America has fallen in love with high speed trains. Not our own–we don’t have any worthy of the name–but with Spain’s. There are now daily love letters to Iberian rail in the media as the US press touchingly discovers the wonders of modern travel.
Obama managed to shoehorn $8 billion for high speed rail into the $790 billion stimulus package. This was greeted with great enthusiasm by many rail advocates. As it should have been–it’s a lot of money by recent US standards.
But it’s interesting to consider it in the context of what Spain is doing. They’re planning to spend $150 billion over the course of 15 years (they’ve spent close to $30 billion already) building out a first-class high speed network knitting together the entire country. The plan is that pretty much everyone would be within 30 miles of a station.
If we — a bigger, richer, and more populous country — wanted a rail system like theirs, what would it cost?
Well, Spain’s population is 40 million–an eighth that of the US. Their GDP is about $1.4 trillion, a tenth that of the US. The country is just shy of 200,000 sq mi in area, about one fifteenth the size of the Lower 48.
So if cost ran roughly in line with those factors, we could expect a national HSR network to rival Spain’s to come in at around $1.5 trillion.
An obvious point to be made is that population density is much lower in the continental US–90 people per square mile, compared to 230 in Spain.
But nobody is clamoring for an HSR link between Fargo and Boise. So what if we built a Spanish-caliber network just in the Eastern US and California? Together, these states have an area of about 1 million square miles, a $10 trillion economy, and a population of 207 million at a density almost exactly the same as Spain’s.
A very rough estimate then (again, just scaling out the example of Spain) would be $800 billion. Which would actually constitute it a smaller percentage of GDP than Spain is ponying up.
In reality, the more money we spent, the broader the network would have to be in order to get sufficient political support. Heck, even a bargain basement $150 billion network would be a much more satisfying investment than owning AIG.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Get real !
High speed rail is the next boondogle transit push for want-a-be Euros.
First, we don’t need high speed rail. Our commercial airline industry provides the same service (intercity travel) using private enterprise and competition to drive the markets. In Europe, the airlines are government controlled and do not offer these shorter-haul trips since the rail network was in place before the commercial aviation became of age. In the US, our commercial airline industry replaced the more expensive, less reliable and longer-travel time service offered by the rail industry until it faded into a government controlled bail-out called Amtrak.
Second, the distances between cities are shorter, populations denser and local service transit developed for the “last mile trips,” and service provided by the government run airlines are similar to the expensive and soon to be highly subsidized high speed rail. Without first developing sustainable transit services for the “last mile” high speed rail will simply become a more expensive Amtrak system. That is, a highly subsidized, inefficient, ineffective service of last resort outside of the northeast corridor. In most other metropolitan areas in the US, you still need to rent a car to get from the high speed rail terminal to your destination and since the net travel times will not be significantly different, it will cheaper (time and money) to simply drive or to take an airplane because of the time savings. To develop a sustainable cost effective transit systems in the urban areas of the US to make the long-haul high speed rail work, it would cost billions of dollars, require Americans to change their lifestyles to live in dense urban environments, and the long-term political will and discipline of elected officials to stick to the land use plans that are in conflict with the development industry and persons who want a suburban lifestyle. The American dream is not to live in a third floor walk up and take the bus to work everyday. We love our freedom of space and personal mobility we achieve with autos. If we did commit to expanding transit and making it sustainable and double the transit ridership in America, it is it estimated it would cost taxpayers between $40 billion and $100 billion and only increase transit ridership from 1.5 to 3 percent of all trips made in the US while at the same time diverting resources from much more valuable (in terms of relieving congestion, improving air-quality and supporting realistic managed growth) investments in our nations highways and contributing to significantly worse air-quality.
Third, the “latent demand” used to support high speed and other wasteful spending on transit systems are based on stated-preference surveys. These are the same types of surveys that people answer “Yes, I would buy a salad instead of a BigMac if offered” surveys. When was the last time salads outsold burgers in our restaurants? The same time that transit use outpaced vehicle use.
America is not Europe. Thank God. I wish liberals would stop thinking the grass is greener and appreciate the freedom, mobility and opportunities we have in the US.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Thanks, Terry.
You make some valid points. I think framing this whole debate in ideological labels is unnecessary though.
Let’s just concentrate on one thing: city-to-city travel of less than 500 miles. I think the case here is very compelling that Americans would prefer to travel by rail in this case. If I’m going from, say, Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, the ability to travel downtown to downtown, show up 20 minutes instead of 90 minutes early, not have to go through security, and have the generally more pleasant aesthetic experience of traveling on a train weighs pretty heavily toward rail. In spite of what you say, if I’m staying downtown, I don’t even need to rent a car (despite what you say).
Rail investment has some very aggressive critics (see the National Review article the other day, which I’m too lazy to link right now). Why are these same people quiet about sinking $20 billion in O’Hare airport? Think about that — that’s 2/3rds of the HSR line linking LA to SF, which would revolutionize travel the country’s most populous state… or an expansion at an airport that is and always will be overcrowded and miserable to pass through. No contest, I’d offer.
The reason the Spanish overwhelmingly favor the AVE high speed rail system is not that they don’t value freedom and mobility. It’s just that it’s much better than flying or driving when traveling between most cities in that country. That will probably never be the case when traveling from Birmingham to Reno or Missoula to Laredo. But, you know, so what? Let’s not ever pretend otherwise. But it’s just silly to pretend that a large portion of American travelers wouldn’t benefit from a rail network like Spains.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
[...] dedication of resources to expanding and improving rail and transit on a scale similar to China and Spain–which is to say [...]
August 28th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Having lived in both countries, realpolitiks dictates the impossibility of a high speed railroad in America, which is basically 2 countries in one: the mass of Americans, which would benefit with a mass-transit system, a mass-medicare health system, a mass-credit system, a proper educational system for the masses, etc. have no mass=social rights whatsoever, no political representation whatsoever, and what is more telling, no idea that those rights are the essence of a true democracy, which means the ‘government of the people’. A complex web of myths about freedom (generally confused with chaotic lives) and mobility (generally hidding insecurity of jobs, health and safety against crime), perfectly served with massive audiovisual rhetorics has convinced that mass of Americans that it is ok not to have any social, democratic rights. As there is no knowledge of the external world, this will last till true poverty brings perhaps a situation closer to civil war than r=evolution.
The other country, around 10% of the nation, however enjoy all the rights, all the benefits and certainly need not a railroad system, as they can travel in planes, not medicare as they can pay private clinics, etc. Their only obsession is not to pay taxes and being able to ‘invent for free’ electronic money, that is to speculate in the markets. But they control totally the politicians and mass-media outlets, except some internet forums. And so the situation won’t fhange. Europeans though, have had a denser history; have a variety of neighbors to compare systems, have gone through wars and revolutions, have killed and got killed by their lower adn upper classes, and so after II world war, they have striken a balance of power. And so the mass do have mass transit, mass education, mass health care, and some rights, while the top 10% still enjoy their yachts, their planes, their stocks, their corrupted politicians… This is the case of Spain, where there are 3 minimal rights: health-care, unemployment benefits and pan et circenses (good, cheap food and sports