Midnight Train to Nowhere

In the State of the Union Address, President Obama promised “to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail” in the next 25 years. This is hardly the first mention of rail that the President has made: during his campaign, his official statement on transportation included a dedication to establishing high-speed rail lines. He has certainly followed through in the sense of promoting high-speed rail to the tune of eight billion dollars within the entire stimulus package. Advocates of high-speed rail, including the President, have put forward a number of reasons for expanding a network within the United States. Rail is supposed to be clean, convenient, and the wave of the future. Unfortunately, high-speed rail will not fix our transportation woes, and it is at most an unnecessary bauble.
While it would seem that a sleek, high-speed train would harm the environment less than all the gas-guzzling cars and trucks lumbering along the highway, studies have shown that the benefits are not quite what they are made out to be. A Freakonomics post in the New York Times from July 24, 2009 highlighted a study of British rail that was hardly glowing. The consulting firm Booz Allen found that rail was not any cleaner than automobiles on a per-seat basis. Embarrassingly enough, “intercity bus came out considerably cleaner than HSR on a per-seat-mile basis.” Adding in the environmental impact of construction and maintenance, Booz Allen found that even if rail traffic were maximized on the London-Manchester potential line, emissions would be lower over 60 years if no rail were built. A Reason analysis of California’s potential high-speed rail network found that high-speed rail would remove “1.5% of the current state objective” while going far above the recommended cost per ton of CO2 removed by the IPCC. This is hardly the green savior that rail advocates would want us to believe.
In addition to the green benefits, rail advocates would have us believe that high-speed rail is the great savior from long security lines and congested highways. As the president quipped in the State of the Union, high-speed rail would provide quick travel “without the pat-down” (Hold for applause, laughter). If high-speed rail were ever to approach the level of use that airplanes currently have, it would be gross negligence at the least to skimp on security. Russia’s own high-speed rail system came under attack in 2009. This attack highlights the vulnerability that trains do not share with airplanes: an infrastructure that is very difficult to defend against. If trains do become popular means of transportation, they would require not only a level of security at the entry points but a way to prevent attacks on the tracks themselves. Wars of the 20th century also provide innumerable examples of train sabotage, and while the government may not have to pat down every train traveler, it would have to go to great lengths to prevent attacks on trains. Given that critical freight connections are also on the same lines as these trains, security would in fact be a vital and complicated aspect of high-speed rail travel.
Also, trains would likely not provide the promised relief from clogged roads. Many of the corridors identified by the Department of Transportation would see little or no change in road ridership after the construction of high-speed rail. Rosy ridership numbers used to promote the California high-speed rail system were found to be less than reliable by the University of California. Robert Samuelson highlights in the Washington Post the less-than-impressive 4% share of inter-city trips that California’s own rail authority estimates that rail would provide. He notes that even an impossible 100% switch from air to rail in the San Francisco-Los Angeles corridor would decrease total air travel by a paltry 2.5%. In Florida, a rail line is proposed from Tampa to Orlando and Miami, despite the fact that Florida’s sprawling suburbs are hardly conducive to a rail network. Some have argued that high-speed rail would help consolidate development around the stations, but this seems like a small reward for a very large gamble.
Ultimately, it seems that much of the love for high-speed rail comes from a nostalgia over the supposedly progressive rail networks of Europe and Asia. One is often presented with the image of a foolish American idling in his car while the enlightened European is whisked around the continent by rail. Randal O’Toole points out in USA Today that the average Frenchman rides the train “less than 400 miles a year.” Most recently, the fact that the Chinese are building a high-speed rail network seems to be the driving impetus for our own network. By gum, if the Chinese are building one, then we need one as well! The problem, as Patrick Chovanec of Tsinghua University points out, is that high-speed rail is not exactly going that well in China. The Chinese are discovering that high-speed rail is contributing little to relief of road congestion.
It is not that I have a fundamental dislike of trains. In a densely populated region such as the Northeast, some sort of passenger rail seems sensible. However, the President’s plan for high-speed rail is overly ambitious and likely to fail at meeting the excessive expectations put upon it. Samuelson makes what is perhaps the most stinging indictment of rail: total costs could easily top $200 billion with little to show for it. If the government pours the huge sums of money necessary into a high-speed rail network, taxpayers will notice the bite in their wallet far more than the minute reductions in emissions or traffic congestion.
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