It’s starting to become one of those unspoken truths that everyone just accepts: Compared to Europe, and Asia, the U.S. is in a sorry state when it comes to our rail system (or lack thereof). But the precise explanations for why we’re left in the dust while much of the rest of the developed world speeds by in gorgeous high-speed style remains undiscussed on a national level (though we love to hammer away at it on this blog). But now the New York Times has brought the discussion to the media forefront, with an op-ed by Paul Kennedy, a history professor and director of International Security Studies at Yale. Kennedy describes the jealousy that he (and any American) feels upon hearing of China’s mind-blowing new Guangzhou-Wuhan line, then takes a stab at why exactly American travelers are left in the dust:
The reasons for America’s laggardliness is easily explained. To begin with, the initial investment in a rail network costs an awful lot of money, which national governments usually provide as a “public good.” That in turn means that the taxpayer pays, which is much less disagreeable when the taxpayer can observe the satisfactory results of that investment. In America, most of the country feels that it is handing over funds solely to support East Coast and West Coast commuters.
Then there is the American obsession with the automobile, and with aircraft. Given the sheer spread of the country, this once seemed to make a lot of sense and still does for many journeys today. Air travel is a fantastic conqueror of distance, and for decades car ownership has been synonymous with American individualism and love of the open road. Finally, there are considerable parts of America that are so under-populated that it would be highly uneconomical to have a rail network even one-quarter as dense as, say, Belgium’s.
While the second paragraph strikes us as overly theoretical (yes, we love cars, but Americans are also very open to economic incentives, and would ride the train if it was cheaper and more efficient) the first paragraph touches on an interesting, if not entirely original, point: The geographic and population diversity of the country create a rift between those on the coasts, and those in the middle. While the country’s urban areas, most of which are clustered on the coasts, house the majority of the nation’s population, they have been notoriously underrepresented when it comes to transportation funding.
Not that this should come as that much of a surprise — the structure of our electoral politics hands disproportionate power to states with smaller populations, so why shouldn’t this have a rippling effect with infrastructure? Still, in an era of economic uncertainty, it’s becoming more crucial that our cities are equipped to keep contributing the three-quarters of the nation’s economic activity that they currently shoulder. Of course, try telling that to a middle-state Congressman up for re-election.
January 4th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Thanks for pointing out this op-ed, I might have missed it otherwise.
I think there are a lot of things that we can’t do because of a) our size (physical and population) and b) our political system.
To point A, ridiculous-speed broadband nationwide is a hell of a lot tougher in the U.S. than in, say, Holland. We simply have more ground and more people to cover, and it’s easier for a government there to say, Bam! We’re investing in this.
To point B, for China it’s damn easy to say We’re investing $300 billion in high speed rail because they will just do it, opposition be damned because there is no opposition. We need your house? Too bad, move. Here, we’ll build a new city (cf. Three Gorges Dam).
January 4th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
The contents of this article refute the headline. The United States Senate, which has equal representation for each state regardless of population, is not democratic.
January 4th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
“most of the country feels that it is handing over funds solely to support East Coast and West Coast commuters.”
The reality of fiscal transfers is that tax money actually flow from the bicoastal commuters to the over-represented rubes in fly-over land, in the form of agricultural subsidies and other pork. Clearly the problem is due to lack of democracy via under-representation in the Senate and Electoral College.
January 4th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
The interior vs. coasts division does suggest a set of possible solutions, however. Funding and implementation for passenger rail systems could be delegated to states or multi-state regions with sufficient density. The federal role could be limited to providing freight and passenger service to lower-density areas, while also providing grants for projects that coordinated services funded and implemented at lower levels of government.
The federal gas tax is 18 cents per gallon. That’s more than the comparable state-level tax in many cases. To further federal goals, state or regional control of federal tax collected could come with a mandate to consider integration with neighboring systems when appropriate.
The result would be poorer service in the interior of the country, but with growing population in urban areas it makes sense to allocate transportation spending accordingly.
January 4th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
@Ed Hoover
The urban population accounts for 82% of total population in the US, vs. 82% in the Netherlands, 77% in France, 66% in Japan, 85% in Sweden and 81% in South Korea, all countries that are far ahead of the US in broadband speeds.
I’ve worked for ISPs in France and the Netherlands, and I can refute your characterization of the ease of implementation. Dutch municipalities routinely impose curbs on trench-digging exercises and require multiple carriers to join up so the trench only has to be dug once. My former boss in France is now head of France Telecom’s fiber optic deployment, and even in the dirigiste home of the TGV, NIMBYism holds up progress as effectively as legislative deadlock does in the US.
The issue of suburban sprawl is harder to address. I suspect this will never happen voluntarily but peak oil will force the issue. We can only hope the transition is not too painful, but in all likelihood it will be worse than the 2007-2009 depression.
January 4th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
A society’s love of cars does not mean that its nation cannot have an excellent quality rail system. Just look at Germany…you have the ICE and excellent public transportation, complemented with the autobahn and a cultural passion for the automobile and leisure driving.
I don’t understand America’s so-called “obsession” with automobile-defined independence and the love of the open road. Americans seem to overlook fast trains because they are not symbolic of freedom. But having trains doesn’t mean you can’t own a car and drive it when you want, it simply means you are not a slave to your car.
January 4th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
50% of the senate represents 10% of the population. So much for democracy.
January 4th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Since when does the government pay for what taxpayers actually want? Aren’t we wasting tons of taxpayer money fighting some pretty ridiculous wars and backstopping GMAC/freddie/fannie right now? Where are the satisfactory results of those investments?
January 4th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
[...] the inherent goodness of democracy has on the English-speaking world, The Infrastructurist’s recent commentary on high speed rail construction in China is shocking. Lamenting the political calculus that keeps [...]
January 4th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
One shouldn’t read too much, as Kennedy and many others do, into China’s massive investments in HSR. The fact is, China’s making equally massive investment in every kind of transportation infrastructure: trains, highways, ports, and airports. China is busy paving more miles of highway than exist in the U.S. today. It is also building or expanding more than 200 airports, has hundreds and hundreds of planes on order from Boeing and Airbus, and is investing in its own national aircraft company to compete with both. The idea that China is somehow enlightened when it comes to HSR and we are not is a fallacy.
January 4th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
I guess I would argue differently. The turning point was really at the end of WWII - China, Japan, and most of Europe was war-ravaged, and people were economically ruined. Their first order was to rebuild their economies, and railroads made sense since most people didn’t have cars, and they didn’t have much money.
In the U.S., we had a number of things working in the opposite direction. We had developed oilfields, so we had tons of cheap petroleum. We had factories that had been cranking out tanks and planes like crazy that needed something to build. And we had a massive build out of interstate highways, which made made driving so popular.
High-speed rail is much easier to build out when you have an existing and healthy regular speed rail system set up. We are only just now starting to think about fixing the deficiencies of the regular speed rail.
January 4th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Kennedy is right about the part about middle America feeling it’s subsidizing the coasts. Anthony Perl makes the same point in his book, New Departures: he argues that Japan and France were early adopters of HSR because of their strong centralized governments, and compares them favorably with Germany, where federalism ensured that Deutsche Bahn would have to spread its money too thin. Indeed, most of the German high-speed network consists of legacy lines upgraded to 200-250 km/h, which are more expansive than in France or Japan, and few dedicated high-speed lines capable of 300 km/h.
January 4th, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Yes, but the coasts subsidize Middle America….heavily.
Here’s the breakdown from 2005:
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/publications/what_came_to_and_left_your_state_in_2005
January 5th, 2010 at 1:19 am
Our car industry was bigger and badder than any other — it took control of our government. GM conquered rail in the US. They started the fire, then it burned on its own.
January 5th, 2010 at 5:21 am
It’s not really subsidizing the coasts, just everywhere but the western states (rocky mountains/great plains region). There’s heavily urbanized populations and giant cities in not only in the coasts, but the midwest, texas and the southwest, and decent-sized urban areas in the inner south (’east south central states’). But we’ve been heavily subsidizing that minority’s immensely wasteful infrastructure projects for decades, just look at rural Alabama’s zombie highways. Time to turn the tables.
January 5th, 2010 at 11:53 pm
Yes, but the coasts subsidize Middle America….heavily.
In reality, they do. In politics, they aren’t perceived as such. Part of the issue is that the people who yell the most loudly about urban-to-rural subsidies often yell equally loudly about the need to subsidize the urban poor, and when they don’t, they say other things that make them come off as rich assholes (think Michael Bloomberg).
January 6th, 2010 at 2:50 am
Nah. We are just stupid, that’s all. We spend only 2% of the federal budget on transportation. But the political opportunitsts know that they can make hay out of such projects without having to account. So they do. Mindless mainstream media doesn’t look at the relative costs critically. They just reprint the allegations in the name of objectivity. Jon Kyl and John McCain love to talk about “tens of billions” of dollars in subsidies for Amtrak. No one stops to make them admit that they are talking about the subsidies over a couple of decades. Until Obama came along Amtrak limped along with about a $600 million per year subsidy.
A really aggressive HSR program might cost $20 billion per year over the 6 year transportation funding cycle. That’s chicken feed to us. Maybe the cost of our wars until the end of the month. Or, the cost of the former estate tax every year (affecting 1/2 of 1% of the population). If a politician proposes to spend $20 bil on HSR he’s a reckless demagogue. If a politician proposes cutting the estate tax $20 billion he’s a “conservative” Republican.
January 6th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
When the clever boys and girls figure out how to make money off HSR like they’ve cashed in on auto dependency for the last several generations (e.g., land speculation, frypits and big boxes, eminent domain, car dealerships, etc.), HSR will take off. Until then, we’ll stop driving only when our cold, dead hands are removed from the steering wheel.
January 6th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Is Kennedy’s point really an argument for why states or consortia of states should take the lead on HSR, rather than the Federal govt, so that the decision is made by portions of the country that benefit from the projects? Just asking.