High-speed rail is dead in America. In Slate, Will Oremus does a postmortem that isn't as clueless as most of what one would find in the mainstream media. It makes some points familiar to my readers: The Obama plan wouldn't have been genuine high-speed rail, except in Florida, merely higher-speed; the funds were insufficient and dolled out helter-skelter across the country rather than focusing on corridors likely to bring success, etc. I would add that the Florida HSR was foolish from the get-go, aimed at a suburbianized, car-crazy state, rather than, say, California, the Pacific Northwest or the Northeast Corridor, where train travel is already popular and in demand.
In any event, this is a catastrophe for the nation.
On a general level, it is another sign that America just can't do great things any longer. It's an emphatic indication of the nihilistic paralysis of our politics, with one of our major political parties captured by extremists whose mission is pure destruction. It highlights yet another blow to the commons. It's a lost economic opportunity. High-speed rail would have created tens of thousands of jobs, for operating and not just construction. It had the potential, properly done, to seed new industries here to build the trains. It is exactly the kind of infrastructure spending that would stimulate an economy that as things stand faces years of high unemployment and stagnation. From an environmental standpoint, rail is much less destructive than cars and moves far more people with a small carbon footprint.
Mr. Obama and the Democrats never approached rail with a sustained and focused strategy. In addition to high-speed rail, we need the frequent and convenient rail service operating below the 150-mile-per-hour range. In other words, rebuilding Amtrak. In my lifetime, the United States had the most advanced passenger rail system in the world; one could go to virtually all cities and larger towns by train. That was all lost. Amtrak has faced a battle for its life since being created in 1971, and under-funding has fed service problems creating a self-fulfilling feedback loop of perceived failure. Perceived: The remaining trains are highly popular, much to the chagrin of Amtrak haters such as wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III.
A serious approach would also have emphasized building commuter rail in major cities, as well as shoring it up where it already exists. In addition to providing jobs, it would have retrofitted suburbia for a high-cost energy future that is baked in the cake, giving people options beyond single-occupancy car trips. Again, where this is done it is highly popular, including the Sounder trains in Seattle. Adding service to already popular passenger rail corridors, such as the Cascades in the Northwest and Surfliner in Southern California would have also yielded big results, as well as providing templates that other metropolitan areas could have copied. All this would not only have provided for the future, but have helped fill the huge demand hole left by the recession and engaged Americans in a productive enterprise that didn't involve finance or real-estate hustles.
Instead, local transit and state corridors continue a yearly fight for funding just to stay alive. Plans early in Mr. Obama's term to strengthen Amtrak have been thwarted by the Tea Party takeover of the House, and now Amtrak is fighting for its life again. Mitt Romney promises to kill it. Various Republicans want to turn the Northeast Corridor over to Wall Street speculators, which ensures that 40 years of hard work to build a successful passenger rail spine will be looted and thrown away.
Most Americans won't notice these lost opportunities. They don't get out much or realize America's growing backwardness. They don't comprehend that a modern rail network, including high-speed rail, is a given is every populous advanced nation. They are stuck in 1970, when gas was cheap, when we had 100 million fewer people and less congested urban areas, when in many places it was like those car ads on television that show only one vehicle on an empty road. Somehow they think highways and airlines aren't subsidized; they think many things that are not true, including this. Every transportation system is subsidized. In our case, we just have fewer choices. It's an outrage that there are not frequent and fast trains linking, say, Phoenix and LA, Phoenix and Tucson. No, they're happy to spend a huge portion of our lives stuck in traffic, changing the planet for the worse.
Too bad that reality, in the form of oil scarcity and higher prices, increasing congestion and, ooops, climate change, will throttle these American delusions.
The big victors are the fossil fuel industries and car-makers, which have the money to lobby for what they want in Washington. Rail has none of this political power. Too bad no one was able to push the fear button and make Americans realize that our regressiveness, including lack of an advanced passenger rail system, is a national security issue. So here we are. Stuck. It's a hell of a way to run a railroad and a country.
There was a time when cattle was king. As a result there are still civil laws and tax laws on the books that favor cattle owners over everyone else.
There was a time when railroad was king. As a result there are still civil laws, tax laws and transport regulations that still favor railroads over everyone else. I often go up against some of these old railroad regulations and I have won zero battles and lost too many to count.
At their height there were 230,468.32 miles of trackage. (Emil, the .32 is for you,. I thought you might like that) Currently there are still 200,000 miles of trackage.
The “date of death” on the death certificate of the railroads would have to state “during the 50’s and 60’s, which was also the birth of “the explosion of cars” and the interstate highway system.
As has been mentioned on the blog before, we should be discussing flying cars at this point in our history. The fact that we are not having that discussion would mean that somewhere we bumped into an invisible wall that stopped our forward progress as a society. I wonder what it is that composes that invisible barrier???
Har,
Commuter rail only works where you have a dense enough destination to push the workers into their jobs. One of the grand failures of Phoenix is the lack of jobs downtown. The spread of downtown to the freeway corridors, with the 101 being the perfect example, further dictates that unless you follow the freeways with service connects to real bus lines, you have nothing. Quite simply, Phoenix is ill designed, and does not have the density at the current prices of gas sufficient to push people into bus transit.
Without sufficient taxes to subsidize bus service, the poor can’t even use our marginal bus system, because it does not have a rich enough interconnect system between bus lines. Two hours to travel 12 miles is common, and that just doesn’t compete with a car that takes 20 minutes.
I am tired of heavy infrastructure failures, when the damn bus is the starting problem.
All of this light rail crap could be done much cheaper with natty gas buses and with better service.
Stupidity is not confined entirely to the right in this case.
Rail simply costs too much.
For the cost of light rail, we could have but thousand of new riders onto our bus system, and still had money left over.
That waste, more than anything, is what pisses me off. I have lived in urban areas, and good bus service is what allows the poor real freedom to commute to jobs. Which is the point of a real transit system.
“The remaining trains are highly popular, much to the chagrin of Amtrak haters such as wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III.” – Rogue
Just imagine our Congressmen travelling from their states to Washington by rail, mingling with their constituents, instead of flying there in their corporate jet cocoons. A connected, new world.
“Without sufficient taxes to subsidize bus service[…]” – AllenM
Automobiles are subsidized in our system at every level. Change in transit, as for change in the energy regime, requires first addressing entrenched subsidies.
“I am tired of heavy infrastructure failures, when the damn bus is the starting problem.”
Actually, the starting problem is what you wrote here:
“Quite simply, Phoenix is ill designed, and does not have the density at the current prices of gas sufficient to push people into bus transit.”
Real estate development patterns are influenced by the type of infrastructure built. Since WWII, highway funding has been available at a ratio of about 8:1 compared to transit funding. The outcome of decades of highway projects and other market distortions is the dispersed, car-dependent urban form that you see in Phoenix and most other cities that were created in the second half of the 20th century.
So, when you write: “good bus service is what allows the poor real freedom to commute to jobs. Which is the point of a real transit system.”
This is false, particularly in a city like Phoenix. The point of a real transit system in a post-war city is to stimulate the re-design of the environment into a walkable format that focuses development close to transit and, in turn, increases accessibility to jobs and services for everyone, not just people who can’t afford cars. Buses alone do not accomplish this objective. The quality and certainty provided by rail infrastructure is required (it’s also cheaper in the long run due to lower operating costs).
There is a large and growing market for neighborhoods that do not require long commutes and daily driving for all of ones needs. This market includes not just low-income folks, but people who prefer to live in active urban centers and walkable neighborhoods. What real estate has the highest price per square foot in America? (hint: it’s not in Paradise Valley or Gilbert) The key to meeting this demand with additional supply is providing the right type of infrastructure – and that starts with rail transit.
Phx Planner beat me to the chicken-and-egg argument, and stated it better than I would have.
Scene: Hallway in the hall of congress.
Railroad lobbyist to congress-person, “hey buddy, here’s a brand spanking new $20 bill. How about you hang on to it and maybe throw a little favorable legislation our way?”
Congress-person, Scowling, silent.
Oil lobbyist to congress-person, Hey, can I get your wire-transfer info for your bank in the Bahamas? We have $1,500,000 to help with your re-election efforts. Maybe you could introduce legislation making a person a terrorist if they say anything bad about the oil industry. You know, the war on terror thing?
congress-person, “sure, I’d be glad to.”
Thanks, Mr. McCain, tell your friends Kyl and Lieberman and Graham there’s plenty for them too.
Well, to be fair, trains can’t fly over to South Korea for cheap maintenance: you know, the very minimum required for compliance.