Another article pointing out the economic issues with the current US administration’s sudden love for high speed rail:
In April, President Barack Obama claimed “my high speed rail proposal will lead to innovations in the way we travel” and new rail lines “will generate many thousands of construction jobs over several years, as well as permanent jobs for rail employees and increased economic activity in the destinations these trains serve.”
Even House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who voted against the stimulus bill, now wildly praises rail’s job-creation potential, writing, “It is estimated that creating a high-speed railway through Virginia will generate as many as 185,500 jobs, as much as $21.2 billion in economic development, and pull nearly 6.5 million cars off the road annually. Providing a high-speed rail service from Washington, D.C. to Richmond will drive economic development throughout our region for many years to come.”
High speed railways (HSR) work well in certain conditions: in areas of high passenger density over medium-length journeys. HSRs can’t replace regular passenger trains running on joint freight-passenger rail lines because the HSR trains require more expensive dedicated lines with different signalling and control systems. Running an HSR train on unimproved track would merely give you a slightly faster passenger train: it would not allow the much higher running speed required to allow the HSR to show its capabilities.
The need for dedicated lines in high population areas means that no private railway could afford to buy the necessary right of way and additional land for associated station, maintenance, and storage facilities. Inhabited, densely developed land is expensive: governments need to get involved by using their powers of eminent domain to condemn and requisition land from private owners.
The proposed HSR line from Washington to Richmond might be economically feasible, setting aside the costs to the individuals and companies whose property will be taken to build the new line, but it will be politically difficult because the people whose property will be at risk will be highly motivated to oppose the development in any way they can.
Passenger rail currently carries a very small portion of city-to-city travel — the market targeted by high-speed rail — and it’s likely to remain modest well into the future. In 2008, Amtrak carried 28.7 million passengers. By comparison, there were 687 million airline passengers in 2008, in part because air service provides frequent high-speed travel to geographically distant cities. Then there’s our well-developed highway network that makes automobiles very competitive with rail for distances under 200 miles. In most cases, once travel and wait times to train stations are factored in, travelers will spend as much time in route on the train as they will in a car.
That last point is why the “high speed” part of HSR is critical . . . if you’re going to use the train for part of your journey, you need that portion of the trip to be appreciably faster than the other options, or you won’t make the extra effort to use the service. For example, commuting into Toronto using the (non high-speed) GO train service saves me an average of 5-10 minutes per trip, but if I miss the train, I’ll be an hour later getting there. Driving in is more flexible, time-wise, but a bad traffic jam or construction en route can make an already long commute that much more frustrating . . . and I can’t read while driving. It’s a bit of a wash, from my point of view. The costs are slightly in favour of taking the train, counting parking and gas costs (but the GO train fare is subsidized by the provincial government, so I’m only paying half the actual cost of my ticket: everyone else in Ontario pays the other half).
