On his trip to Florida, President Obama revealed his list of recipients for the High Speed Rail funding portion of the federal stimulus package. Reportedly, the $8 billion pot will be split amongst projects and planning in 31 different states to promote faster, more efficient transit across the U.S. There are numerous parts of our country’s railroad network that the Department of Transportation has designated as potential high speed rail corridor and most of them would benefit from developing such a revolutionary system. On the other hand, not all track beds are alike when the available funds are supposed to promote jobs, provide perceived benefit and comprise a mere fraction of the funding ultimately needed to institute HSR on a national scale.
Politicians can think of few better ways to win public support than giving out free money. Coming the night after the State of the Union, this was a perfect time to publicly dole out the public’s own cash. It is not surprising that the administration would want to make as many constituencies feel better as possible, but sometimes endeavors (such as vast, highly technological, infrastructural upgrades) need a certain degree of critical mass. Otherwise, the result can be a watered down series of half-finished, under-funded tasks that only leaves people frustrated.
In this case, the choice of how to allocate funding for projects of this magnitude are (or at least should be) rather difficult; determined by a number of different factors. Still mired in a lethargic pace of recovery, the economy is searching for job opportunities and the President is pitching this distribution as the road to job creation. This means that projects that are closer to “shovel ready,” the better.
Building new HSR systems is extremely expensive, second only to subways when considering the realm of alternative transit. An estimated example can be drawn from the proposed California line from Los Angeles to San Francisco has estimated costs upwards of $45 billion that would translate into $130 million per track mile. The distance that needs to be covered becomes important quickly. Given that this quick boost of funding is not going to bring any project from start to finish, someone should also be weighing the likelihood that state governments will have to means to complete the projects themselves. Naturally, California is a standout, seeking to create a $45 billion transit system while their government is bankrupt.
In order to have a chance at operating at higher capacities (and efficiencies), these trains should also be connecting cities that not only have considerable populations, but have mature transit systems of their own, realizing that HSR is only a piece of the ecology of alternative transit. It could be anti-climactic to travel 400 miles in two hours only to take another hour to travel 40 blocks.
When we look at the corridors themselves it is difficult to find the government’s method. With so few dollars going to so many miles of track, it is unlikely that the funding will actually “complete” many projects but rather help some of them get off the ground. One exception and stand-out-hopeful of American HSR is the Northeast Corridor. Connecting most major cities in the Northeast from Boston to Washington D.C., the NEC draws on over a tenth of the country’s population with the combined metro areas of its main stops and all of those stops have public transit systems of their own. The line also already operates as the country’s only high speed train (I use the term loosely, because it still pales to international counterparts.) Amtrak’s Acela is one of Amtrak’s few profitable routes.
In the Wall Street Journal Amtrak’s CEO, Joseph Boardman, claimed a year ago that “we can improve the Acela in many ways and reduce the travel time from New York to Washington to two hours and 30 minutes, including five stops” by utilizing a minor changes in signaling and track upgrades. Eventually the train could make the journey in only two hours, but Boardman says that is billions of dollars away. For a relatively small amount of money, the government could see jobs and, perhaps more importantly, results felt by hundreds of thousands of commuters.
After that, the likelihood of actually stimulating any real progress is minimal. The Chicago Hub Network is one of the longest proposed corridors in the country requiring tens of billions of dollars to ever become a reality. Conversely, the Empire corridor through upstate New York is half as long, connects more people and probably cuts through cheaper land. We will learn more when the actual dollar amounts are linked to their respective corridors, but one has to wonder whether or not fewer projects with larger helpings may have done more for the goal—even if it pleased fewer voters.
I will say that I believe HSR is a good use of stimulus funds. If we are going to spend money we do not have, it might as well be on something that can create jobs and assesses the infrastructural deficiencies that we have in the country. Transportation is one many large systematic dilemmas facing the future of the country. It is not as though we are trailblazing anything either. Other countries do this well. The technology is there, so let us get on board (no pun intended).
This is an important first step in promoting the development of a transit system built to the caliber that our country deserves and requires.
Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal
March 7, 2010 at 3:01 am
Clearly it is spread too thin. I agree that this little incremental baby step isn’t going to generate much opportunity either; what next then? Are the critics of high speed rail, and often mass transit as a whole, going to be able to strangle this fledgling effort in the crib arguing it costs too much and delivers too little? (just check out these jokers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xyUg4J7Sf8 )I think that will be even more dangerous an outcome than if we had done nothing. What disables us from taking big time action to confront large problems?
Having lived in the northeast and the northwest corridors, the ironic thing I’ve found is that the northwest is far more prepared in terms of planning and in working towards setting up secondary transit systems than the northeast, but without really the activity, density, and congestion that is crippling the northeast and who needs the system to the point of desperation (when compared to equivalent economic regions globally). Yet the swing state of florida is getting a lionshare of money at this point. I’ve just got a real bad feeling about all of it, and I’ve been someone whose been borderline irrational in my support for hsr in the past
March 7, 2010 at 10:27 am
That’s a great point on the dichotomy of implementation vs. need. Clearly the western half of the country is finding more ease with delineating new corridors and securing required land–almost definitely because its cities are more spread out and even then, do not achieve the urban density that the northeastern bellwethers have risen to. I think this only underscores why the transition to high speed rail (or rail travel in general) is a difficult one for the U.S..
Supporters of HSR (of which I am one) often point to the successes of European systems, but those systems rose with the cities as part of planning and coordination. As a committed part of their mentality towards travel, rail made sense and as a result was maintained consistently while here in America, we have bridges and tunnels along even our most popular Northeast Corridor line than are a century old. We have built more of our cities at while at the same time allowed our rail system to deteriorate. At this point, we have passed the point where implementing more rail service is easy or cheap and that’s one of the large hurdles in reaching success. We’ll be facing headwinds every step of the way.
Thanks for stopping by. Your comments are welcomed!
March 7, 2010 at 2:27 pm
There is another issue that makes it difficult for the West; there’s a lot of rural, barely used roads that cross the train tracks but nonetheless make for safety expense and increases difficulty to the system.
But I think really that the West, at least here in the Pacific Northwest, has a very large urban and regional planning community that has wanted for this and, well, planned for it far longer than back in the northeast. There’s popular support from environmentalists. I just wished that smaller Northeast cities in Southern New England or Pennsylvania had as passionate popular support, and that there was government agencies with plans that highly prioritized hsr like out here in this smallish NW city I’m in now. Maybe if they were then there’d have been more investment than simple maintenance and replacement of 100 year old bridges across the CT river.