Full-cost accounting means taking everything within a project into account. When the CHSRA talks about how green it is going to make California, how much less carbon fuel it will consume, and how many cars it will take off the road, the notion that the construction process itself is harmful never comes up; it's not part of their equation, not part of their full-cost accounting.
The fallacy of doing something about a green future rests in the obsession that we can build ourselves out of problems. This deserves far more study, but it should be clear that building the high-speed train system in California will be hugely productive of CO2 and other air pollutants. The Institute for Transportation Studies in Berkeley estimates over 75 years of carbon amortization will be necessary to offset the damage.
To grasp that, you merely have to think of the tens of thousands of Diesel powered trucks and construction equipment that will be required over as long as ten years, or more. Nor is the manufacture of all the hardware, like tracks and concrete ties, particularly "clean." Manufacture of the rolling stock, the millions of tons of ballast, building viaducts and tunnels, and all the other construction processes and materials all are highly polluting and CO2 producting.
We are in a very challenging economy. And, under such circumstances, we need to apply some "triage" decision-making. What can we suspend and what must we do soonest? Repairing infrastructure that is broken, less than optimally functional, and for which there is very high use-demand would seem appropriate to top that list. High-speed rail, not so much.
What President Obama kept calling "investment," Sen. Mitch McConnell suggested is a Latin word for "taxes." The President is correct in seeking to put precious dollar resources into those infrastructure demands that are on the critical list. But, let's also acknowledge that these will cost dollars that we don't have. The projected deficit for the US in the next fiscal year is $1.5 trillion dollars. Is that a problem?
However, just as the Congress has taken a very hard look at the space program at NASA, and has been quite parsimonious with its funding, HSR should fall into that same category, if not more so. Not only is high-speed rail a luxury train for the well to do, it's a luxury that the US cannot afford. Both programs, Man in space and luxury HSR trains, are political public relations posturing; that is, a race with other countries, today it being China. Several decades ago, it was the Soviet Union. Race to space. Now race on the tracks. Who is bigger, stronger, faster, richer, better-looking and has the shiniest toys? It's the wrong race.
Stephen Smith brings up the often used comparison with the national interstate highway system. That's apples and oranges. Not just because HSR and the highway network are different modalities, but because they accomplish totally different things in a totally different way.
The highway system connects each and every American to her own front door. This highway network is based on and enables individual self-determination. Buy a car or not. Drive a little, drive a lot. Go near or go far. Go when it is convenient. The highway system was not intended to facilitate the decline of rail. Rail did that on its own.
The great rail companies made lots of money on freight (and those that survived still do. Just ask Warren Buffett.), but barely broke even or lost money on passenger rail. As I've said before, the rail carriers thought they were in the railroad business, when they should have understood that they were in the transportation business. They were glad to relinquish the passenger rail part of their business. . . to Amtrak. As Smith says here, the highway network was the nail in passenger rail's business.
200 mph trains will not bring back some glorious, romanticized passenger rail past. We have moved on. The entire basic concept of moving people around has to be studied in fundamental terms for the future, not by emulating the choices of other countries. Obama calls for innovation. Well, here's an opportunity not met by buying foreign train sets off the shelf.
The Administration is not actually that interested in the railroads per se. They are much more concerned that a mega-infrastucture project such as HSR will become our new "Sputnik" challenge and all America will get behind it, pour tons of money into it, and reap the mythical benefits of a burgeoning economy and full employment. That's what this is all about, and it's the wrong "vision." At this point in time, and for the foreseeable future, such a project in the US will benefit other nations far more than it will ours. And, I say that as a Democrat.
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Obama SOTU(s): We Need a New Transportation Megaproject to Undo the Last Megaproject
Stephen J. Smith | January 26, 2011
One of the most jarring inconsistencies in Obama's speeches about how America needs to go on a greening spree is his constant invocation of the interstate highway system, perhaps the most environmentally destructive government project in American history. Our formidable network of highways made an appearance in Obama's first two State of the Union addresses, and sure enough, he worked it into last night's speech too, followed by a shout out to high-speed rail projects in California and the Midwest:
We have to do better. America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, and constructed the interstate highway system. The jobs created by these projects didn't just come from laying down tracks or pavement. They came from businesses that opened near a town's new train station or the new off-ramp. [...]
"Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying—without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway." [said the President in his speech.]
Like most Americans who have only known an auto-dependent nation, Obama seems to forget that America once had a robust, private mass transit network that was the envy of the world, parts of which still exist in the form of poorly-managed, decaying public transit authorities (most intracity bus routes in America were once private streetcar lines).
The downfall of mass transit in America is a complex issue, but the massive network of subsidized highways begun by FDR and continued by Eisenhower was the final nail in the coffin of what was once America's most innovative industries. As convenient as it is for Obama to forget, it's a history that he'll have to face up to if he wants to dream bigger than his ill-conceived high-speed rail project. A perfect example of cargo cult urbanism, it seeks to emulate the frills of European and Japanese systems without actually allowing for the density that makes such networks feasible.
Someone also might want to remind Obama that the interstate highway system he is so proud of would not have been possible without the widespread use of eminent domain, to which he alludes in a dig at China: "Of course, some countries don't have this problem. If the central government wants a railroad, they get a railroad—no matter how many homes are bulldozed."
[Edit: Isn't that what's about to happen here?]
[Edit.]
