Last week USA Today carried an op-ed piece by Randal O’Toole on President Obama’s high and moderate speed rail plans. O’Toole is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute. Outlined below are some of the points that he made.
The administration’s high and moderate speed rail plans would cost billions of dollars but would do little to improve traffic congestion or the environment.
Studies in Japan and France have shown that high speed rail is not about serving the common citizen. Instead it is used largely by foreign tourists and in-country elites.
Many if not most of the folks who patronize the Acela (business and first class accommodations only) appear to have better than median incomes or are traveling on expense accounts. Most of the common folks are on the regional trains, buses, airplanes or in their cars.
To date the administration has committed approximately $13 billion for moderate and high speed rail. This represents somewhere between 2.5 and 25 per cent of the estimated cost of these plans, although no one really knows how much the proposed systems would cost.
Investments in passenger rail will not cover the capital costs and in most instances will only cover a portion of the operating costs. California wants half of the committed funds to build a high speed line from scratch, as opposed to most other states where the plans are to upgrade existing rail lines for moderate speeds. If California is successful in getting significant federal funding for its high speed system, the other states will clamor for similar funding. And that could drive the cost of the proposed rail improvement plans above $500 billion. By comparison, according to O’Toole, the inflation adjusted cost to build the Interstate Highway System was approximately $425 billion. Interstate highw
Randal O’Toole indeed. Dontcha know he works for Cato, which is a RIGHT WING think tank and they and he HATE TRAINS. OK, I have gone on record with that, so the usual suspects around here don’t have to repeat it.
Metra carries something like 300,000 passenger daily, which means that 150,000 people use it to access jobs in the Chicago Downtown. Their rush hour peak lasts about 2 hours, so say they carry 75,000 people/hour. A freeway lane may be good for 2000 cars/hr, so lets say on average 2500 people/hr. So the Metra network replaces 30 freeway lanes in each direction. I know the Kennedy Expressway has reversible lanes, but they are not duplicated elsewhere, so the Metra network is replacing 60 freeway lanes or perhaps 8-10 major freeways into the Chicago Downtown.
I ran this analysis by Randal O’Toole because he claims that many transit lines barely replace a single freeway lane with their ridership, but his analysis conflates 24-hour freeway capacity with peak-hour freeway capacity. Mr. O’Toole was gracious enough to respond to my e-mail.
His response was that it might be good that Metra supports 150,000 people in the suburbs having jobs in the Downtown, but during some time period around the 1990’s, the Chicago Metropolitan area added 600,000 jobs in the suburbs not served by Metra. There are several notions in those statistics. One is that if Metra suddenly went POOF! that those 150,000 people could probably find work closer to where they lived. Another is that a city downtown require commuter rail or a transit system may be an anachronism. Yet another is that automobiles and roads, over a distibuted network of mainly arterial streets and highways and to a lesser extent limited-access tollways and freeways, are handling the growth in employment that is multiples of the total number of people served by the commuter rail network required for density in the
I am not going to quote in order to keep my reply down in size. I do agree with some of what you quote Sam, however, I also disagree with some of the premises that Mr. O’Toole appears to base his points on, and by inference you appear to concur.
I think Mr. O’Toole bases his points on assumptions that are no longer valid, the most important of which is cheap oil that will allow us to go on like we have been.
The CATO Institute is a consisently, some would say relentlessly, libertarian think tank. “Let the market take care of it” is practically a home creed If the government is wasting money to build or improve passenger rail, how on earth are private enterpreneurs to try in this cash-poor era? Perhaps that’s the point: the USA is such an exceptional society with its rugged individualism that we citizens have “chosen” to have a RR system most of whose technology is not beyond the mid-1950s. Hah!
The Interstate Highway program was a great idea for its time. Back when it was being debated (actually the bill passed in several sections but roughly 1960), the primary aim was to make driving safer, and that it has done. The secondary reason was to speed up truck travel, and that it has done. What finally got the thing passed, though, was a putative military use: hauling tactical atomic cannons quickly between cities. As far as I know, that never happened, but the military aspect helped “sell” the program to a reluctant public. Some people condemned the gas tax as intrusive and inflationary, and resented the fact that under the program, the Federal gov’t bankrolled about 90 percent of construction costs. After all, the Northeast and Midwest had already evolved a system of toll roads; why should the other states get off with ten percent of the building bill?
Some unfortunate and unforeseen consequences of the “Interstating” of America include the inevitable cheesy “strip” that streches from the town center to its Interstate interchange, and the ruination of hitherto viable urban neighborhoods by the encroachment of urban Interstates in the 1960’s. (Robert Caro’s THE POWER BROKER has a whole chapter about Robert Moses’ ruination of a neighborhood in the Bronx.). Even worse, as I think most of
I read through your response quickly and then went to another site. When I returned to read it again, most of it had been deleted. Did you delete it or has some else deleted most of it?
Paul, SNCF’s TGV Dayse with 186 mph. capability weighs 0.7 tonnes per seat. If you would be satisfied with 110 mph. max speed I would think that you could either get down to 0.6 tonnes per seat or expand the seat pitch (leg room).
The car of the future that will meet the announced CAFE standards will be much smaller, more expensive, and have less power.
If we are going to have a viable rail PASSENGER transportation system in this country, it cannot share tracks with the freight railroads because it will be unviable if it has to meet collision standards that make no sense except for the fact you might hit a freight train head-on.
Wait until cars that meet the new CAFE standards begin to hit fully loaded semi-trucks. At least on the rails a collision avoidance system is practical, we are nowhere near to a similar system for the highways, especially where the individual is responsible for the maintenance .
And how are we in the advocacy community any different in our thinking about cheap oil, when we support high rates of subsidy to save maybe 20 percent on oil usage per passenger mile? How are we any different than Mr. O’Toole when our most ambitious plans would replace auto travel at the single-digit level and result in net oil savings that are a fraction of a percent of total usage?
Since the initial 1970’s oil shocks, cars have increased in fuel economy although perhaps not as much when oil got cheap in the 1990’s. Airlines have had steady increase in fuel economy – partly through improved airplane designed, improved engines, largely because of packing passengers into the airplane. Trains have had hardly any change worth noting – fuel usage has moved up and down, but there is no discernable improvement over time.
I suppose people are going to turn around and say that we “underinvested in trains.” But Amtrak has been around since the 1970’s and has received billions in subsidies over the years, but little has changed in their fuel economy when it had been a priority for everyone else.
I am one who is in favor of rail passenger service but not as enthusiastic about HSR being the panacea for all passenger rail transportation problems; I think it is highly over stated or hyped. However, that being said, what a good HSR system will do is alliow the rest of the passenger system be utilized with connecting and lesser intermediate services. Thus the “less elite” also can have more and better services.
The facts lie in the statistics and statistics can lie when improperly applied.
“Studies in Japan and France have shown that high speed rail is not about serving the common citizen. Instead it is used largely by foreign tourists and in-country elites.”
Please provide a primary source for this statement.
I found contradictory examples after a brief Google search. “Four years after the Paris/Lyon TGV route opened, rail passenger trips increased 90 percent for personal travel and 180 percent for business travel. Both increases came at the expense of air and automobile travel.” Also: “British Airways reported a loss of 30 to 40 percent of its passengers on its competing one hour London to Paris flight” (after inauguration of Eurostar). From
Transportation Statistics Annual Report (1997)
edited by Marsha Fenn
Published by DIANE Publishing, 1998
page 242
in Spain it has been found that regional
cultures feel more united thanks to high-speed-rail development.
(“The country is becoming far more intertwined,” says José María
Ureña, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of
Castilla-La Mancha. “In a country that tends to separate out somewhat,
that can only be a good thing.” Wall Street Journal, 4-20-2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124018395386633143.html).
As for “foreigners,” let’s not forget that our cheap dollar makes things cheap for them. It may indeed be worth the extra money to them to ride a train (Acela) which is almost the equal of the bullet trains, the TGV, and the German InterCity network." Saves time and cleaner equipment, etc.
The whole idea that “we can’t afford high-speed rail” is out-of -context in this world today…
Facebook Gets $200 Million Backing From Digital Sky
By Joseph Galante
"May 26 (Bloomberg) – Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social-networking service, received an investment from Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies that values the company at $10 billion, more than Starbucks Inc. or Safeway Inc.
Digital Sky will buy $200 million in preferred stock, gaining a 1.96 percent stake in the company, Palo Alto, California-based Facebook said today in a statement…"
I posted excerpts from Mr. O’Toole’s column because they represent a contrarian point of view, and I believe that they are worthy of a rational discussion.
I have never been to France or Spain. If you want Mr. O’Toole to support any of the assertions that he made in his column, you are free to contact him. I understand that he has responded to e-mails and letters from interested parties.
I have ridden the Acela on several occasions. Most of the people that I met on the trains were business people traveling on expense account. Moreover, I have looked closely at the fares for the Acela and have compared them to the regional fares, as well as those for competing buses and airlines. The differences are particularly dramatic between Philadelphia and New York, for example. They are less so between Washington and New York. The fare structure, coupled with my experience, plus the accommodations on the Acela (first and business class only), tell me that the Acela service is intended primarily for persons traveling on an expense account or higher income patrons. To further buttress this argument, most of the discounts that are available on other Amtrak trains are not available on the Acela.
The fact that rail travel experienced an upsurge in personal and business train travel following the introduction of TGV service tells us nothing about the incomes or class of the riders. In fact, it does not tell us whether they rode the TGV or a non-TGV service. Who are these personal users? Who are the business users? What criteria were used to define the categories? Did the personal rail users ride on the TGV or a non-TGV service? Did the business travelers use the TGV or a non-TGV service?
It is interesting to note that business travel increased 180 per cent whilst personal travel increased 90 per cent.
Re: “The fact that rail travel experienced an upsurge in personal and business train travel following the introduction of TGV service tells us nothing about the incomes or class of the riders.”
What are you saying? As early as the early Eighties SNCF had a program called “la democratisation de Vitesse” (the democratization of Speed) during which luxury, first-class-only trains, were opened up to second-class seating and riders as well. When TGV was new it was extra-fare, first class only. This became over time a public issue when the “new” wore off the technological miracle of super-fast passenger trains and the French gov’t (or at least SNCF, which is government-owned) realized there was a tension between offering a brand-new, high-tech service in which there was room only for the elite (1st class passengers); and the mass democracy of the public on the other hand, that wanted its democratizaztion of speed on TGV and thought it only fair, as fellow members of the taxpaying public, to be included in the new trains.
SNCF may not have inquired about the income or class background of its TGV riders when they bought their tickets, but it did bow to public will and start offering second-class seating on the TGV a few years ago. Upshot? The original TGV route now has double-decker trains which carry many more people – in first and second class both. I must remark that I never heard of any French people whining about how there wasn’t enough money, or that equipping the world’s fastest trains as bi-levs was so technologically improbable as to be impossible, or that French technology just didn’t run that way, or that the French people didn’t really like trains all that much. I realize it makes a big difference that France, while large, is not huge and Continental (it’s about the si
Re: “The fact that rail travel experienced an upsurge in personal and business train travel following the introduction of TGV service tells us nothing about the incomes or class of the riders.”
What are you saying? As early as the early Eighties SNCF had a program called “la democratisation de Vitesse” (the democratization of Speed) during which luxury, first-class-only trains, were opened up to second-class seating and riders as well. When TGV was new it was extra-fare, first class only. This became over time a public issue when the “new” wore off the technological miracle of super-fast passenger trains and the French gov’t (or at least SNCF, which is government-owned) realized there was a tension between offering a brand-new, high-tech service in which there was room only for the elite (1st class passengers); and the mass democracy of the public on the other hand, that wanted its democratizaztion of speed on TGV and thought it only fair, as fellow members of the taxpaying public, to be included in the new trains.
SNCF may not have inquired about the income or class background of its TGV riders when they bought their tickets, but it did bow to public will and start offering second-class seating on the TGV a few years ago. Upshot? The original TGV route now has double-decker trains which carry many more people – in first and second class both. I must remark that I never heard of any French people whining about how there wasn’t enough money, or that equipping the world’s fastest trains as bi-levs was so technologically improbable as to be impossible, or that French technology just didn’t run that way, or that the French people didn’t really like trains all that much. I realize it makes a big difference that France, while large, is not huge and Continental (it’s about the siz
Re: “You have not provided any hard data about the fare structure.”
Nor can I, not will I. My evidence, which was enough to persuade me, was based on a TV report, a longish (45-minute) MySpace video, and similar mention; and reason.
What is your idea of “hard evidence”? Physically bound printouts from the cost accounting or marketing departments at SNCF? They wouldn’t send them to me and probably wouldn’t to the average French citizen. If you actually have hardcopy French statistics, shouldn’t you be the one to share them with us? With actual numbers, I mean? And policy and operating decisions?
The examples from other countries are to show a couple of things: (1) by reason of analogy, what has worked there might work here; and (2) no major industrialized country that has set at least a basic HSR network as a priority has failed to achieve that. Deficits of funding and technology can be made up for if the political will and social support are there.
I personally don’t think we have the room (all those suburbs) or the dough to plan and execute a full system of 200 mph trains with no crossings or slow orders anywhere beyond the stations (even the French run the TGV at lower speeds on more conventional track, and there’s a lot of it). I do think that we might want to follow something similar to the German model, which was a program of steady upgrades and rising average speeds of their IC trains, but very little brand-new track in new places. Over the past thirty-five years their best trains have gone from a GG-1 top cruising speed (ca. 85 mph) to an almost Japanese one (speeds approx, 140 mph). It cost a lot of money and took a lot of time b
For the record, I think the next best step is moderate speed trains with about the level of service (daily frequency) of 1959. Is it too much to ask to move only fifty years backwards?
I gave up on supporting maglev; the future is way too far for most Americans to consider. The rest of the developed world is taking leaps and bounds: the cover of this week’s Nature (which along with Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, and of course Trains is among the most important of our planet’s publications) features the fifth dimension. 100 mph in three dimensions (but three times a day) would be okay for most purposes in this country…
[See “Digital Storage in Five Dimensions: How to cram 1.6 terabytes on a DVD sized disk,” cover of Nature volume 459 (issue number 7,245), 21 May 2009.)]
I agree with you that maybe too much attention is paid too soon on high speed rail, before Amtrak service is brought to all large city pairs in the 48 states.
Mailman brought new Amtrak timetable which shows some of the same old disappointments:
no connections Albuquerque-El Paso. I’ve thought for many years that an Amtrak train from El Paso - Denver would succeed, given the great Latino migration northward. Now there’s a report that Gov. Richardson (NM) wants to extend his RailRunner trains, already serving Santa Fe (!!) to those end points.
poor connections Phoenix-Flagstaff. And why not a Thruway bus Phoenix-Maricopa? I just don’t understand that one.
speaking of Phoenix, isn’t it time for a maglev train Phoenix- San Bernardino area, connecting to MetroLink?
and why no more routes for Auto Train, all these years? NY-Phila.-Chicago, Chicago-Denver, Chicago-St. Louis-Texas, and many many more.
Here we sit in Allentown, PA, and the best we can hope for appears to be an extension of NJ Transit the few miles over the border. They did run bus services to NYC for a number of years. Another operator took over. Not even Amtrak here!
Has Amtrak EVER undertaken a comprehensive, professional, national survey, to see what markets are not currently served, and where any expansion should take place first? Isn’t the best place to start increased frequency on existing routes?
I do hope the stimulus addresses and solves these needs
Facebook, Inc. is a for profit business. It is able to attract private capital because the investors believe that it is a going concern that will return their capital with interest.
Unfortunately, most passenger rail projects, including operations, depend on taxpayer monies because they are money losing propositions and cannot attract private capital.