The New Transportation Intelligence Test

The Antiplanner has called streetcars an intelligence test: anyone who thinks they are a good idea is not smart enough to make decisions about urban transportation. Now Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has revealed a new intelligence test, this one dealing with high-speed rail.

Obama’s high-speed rail plan might have replaces 5 percent of American air travel and was projected to cost at least half a trillion dollars. Replacing all air travel would cost much more.

In a description of her Green New Deal released yesterday, Ocasio-Cortez advocates that we “build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.” This is far more ambitious than Obama’s high-speed rail plan, which was only about 12,000 route miles in five separate, disconnected systems.

Anyone who thinks that replacing air travel with high-speed rail is a reasonable goal fails the high-speed rail intelligence test. First, in accordance with her goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Ocasio-Cortez assumes that high-speed rail emits significantly less greenhouse gases than flying. That’s simply not true: the difference is minor and is more than made up for by the huge greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the construction of high-speed rail infrastructure. Since trains require far more infrastructure than planes, the emissions required to produce that infrastructure are far greater.

Second, Ocasio-Cortez ignores the cost of building such a high-speed rail system. The United States has more than 500 commercial airports. Not counting Alaska and Hawaii, a route system serving all of those regions would be at least 40,000 miles long. California is spending $90 million a mile building high-speed rail in the flat Central Valley, and building through the mountains will cost much more. So the system conceived by Ocasio-Cortez will cost at least $4 trillion — and probably much more — none of which is likely to be recovered by high-speed rail fares.

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In addition to high-speed trains, the Green New Deal includes a “goal to replace every internal combustion vehicle.” Think about what that means. Right now, transportation consumes 28 percent of the energy in the United States, 98 percent of which is powered by internal combustion engines. Meanwhile, electric power provides 40 percent of our energy, of which perhaps only 1 percent goes for transportation.

Only 30 percent of electricity comes from non-greenhouse-gas-emitting sources, and Ocasio-Cortez wants to convert the other 70 percent to renewable sources. That 70 percent is 28 percent of our total energy use, which by coincidence is about the same amount of energy devoted to transportation. Since she also wants all transportation to be powered by renewable sources, that effectively doubles the requirement for renewable energy: not just enough to replace existing non-renewable electricity but also enough to power transportation.

This doesn’t even count the fact that 29 percent of our energy consists of fossil fuels burned for industrial, commercial, and residential uses other than electricity. In short, her plan calls for replacing the 85 percent of our energy that now comes from fossil fuels with renewable sources.

The most optimistic analyses of renewable energy say that we can replace a significant fraction — perhaps 80 percent — of existing electricity with renewable sources. But electricity accounts for only 40 percent of our energy use and, as noted, 30 percent of that already uses non-emitting sources. Ocasio-Cortez’s demand would more than triple that requirement.

Under Ocasio-Cortez’s plan, travel would be much more expensive and after-tax incomes would be much lower. Effectively, she wants to return to the Golden Age of 100 years ago when only the wealthy traveled and most people were stuck in their home cities for most of their lives. That would certainly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but it would also destroy our economy.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

15 Responses to The New Transportation Intelligence Test

  1. LazyReader says:

    Cortez has only been in office for a mere few months, despite this she’s already demonstrated and mastered all the factors of career politicians that normally takes years or decades
    – Stupidity: “Medicaid for all will save on funeral expenses” I bet next she thinks NASA will land on the sun if we launch at night
    – Hypocrisy: Screaming about the plight of suicidal cab drivers losing revenue to ride hailing; then records revealed her campaign spent literally thousands of dollars on Uber and Lyft rides.
    – Greed/Envy: I’ll give you everything you need, just give us everything you’ve got.
    – Hanging out with the wrong crowd: Founders of the womensmarch calls for current leaders to step down for allowing “anti-Semitism, anti- LBGT…rest of alphabet sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform by their refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist, hateful beliefs.

    I can however delight in the fact she’s a agent who’s slowly ripping the DNC apart at the seams. The Green New Deal eliminates huge sectors of the United States economy, yet wants to tax huge sectors of the US economy to pay for a new emerging economy. With the idea “green” something or other will replace those industries. The government can’t build a wall in ten years. The Post Office still can’t find your package. DMV can’t take a photo for your license in under four hours. But the same kind of government lackeys who run the aforementioned institutions mentioned above are somehow going to make the country completely green in ten years, and also airplane free. Eliminating huge sections of the US economy, but… union jobs for all! Supposedly, she has a degree in economics. After listening to her for a few minutes, you begin to realize that her degree was most likely Home Economics.? But if Crazy Eyes Cortez and Mad Maxine Waters and Senile Pelosi are anything they are the perfect spokespeople for the Democrat Party.

    “If your enemy is making a mistake, don’t stop them”. – Napoleon.?

  2. the highwayman says:

    “Highways are there regardless of economic conditions” -Randal O’Toole

    I totally agree.

    So then why do I have to pay bills and you don’t? :$

  3. Henry Porter says:

    I
    Can’t
    Stop
    Laughing
    !

    In a rational world, this plan would be the end of her political career. Sadly, we aren’t in a rational world.

  4. CapitalistRoader says:

    …the Green New Deal includes a ‘goal to replace every internal combustion vehicle‘…’build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.’

    Row, row, row your boat to Hawaii? Or will wind-powered ships be making a big comeback?

  5. MJ says:

    The Green New Deal — just as grotesque, statist and economically backward as the old New Deal.

    Someone is clearly pulling her strings and throwing these kinds of policy ideas at her, hoping to use her as a megaphone to broadcast these initiatives. Remember, Randal didn’t even mention the craziest part of this plan. When asked how this whole wish list would be paid for, she responded that she would rely on “New” Monetary Theory, which is a polite way of saying she would massively expand the money supply. In other words, we would pay for it with inflation and/or deficit spending. The average voter is probably untutored enough in macroeconomics to know that this isn’t the free lunch it sounds like.

    With a debt-to-GDP ratio rapidly approaching 100%, I’m really not comfortable with the US engaging in an experiment in radical monetary policy. The potential risks are enormous, not just for us, but for the rest of the global economy as well — and especially the US’s creditors.

  6. Frank says:

    Whenever I sometimes feel that life is not that great, I just give thanks that I’m not an Asperger’s patient or retard like highwayman.

  7. Bob Clark says:

    Yeah, I know you could build a bridge across the Atlantic Ocean or Pacific Ocean, Caribbean to get the train across for your overseas travel. Or one long chunnel.

    Funeral expenses might go up seeing how MAX does a pretty good job of killing off CO2 emitting human beings prematurely.

  8. LazyReader says:

    Highways are there regardless of economic conditions
    Because they’re vastly cheaper to build and maintain and do everything a train can……..

  9. prk166 says:

    Someone needs to tell the authors of The Green Leap Forward that the alt-left’s shiny new thing is not high speed rail ( HSR ) but zero-fare transit.

  10. prk166 says:


    So then why do I have to pay bills and you don’t? :$
    ” ~highwayman

  11. prk166 says:

    That is what Alberta’s been asking for decades. Don’t be surprised when they give Ottawa the middle finger and leave the federation, a federation that forces others to pay Quebec’s bills and remain.

  12. the highwayman says:

    I’m against crooked contractors, still your infrastructure is protected by government, so by comparison you don’t really have that much to complain about :$

  13. prk166 says:

    Let us know when Quebec decides to pay it’s fair share.

  14. the highwayman says:

    Quebec also has oppressive French language laws that harms its economy, still you’re not complaining about sidewalks not being profitable :$

  15. prk166 says:

    Let us know when Quebec decides to pay it’s fair share.

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