One of many reasons why high-speed rail in America is doomed, from Systemic Failure:
When DB or Renfe or even SNCF needs to buy a high-speed train, they simply call up Siemens (or Alstom or Talgo) and order some trains. Simple as that. Customization consists of painting a logo on the outside, and maybe choosing colors for the interior. It is no different than how United or Continental orders airplanes, or how Hertz orders automobiles.
Now consider the process for building trains in the USA. Under FTA rules, all train components must be 100% manufactured in the US. And to guarantee no foreign manufacturing takes place, regulators will devise enough oddball design specs that bidders have no choice but to custom design the rolling stock from scratch. Then, local municipalities compete to offer huge tax breaks to lure a manufacturer.
For transit agencies, this nonsense results in 100% higher costs for vehicle procurement. And even as a jobs program, the cost-effectiveness is abysmal.
I know I haven’t really addressed high-speed rail in a comprehensive way, but that’s mostly because the concept so enrages and saddens me that it’s hard for me to sum up all my negative feelings about it in one post. The arguments against it seem so obvious, and yet the idea has somehow become the primary plank of Obama’s transportation policy.
It gives railed transit a bad name, and the fact that its current incarnations are supported by Greater Greater Washington and Streetsblog – blogs whose regions aren’t even being considered for the money! – and pretty much every other urbanist blog out there really disappoints me. To everyone who’s sullying the name of transit and urbanism with this ridiculous white elephant: shame on you.
I agree that the FTA rule in question is really f**king stupid, but if you’re going to go off on a rant about how terrible HSR as a concept is, it would behoove you to actually make some arguments at some point. “It’s so bad that proponents should be ashamed of themselves” is not an argument, it’s a scolding.
I don’t know GGW, but Streetsblog isn’t really a pro-HSR blog. It supports HSR in principle, but it doesn’t care too much; the lion’s share of its effort is on livable streets issues, especially pedestrian and bike improvements, and the rest is urban transit. It’s an intensely local blog network, and intercity transportation is a side issue for it.
For one, most HSIPR corridors will only allow trains to max out at 110 mph, meaning they’ll likely be powered by diesel locomotives and the lines won’t be electrified. Simply: most of what the administration and its backers are supporting isn’t high-speed rail; it’s traditional intercity passenger rail with minor track upgrades.
Yeah, I recognize that they’re not really that focused on the issue, but they always report pro-HSR developments as “good” news and anti-HSR developments as “bad.” And at one point I remember them printing some of LaHood’s talking points and then writing, “And who could argue with that?” (one of LaHood’s points, which went unchallenged, was that the Buy America provisions will revive America’s manufacturing industry). They then presented a few objections, but the overall tone is definitely pro-HSR (by which I mean the Obama admin’s specific implementation).
“I know I haven’t really addressed high-speed rail in a comprehensive way, but that’s mostly because the concept so enrages and saddens me that it’s hard for me to sum up all my negative feelings about it in one post. The arguments against it seem so obvious, and yet the idea has somehow become the primary plank of Obama’s transportation policy.”
Sir:
Perhaps when you have finished with your hissy fit(s), you will see fit to provide something resembling analysis.
“Simply: most of what the administration and its backers are supporting isn’t high-speed rail; it’s traditional intercity passenger rail with minor track upgrades.”
Sir:
The Japanese “standard” for relating commercial (“schedule”) speed to maximum permitted speed is:
Commercial speed = maximum permitted speed * 0.9.
In other words, commercial speed is equal to 90 percent of the maximum permitted speed. Granted, that’s “optimum.” But, in this case, 110 mph * 0.9 = 99 mph; make that 100 mph for simplicity.
Go through an old “Official Guide” with calculator in hand and you will see that commercial speed at this level was uncommon. In most parts of this country, “traditional intercity passenger rail” service was relatively infrequent and rather slow.
I’m surprised that you’re surprised that most bloggers in the urbanist camp support Obama’s HSR proposal. I think everyone is fairly aware of the sausage making that goes into any federal policy (why else would the swing-state Florida be getting any money at all?) and the fact that what’s being proposed for a system is pretty lame compared to what’s already up and running in other developed nations. But you have to evaluate proposals in the context of the alternatives. Frankly, the type of free market federal transportation system that I believe you would prefer is not even remotely presented as an option on the federal stage right now.
It’s not unreasonable to both pragmatically support an actual proposal while simultaneously working to improve the quality of that proposal toward the ideal. This is what I’m hearing from blogs like GGW. Although, by doing this, you risk being misunderstood by those you wish to characterize your position by sound bites.
The cynic in me tells me not to be surprised, but still, I am. And I think you’re implying that the alternative is nothing, but I don’t think that’s true – I see the alternative as federal funds for local projects like DC’s streetcars or NYC’s 7 line extension. I’m not so delusional that I only support projects that are 100% funded by the private sector, but the HSR plans just seem so ridiculous that there’s no way that I can support them, even as an incremental step. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I’d probably support the alternative of “do nothing,” if only because at least that doesn’t tarnish the image of railed transport (from what I understand, some Republican governors have been getting a lot of political mileage out of opposition to HSR).
Anyway, I know I’m not making actual arguments against HSR…hoepfully I’ll get to that later.
I think it’s naive to think that Streetsblog, etc. are related to anything other than furthering progressivism. Urban design, I think, is about related to what they do as, say womens issues are to feminist sites, homosexual issues are to gay sites, etc.
It’s yet another battle against the Ruling Class and the Bourgeois (rich suburbanites and their evil cars) against the noble Working Class (the honest people of the five boroughs) and the “Other” (the truly noble whose main need in life is more bike lanes in the South Bronx as opposed to, say, driving to a job in New Rochelle).
For those people, it is never an issue of how people can lead their lives as they see fit. Instead, it is an imposition of their views (More pedestrian streets! Ban Killer Kars!) on others with the force of a government who they pretend will listen to them — and have the ability to actually effect any change.
(Incidentally, it’s my recollection that the bulk of the city’s usable bike lanes (The Queens Greenway, Flatbush Ave near Floyd Bennett Field, etc.), as opposed to the silly white lines painted on clogged streets in Flushing, were implemented under Mayor Giuliani. You would never know that from Streetsblog.)
While I sympathize with your characterization of urbanist blogs as almost universally “progressive,” I’m not sure that I agree with you that bike lanes is “an imposition of their views […] on others with the force of government.” I mean, obviously this is true, but the alternative – the status quo – is just an imposition of a different kind. Local roads, like local bike lanes, are barely given a cent of user fees, so it’s an imposition either way.
High speed rail in and of itself is a sound piece of the transportation hierarchy. The problem is that we in the USA don’t really see how that hierarchy works. I’m not one who’d advocate diverting money to streetcar or other more local projects under the assumption that intercity rail is worthless where there’s no public transit at the origin or destination points (which isn’t a problem for airports after all). However, high speed rail, to borrow a phrase from another blogger, is merely the icing on the cake. The cake is a comprehensive network of frequent medium speed trains, the kinds that make local and express stops, that have stations in many cities along the way, and that run at the already very achievable 79 mph speed.
While subjectively a high speed rail system without that lower level of service might seem akin to a major interstate highway with no interchanges and no other road network, it’s more a case of prudent investing than anything. To invest in the infrastructure we already have to not only accommodate passenger traffic, while also improving freight handling (which in many cases means just putting back the second or third track that was long ago taken out of service) gives us much more bang for the buck than a gold plated high speed system on a brand new alignment. We should be concentrating on bringing back to life those already existing corridors that have been woefully neglected over the past 50-some years. To focus on that would bring transportation options to many more people and it would spread the benefits around in a much more egalitarian way.
What Systemic Failure is complaining about specifically is California High-Speed Rail, which is planned to have a maximum speed of 220 mph and an average express train speed of about 165 mph; both numbers are higher than any line in operation in the world today outside China.
First, the 7 extension has all the cost-effectiveness of burning money.
Second, at least in principle, HSR and local transit are not substitutes. They serve different needs, and should come from different piles of money – one from intercity passenger transportation, competing with long-distance highways and airports, and one from local transportation, competing with local roads and bike lanes. This is usually not the case in practice, where the piles of money are divided based on roads vs. transit and not intercity vs. local transportation; however, it is kind of the case in this specific case, since the stimulus contains a separate HSR grant.
And third, not all HSR lines are equally silly. The canceled Midwestern lines should never have been built, but California will do better, if the cost and ridership projections hold up. LA-SF in 2:40 is a better target than Cleveland-Cincinnati in 5:15, and is worth spending the extra cost.
I think in the case of the stimulus bill they were pretty good substitutes – spread money to unions around for HSR (9/10 – or more likely, 10/10 – of which will never even be built), or spread money to unions around for intracity transit projects (more of which will actually yield new lines).
And I’m also surprised you rate HSR as more cost effective than the 7 extension. The way I look at it, public transit projects in America have exactly one purpose: making it a little bit harder to not upzone around the stations. The 7 extension might not activate huge opportunities (it looks like the West Side rail yards are going to be heavily developed regardless of whether there’s a direct connection to Secaucus) in NYC, but at least there’s the chance for some upzoning in Hoboken and Secaucus (that is, if they’re smart enough to run the line through the actual town of Secaucus and build a station there and not just as the “Secaucus” Junction, which should really be renamed the Jersey Turnpike terminal). Then again, if they run the line straight from the West Side to the Secaucus Junction, you’re right – the line is next to useless.
Actually, the “Secaucus Junction” is useful, not for its location, but for the fact that it’s a junction. It’s an easier transfer to Midtown for folks who previously had to take the crummy PATH at Hoboken.
I think anyone who’s been paying attention to transit in America for the last forty years or so could see how this one was going to turn out: it’s driven by politics, not demand. I have no idea what Stephen’s opinion of HSR is, but I completely understand his frustration at the uncritical support given by most other urbanists to anything “transit”, regardless of utility or need. And he is absolutely right that anti-urbanists seize on every new vanity project and ridicule it for their own “populist” ends – and who can blame them when there’s such an abundance of projects out there which could never have been justified by “demand”?
I agree with Jeffery. HSR can be a valuable component of an entire ecology of alternative transit and I am actually a fan of HSR. However, that tiered construct has to exist. My frustration comes with how HSR is proposed for in the U.S. which is constantly making it more likely that the one or two HSR lines that actually get built will not work–thus striking away the credibility of the entire technological system. Fast travel between cities has to be connecting cities that have established local transit systems to compliment them. There is no use connecting cities to places like Los Angeles that don’t have the capability to move people around once they’re there. We are funding service corridors that have no chance of functioning efficiently (if they even get finished).
The Northeast Corridor is one of the only sites in the U.S. prepared to utilize a real HSR service and even then, it would need to be accompanied by new tighter development patterns around the stations that could help bolster its convenience. If federal funds are going to try and promote HSR, they should be picking one route, one corridor, so that the contributions are actually a meaningful part of a project that stand some chance of getting built.
Wait, you were talking about a 7 extension to Jersey with actual neighborhood stops? That partly changes things, since such an extension could be useful. I thought you were talking about the 7 extension as is, i.e. a $2 billion giveaway to the Hudson Yards fantasy.
The main purpose of public transit is to carry riders at minimum cost. Upzoning helps: it means more people will take the trains. (It’s also how it’s understood by most operators in Hong Kong and Japan: the property deals help secure rail ridership, not the other way around.) The problem with the 7 extension is that the hope of high ridership was a complete fantasy.
HSR is a little like transit in that its cost-effectiveness is a question of ridership, again. But it has a chance of making money, which means cost-effectiveness can be better rated as the ratio of operating profits to construction cost. For the Midwestern lines, any hope of operating profits is fantasy. For California, it’s almost certain, no matter how stupid the design decisions are; the question is whether the ridership and cost estimates hold. If they do, then the system’s rate of return will beat the discount rate, once you include its reducing uncorrected (and politically uncorrectable) negative externalities coming from congestion and other problems of driving.
If there’s one thing that really gets a mega-project going in America in addition to the usual promise of jobs, it’s the promise of American “exceptionalism”.
At first I thought that the 7 line extension was going to be directly from the West Side yards to Secaucus Junction without stopping anywhere else, but then I thought I read somewhere that at least a stop in Hoboken was planned…in general, though, the plans I’ve seen don’t really get into details. What’s your experience been?
I’ve never read anything about going through Hoboken Terminal. The plans I’ve seen, such as they are, are for going in a more or less straight line from Hudson Yards to Secaucus Junction. The line touches the northern parts of Hoboken and might include a station there and maybe one in Union City, but it wouldn’t connect to anything.
Bad FTA regulations do not invalidate HSR as a mode of transportation.
“There is no use connecting cities to places like Los Angeles that don’t have the capability to move people around once they’re there.”
Is this statement based on anything or just your perception that “Los Angeles is the city where everyone drives”. HSR into LA will end at Union Station which is the hub of a large and rapidly expanding intracity rail network and one of the largest bus systems in the country. No one seems to complain that it’s crazy to run 100’s of commuter flights into LA everyday from SF and Sacramento even though the main airport has almost no mass transit connections. There have also been multiple proposals to expand that airport for 100’s of millions of dollars because it is already operating beyond capacity.
http://www.humantransit.org/2010/03/los-angeles-the-transit-metropolis.html