High Speed Rail Speeding Ahead at Snail's Pace
In the months ahead the Department of Transportation will be begin awarding the $8 billion set aside under the federal stimulus program to those states presenting the most attractive plans for building high speed trains. Another $5 billion will be sought by the administration over the next five years. Not exactly chump change but for those counting, it's equivalent to the amount showered practically overnight to a single financial entity, the $12.9 billion paid out to Goldman Sachs through AIG's counterparty redemption of near worthless derivatives made possible by the government's infusion of cash into AIG.
Where once upon a time $8 billion plus the prospect of an additional $5 billion would have seemed like a munificent sum, given our recent conditioning of hundreds of billions being bandied about it seems insufficient to the task at hand and lacking in vision. And this for a program that would have an extraordinarily beneficial impact on our lives, on our economy, and on the environment. Quoting California's Governor Schwarzenegger, commenting on the proposed high speed link from the Bay Area to Southern California:
"On top of stimulating the California economy, Federal investment in California's rail systems will help lay a sustainable foundation for economic growth, help us meet our environmental goals and improve quality of life here in California."
Please recall that the $8 billion for high speed rail was barely mentioned in the first draft of the federal stimulus program (please see "The Stimulus Package: Why Is Intercity Rail Service at the End Of he Line") and added almost as an afterthought when enthusiasm for the concept received a much warmer following in Congress than had been anticipated and with the strong sponsorship of President Obama. Since then, support and enthusiasm for the program has broadened nationwide, extending to the 13 regions that will be submitting proposals to the Department in the next days. They range from submissions coming from California, from the Capitol Corridor including Virginia and North Carolina, from Chicago to points south to St.Louis, as well as east and west, from Arizona and Florida and beyond.
Most glaring is the paucity of national commitment to what could be a major and positive overhaul to how we travel, weaning us away from decades of addiction to endless highway and road building, and the endless subsidies toward air and highway funding.
Given the success and public enthusiasm for high speed rail in Japan and China coupled with a deep sense of national pride, our efforts are long overdue in what is rapidly becoming the preferred mode of transport of the 21st century and beyond. This is especially so when both England and France are undertaking major expansions of their already highly successful high speed rail infrastructure.
To the enormously successful high speed rail service linking London to Paris, the British government is proposing expanding service from London to Edinburgh and Glasgow serving both Manchester and Birmingham as well. Current plans call for the link to become operative by 2030 with an expenditure of $55 billion dollars. (BBC "New High Speed Plan Unveiled" 08.26.09). Travel time between Glasgow and London will be reduced from 4 hours and 10 minutes to 2 hrs and 16 minutes.
France, with perhaps the most effective national high speed rail network in the world is looking to double its reach within France and extend service links to Italy and Spain and ameliorate service links to Germany. More than 2000 additional kilometers of track will be put down by 2020 at a cost of 98 billion dollars (Le Monde: "Lignes a Grande Vitesse: la France de Demain" 08.11.09). On a proportional basis relative to size and population that would be the equivalent of the United States committing at least $490 billion toward an analogous project.
It needs be added, in terms of what forward thinking governance can achieve, that the French rail system is powered almost exclusively by an electric grid that is generated in excess of 80 percent by nuclear power, with the French government gearing to reach 100 percent within the next few years.
On the issue of high speed rail service we are riding the caboose of history attached to a hundred car freight train. "Lignes a Grande Vitesse: la France de Demain," freely translated is "High Speed Rail Network: the France of the Future". What about our future? And when are we going to have a government that once again takes the future in hand with vision and meaningful purpose and action?
Raymond J. Learsy: Tom Friedman's Take On "Wimps" and "The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys"
How are we going to compete in years to come as we go head-to-head with societies that are far better equipped to deal with the exigencies of the future?
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HSR was doomed before it got off the drawing board - has anyone actually looked at the choices of routes and whether they constitute commercially viable corridors of travel? I live in Houston, so my example is from down here. The HSR map put forward by the DOT involves construction of a corridor from Houston running east to Mobile, AL. No proposal for any corridor running from Houston north to Dallas. No proposal for any corridor running from Houston west to San Antonio or Austin. Needless to say, this is absurd. The airline industry lobby made sure long ago that HSR would fail.
since you live in Huston, you must be familiar with PEAK OIL
you must know allot about depletion
you must know that texas peaked long ago and now produces much less oil then several decades ago
so..., why would you be apposed to HSR?
are you apposed to light rail within cities too?
You apparently don't know how to read (and you clearly don't know how to spell). I am not opposed to HSR. I am simply stating that the DOT initiative map for HSR corridors is flawed and I suspect foul play (airline industry lobbyists, no doub) in ruining what could have been an intelligent plan for HSR in this country. Peak oil? Got nothing to do with it...
High-efficiency, high-speed buses are a better fit. High-speed buses could use existing highway infrastructure, and are much more adaptable to customer needs.
what would these high speed buses run on?
gas?
diesel?
bad idea
Use the money to expand metropolitan subway systems. We need to get our urban public transportation big enough so that people can get rid of their cars. The way it is now, you still need a cr because it does not go close enough to your starting point and final destination. In many European cities, public transportaion actually works well enough you don't need a car to get to work.
True. I lived in a European city where the goal was to never have a public transportation stop more than 50 meters from your door. It worked like a charm, and the buses and trams ran all night long--even in the middle of the night they ran once per hour. Except for things like moving, you never really needed a car at all.
$8 billion? That's trading stamps compared to what the Iraq War has cost.
Republicans and "patriotic" Americans simply don't like public transportation because of the very reason that it is "public" i.e. socialism, collectivism, cooperativism (and the fact that transportation workers are usually unionized) whereas the private automobile represents "freedom" - rugged individualism, the private sector, etc.
I know, government builds the roads for cars to travel on (and they force me to buy license plates, driver's license, insurance, and they won't let me drive drunk or over the speed limit!) but I choose to ignore that. Don't confuse me with facts! :) /sarcasm
Why can't we have a national development and investment bank, to fund high speed rail, green energy and industries, and so on?
And yes, I think a high speed rail system would need to move freight as well as passengers to be successful.
would you all support a 25% tax credit for freight railroad companies to make this happen?
What I think would be eminently better would be to get the big trucks off the highways and onto the rails, where freight can be moved electrically and with far more efficiency. And then driving would be safer, easier, and the roads and bridges would suffer much less wear and tear.
do you want tracks built in your neighborhod so they can deliver groceries and electronics?
Support for high speed rail systems between cities less than one thousand miles apart is a great idea. Imagine going from San Diego to Seattle by high speed rail with L.A., San Fran and Portland as stops along the way and still making it in just a few hours! and this without the hassle of Airports! The only caution would be the unintended consequence of spurring more coal fired power plants.
most rail runs on deisel now
High speed rail is electric. Diesel can't go that fast.
San Diego to Seattle in a few hours on rail? How fast do you think HSR goes? Those two cities are 1263 miles apart. To do it in a few hours, you have to average speeds over 400 mph... in a train. Sorry... it doesn't work like that. Maybe SD to SF is more like it.
By "few" I meant about 8. I can understand your misunderstanding as I wasn't that specific.
Mr. Learsy couldn't be more correct and the U.S. transportation system still has a shot at a viable future. But bombs, guns, sleek jets, cool outfits: This is the bread and the butter. I like America just the way it is. Hasta temprano! Pete Pistolero, Juarez.
We are not going to get any meaningful investment in railroads as long as the oil companies continue to dominate our politicians. Before anything can be done about anything in this country, we must stop the corporate sponsorship of politicians. We can't even get health care passed with a democratic president, house, and senate. If we can't fight the health insurance companies effectively, we can't fight the oil and coal companies either.
Off topic (maybe).
Has anyone noticed that Al-Quida has made attacks that provide financial benefit to Saudi Arabia and the other oil nations?
They attacked public trains in Britain and Spain, and air travel in the US, pushing people in both nations to make more trips by car (which increases gas consumption). The also attacked cities with lower gas per citizen use than the US as a whole.
I am not saying that Al-Quida would attack US high speed rail, but if they did we should support it all the more...
Yes, this is very off topic.
Excellent! We need mono rails and magnetic tubes and we need them yesterday. And I may be behind but transporters are fine too! We need the GOVERNMENT to build them at cost only and allow usa airlines and train experts to get first bids on investment and ownership. And no the government does not get to own them. The government needs to govern them not operate them. hows your city bus system, or have we forgotten the latest crashes in LA and DC by city owned systems. Costing you and arm and a leg or your life. The system has to be paid for by it's users and the system has to be so good that everyone will want to use them. The government bureaucrats are incapable of such a feat. MIT, the military Academies, and NASA are more likely guide ons. You want people to get excited about it get the government out of it.
As long as we don't have the fiasco we had in St. Paul.
They built the most modern subway system in the world, and then set up contracts to run it. GM undercut the contract and used busses so that other cities wouldn't replace their busses with subways.
The lack of high speed train in USA is just one more example of how American people's Taxes have been wasted on one unnecessary war after another and on a Gargantuan Military spanning the globe via Military bases in 128 different countries rather than invested in American people & cities.
What is amazing and telling of what lunatics Republicans are, is that when one states how right it is to invest our Taxes in high speed trains as Europeans have, Japanese have, Chinese have and are that the Republicans state this amazing non-sense:
US is larger than Europe so high speed train will not work here!
Doh! You do not take high speed train to go between New York and LA but you would take it to go between cities that are less than 1000 miles apart, which are 100s of cities in US. To put it another way for the mathematically challenged Republicans you take high speed train to go between San Francisco and LA, LA and Vegas, Charleston and Atalanta, Miami and Savanah, etc. etc.
which are the same distances apart as for example are Paris and Niece which are connected with high speed trains.
Thank you, Ronald Reagan.
I would love to be able to ride HSR from Houston to Dallas.
Not just Houston to Dallas, but think of a network between Houston, D/FW, Austin, San Antonio. Now there's a network (for moving goods and people, it's more profitable to run a three- or four-stop system rather than a shuttle between just two points).
Obama's miserly commitment to infrastructure, is one of the most inexcusable parts of his lop-sided so called Stimulus...
If you are familiar to all the great work The Brookings Institute did in this regard to prep this President it makes this even more disgraceful and regressive...
High speed rail would open up and bring huge increases of spending investment and even create an economic boom in many areas and regions of our nation...
It also pays for itself many time over in a number of years for every dollar spent...
People think Obama is about change...
He's about preserving the inequitable status quo...as much as possible...that's his real deal, we can believe in...!
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