The Antiplanner

Obama’s Recycled Moderate-Speed Rail Plan

20th April 2009

Obama’s Recycled Moderate-Speed Rail Plan

posted in News commentary, Transportation |

The Obama administration believes in recycling, as shown by the so-called high-speed rail plan it announced last week. Below is a map of the plan, and below that is a map of the Federal Railroad Administration’s 2005 high-speed rail plan. As you can see, the proposed routes are identical. (The grey lines on the first map represent conventional Amtrak trains.)

Of course, this is a time-honored practice. Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System was really the Bureau of Public Roads’ Interregional Highway System. There is no doubt that the Federal Railroad Administration is thrilled that Obama has adopted its plan.

The Antiplanner loves trains, but I have several problems with this plan. First, it is important to understand that most of Obama’s plan is not bullet trains or TGVs. Instead, it is conventional Amtrak Diesel-powered trains running a little faster — up to 110 mph, but averaging only 60 to 70 mph — than Amtrak runs today. Based on this, here are my objections to Obama’s moderate-speed rail plan.

1. Less than 1 percent will ride, more than 99 percent will pay

More than 4 percent of federal transportation spending goes to Amtrak, yet Amtrak today carries only 0.1 percent of passenger travel. Moderate- and high-speed trains will significantly increase the subsidies but have little effect on the total travel. Why is it fair for 99.8 percent of people to pay for the rides enjoyed by the other 0.2 percent?

Even with subsidies, high-speed rail fares will be about 50 percent higher than ordinary Amtrak fares. For example, passengers pay $69 to ride conventional trains from New York to Washington, and $99 to ride high-speed train. (By comparison, an unsubsidized bus is $20 and unsubsidized airfares are $99.) This means only the wealthy and those whose employers pay the fare will ride high-speed rail. All taxpayers will end up paying for rides of bankers, bureaucrats, and lobbyists.

2. Moderate-speed rail is dirty

Obama’s claims that trains are better for the environment are pure speculation. Amtrak today is only a little more energy-efficient than cars and planes. While cars and planes are expected to get far more energy-efficient in the future, running trains at higher speeds will make them less energy-efficient.

True high-speed rail, which generally powered by electricity, is dirty too. Even if the electricity comes from renewable resources, the energy and environmental cost of construction will be enormous. It will take decades for the trivial annual savings to pay back that cost.

3. It doesn’t work in Europe

High-speed trains in Europe are convenient for tourists, but the average European rarely uses them. Even in France, which has more high-speed trains than any other European country, the average resident rides heavily subsidized high-speed trains just 400 miles per year. Despite punitive fuel taxes, they drive 7,600 miles per year, a number that is increasing faster than high-speed rail travel.

4. It doesn’t work in Japan

The Japanese drive less than French or Americans, but they don’t ride high-speed rail more than the French. The average resident of Japan drives 4,000 miles per year and rides high-speed trains 400 miles per year. The Japanese ride trains more than the residents of any other country — nearly 1,900 miles per year including subways and other urban rail — but due to premium fares, nearly 80 percent of train riding is on conventional trains.

5. Every car off the road means more new trucks on the road

Obama’s moderate-speed trains will run on the same tracks as existing freight trains. Since many of America’s rail lines are near capacity today, there is a real danger that moderate-speed trains will push freight onto the highways.

Europe’s rail network carries 6 percent of passenger travel, while ours carries only 0.1 percent. But European trains carry less than 17 percent of freight, while 73 percent goes by highway. By comparison, American trains carry 40 percent of our freight, while only 28 percent goes on the highway. In other words, to get 6 percent of passengers out of their cars, Europe put nearly three times as many trucks on the road.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 5:53 am and is filed under News commentary, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  1. 1 On April 20th, 2009, John Thacker said:

    Regarding the recycling, you know why that is: Environmental Impact Statements for NEPA, mostly. Having the preliminary engineering and plans done is helpful, but the NEPA process is the biggest reason why they wanted to use the already existing corridors that had been sitting around doing their EISes for 10-15 years was so that they could get the money out the door.

    It certainly points to a problem in the planning process, controlled by NEPA. Anything takes a long time to plan, and circumstances may change by that point.

    A lot of media sources incorrectly presented the announcement as the Obama Administration coming up with these corridors. Not true at all; this was simply the Obama Administration describing the grant schedule for giving money to the already-designated corridors.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 7:19 am

  2. 2 On April 20th, 2009, John Thacker said:

    While cars and planes are expected to get far more energy-efficient in the future, running trains at higher speeds will make them less energy-efficient.

    It’s hypothetically possible that increased load factors could gain back energy-efficiency. If I understand the DOE’s numbers correctly, the Northeast Corridor is considerably more efficient than the average numbers, and the long distance trains are horribly inefficient with their low loads. Of course, there seems to be no will to eliminate inefficient trains either.

    Point 5 would be stronger if you looked at not just Europe, but also mentioned how New York City, with so much passenger rail, has the lowest use of their rail for freight in the country.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 7:25 am

  3. 3 On April 20th, 2009, dmccall said:

    In Obama’s “imagine a world” speech stumping for this plan last week, he said that our aviation system is overburdened and implied that people would not have to go through security on a “high-speed” rail system (imagine not having to take off your shoes). Neither is true.

    His only good point in the speech is that airports transfer people from suburbia to suburbia while trains will take people from one city core to another.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 7:47 am

  4. 4 On April 20th, 2009, the highwayman said:

    I’m not surprised by your responses, you don’t want people to have options.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 9:29 am

  5. 5 On April 20th, 2009, msetty said:

    Based on my reading of Minnesota’s Minneapolis-Duluth 110 mph corridor study, the net reduction of GHG is around 20,000 tons of CO2 at a net cost of about $25 million per year subsidy, all capital–it is projected to return a moderate operating surplus. In general, the few U.S. trains that do run at competitive speeds compared to driving–at least 60-70 mph, which offsets rail access times–do tend to run moderately in the black in terms of direct operating revenues vs. expense, e.g., Northeast Corridor (where capital costs are offset somewhat, but not a lot).

    So the projected net savings is about $1,500 per ton of reduced CO2…However, construction will emit around 200,000 tons of CO2, based on an assumption of 50,000 gallons of diesel consumed per million dollars of construction and vehicle manufacturing cost, e.g., $400 million. I’d say payback on this is at least 10-12 years. Most of the economic payback is time savings, which is about 30 to 40 minutes per ride; they could do better with electrification and higher frequencies, but the payback times on GHG would be similar. With a 30-year payback period, it makes sense, particularly the more transfer traffic the route could generate with the proposed Minneapolis-Milwaukee-Chicago rail line.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 9:55 am

  6. 6 On April 20th, 2009, Tad Winiecki said:

    High Speed Rail is too slow. We need Evacuated Tube Transportâ„¢, which can be faster than supersonic aircraft and the most energy efficient transport of anything except earth satellites. See http://www.et3.com.
    Disclosure – I am an ETTâ„¢ licensee.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 11:05 am

  7. 7 On April 20th, 2009, ws said:

    ROT: “Europe’s rail network carries 6 percent of passenger travel, while ours carries only 0.1 percent. But European trains carry less than 17 percent of freight, while 73 percent goes by highway. By comparison, American trains carry 40 percent of our freight, while only 28 percent goes on the highway. In other words, to get 6 percent of passengers out of their cars, Europe put nearly three times as many trucks on the road.”

    ws: Except railway lines are only 200,000 km long and roadway distance is 4,820,000 km long, according to European stats. 10% of freight in Europe is moved along 200,000 km distance, which is very efficient. The point is that many roadways are saturated with no room to grow and that railways in the US and Europe have shrunken drastically.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 11:09 am

  8. 8 On April 20th, 2009, ws said:

    I might add, that roadway transportation accounted for 93% of all emission according to Eurostat.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 11:10 am

  9. 9 On April 20th, 2009, Francis King said:

    Antiplanner wrote:

    “For example, passengers pay $69 to ride conventional trains from New York to Washington, and $99 to ride high-speed train.”

    Clearly, he hasn’t bought a train ticket in the UK for a while.

    “Even in France, which has more high-speed trains than any other European country, the average resident rides heavily subsidized high-speed trains just 400 miles per year. Despite punitive fuel taxes, they drive 7,600 miles per year, a number that is increasing faster than high-speed rail travel.”

    And he hasn’t bought petrol in the UK for a while either.

    “Europe’s rail network carries 6 percent of passenger travel, while ours carries only 0.1 percent. But European trains carry less than 17 percent of freight, while 73 percent goes by highway. By comparison, American trains carry 40 percent of our freight, while only 28 percent goes on the highway. In other words, to get 6 percent of passengers out of their cars, Europe put nearly three times as many trucks on the road.”

    I don’t think it’s a trade-off between freight and passengers, rather a reflection of the different countries. The UK, for example is a small island. For us, passenger trains are more suitable in many cases than airplanes, and, at the same time, the distances are good for moving goods by lorry. The exact opposite is true for large parts of the USA. When I was in the USA a while back we saw one of the long freight trains go by. That just wouldn’t work in the UK.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 12:12 pm

  10. 10 On April 20th, 2009, t g said:

    Re: Evacuated Tube Transport.

    Um…the web site says this:

    Fast
    Convenient
    Efficient
    Clean
    Safe
    Energy Conscious

    Is this for real, or are the first letters of those words an anagram for FECES?

    Evacuated tube indeed.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 2:46 pm

  11. 11 On April 20th, 2009, Tad Winiecki said:

    tg said “Is this (ETTâ„¢) for real…?”
    It is about as real as communications satellites and space stations were in 1950.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 3:36 pm

  12. 12 On April 20th, 2009, mattb02 said:

    Evacuated tube indeed.

    LOL, great call.

    I’m not surprised by your responses, you don’t want people to have options.

    Highwayman: what is the value of an option that requires massive subsidies almost entirely from people who will never use the service to deliver a service that achieves what can be done via other largely or entirely unsubsidised means anyway?

    The answer is that there is no value, which is precisely why so much taxpayer money is required to make this happen.

    Idiot.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 5:49 pm

  13. 13 On April 20th, 2009, ws said:

    mattbo2, you must not be referring to automobiles, as they are as subsidized as they come.

    posted on April 20th, 2009 at 9:22 pm

  14. 14 On April 21st, 2009, Dan said:

    you must not be referring to automobiles, as they are as subsidized as they come.

    Yes. We also subsidize their use in another way: we refuse to count the cost of dumping their pollution into the airfill. We charge for dumping in the landfill, but not the airfill for some reason.

    Abstract: Environmental impacts of energy use can impose large costs on society. We quantify and monetize the life-cycle climate-change and health effects of greenhouse gas (GHG) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions from gasoline, corn ethanol, and cellulosic ethanol. For each billion ethanol-equivalent gallons of fuel produced and combusted in the US, the combined climate-change and health costs are $469 million for gasoline, $472–952 million for corn ethanol depending on biorefinery heat source (natural gas, corn stover, or coal) and technology, but only $123–208 million for cellulosic ethanol depending on feedstock (prairie biomass, Miscanthus, corn stover, or switchgrass). Moreover, a geographically explicit life-cycle analysis that tracks PM2.5 emissions and exposure relative to U.S. population shows regional shifts in health costs dependent on fuel production systems. Because cellulosic ethanol can offer health benefits from PM2.5 reduction that are of comparable importance to its climate-change benefits from GHG reduction, a shift from gasoline to cellulosic ethanol has greater advantages than previously recognized. These advantages are critically dependent on the source of land used to produce biomass for biofuels, on the magnitude of any indirect land use that may result, and on other as yet unmeasured environmental impacts of biofuels. [emphases added]

    DS

    posted on April 21st, 2009 at 8:23 am

  15. 15 On April 21st, 2009, the highwayman said:

    ws said: mattbo2, you must not be referring to automobiles, as they are as subsidized as they come.

    THWM: That’s the irony with tea bagging types, covert subsidization as it has been with automobiles is fine, but overt subsidization as it is now with mass transit is bad!

    Makes you wonder why Mr.O’Toole chose an oxymoronic name like “The Antiplanner”?

    posted on April 21st, 2009 at 10:55 am

  16. 16 On April 22nd, 2009, prk166 said:

    Has anyone seen proposed times and frequencies for these routes? I looked a bit but didn’t find anything summing it up. Or at this point are these just proposed routes?

    posted on April 22nd, 2009 at 6:11 am

  17. 17 On May 13th, 2009, Amtrak President: High-Speed Rail “Unrealistic” » The Antiplanner said:

    [...] $13 billion won’t begin to pay for the national plan issued last month, which I estimate will cost around $100 billion just to build, plus much more to [...]

    posted on May 13th, 2009 at 12:02 am

  18. 18 On June 2nd, 2009, The Antiplanner :: Six Billion Pounds? Not Likely and Not Worth It :: http://ti.org/antiplanner said:

    [...] President Obama announced his vision for high-speed rail, he claimed it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6 billion pounds a [...]

    posted on June 2nd, 2009 at 12:01 am

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