to have the physical tracks, land, and stations paid for through taxes, and the trains covered by fares. Or take the expected riderships, the cost of road construction and maintenance those people would represent, and apply that towards the cost of the rail system. Is the rail cheaper overall as than people buying cars on loans and their share of road construction?
The ______ Agenda
Here's the chunnel's loading procedure. It might be more difficult when you don't have completely pre-determined endpoints, but that doesn't seem insurmountable.
The ______ Agenda
Since none of the proposed routes for California's high speed rail have ever come anywhere near Marin County (the two northern termini being San Francisco and Sacramento, and Marin County being north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate), your description is rather implausible.
The only thing even close to that was, IIRC, a lawsuit over the procedures used in the the impact report supporting the part of the Bay Area to Central Valley route, which has forced the High Speed Rail Authority to have the report redone and then reconsider the route based on the new report. But even that isn't anyone successfully lobbying (or suing) to get the route changed, since its quite possible that the original routing decision will be maintained.
But nice try.
I don't think your point stands when we look at states/countries -- or possibly you have a different value of 'feasible'. Sure, Japan and UK have high population densities but they aren't the only places with working public transport... Finland is in the same league as California in total area and has only a fifth of Californias population density. Even the "densely populated" south is still empty by Japanese standards. Public transport throughout the country still works. Less populated areas are naturally harder to reach but it's possible.Whether ultra-high-speed trains are feasible with these population numbers is another thing altogether.
Your point is spot on when you start looking at cities: Most of Los Angeles is just not dense enough for working internal public transport. This of course affects the feasibility of state-wide public traffic because people have no way to get to the long distance train station...
California voters approved a high-speed rail ballot initiative recently that would build really high-speed trains from San Francisco to LA to San Diego, and also to points in between and Sacramento. The initiative approved $10Billion in bonds for construction - but the official estimated cost was about $30B, and the followup Oops-you-mean-the-WHOLE-Cost cost was about $40B, so they're depending on $30B of Federal money to magically fall from the sky. They've gotten approval for something like $2B of that $8B the Feds want to spend in the whole country, but they'll need a lot more. So the finances have been a total crock from the beginning.
By the way, the route from San Francisco to LA alone is longer than the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux, which is about the longest of the French TGV routes. (The highway distance would be a bit shorter, but the existing train routes across the mountains make the actual route zig-zag for a longer distance.)
I don't think you mean Marin County NIMBYs, though -that's across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and there's no obvious way to get a train across the bridge. There are lots of NIMBYs around Atherton and Menlo Park who don't want the train going down the Peninsula, or at least not near them, or hidden in underground tunnels.
There have also been arguments about whether the route from San Jose should go south first, or should go up the East Bay and east before heading south, but that's been people who want the train to go near them, not people who don't want it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For the most part, yes, though some are paid for through tolls instead. Toll booths are actually capable of paying for major highways by themselves (construction costs at least, not sure about maintenance).
It's worth mentioning, though, that a huge chunk of that tax money comes from the gasoline tax. While it's less targeted than tolls, it still does mean that, if you don't have a car at all, you are paying far less to maintain roads than a driver is. It also has the benefit of ensuring that people who drive lots of miles pay a greater share of the maintenance costs than someone who only drives a couple miles to and from the grocery store once a week. And it indirectly taxes heavier vehicles more (because they are usually less fuel-efficient), which is fair because those vehicles cause more wear and tear.
Do governments usually pull money out of the general fund to help pay for roads? Yes, they do, there's no question about that. My point is that, while your claim is more or less true, it's also very misleading. Let's look at the numbers. My local mass transit system gets 32% of its money from fares. The rest comes from local sales taxes levied by counties in the service area. As of 2003, 70% of all road funding came from gasoline taxes. You tell me which is fairer.
Rather than these "I don't like what you do with your life so I'm going to try to hinder you from doing it through a passive-aggressive tax measure"
Taxes on carbon emissions aren't about "not liking" liking something, they are about making you pay for costs you impose on the rest of the world without paying for them (externalities).
Libertarian arguments that you don't need taxes because private property will take care of it don't work for many externalities.
That's an artifact of the top 1% of income earners paying over 40% of all federal income tax.
The top 1% of income earners earn 23.5% of income. Note, however, that the top 1% of income earners ALSO pay very, very low tax rates on social security and investments, which is where their income comes from.
A middle-class person might pay a 28% marginal tax rate on money they earn by working. A rich person pays a 15% tax rate on money they make by already having money.
If anyone in the top 1% of earners thinks that's a bad deal, I would be happy to trade places with them.
paintball