We follow Ken Orski's Innovation NewsBriefs closely. Ken is a close observer of government's role in national and regional transportation issues and he frequently discussed the current state of high-speed rail. Here are his most recent comments.
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Innovation NewsBriefs
Vol. 22, No. 2
January 12, 2011
Skepticism About High-Speed Rail Is Growing
"Spend first, answer questions later." So concludes a critical editorial in the January 12 edition of the Washington Post, commenting on California's proposed $43 billion High-Speed Rail program. The Post editorial, along with a January 11 article in the New York Times (both of which we reprint below), are emblematic of the increasingly skeptical press and public opinion concerning the fiscal and economic soudness of the Obama Administration's high-speed rail initiative. "It's unclear that the public benefits attributed to high-speed rail...would outweigh the inevitable operating subsidies," observes the Washington Post, confirming the conclusions already reached by the states of Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa.
Other states and their freight railroad partners seemingly are having similar second thoughts, judging from the parties' lack of progress in reaching cooperative track-sharing agreements. Conspicuous among them is the state of Florida which has been promised a $2.4 billion federal grant to build an 84-mile "high-speed" line from Tampa to Orlando. That line, by all evidence, is too short to produce any meaningful time savings over car trips along a parallel interstate freeway.
Moreover, as the New York Times article points out, the proposed line has scored among the lowest in terms of projected ridership in a study of the nation's high-speed rail corridors recently published by America 2050, a national urban planning initiative (
As the Washington Post editorial observed, "The president has a vision of a national high-speed rail network almost as grand as the interstate highway system. We have our doubts about the ultimate feasibility of this vision, in part because in much of the country passenger rail can't compete with car travel by interstate highways." The editorial could also have noted one other fundamental difference.
Pres. Eisenhower's ambitious plan for the interstate highway system was placed on a sound fiscal basis by being backed by a user fee (aka the gas tax). Mr. Obama's high-speed rail vision, on the other hand is funded by a one-time $8 billion federal stimulus grant with no visible source of continued support. Indeed, the high-speed rail initiative faces little prospect of sustained congressional funding, it has yet to show evidence of attracting private capital, and it exposes the taxpayers to continued operating subsidies,as Amtrak experience suggests.
No wonder Pres. Obama's vision is increasingly being questioned, even by the mainstream media.
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Here is the New York Times editorial again as Ken put it in his NewsBriefs. We ran it in this blog yesterday. You may have missed it.
The Washington Post, Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Hit The Brakes
ON PAPER, California appears a promising venue for high-speed passenger trains
like the ones that streak across Japan and Western Europe. It's got a string of
urban centers from Sacramento to San Diego and lots of flat real estate in
between. In 2008, its voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue to pay about a
quarter of the total projected $43 billion cost of a statewide high-speed
system. Events since then, however, suggest that this grand plan is still a bit
half-baked.
In November, the California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group informed the
legislature that the project suffers from an undefined business model and the
"lack of a clear financial plan." Most damning, the report noted that official
estimates of how many people might actually want to ride the system are so
unreliable that they "offer little basis for proceeding." Ridership is a crucial
variable, because the law authorizing high-speed rail bonds included a ban on
state operating subsidies once the system is up and running.
The Peer Review Group's report was only the latest in a series of skeptical
blue-ribbon documents. But, undaunted, the California High-Speed Rail Authority
announced last month that it would at last begin construction - on a stretch
connecting not, say, Los Angeles and Anaheim but two obscure locations in the
state's rural Central Valley. The 120-mile segment would cost $5.5 billion.
Critics quickly dubbed it a "train to nowhere" - a bit unfair, since some of the
towns along the way have expensively redeveloped downtowns that may now suffer
from the frequent noise and vibration of trains roaring through them.
This would be a matter of purely West Coast interest but for the fact that the
U.S. government is paying more than half the cost of the new track, including
$600 million newly diverted from Midwestern states that rejected the funds.
Indeed, the Federal Rail Administration required that the money be spent in the
Central Valley. It was the part of the state most likely to be ready to use it
by a September 2011 deadline, because local property owners in more populated
areas are stirring opposition, which drags out the environmental review process.
Given that California's system has attracted zero private capital and has been
unable to guarantee any source - governmental or private - for almost half the
cost of completion, the obvious risk is that the federal taxpayer will be on the
hook for billions of dollars worth of railroad track that may never serve its
intended high-speed purpose. But the Obama administration sought the funds, as
part of the 2009 stimulus package, and Congress approved them - and so they must
be spent.
The president has a vision of a national high-speed rail network almost as grand
as the interstate highway system. We have our doubts about the ultimate
feasibility of this vision, in part because in much of the country passenger
rail can't compete with car travel by interstate highways. It's unclear that the
public benefits attributed to high-speed rail - reduced carbon emissions and
less airport congestion - would outweigh the inevitable operating subsidies, as
Amtrak's experience suggests.
If federal high-speed rail investment makes sense at all, it's probably in the
densely populated Northeast Corridor, where demand for passenger trains is
highest. At the very least, California should have to fill in its project's
economic and logistical blanks before any more money - from state taxpayers or
the rest of us - is spent. Unfortunately, the rule right now seems to be spend
first, answer questions later.
The New York Times, January 11, 2011
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