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Daily Archives: September 18, 2008

Reason Foundation on High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters, Transportation
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The Reason Foundation just published its analysis of California’s high-speed rail plan. The full study is also accompanied by a series of policy briefs on the effects of high-speed rail on congestion, greenhouse gases, and California finances.

“The current high-speed rail plan is a fairy tale,” says Adrian Moore, Ph.D., Reason’s vice president of research. “The proposal suggests these high-speed trains will be the fastest ever; the most-ridden ever; the cheapest ever; and will convince millions of Californians they no longer need to drive or fly. Offering up a best-case scenario is one thing, but actually depending on all of these miracles to happen simultaneously is irresponsible public policy.” Moore also has an op ed on the subject in today’s Orange County Register.

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High-Speed Rail Part 8: Alternatives to California’s HSR

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation
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The 2005 environmental impact statement for California’s high-speed rail includes two alternatives to building rail: a no-action alternative and a “highway-air” alternative that proposes major expansions of both freeways and airports in the rail corridor. The highway component alone of this alternative was projected to cost twice as much as high-speed rail, allowing rail proponents to claim that rail is cheaper than roads (page 4-1).

But this alternative was a “straw man” designed to make high-speed rail look good. One reason for the high cost is that the alternative proposed to expand every freeway along the rail route, even highways that are not expected to be congested in the rail project’s time horizon. For example, the alternative adds one-third more capacity to freeways in the Central Valley that are expected to operate at only 92 percent of capacity in the no-action alternative (page 3.1-12).

On top of that, the highway-air alternative is more than five times as effective at relieving congestion than the rail project. Where high-speed rail is expected to take 3.8 percent of cars off the road, the highway-air alternative reduces congestion by more than 20 percent (page 3.1-12). This suggests that an alternative that costs only one-fifth as much as the highway-air alternative, or about half as much as the rail alternative, would be more comparable to rail.

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