Over the past month, economist Ed Glaeser has explored the benefits of high-speed rail in an occasional series over at the New York Times website. To put it mildly, his reception in the blogosphere has been wretched. Ryan Avent at Streetsblog has been a particularly devastating critic, picking apart Glaeser’s analysis strand by and strand and characterizing the overall effort as “daft and indefensible.”
But what’s been missing thus far is a numbers-based rebuttal of Glaeser’s “back-of-envelope calculations.” He figures three categories of benefits from high speed rail: travel (for example, fewer car accidents and reduced highway congestion), environmental (lower carbon emissions than car or plane travel, etc.), and improved land use (the rail project encouraging denser, more walkable cities, etc.). Through this combination of factors, Gleaser examines a hypothetical HSR link between Dallas and Houston and calculates annual benefits of $158 million. Not bad perhaps, but they pale in comparison to annual costs of $648 million. The gap between costs and benefits–an annual loss to society of $500 million–would seem to be so huge as to kill the prospect of US high speed rail in its cradle.
That may even to have been Glaeser’s intent in writing the series. The problem is that–through a sorry mix of omission, oversimplification, distortion, and deficiency–his calculations bear no relation to the effects he is claiming to consider. So it’s important to show that “the numbers” do not at all undermine the viability of HSR in the US, even outside the northeast and California. In fact, they tend to support it.
By populating his model with a better set of assumptions, we hope to show how badly the economist missed the mark even on his handpicked example of an HSR link between Houston and Dallas. In reality, a well-designed high speed intercity rail project between the two largest cities in Lone Star State would likely produce a net economic benefit–not at all the white elephant Glaeser suggests. In this more comprehensive model that takes into account trivialities like regional population growth and a reality-based route, the annual benefits total $840 million compared with construction and maintenance costs of $810 million. Which is to say, our numbers show that HSR pays for itself rather handily.
And this would be early in the lifecycle of the system, with those benefits likely to grow in future decades.
The Basics: A Better Set of Assumptions
Rather than looking at Glaeser’s hypothetical 240-mile rail line directly and exclusively between Dallas and Houston, I’ll base my argument on a line actually under consideration called the Texas T-Bone that would run roughly 300 miles between the cities, with intermediate stops at Waco, Temple, and College Stations. For simplicity’s sake, in this piece I’ll ignore the roughly 140-mile proposed extension of the line south to Austin and San Antonio but factor in connecting slow-speed trains from those locales.
Despite the fact that an HSR system would take more than a decade to build, Glaeser calculations are all for 2008. Why? We have no idea. Unlike some other US states, Texas is projected to grow steadily in coming years. Assuming the project gets underway relatively soon, the Texas T-Bone HSR line ought to be hitting full stride around 2030. So our model focuses on that year. Texas is projected to have 33 million people (up from 24 million today) with the metropolitan areas of Houston and Dallas each growing by more than 4 million inhabitants to populations of 9.9 million and 10.6 million, respectively.
Ridership: Using Real-World Examples
Glaeser argues that a Houston-Dallas line would be roughly one-half as popular, relative to population, as the current slow Amtrak service is in the Northeastern Corridor. His reasoning is that both Dallas and Houston are less transit-friendly areas, and therefore less conducive to train travel. So, assuming a 50 percent lower per capita ridership rate, he comes up with 1.5 million annual customers for the line – this is similar to the number of people who currently fly directly between the two cities.
There are a number of major flaws with this approach though. First, while transit-friendly conditions are desirable – and it bears mention that both Dallas and Houston are expanding their transit systems significantly – there is little evidence those networks are vital in attracting customers to high-speed rail.
Second, Amtrak services between Washington and Boston have never fit the international definition of high-speed (186 mph). They reach a high of 165 mph for a short segment in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, but Acela trains average only 72 mph overall, so their ridership is hardly an apt point of comparison, as Glaeser suggests.
Third, Glaeser neglects to mention that a number of commuter rail agencies in the Northeast serve long-distance travel, such as MARC between Baltimore and Washington and MBTA between Boston and Providence. These agencies cannibalize Amtrak market share, carrying more than 60 million passengers a year on track shared by Amtrak Northeast Regional and Acela trains; Glaeser’s calculations do not account for these rail riders at all.
So instead of deeply flawed attempts to project ridership based on the Northeast, we should be focusing on high-speed rail’s noted ability to take substantial market share away from the airlines and even from automobile commuters. Evidence from overseas to this effect is plentiful, though Glaeser doesn’t even mention it. In France, for instance, the 200 mph TGV Est line between Paris (metro population 11 million) and Strasbourg (600,000) carried 11 million passengers in its first year of operation. Rail now commands 70% of total travel market share, including automobiles, versus 30% before the line opened. Today, roughly 10 million people a year travel between Dallas and Houston either by plane or by car.
Looking to the future provides even more evidence of the route’s potential ridership. We can reasonably speculate that trains would take 80% of the market from air services offered between Houston, Dallas, College Station, Waco, and Temple, each of which would be located directly along the line. By 2030, about 4.3 million people will take flights between those cities, based on current growth rates. In addition, people connecting to the line on routes between Austin and Houston (900,000); Austin and Dallas (1.2 million); and Dallas and San Antonio (800,000) would have an improved time incentive to take the train (up to 30% of market share for the first two and 10% for the latter). In total, around 4.1 million people every year would choose the high-speed route instead of air travel.
Of the 12 million people who will likely drive between Dallas and Houston by 2030, looking to international example leads us to conclude that 25% could be expected to abandon their cars for the train ride as long as services are provided at a competitive rate. Fewer people would likely choose the train on trips between Austin and Dallas (15%); Austin and Houston (10%); and Dallas and San Antonio (5%), simply because rail would be less convenient than on direct Dallas-Houston journeys. Based on reasonable assumptions, 1.3 million car drivers could be expected to switch to the train on trips to and from College Station, Waco, and Temple. In total, a full 7.3 million trips might be removed from the highways.
This adds up to a projected more than 11.4 million annual riders riding the train (27,000 a day), far higher than Glaeser’s oversimplified assumptions. This figure is well supported by a comparison with Spain, whose AVE line between Madrid (7.1 million) and Barcelona (3.2 million) will serve 8 million passengers a year by 2011, taking 50% of total market share.
With this level of ridership, we calculate annual travel benefits alone of $578 million (see this PDF for detailed breakdown of how we got this figure).
Environmental Effects: 21st Century Rail Travel Should Be Zero Carbon
The construction of a high-speed rail line would require a large environmental sacrifice – construction crews would need to shape the land, poor concrete, lay the tracks, and build the stations. This work would release millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But building a new highway such as Texas’ planned I-69 would require similar work and would almost certainly be just as ecologically damaging. On a somewhat smaller scale, the same can be said for new terminals or runways at airports.
In a rapidly growing state like Texas, though, a serious need for a transportation capacity upgrade is bound to arise over the next decades – especially between the state’s two biggest cities. The construction of this infrastructure would require carbon emissions on a large scale–but since we don’t yet have competing plans for highway or airport capacity expansions if the high-speed system is not built, the most meaningful question for us is the rail system’s environmental effects in operations rather than construction.
Glaeser himself demonstrated the efficiency advantages of rail, showing that it releases less than a fifth of the emissions per passenger-mile of those of automobiles and less than a fourth of those of airplanes. Air travel emissions are particularly damaging to the environment because the nitrogen oxides and water vapor they release magnify the global warming effect.
Approximately 150 daily flights would be eliminated if the ridership model suggested above plays out. In comparison, Dallas’ Love Field hosts only 130 daily departures today. As such, the opening of the high-speed line would represent significant relief for airports and it would delay the need to expand terminals and runways, projects that are typically multi-billion-dollar operations.
The reduction in carbon emissions from people choosing not to drive cars or fly airplanes would be quite significant – especially if the rail system is powered by renewable energy. These savings are particularly evident on the very short flights on this corridor, such as from College Station to Houston or from Waco to Dallas, which could be replaced entirely with rail service.
Glaeser argues the power plants that produce the electricity used by high-speed trains would produce significant carbon emissions, reducing the environmental gain from switching away from air or car travel.
Yet he fails to account for the green potential of an electric rail line: it can operate without releasing any carbon at all. California, which is developing a 220 mph line between San Francisco and Los Angeles, has pledged to run its trains with electricity obtained only from carbon-neutral sources, such as wind turbines and solar panels. Texas could make the same commitment and dramatically expand the environmental benefits of the high-speed system. Texas is uniquely positioned to build such facilities, too – its western and northern sections are sunny, windy, and sparsely populated.
Needless to say, airplanes and automobiles cannot match high-speed’s promise of carbon-free long-distance travel. Just as significantly, this allows the system’s capacity to be ramped up – more and more trains, serving a growing population – with no additional carbon output.
With greater ridership, all the benefits that Glaeser calculates–based on better safety, congestion reduction, and lower carbon emissions–are all amplified. All told, we figure the annual environmental benefits would be $150 million in 2030 — compared to the $26 million Glaeser’s calculates for 2008.
Land Use: Give Density A Chance
With the exception of two flights a day to Atlanta, the small airports in Waco, Temple, and College Station each only provide service to Dallas and Houston today. If high-speed rail replaced plane circulation, these airports could be downsized and redeveloped for the public’s benefit. This is especially true for Easterwood Field in College Station, which is located just a few blocks from Texas A&M University. The use of this land for new housing or office space could reap significant new tax revenue for the city.
Glaeser himself assumes that high-speed rail would change the habits of some Americans: he argues that perhaps 100,000 households could be convinced to switch from suburban areas to inner city neighborhoods in both Dallas and Houston. Doing so provides a net benefit to society through carbon reduction.
Those estimates, however, are likely low since both metropolitan areas will be expanding by more than four million people by 2030. What if the state were proactive in encouraging dense, infill development around station cores? That straightforward strategy–which has a long history of success in cities around world–would both encourage ridership and amplify the projects benefits. It would also open up significant new economic opportunities for inner-city growth in those two cities as well as in Waco, Temple, and College Station. But Glaeser chooses to ignore that a high-speed system would attract offices and retail around stations. With both residential and commercial development being drawn to a downtown magnet rather than agglomerating in loosely around the cities’ outskirts, transit use and density would increase accordingly, both to society’s net benefit.
By plugging in a few of these conservative assumptions we get annual land use benefits of $72 million generate by a high speed rail project.
Conclusion: Build, Baby, Build
This reevaluation of Glaeser’s argument seems to upend his primary conclusion that the construction costs of the high-speed line would vastly outweigh the corridor’s benefits. While he figures that a 240-mile train system would result in a net annual loss of around $500 million, this analysis – using his own economic benefits model – shows a net benefit of $30 million a year (see our PDF for the math). High-speed rail between Dallas and Houston, then, seems like an eminently sensible thing to do.
See the full numerical breakout on this PDF.
Note: Car Travel Data from the 1995 American Travel Survey; updated by the author to compensate for the growth in the population of metropolitan areas. Population estimates based on existing population growth of 7% a year in San Antonio metro area; 8% in Dallas and Houston; and 9% in Austin. Car travel estimates for smaller cities (Waco, Temple, and College Station) calculated based on assumption of 50% car/air market distribution, which seems to be low-balling the data since the Houston-Dallas market is 3:2 car:air.
***
Yonah Freemark blogs about transportation and land use issues at The Transport Politic and is a regular contributor to The Infrastructurist.
Tags: THE RAIL WORLD
[...] Freemark (of the Transport Politic, see my blogroll) posted a fantastic cumulative response to Edward Glaeser’s lackluster and academically dishonest essays on high speed rail at the [...]
~4% roi on a many year long project? and only if things keep on improving? Thats insane. The payoff is TINY. You would be better off putting your money in treasury bonds.
Based on reasonable assumptions, 1.3 million car drivers could be expected to switch to the train on trips to and from College Station, Waco, and Temple. In total, a full 7.3 million trips might be removed from the highways.
What assumptions? And what data? Your PDF contains a bunch of numbers, but no description of the data sources or methodology you used to produce them.
Jebediah-
Your argument, if I understand you correctly, is that a quantitative argument is subject to bias. You can make a quantitative argument work or not work, based on the assumptions you make, and those assumptions are driven by bias.
You also seem to think that qualitative arguments are more important in this debate, despite the fact that qualitative assumptions are driven by bias as well.
You seem to be missing my point though, so I’ll try to rephrase it.
Of course it is possible for HSR benefits to outweigh the costs. And it is also possible for the costs to outweigh the benefits. Depending on which assumptions you make, the cost/benefit ratio can be skewed to benefit any argument. This much I am in agreement with…I feel like Glaeser’s assumptions fell too conservatively.
But my concern is not whether arguments can be biased, but rather which argument is most likely to fit reality. As far as I have read, from this blog as well as Streetsblog and Transport Politic, the argument for HSR benefits exceeding costs relies heavily on a “stars perfectly aligned” probability matrix.
Look at the assumptions we must have in order to arrive at the conclusion that costs do not exceeds benefits:
1) We have to have existing networks well established. This means subway systems, extended connections to other cities, etc.
2) We have to have perfectly model-matching, or better, population growth.
3) We have to assume extremely fast changes in population density
4) We have to assume extremely fast buildup of expensive alternative energy, without accounting for the costs of that buildup
The simple fact of the matter is that each one of these assumptions is a very low probability occurrence. And only in the extremely low probability event that all of these low probability assumptions take place, can we really realize a net benefit.
And, like Tyler Cowen commented earlier today, we must consider the fact that we have irreversible investment, lock-in effects, hurdle rates of return, likelihood of inflation on the cost side, as well as public choice problems.
Your personal analysis, (sorry for confusing you with Yonah at first) is ONLY a benefit analysis. And of course it is going to be a better place with HSR than without it if we didn’t have it in 30 years. But you are completely ignoring the cost of achieving that benefit!
By ignoring the cost of achieving that benefit, you are implicitly suggesting that money grows on trees. The truth is that we have a very limited supply of funds to work with. We can only raise taxes so much before we get huge negative effects from that taxation. In our situation, we are looking at anywhere from 7-14 trillion dollar 10-year deficits…meaning just to cover what we have already planned, we would have to raise taxes past what Sweden and Denmark have. And you want to spend billions more!
Sure, ignoring costs gives us a very pretty picture of the future. But by taking into account costs, we have literally thousands more options of public investments that we could make that are much more likely to have a positive benefit/cost ratio. By investing in those first, maybe we can achieve the economic growth necessary to fund our current budget without raising taxes, and maybe having some left over to spend on projects like this where the positive benefit/cost ratio is lower in probability.
Danny, I disagree completely with your ‘assumptions’.
Regardless of whose analysis is right or wrong, this is a project that should be decided and funded by Texas alone. The rest of the US has no substantial stake in this project and would be better off spending the money on projects in our own states.
Eric,
You are a troll. I love the twofer that the “enviros and NIMBYs” are blocking HSR. That is such a crock – after all, we know “enviros” hate rail.
HSR is blocked everywhere in Amtrak because the freight rail guys own the right of way. And they won’t support upgrade to HSR unless the feds buy them an entirely new infrastructure, for free.
They are free to do that, until the Feds exercise their rights under Railway regulation. But don’t blame the “enviros and the NIMBYs.” That just shows that you are operating via prejudice, rather than analysis.
Danny,
It’s not about “bias,” which I don’t think is a meaningful word in this context. If making a decision like this involves consulting a model to see if there’s a payoff 35 years from now, then that discussion has become meaningless. It’s people pretending to grown-up and analytical when they’re being nothing of the sort. And I think Glaeser’s recent contribution to the HSR debate falls in that category.
In terms of cost, we could put a 40 cent/gal tax on gasoline, still be below the OECD average, and have a way to fund this. I’m not saying that’s politically feasible, but it is an eminently sensible course of action and doesn’t involve 70% income taxes.
JR
[...] sure to also check out the piece Freemark had Tuesday on The Infrastructurist, in which he sharpened his pencil and re-ran the numbers on Ed Glaeser’s unfavorable analysis [...]
From the GAO report on High Speed Rail:
“…analyses and research on the accuracy of rider forecasts and cost estimates for rail infrastructure projects have found that a systematic problem and incentive to be optimistic may exist—that is, actual riders are more likely to be lower than forecasted, while actual costs are more likely to be higher than estimated. For example, a study of over 250 transportation infrastructure projects in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, found that rail projects—while not all high speed—had the highest cost escalation out of all the transportation modes studied—averaging 45 percent higher than estimated. Another study that included 27 rail projects, 1 of which was a high speed rail project, from around the world found that rider forecasts for over 90 percent of the rail projects studied were overestimated, and 67 percent were overestimated by more than two-thirds.”
You seem not to understand how to evaluate investment projects. There will be a set of construction costs when the line is built – the initial capital investment. Once the line is up and running, there will be cash inflows and outflows each year. If the present value of (cash inflows – cash outflows) is greater than the initial capital investment, proceed, otherwise don’t.
It’s actually impossible to tell from the way you’ve presented your argument what the initial capital cost will be. I suspect very strongly that you figure of $750m “annual construction costs” actually represents an amortization of initial capital expenditure, in which case you shouldn’t be including it in the calculation of cash in/out, since amortization isn’t a cash item, merely an accounting term (the accountant is smoothing out initial capital expenditure, an actual cash flow, over some arbitrarily determined horizon).
This matters a lot, because your own “improved” analysis almost certainly suggests the high speed link is a no-go. Taking your cash in/outflow figures at face value, you’ve got an annual incremental benefit of $30m. To do a quick and dirty valuation, assuming a discount rate of 5%, no growth, and that these cash flows persist in perpetuity, that gives a present value of $600m (= $30m / 5%). Furthermore, that $600m worth of benefit arrives 20 years in the future. Its value today is only $226m.
If the value today of the initial capital investment required is any amount greater than $226m then one should not proceed with the project. I don’t know what the capital costs of building the link will be, but I’m willing to bet that it’s substantially greater than $226m. So the present value of the incremental benefit, as you’ve presented it, is simply doesn’t justify the capital outlay.
However, even if one assumes you’ve simply made a school boy error in the presentation of the figures, the picture is quite different.
Let’s say that the $750m “annual construction cost” actually represents the results of amortizing the capital costs over 20 years. Then capital costs are $15bn. Let’s also assume that thos capital costs aren’t all incurred tomorrow, but are actually spent over a 20 year construction period, starting tomorrow.
Since amortization isn’t a cash item, we add that back to incremental cash inflows. Now we have cash in of $1590m (=$840m + $750m) and cash outflows of $60m, for a net incremental benefit per year of $1530m.
Assuming, as before, a discount rate of 5% and no growth, then we have a present value of cash in/out of $30bn. However, that’s not the value of the incremental benefit today; that’s the value of the net benefits once the line has been completed. Assuming it takes 20 years to construct the line, and construction starts tomorrow, then the value *today* of the incremental benefit is $11.3bn (=$30bn / 1.05^20).
Assuming that the $15bn construction expenditure is spread out over 20 years, then the value today of the construction expenditure, before the line is complete, is $9.34bn (the result of discounting back $750m a year each year for 20 years at a rate of 5%).
The value of the project is positive, since the value of the benefits is $11bn, but the value of the investment in $9bn. So it’s worth doing.
But these are figures I’ve tried to rescue from your confused presentation. To summarise, what we actually need to know in order to evalue the line is:
Total cash outlays during the construction phase, and the timing of those outlays.
Actual cash inflows per year once construction has been complete (including all incremental benefits attributable to the project).
Actual cash outflows per year once the project has been complete (including all incremental costs attributable to the project). Actual cash outflows does *not*, repeat *not*, include accounting measures like amortization of construction costs.
Without that data, it’s simply impossible to tell whether the project is worth doing or not.
“You are a troll. I love the twofer that the “enviros and NIMBYs” are blocking HSR. That is such a crock – after all, we know “enviros” hate rail.”
Google: environmental lawsuit rail project
and follow the links.
[...] Tuesday, transportation researcher Yonah Freemark delivered another sharp rebuttal to Glaeser: The problem is that–through a sorry mix of omission, oversimplification, distortion, [...]
[...] to its decision to construct a high-speed rail network. At a more casual level, Chris Bradford and Yonah Freemark have shown that simply by making a few reasonable assumptions, the stripped down models used by Ed [...]
[...] sure to also check out the piece Freemark had Tuesday on The Infrastructurist, in which he sharpened his pencil and re-ran the numbers on Ed Glaeser’s unfavorable analysis [...]
[...] a long-winded economic analysis doing a cost-benefit analysis of a high school rail from Houston to Da…. Several economist types weigh [...]
[...] to its decision to construct a high-speed rail network. At a more casual level, Chris Bradford and Yonah Freemark have shown that simply by making a few reasonable assumptions, the stripped down models used by Ed [...]
[...] and the Economics of Ideas: Catching Up vs. The Cutting Edge Matt Yglesias points us to this survey of costs and benefits from a Dallas-Houston high-speed rail link. I’m not convinced by many of the particulars of the argument, which claims to show that the link [...]
Reading through the discussion on here I notice that allot of commenters are throwing around the freight rail share in the US and european countries. There are allot of factors that negatively effect the european freight rail share. The US system is definitely more efficient and definitely has a greater market share, I’m just saying that the differential is not as unbelievably large as some commenters are making it out to seem.
1) The basic underpinnings of the european economy differ from the US in some important way. They do not use coal as an electrical energy source to nearly the same extent as the US. Coal is a very transportation intensive energy source because of its Btu / weight. In contrast natural gas, nuclear energy, and hydroelectric energy are not that freight rail intensive.
2) The basic realities of european infrastructure/geography differ from the US in some important ways. They invested early on in canals which they still use to transport cargo. Canals are used in the US near the Mississippi river system and somewhat in the eastern US. However, their extent and utility are more limited than the system in europe. In europe seaports are somewhat evenly spread around the coast (having the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, Black and Baltic seas) allowing shorter intra-coastal shipping which is not as used in the US market (inland population centers, long land borders, US flagged vessel requirements, etc.). European railways were not built to allow double-stacks or wide loads. Originally, neither were US railways, however the capital cost of increasing the loading standards on several US freight rail corridors has come from the government (e.g. Heartland Corridor, 3R act, 4R act). Also, the desire to transport goods from west coast ports directly to east ports doesn’t really have a parallel in europe.
To digress, I agree that US freight rail is more efficient than european freight rail. However, It is not as much better as some commenters think. Also, the difference between them does not completely stem from the use of high-speed rail technologies and as such should not come into the debate over HSR as much as it does.
Also, a side note, HSR and freight are not totally mutually exclusive (except if the Federal Railway Admin makes them be). LGVs (high-speed only lines) and freight are the bigger issue. The weight of the freight trains would destroy the specialized tracks and the low incline requirements would inflate the construction costs of LGVs (1-2% vs. 4% inclines). Freight and high-speed trains should be able to share tracks near a city or on a line connecting two LGV corridors. The nice part about an LGV corridor as well is several routes or city pairs can use the same LGV, allowing a greater return on the initial investment. I mean as long as you get to your destination quickly, safely, and you have to switch trains a minimum number of times, how much do you care if you are using an LGV corridor or a conventional corridor?
[...] those benefits and costs may be. Yonah Freemark, writing at the Infrastructurist, comes up with his own set of numbers and sees a much more brighter future for HSR (even in Texas). This reevaluation of Glaeser’s [...]
“Rail was profitable because it was the most efficient way to move stuff. Nowadays it is not.”
Technically correct – moving goods by water is most efficient in terms of dollars per tonne-km. However, moving goods from side of the USA to another is a lot shorter by rail than sea, hence all those freight trains running across the continent (oftenn with containers from the port of LA). Also, most places in the USA don’t have a convninent canal runnign close to them, so rail wins again on accessability.
Jebediah,
Bias is relevant in this context, as is uncertainty. The uncertainty is important, and can be dealt with a more formal manner (there are analytical methods to do this), but blog posts do not lend themselves to either long, drawn-out expositions or highly technical treatments.
Glaeser is a highly competent economist, and I have no doubt that he could do a more comprehensive analysis of the subject. In fact, I hope that he does, and that he publishes the results in a peer-reviewed journal, where any assumptions and calculations can be scrutinzed to the extent necessary. Meanwhile, I find it telling that anyone who publishes work that is critical of HSR projects is immediately labeled as biased or partisan (or worse) by the pro-HSR crowd.
I do not put myself in the camp that believes that high-speed passenger rail projects should be built because they are “self-evidently” beneficial, even between the 4th and 8th largest cities in the country. Quite the contrary. As Yonah’s post indicates, even torturing the assumptions produces a project of only marginal benefit, even if we believe we know all of the relevant quantities in advance. HSR projects are not just expensive, they are risky. They also fall into the class of “megaprojects”, which recent studies have shown to be problematic in more than one dimension.
Whether this project could be funded with a 40-cent gas tax or not is irrelevant. There might be good reasons for raising the gas tax, but none of them change the reality that HSR is likely to be a negative NPV proposition, and thus would erode any social benefits that could be gained by increasing the gas tax.
[...] There’s been a great back and forth over the past few days on high speed rail, most of it stemming from Ed Glaeser’s flawed cost-benefit analysis, and Yonah Freemark’s counter-analysis. [...]
[...] opinion of casual observers is slowly shaping. But is Glaeser right? I’m not sure. On the Infrastructurist, Yonah Freemark puts together a compelling case that Glaeser’s numbers are all wrong. Figuring in [...]
“Also, I think Eric @9:21 is right about plowing under all or part of the local airports in places like Waco or College Station. Although the airports and cities like to have commercial service, the principal use and purpose of those airports is to serve General Aviation traffic, some of it fairly high performance (private and corporate jets). Places like those (and Temple) are non-hub commercial service airports in FAA parlance, serving only a very tiny fraction of US commercial passengers”
I can think of an airport which was plowed under: Stapleton, in Denver.
More importantly, the land footprint of a general aviation airport is a lot less than that of a typical commercial airport. Even if the aiport stayed, it would likely be nibbled away at the edges. No waiting areas, security checkpoints, and so forth make the terminal facilities much smaller and simpler.
“HSR is likely to be a negative NPV proposition, ”
Correction: a positive NPV proposition.
Again, all you have to do to find positive value is to compare it to the alternatives:
(1) massive airport expansion;
(2) massive highway expansion;
(3) congestion and lack of mobility
Obviously, HSR to places where nobody is going to consider airport expansion or highway expansion because there is no congestion or lack of mobility — that’s just stupid. Thankfully, apart from a few questionable proposals in New England, all the HSR proposals are of the “avoid $10 billion airport and highway expansion” varieties.
“There are allot of factors that negatively effect the european freight rail share. ”
Yes. And one of the biggest ones is that Europe still uses hook-and-chain couplers. This makes it very, very inefficient to switch cars, involving someone walking the length of the train to unhook and again to hook.
If Europe switched to knuckle couplers, used throughout the entire rest of the world, their freight rail would win sudden, large benefits. Unfortunately interoperability “lock in” has made this very difficult.
[...] blogger Eric Morris. Now that his seris is complete, here’s a more in depth critique from The Infrastructurist, which uses the Texas T-Bone instead of Glaeser’s hypothesized Houston-Dallas line. The good [...]
[...] presented here. The study projects 12.1 million annual riders by 2026 and 15 million by 2040. After predicting 11.4 million annual riders for the Dallas-Houston corridor last month — far higher than the 1.5 to 3 million economist Ed Glaeser assumed in his study of [...]
I’m having an existential dillemma stemming from Danny’s post in which he says: “because existing networks don’t exist…nor do they look likely”
p.s. > I got $8 billion that says “YES WE CAN!”
Besides believing this is economically needed and sustainably needed – I would like to know what happened to the enterior of the US.
From Chicago to Denver and out through the Dakotas, The rail lines are still out here -some still hauling coal and other loads and some defunct – but the rail road stiched the coast together once before – and Gulf to the great lakes – why not continue.
We need high speed across the whole country.
excellent information.
[...] Yonah Freemark, a Yale research fellow who writes about urban development for websites such as The [...]
[...] or not high-speed rail is worth it. Of course, some counter that it is indeed a smart move, such as this analysis of Texas’ high-speed prospects that estimates $578 million in annual travel benefits if Texas were to finally build a high-speed [...]