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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."
Cut subsidies for all forms of transportation. Then, tax in proportion to carbon emissions. Trains win in every densely populated region, hands down.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
A private consortium tried just that back in 1991 in Texas. Then Southwest Airlines called in a few favours and had the project destroyed (some details on Wikipedia here.). Free market capitalism may or may not have worked here (if it did then one could certainly expect other consortia to follow suit) but the Texas state government never gave us a chance to find out.
People love their automobiles because the great majority of them aren't given a choice in the matter.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to hop on a train to head to a concert, sporting event, famous restaurant, etc. a couple hundred miles away and back on the same day? That sort of casual impulse travel would be of new benefit to the economy (particularly of hub cities) even if the railway itself didn't pull in the cash.
Europe has certain zones where high speed rail makes sense. Those also exist here, such as the Acela route, also perhaps Miami to Orlando to Tampa Bay, LA to San Diego, and Dallas - Fort Worth. However, extending high speed rail across the US makes no economic sense now, and would place the government into direct competition with private commercial transport. It is unlikely that high speed rail will become economically viable on a nationwide basis given the huge costs of creating dedicated, isolated rails on such a broad spread basis. While I strongly support high speed rail in high density, closely located urban zones, especially where urban mass transit exists to get people to and from the train stations, it doesn't seem either economically viable or practicable in other locations.
I'm pretty sure that simply raising taxes isn't the cure to all that ails us. Keep in mind that everything you eat, wear and touch is delivered in one way or another on transportation of some kind, so literally everything would become more expensive. From experience, I can say that often a very large part of the price of goods is from transportation. When you double that cost, everything now costs 10% to 50% more overnight. That is called inflation, and it cuts demand dramatically, which is likely not the best solution considering we have the highest unemployment since the early 80s, and the most persistent unemployment since the Depression.
The problem is that the US is one giant suburb sprawl, and because our population densities are so much lower between cities, trains will never be viable all over. On the east coast, yes, and maybe even a few in fly over country. But to have trains in most of the rest of the country would take more carbon than driving cars. From building the trains cars that would only be partially full because of the lower density, to the fuel used for those smaller passenger loads, it doesn't make sense in the US for most areas, at least not for daily travel.
Also, you have to condemn land, lay tracks, uproot people and remove farm land and utilities, and in the end, most people here would still rather drive less than use the train. You can't turn America into Europe by simply taxing fuel at the same rate.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The US is not built to support high-speed rail, nor is there a need. Consider the Florida High Speed Rail program, part of which will run between Tampa and Orlando, a grand distance of 85 miles, or about 90 minutes driving. According to Wikipedia however, "bullet train would beat a car by only 30 minutes." Odds are even that advantage will be lost when the Lakeland stop is opened. Additionally, that doesn't even take into account that you're going to have to drive to the station, then when you get to your destination, you're going to have to drive wherever you need to get to!
High-speed rail can work in certain environments, but it's self-defeating the way it's being implemented here in the US, because it's just being used to buy votes, as the summary itself all but admitted.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
big oil is healthy and Ain't gonna let it happen
Why not? Trains run on diesel just like buses and VW TDI cars.
how about more inner city rail as well?
add buses, moving walk ways, more inter city rail and that will cut down on cars.
I gave up cars several years ago. I do have a motorcycle, but I either walk, ride a bicycle, ride my motorcycle, or do public transportation. A motorcycle can go crazy places. I do all my shopping with it; and on the rare occasions I need something that won't fit in my large hiking backpack, I rent a truck.
Point is, we're not all members of the planet-destroying hippy generation that dramatically increased our meat consumption (the beef industry is more destructive to the planet than all the transportation industries combined). I had to help solve a software bug this morning when a customer had an order go through for an overnight delivery of a handtowel from California to Hawaii, and the shipping wasn't computed correctly. The customer's site specializes in eco-friendly products. So, somewhere there's a person in Hawaii that thinks overnight shipping an empty box (just forget the damn contents) is somehow more environmentally friendly than ANY handtowel they could have bought at their walkin stores. $80 shipping for a $7 item. That shit right there, with environmentalists driving SUVs and doing whatever they want because they buy carbon neutral credits is the problem. But fortunately, that generation is getting old and will die off soon enough, and we'll have a healthier planet because of it.
There are PLENTY of people who would love to get in a high-speed train from LA to Phoenix, LA to SF, that sort of thing. They might not be children of the 60s, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile consumers.
I fear the high speed rails will be deployed on the east and west, and those of us in "fly over" country will be left out in the cold.
Which is a shame, because in many ways the middle of the country is where high speed rail could really shine: the trains could get up to speed and stay there for a significant length of time.
However, a few random points:
1) France has a total of 1000 miles of high speed track. The Southwest Chief runs from Chicago to LA - about 2000 miles. That's just ONE of Amtrak's routes.
2) In Europe, they have auto-trains: put your car on, go, take your car off, drive. The only place this happens in the US is on the east coast, on one run. Again: were it possible to put your car on in New York, pull your car off in Flagstaff, and drive up to the Grand Canyon, I think it would be much more attractive to many people.
3) Were autotrain runs more common in the US, then driving an electric car with limited range wouldn't be the deal-breaker for long trips it is now: again, put the car in in NY, off in Flagstaff, with a fully charged battery courtesy of the train's power.
4) There is a great push on just to restore old-style rail service in the middle of the country: see the Heartland Flyer extension effort.
I routinely travel long distances: Wichita to Los Angeles for example. I'd love to be able to put my car on the train, roll overnight, and be able to make the trip in a day rather than two. I'd love to be able to hop on the train for my business trips to Kansas City and Austin. The idea that Americans won't take the train doesn't square with how many ride it now, when Amtrak seems to go out of their way to make it unattractive. Over 4000 people used the Amtrak station in Hutchison KS last year, and that is a little station in a town of about 40,000 people - the station isn't even manned, and the train gets there at 4 in the morning.
No, rail COULD work in the US - it's just that no big company will make $$$$ from it, so no CongressCritters are motivated to do anything about it.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The very fact that something is unprofitable, and that no private party has stepped up to do it for that reason, does not mean the thing is not worth doing and worth having the government do it.
Speaking of the military, just a small fraction of that $500B-$600B (more?) annual offense budget, currently being in great part wasted on failing attempts at nation-building, would buy us this rail service and a whole lotta other stuff besides, without adding to the deficit. The military is just a few (well, a hell of a lot) of people getting massive slush funds for their states that everyone else is expected to pay for.
I'm with you on telecommuting though. It's idiotic for most people to transport a sack of meat - themselves- in a one to two ton container just to sit at a desk and in all likelihood be no more, if not less, productive than they'd be at home. And then transport the same meat/steel back at the end of the day.
The man who dies rich dies disgraced. -- Andrew Carnegie
If I didnt put down the railways first in Sim City, I was basically screwed.
Of course if it's a business expense, you just include the cost of a bunk-bed coach. Room for 1-2 people, bathroom, chair, everything you need to be comfortable (if cramped) for a day or two. I imagine any new rail system will also provide WiFi or equivalent with a coach in the future.
I've only travelled once by VIA (Canada) and once by Amtrack (US) each. It was a pleasant experience, though a lot of people are pissed off that VIA travels through the Rocky mountains at night so you can't see them. I expect they've got some sort of premium "Rocky Tour" package by now.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Ive railoaded military vehicles before. It can happen alot faster then you think, all you have to do is have a trained crew do the actual loading while the travelers waits nearby.
I see the biggest issue with being are the people going to ride IN their own vehicle? These train trips can be long rides without restrooms and food. If you have these people ride inside regular rail cars on the same train, your going to be wasting alot of fuel toting around a shitload of vehicles all the time, and your not going to get the fuel savings trains normally have.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
This is precisely why rail is typically only added to the most population-dense areas. It doesn't make sense to use it unless you can walk everywhere else you go. It could possibly work in Los Angeles if you stationed a cop in every car, but only if they stopped hiring cops that taser or even shoot people at the least provocation. Most of the places it could work could be more cheaply (up front, anyway) served by adding lanes to existing roadways.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How true, how true. Of course, you bring up an interesting side point: Which organization stands to lose the most from a functional rail system with good routes and coverage? Greyhound Bus Lines, hands down.
And that's not an idle issue. For instance, at one point there was consideration of setting up passenger rail service between Boston and Concord NH, with stops at significant cities such as Manchester, NH and Nashua, NH, both of which have a lot of people who are commuting to Boston daily and clogging up the interstates during rush hour. The costs involved in creating such a route would have been relatively low, because there's already track laid for freight rail, and the cities which were likely stops conveniently had their public transit centers about 100 feet from the tracks.
It was shot down, primarily because of opposition by the bus line that is making good money running buses along that exact route. It doesn't matter that rail would have made things faster and more convenient for everybody.
I am officially gone from
I didn't have a car, but the only time I rode the train was when I was going from the town I lived in (Lueneburg) to Hamburg. If I was going anywhere more than about 3 hours hours away, I flew. The reason being was a flight from Hamburg to Muenchen was something like 120euro round trip with a single carry on and took about 3 hours to get to the airport, on the plane, and arrival at destination. I was often traveling on weekends and time was something I had limited amounts of while studying or working in the country. If I were taking a regional train, the fare was 140 Euro and the trip took like 13 hours one way. If you wanted to take a ICE (Fast) train, the ticket was like 400 Euro with 6 hour travel time. And that was back when they had a Junge fare.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
They tried that in Ontario, Canada, in the 1990's. Mike Harris pushed through legislation to cut welfare benefits to those who were not participating in workfare projects.
One million unemployed formed a mob outside the parliament (legislative) buildings, arguing that having to work for a living was slavery.
Surprisingly, 97% of those who's benefits would be cut "magically" found jobs suddenly.
Socialism creates some real weird la-la land illusions in some people's heads.
In Liberty, Rene
You can't read a book or take a nap in the car you're driving. I ride the train to work in Atlanta and the single biggest benefit is that I can spend 30 minutes on my laptop catching up on emails or just goofing around instead of driving.
That is, the car trip "costs" me 30 minutes of my life (plus some gray hair, due to traffic), and the train trip "costs" me 5. I value my work and leisure time enough that those extra 50 minutes a day are well worth a small amount of inconvenience.
The Acela is more expensive than flying and takes 4 hours instead of 30 minutes (plus another 30-60 minutes airport time), barely faster than the normal train. The only way I would consider the Acela a viable option is if you needed it last minute. Personally, in that case I would take a bus at about 15% of the cost.
If this is the future of high speed rail, I think the whole concept is dead. High speed trains need to be able to run at full speed (which takes a combination of dedicated tracks and convincing states to not cripple the speed with noise restrictions) and they need to be cheaper than air travel. I don't know any other way it could work.
Greetings and Salutations....
I have always enjoyed traveling by train, and, would be on it like a duck on a June Bug if it were available. However, there are three things that will have to happen before it will become successful.
1) Whoever takes on this project (and I suspect it will have to be the Federal Government), will have to lay out a growth plan that will continue to add lines to areas in the USA where access does not exist. One of the massive fails of Amtrak was that the company built a few lines...then stopped, apparently expecting that this would be enough. For a model, look at the light rail systems in larger cities, such as Washington D.C., New York, or Atlanta. In all three cases the lines are laid out to minimize the distance that a passenger has to travel to get to a station.
2) Arrange for auto transport cars to be part of the long-distance lines. This would allow the passenger to drive up to the station, get their vehicle loaded, and, enjoy a pleasant and comfortable ride across country. Upon arriving, they would have their own transport immediately available, which would go a long way towards making the trip more enjoyable.
3) Ensure that the cost of a train ticket is no more than that of an airplane ticket. A few years ago, I was going to travel to Washington D.C. for an event. The cost of a round-trip train ticket was close to $400.00, and, in order to GET to Amtrak I would have had to drive to Atlanta. The airplane ticket (also round trip) was $175, and, I could fly out of Knoxville. Prices may be more at a parity now, but, there is still that long drive to get to a station.
I would love to see train travel come back, as it is a great way to see the countryside, especially if one is not in a huge hurry.
Regards
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
"Paying a million people a year say, $50000 (to cover their wage plus the usual overhead) is $50 BILLION"
And that's, what? about 10% of the defense budget? There you have your money.
What is needed is for Amtrak to stop pissing away hundreds of millions of fucking dollars on bloated, late, grossly over budget, and laughably mismanaged IT projects with marginal returns on investment. The Accenture-led SAM project is one of them. The other is the black hole in Engineering known an EAM: Enterprise Asset Management. Years ago, a vendor managed to cajole Amtrak into a parasitic relationship with IBM/Tivoli (used to be MRO before IBM bought them) to customize Maximo (a steaming pile of shit software if ever there were one) for use in managing fixed infrastructure maintenance activities. The burn rate on those projects is stupefying, as is the shocking dishonesty the advocates of those projects advance in defending their empires: "We're doing this in the name of efficiency...and...and...saving money...and...um...FRA compliance...and...wait for it...FOR THE PASSENGERS!"
For the passengers. Really? A lot of the older passenger coaches (Amfleets) still in service routinely encounter air conditioner failures (which makes riding in them insufferable during summer months) and leak water on passengers' heads during rain and snow melts. These coaches are nearing the end of their useful lives and Amtrak desparately needs to buy new ones. But instead the German Sausage running EAM would rather divert all the money from the capital project pot to dumb shit like buying all the maintenance of way personnel fucking iPhones to do work reporting with. Amtrak also needs to install constant tension catenary south of NYC and install larger crossovers to allow trains to run faster south of the Big Apple down to DC -- but all that money is, again, being diverted to these IT projects. A good portion of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor assets are over a century old. What's amazing is how well the trains run in spite of that fact.
I had hope for Amtrak under Obama, but after the Inspector General was forced out for actually (gasp) discovering a significant amount of sketchiness and fuckery, that hope has since evaporated.
The US has a great rail system and we need to make sure that we do not ruin it by doing what Europeans have done.
"Europe's dependence on trucks stems from the failure of its vaunted passenger-rail network to provide a cheap, efficient alternative for cargo. Between 1995 and 2005, the percentage of European goods shipped by truck rose to 73% from 68%, while rail's share fell to 17% from 20%. The rest goes by canal or, in the case of oil and gas, pipelines. In the U.S. in 2005, 42% of freight was moved by train and 33% by truck."
"EU Looks to Cargo Trains To Ease Load on Trucking" by John W. Miller, in The Wall Street Journal on June 5, 2007 at p. A6
The US has optimized its rail system for freight, not passengers, and that is a good thing. Distances between population centers in the US are larger than in Europe, Americans will tend to prefer air travel for long distance intercity travel.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I love trains. They're fun, and every guy who had a train set still has that affection for them. But they have good and bad points.
The good points is a train station probably already exists, or can be built fairly easily, in the center of town. Not so with airports. You can go inter-city mode quite easily with trains, and with less noise, pollution, hassle, than a plane, for most trips under 400 miles or so, particularly with high speed rail. You can take a train from say, Paris to Brussels, in less time than a plane, and be in a meeting in the center of the city without much fuss.
Trains use less fuel. They are far less vulnerable to being used as a weapon of mass destruction, unlike airliners. Though they are vulnerable. They provide redundancy to air networks, and that is a good thing, its not always terrorism that closes the air networks. Think the Iceland volcano. Or even high activity solar flares (modern airliners cruise at 30,000 feet or so).
But trains have one issue that most people don't like to talk about. Particularly for commuter rail. That is SECURITY. The LA Times did an excellent story on the Blue Line. A commuter rail line going from Long Beach to Downtown LA. Paralleling the 110 Harbor Freeway. It goes through some of LA's worst neighborhoods, and per the story, is filled with folks peeing on the seats, homeless panhandlers, guys hawking pirate DVDs (of movies still in theaters), and guys "getting off" ... while people get on and off. The place is a zoo, and respectable, middle class people avoid it like the plague.
Any area that has lots of poor people (we are talking mostly Mexicans and Blacks here, outside Appalachia) will have White Middle Class folks avoid the public transit like the plague unless there is no other way, because of the hassle of daily life with a mostly criminal class that has little fear of the law and a substantial dislike bordering on hatred of Whites in general.
Cars are a great way for White middle class people to avoid dealing with the homeless, the gang-bangers, the panhandlers, the street hustlers, who make life in the Ghetto and Barrio a misery for everyone that lives there.
For public transit to be effective, it has to be heavily and efficiently policed, including rousting and jailing said gang-bangers, street hustlers, homeless, panhandlers, etc. without fear of consent decrees, or "racial profiling" or the like. Otherwise the White Middle Class, when you get beyond all the PC BS, will simply refuse to ride and will stay with their cars, fighting the idea of "riding the Blue Line" to death.
Multi-racial and multi-ethnic societies like Singapore have safe, clean, efficient trains that are sparkling. A Singaporean I knew in Hong Kong thought that city dirty and disgusting (coming from Beijing it was a clean jewel). Singapore has safe, efficient trains because its policed within an inch of its life, with no concerns for Muslims or Hindus or anyone else crying racial profiling. To a lesser extent, Hong Kong does the same thing. Its subway/train system is amazing, the amount of traffic it handles.
I like the idea of systems redundancy, an alternative to the air network, competition introduced, and the efficiency of trains. But it does require policing. Air traffic already has pretty efficient policing (not the least of which is the cost of the ticket and the metal detectors) that trains would need to replicate in the short-haul mode like Long Beach to LA.
It would be if we weren't spending 54% of our federal tax dollars fighting two wars and maintaining the second largest military in the world with more than 820 installations in at least 135 countries. After that maybe we could scale back on the 11% of federal spending that government bureaucracy gobbles up. Then we could lighten the tax load, so that more families could afford to have one income winner in the house. Which would drastically reduce social issues that lead to increased spending in the criminal justice system. This would free up even more money to start chipping away at the $ 13 trillion in national debt and the $110 Trillion in unfunded liabilities, which would let us spend money to bolster our education system, public services, research grants (including alternative energy sources) and finally some much needed infrastructure. Infrastructure that would include a nationwide rail system that will never pay for itself, but would be a great service for many Americans and allow me to sleep on my way to the office.
Government subsidized rail is the most economically feasible solution.
Privatized rail is a waste of money, and has been proven not to work.
For the clueless that haven't figured it out yet, here is why:
1. There is no such thing as a competitive free market.
2. In capitalism, the whole point of "competition" is to eliminate competitors, and achieve a monopoly.
3. Why would you want a private monopoly to run your rail system?
From the paper:
The city greenhouse gas emissions inventories discussed in this paper all use a traditional production-based approach to allocating emissions, meaning that they take into account the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced within the area under consideration.
i.e. Not the areas they are consumed. This is partly the GPs point. Many emissions attributed to rural areas are really produced in support of urban areas.
Huh? From where I'm sitting it looks exactly like the Republican talking points of "Get our country back for God-fearin white Americans", "Deport all the Mexicans", "Reduce taxes for the rich and it will trickle down on us like a golden shower", and "Reign in bad government" (where "government" means policies and court decisions they disagree with). They might not be talking specifically about marijuana, abortion, gays, etc, but given all the figureheads of the movement, it's obvious where they stand.