I like the analysis.
But rail is unpopular in US for political reasons, not practical ones.
But rail is unpopular in US for political reasons, not practical ones.
I say that as someone who lived in Europe, loves trains, and wishes badly that we could have a better train network here.
But the problem is the US in the 1950's embarked on the suburban experiment and now the majority of the US population lives in either very low density or with unsafe walking conditions (or both), and you really can't serve those areas with trains effectively.
If you wanted to do rail and have it become useful, you need to actually focus on local rail first. For example, Houston build an original light rail line that - bucking the trend for most car oriented cities - only served a 7mi track through the core urban area. That rail line actually worked really well. Meanwhile the suburbs to downtown transit is just bus lines because there's not enough demand to justify rail.
But if you spent 20 years incrementally reforming land use regulations, redeveloping with better sidewalks and connective safe streets, and gradually better and better local transit to go along with it, then you might end up with a place that was a worthy anchor for regional rail on at least one end.
Honestly I don't think that will happen in very many places, though, or at least not in my lifetime. It requires a long-term vision that is still counter cultural, and decades of land use redevelopment.
Given that a brand new car costs around 500/month in the US it wouldn't take many such excursions to make the car worth it. Once you've purchased a car and incur it's fixed monthly costs you're incentivised to use it for everything rather than incur further incremental transit expenses.
Just for sake of imagination, let’s take Raleigh, NC, a mid-sized city I lived in for some time.
There are about 500,000 people in Raleigh, which makes it sound like a great stop for a train, and in fact it has an Amtrak station. However, these people are spread over 380 square kilometers, for a population density of 1250 per sq km.
It’s about a 30 minute drive from the center to the northern edge of the “city,” and similar on the other directions (though not symmetrical).
Even with Uber, which is much cheaper than a taxi, this ride costs $30-50.
And this is a US state capitol with high rise buildings, a major university, a professional sports team, etc. Most American “cities” are spread over similar land areas but with a fraction the population density - hence most rural Americans would consider Raleigh to be somewhat “dense” and even “crowded,” although from a world perspective that is comically false.
Just being realistic, an average train ride between US cities - outside of the Northeast - would include something like a $35 Uber ride on each end. Oh, plus another $10-20 and a 15-30 minute wait for every other trip you take while visiting (like to go out to dinner or get groceries) while you’re there.
By comparison, a reliable car can be had for somewhere on the order of $250-500/mo all-in (amortized purchase price, plus taxes, insurance, license, and fuel). A motorcycle or scooter is even cheaper.
While that is a lot to spend on transportation, and a horrible burden on America’s poor, the fact is that it is the cost of participation in the economy. Depending on Uber or Transit (where it even exists) crushes you with extraordinary travel times for basic needs (again outside of the urban centers of a few large or sufficiently old cities).
This is frustrating and I would very much like to see it change, but it took two generations of bad investment patterns for us to make it like this, so my guess is it would take two generations of concerted effort to correct. But first we have to actually start trying.
To add an extra lane to help the load of roughly 20% of Colorado Springs residents (~50k people) that commute between the cities, costs $350 million. To build an HSR would be around $1.8 billion. There was a push to put in a rail as this seemed like a perfect use case (spoiler alert, it showed how niche HSR actually is and how it was a bad idea for lots of places) Even if you charged $10 for a day pass and you had a 100% usage rate by those commuters on every work day (22 workdays a month) that's an income of $132 million a year for the HSR. Hopefully energy, labor, insurance, repair, and upgrades for the rail will be free for the lifetime as well. That's just a constant sink for the public for hair thin marginal benefit. If you make that trip often, you get a fuel efficient car at around 30mpg (what I did). That's about $10 in gas a day. Why would I pay to wait and be on someone else's time? Most commuter rails have narrow commuter hour windows. Not like you can hang out in the city. Worse when you need to travel around the spanse of the city quickly throughout the day. As in, on your time, not on someone else's. Btw, that 50k population ground that commutes, a lot are contractors. As in, they use vans and trucks to carry tools, equipment and materials... so, the practical number of regular users is going to be less.
So, will a politician like to try to convince a population for tax raises for $350 million or for something that's 5 times more expensive? Spoiler again, when it comes to you having to pay for it, you're going to be economical. People were cool with the slight tax hikes for the widening of I25. Not for the major hike that the HSR would need. Doesn't seem political to me. Ain't get more practical than that there good buddy. Let that marinate.
Source, I lived there when this was going on. It's all easy to research since it was a well reported issue. Also, I made that commute somewhat often. HSR wouldn't have worked for me since I was an IT contractor for different companies in the city and needed to move nimbly throughout Denver.
US highways do pay for themselves (http://www.bts.gov/publications/federal_subsidies_to_passeng...) (non-PDF version: http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...), and help pay for other modes of transportation. Transit receives the biggest subsidy per passenger-mile, with rail and airlines in between.
(For those wishing more detail: From the executive summary (http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...):
>*Highways*
>* Users of the highway passenger transportation system paid significantly greater amounts of money to the federal government than their allocated costs in 1994-2000.(http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...) This was a result of the increase in the deficit reduction motor fuel tax rates between October 1993 and September 1997, and the increase in Highway Trust Fund fuel tax rates starting in October 1997.
>* School and transit buses received positive net federal subsidies over the 1990-2002 period, but autos, motorcycles, pickups and vans, and intercity buses paid more than their allocated cost to the federal government.
>* On average, highway users paid $1.91 per thousand passenger-miles to the federal government over their highway allocated cost during 1990-2002.)
https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/federal_subsidies_t...
Local gov don't get to treat money like the fed. They ultimately do have to act like a business with profit and loss ratios. While their profits are to be used for expanse of civil and social programs, they can't operate at losses indefinitely. Detroit is a fantastic example of what happens when a city doesn't do responsible fiscal planning. Just because it isn't directly "your money" doesn't mean you can dumpster fire it on super sexy ideas. HSR is all about the dick measuring of, "Look what we have. It doesn't do much, but we have it. We're just like Japan and Europe. We so cool." It's like that $700 Juicero, over engineered, wifi enabled juicer that squeezed pre-juiced drinks into a glass. Packets of juice that could be squeezed by hand or just cut open with $5 scissors and poured into a glass. Fuck, you had to provide your own drinking vessel to that Silicon Valley stupidity. At least Bolthouse drinks don't require anything more than unscrewing the cap. Just because something is cool, popular and sexy doesn't mean it's the right solution.
It makes more sense to expand the highway and just fully subsidize the Mustang service between the two cities for poor commuters. It'll be far cheaper on the tax payers and still provide the benefits for the local community. This is the point. Why spend $1.8b on something when there's a more effective $350m solution?
And these things don't need to be payed for by the local governments, it can be nationalized and payed for by the fed like other countries do. The fed has demonstrated that it can print 5 trillion dollars in a year but it won't invest anything infrastructure. There is no excuse
How would HSR differ from traditional rail infrastructure in the modern age? Rail was phenomenal pre-affordable automobiles. I get that it was the cornerstone of America's rise to power in the 19th century. But even back in its heyday, it crumbled, pre-automobile. The over development of rail was a massive problem for the American economy due to its limitations. It's expensive to lay rail. It's expensive to maintain. It can't go in all the places roads can. Rail is niche in transportation and does what it does well, mass heavy cargo transpo to far distances, like 1k mile distances. Shorter than that, it's not really that economical. This is why you see lumber, coal, gypsum and other raw materials normally moved on rail. Or slow container goods from coast to coast. It's not used for as many goods as people think. If we, as an economy, dropped just-in-time-inventory practices, yes, rail would come back. Absolutely. But we moved to lean/just-in-time-inventory styles of production. That requires nimble transpo on accessible and prevalent paths to final destinations. Unloading train cars isn't efficient whether it's conexed or binned in small quantities. You better have ordered a few train cars worth of materials in one go to make it worth it. There's a good reason why in many industrial areas the rails are overgrown and decayed. No one uses them anymore because a semi-truck takes it straight to the commercial customer without extra logistical steps of coordination.
At that, there's the drawbacks to HSR. You only achieve those speeds on long, straight stretches. If you've road tripped the USA or worked as a truck driver for a while (I did for 7 months OTR), there are these things called mountains. It's cheaper to go around or over, not through. HSR currently can't be fully utilized at it's desired speeds with too many bends or severe changes in elevations. Semi trucks and cars do far better in these aspects. HSR would have to slow down to conventional speeds too often to see much for benefit. Trains need long braking distances in miles, not feet. As a practical example, this is the problem with the north east HSR. There are only a few stretches where it's fully utilized, giving marginal benefit to regular rail. I think it was some 20% of the length is actually "high speed".
Like, this is my big problem with people who have never worked in logistics. The articles written about HSR are best case scenarios in places that it happens to work in. Then, the general public gets a hard-on for HSR when they don't understand a single thing about the process. It's survivorship bias and dunning kruger. Hell, I know I'm barely scratching the surface of the issue at that. Yes, it works in places where the ground is flat, the population density is high and the country's gov can take land without paying for it. One of those applies decently to a decent portion to the US, but then population density there is extremely low. Then, eminent domain is an extremely touchy subject in the USA.
I'm not a fan of the angle of, "It'll improve people's lives" as some blanket concept. Not only has Silicon Valley abused the hell of the concept, "Making the world a better place through xyz", if you can't point exactly how, it's not a real argument. Which seriously, you've just been keyword dropping, not giving hard facts of benefits. You saying that makes it seem you're assuming I want to harm the general American public. Yea, I want all American's lives to improve. I completely believe HSR will not achieve any betterment. I actually think it'll harm more. You saying, "it'll help people" doesn't make all the problems of HSR okay. How does HSR improve lives more? Faster commutes, to where? No one WANTS to commute. People don't want to commute 10 minutes to work. Now it's cool to wait at a station for 10-15 minutes to get on a train, for 20-40 minutes of the commute, to then walk/taxi to their work? Then do it all over again the other direction? Hopefully you don't want to hang out with your coworkers in whatever town you commute to. Commuter rails aren't 24/7. They operate only during rush hours. People want to work in-town as much as possible. That's a better investment strategy for a city to optimize. At that, low-income jobs should not require high commute times. That's what's worth tackling, not trying to increase that distance. There have been many programs trying to transpo low-income workers to farther distances. It has always locked those people into those jobs because of the time sink of those commutes. HSR isn't going to magically fix that.
If you take Japan as an example, their HSR didn't fix commute times: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/average-work-commu... Over time, jobs get displaced to more centralized areas. Better paying jobs that would be in smaller cities, get sent to other cities and congregate there. Just like you have Silicon Valley and New York. Industries like to mingle with each other closely if possible. Now, you force more people to travel farther than needed. Economic competition is just going to snowball it more. If HSR is going to give us Japanese 1 hour plus commute times, no. Just plain no. It defeats the whole damn purpose.
Also, the fed doesn't just "print" money. That's a youtube cartoon understanding of how the financial system works. It's covered by bonds. Essentially loans with a few extra steps. This creates debt, which yes, is a problem. But this isn't "money printer go brrr".
Amtrak is pretty much nationalized and is a giant clusterfuck. Nationalize all the things isn't the best strategy.
And yes, this topic peeves me. It's a Haliburton like scheme for certain firms to make a ton of money off of taxpayers in the disguise of, "It's all about helping the poor people. If you hate HSR, you hate poor people." No.
I never said roads are a bad investment, I just think they shouldn't be our only investment. Roads are critical and I wish ours were better maintained.
I don't think that saying there are ripple effects that improve people's lives from building new infrastructure is vaporware or controversial. It happened when we first build railroads, transcontinental roads, and airports. I think it is safe to assume that this trend will extend to HSR as well. Just because the effects of HSR will manifest in ways that arent clear right now, doesn't mean that they won't happen. You seem to think that these effects will have a negative impact on society but I disagree. When you give people more options, people will take advantage of them, resulting in economic growth, which will improve people's lives.
There are plenty of places in the US that are flat enough and have the right density for HSR. The central valley in california, the north east corridor, western texas, and Florida are all good examples. These systems don't necessarily have to be connected to make sense. At a certain distance, flying makes more sense, and that is okay, we don't have to drill tunnels through the rockies to have functional systems.
People don't just travel to commute, they also travel for work, pleasure, to access healthcare, etc. These things will be easier with HSR.
Your argument that it centralizes jobs doesn't really make sense because that is already how it works in the US right now anyway, which you acknowledged. Adding HSR will give people who live farther away more access to these jobs, which I think is a good thing.
Yes the fed doesn't literally print money, but that is effectively what happens, debt or no debt. The government is suggesting a 2 trillion dollar infrastructure investment, which many consider to be me moderate. The US has the credit to invest more, and I believe the investment is worth the debt.
What are the costs to the local community for car ownership, gas, insurance, accidents, pollution and parking?
An HSR is like the Gravina Island Bridge project, aka, Bridge to Nowhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
A $400m dollar bridge to replace a ferry for a town of 50 people. Yes, the bridge has a better capacity than the ferry. It still isn't useful because of all the costs associated for so few people.
There is tremendous economic incentive against passenger rail as well; path dependent it may be, but real nonetheless.
Specifically: most of the roadway is designed for freight, not humans, and what little passenger rail there is must run over it, typically yielding priority to freight. Thus at this point the network reaches deep into agricultural, manufacturing and port relations and little goes near the major cities.
Even Caltrain in the Bay Area runs on a freight line owned by S&P; while I’ve only seen freight on it at night, S&P could contractually push Caltrain aside for freight (though it would cause an uproar S&P would rather not deal with). S& P received Covid relief money to government on its tracks in case caltrain couldn’t pay the rent.
The US has the most efficient rail system in the world...for freight. Berkshire Hathaway has been investing.
Passenger rail barely exists any more (in fact rails have been pulled up and sold for scrap and the land repurposed over the last century). To bring it back would mean building a lot of infrastructure from scratch. That’s not necessarily bad as the the layout of the population has shifted lever the last century as well.
You could call that tribal, or you could just call it “voting for your interests”. It feels slightly different from the tribal issues I see more frequently (policing, healthcare, schooling), but maybe I’m fooling myself.