More on the (bad) high speed rail idea

I worked as a transportation planner in what seems like eons ago. One of my assignments was to be involved with California's plans for high speed rail. The agency that I worked for even commissioned a study to identify potential sites for high speed rail stations in the Bakersfield area. Consultants love these kinds of projects--easy money, with no liability arising from their conclusions because everybody knows that the project will never come to fruition anyway!

I am glad I got an opportunity to exit this agency and return to academia where I did not have to hide my analyses and ideas behind facades--thanks the intellectual freedom we have. (Or so I thought until I found out otherwise; but, who cares for my sob stories, right?)
Anyway, one reason why I was convinced that high speed rail will never be economically feasible without extensive--I mean extensive--public subsidies was a simple back of the envelope calculation. The calculation was about the out of pocket expenses that a family of three would incur if they drove from their home, say in Bakersfield, to the destination in Los Angeles, compared to the expenses involved with completing the same journey on a high speed train.

To take the train, there are the following explicit cost factors in addition to the fare for each passenger:
transport to the station of origin
transport from the destination station
and then the transport costs to move around in the destination city.

You add these expenses to the fares for the family of three, and it turns out to be way, way, more than the out of pocket expenses if that family had simply gotten into their car and driven. And then, add to this the need to stick to the train schedule as opposed to leaving from home, well, whenever.

Anyway, that is all water under the bridge. That is what I thought, until the recent rah-rah for high speed rail in the US. I suppose such policy ideas are like mythical monsters that never die!

It was not a surprise to me that my graduate school professor, Peter Gordon, has blogged about it--he has a long track record voicing his opposition. It was, however, interesting to note that the UK too is planning on big time expansion of high speed rail. As Johnny Carson would say, "I did not know that!"I liked this comment about the the UK discussions:

Obsessing about high-speed rail also misses the point that every form of transport has its strengths and weaknesses. There are all sorts of factors that people take into account when choosing if and how to travel, like cost, convenience, speed, comfort and flexibility. If you want to travel from city centre to city centre, trains are great for journeys of up to three hours. No check-in, no driving, just turn up and let the ‘train take the strain’. For longer journeys, the hassle of air travel is off-set by the speed (and, given the stupendous prices charged on Britain’s railways, flying is usually cheaper, too). For trips to less popular destinations, or where you need transport at the other end, the car is often the best choice.

So, to make Britain a truly mobile society, we need trains, planes and cars, and the best possible infrastructure for all three. And we need a government that is committed to the idea that mobility is a good thing rather than one that puts the brakes on our transport future.

Yes, sir!

On Obama's High speed rail plan

"I'm happy to be here. I’m more happy than you can imagine," said the Vice President, a noted rail enthusiast, before introducing the President for the release of his strategic plan for high speed rail in America. Revolving around the $8 billion in the Recovery Act and the $1 billion per year for five years requested in the President’s budget to get these projects off the ground"
That was VP Biden's remarks back in April to launch the administration's vision for high speed rail.

So, four months later, what do we think?

First, here is Sam Staley at Reason:

For transportation investments to have a meaningful economic impact, they will need to cost-effectively improve America's ability to move goods, services, and people from one place to another. High-speed rail doesn't do that. It is an extremely costly way to achieve limited portions of these goals, and it inevitably fails as a broad-based solution to the country's transportation challenges.

In the end, high-speed rail's contribution to the economic recovery and the nation's economic productivity is being oversold. Elected officials, from Rep. Cantor to President Obama, would do a far greater service to the public's understanding of the economy if they would focus on economic fundamentals, not glitzy boutique policy programs that will inevitably fail to meet grandiose expectations they have created for them.

Staley's bottom line is that the high speed rail plan fails as a stimulus program and does not create jobs.

Ed Glaeser looks at whether the proposed high speed rail would help America's other great problems--sprawl.
For illustrative purposes, Glaeser considers the Dallas-Houston corridor, which, as he points out, is not in the Obama plan. Glaeser notes that:

Despite the lack of any positive evidence linking centralization to high-speed rail, I certainly accept that there is a great deal of uncertainty. To give rail the benefit of the doubt, I’ll assume that high-speed rail will cause 100,000 households to switch from suburb to city in both Dallas and Houston. This change would create extra, annual environmental benefits of $29.7 million. These benefits would be real, but they would still do little to offset the $524 million or $401 million net annual loss discussed above.

What do I think? High speed rail is so 19th century a solution for a 21st century Great Recession!