If Congress passes the infrastructure compromise reached by the White House and 17 Republican senators, Amtrak will get $66 billion. Amtrak won’t have complete freedom to spend this money however it likes: instead, according to Senator Charles Schumer, $30 billion is for Northeast Corridor backlog and modernization; $16 billion is for other backlog needs; and $12 billion is for new services outside of the Northeast Corridor, “including high speed rail,” as if $12 billion could buy any significant amount of high-speed rail.
Last month, Amtrak revealed that it needs $117 billion to bring the Northeast Corridor up to a state of good repair, so the $30 billion in the infrastructure bill is little more than a down payment. Thus, Congress is continuing its usual pattern of short-funding needed maintenance so that it can fund new projects. After all, if all of the money in the bill went to the Northeast Corridor, senators and representatives in the rest of the country would have little reason to support it.
One of the Northeast Corridor projects funded in the bill is new tunnels under the Hudson River, which are expected to cost $3 billion a mile, more than just about any other tunnels in history. When Slate writer Henry Grabar asked Amtrak CEO William Flynn how he could justify such a high cost, Flynn responded that he didn’t think it was that expensive. Grabar concluded that Amtrak didn’t care about the cost.
After all, costs don’t really matter when agencies are spending other peoples’ money. This kind of attitude has led to California high-speed rail and transit cost overruns throughout the country.
A recent report from the Eno Transportation Center shows that U.S. construction costs are much higher than those in other countries, a problem that Eno blames on “a dozen drivers” of construction costs, suggesting there is no easy fix for the problem.
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Nevertheless, Slate‘s Grabar thinks he has a solution for Amtrak: “bring in some experts from Japan, France, Spain, or China” to tell Amtrak how to do it. If it did, then “we could end up with train service that looks a lot more like the Shinkansen or the TGV.”
There are two problems with that idea. First, many of the reasons for higher construction costs here simply can’t be fixed by outside experts. Union work rules, political incentives to waste money, and lengthy environmental and legal review processes aren’t going to disappear if someone from France or Japan gives Amtrak advice.
Second, the countries Grabar names are hardly paragons of sound finance. The Japanese National Railways went virtually bankrupt in the 1980s from building and operating money-losing rail lines, and the government bailout led to two decades of economic stagnation. Spain has mortgaged its future in an attempt to unify the country by connecting every provincial capital with Madrid with high-speed trains that often run nearly empty. China’s national railway is nearly a trillion dollars in debt. France has gone out of its way to hide billions of dollars of high-speed rail subsidies from the European Union, which strictly limits how much countries can subsidize transportation.
There are no magic bullets for making construction affordable. The real problem is thinking we need to do the construction in the first place. Planes are faster than trains. Automobiles are more convenient than transit. We shouldn’t be spending money on technologies that have been outmoded for decades.
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“including high speed rail,” as if $12 billion could buy any significant amount of high-speed rail.
” ~anti-planner
We just did this 10 years ago under the BO administration. They spent ~$13.5B ( constant 2021 dollars ). We have zero HSR out of that today.
A lot on the left say they care about things like Amtrak + HSR. They do. They just don’t care very much; it ain’t that deep. So the politicians can throw a lil’ money here + there and they’re happy.
It’s hard not seeing 90% of that NEC money thrown at the 2 tunnel projects w/ the rest sprinkled around for appearance.
Curious where the HSR money will be wasted. What’s the over / under of Cali + Nevada forming what they” dub a PPP so they can grab some fed $$$$$$$$ to throw at Brightline West?
as if $12 billion could buy any significant amount of high-speed rail.
Wellllllll……let’s not be unreasonable, Mr. O’ Toole. $12 billion could purchase at least 3 or 4 miles of True High Speed Rail (TM).
Nevertheless, Slate‘s Grabar thinks he has a solution for Amtrak: “bring in some experts from Japan, France, Spain, or China” to tell Amtrak how to do it. If it did, then “we could end up with train service that looks a lot more like the Shinkansen or the TGV.”
I think it’s important to belabor your counter to this common propaganda, preferably in a couple op-ed’s. Newspapers are constantly running whiny, open-ended articles about why our rail construction costs so much, and other jurisdictions, generally European, do so much better. These claims are lies (except that building rail in the US costs so much). There was one in the Seattle Times just three days ago:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/why-building-rail-transit-in-u-s-seattle-costs-so-much-and-takes-so-long/
Some of the “solutions” proffered are downright anti-democratic, so to speak:
-Make transit megaprojects “self-permitting,” for instance, so contractors may close a street instead of obtaining a separate city government permit.
-Eliminate infeasible alignment options early, instead of wasting time on excessive studies.
-Require land-use zoning for high numbers of homes and jobs around future transit stations, as a condition for cities to receive federal Administration grants. (Eno doesn’t suggest any specific minimum.)
-Spend more money and expertise to identify underground utilities before construction begins.
-Nevertheless, Slate‘s Grabar thinks he has a solution for Amtrak: “bring in some experts from Japan, France, Spain, or China” to tell Amtrak how to do it. If it did, then “we could end up with train service that looks a lot more like the Shinkansen or the TGV.”
Let’s put it in perspective, 30 Billion dollars buys you?
– 90,000 Rolls Royce cullinans, $330,000 luxury SUV.
Or 45,000 Cullinans and enough money to run them for years.
45,000 cullinans running thru northeast, 3 passengers and luggage.