The Antiplanner makes no secret of the fact that I love trains, especially passenger trains. Yet I know that passenger rail transportation is obsolete because it is expensive (compared with either autos or air), slow (compared with air and often with autos), and inconvenient (compared with autos). Unlike some people, I don’t believe taxpayers should subsidize my hobbies.
Despite this, rail advocates far and wide proclaim the virtues of high-speed rail and rail transit. Yet all too often, the virtues they claim are really faults in disguise.
One high-speed rail blogger, for example, criticizes the Antiplanner for endorsing an emerging technology that will significantly increase everyone’s mobility, not just those who have a driver’s license or who can afford to ride high-priced trains. Why dream about new technologies, the blogger says, when we can spend hundreds of billions on an obsolete technology instead?
After all, says the blogger, high-speed rail “has been in successful operation for nearly 50 years in Japan.” Yes, and 46 years ago (when Japan opened its first high-speed rail line) only 10 percent of all passenger travel in Japan was by automobile. Today, more than 60 percent of Japanese passenger travel is by auto while only 6 percent is by high-speed trains, and nearly all high-speed rail lines built since that first one have been huge financial drains on the economy.
Given that this blogger believes in “investing” billions of tax dollars into a mid-20th-century technology instead of promoting a 21st-century technology that will require no subsidies, I wonder why he is not typing on an IBM Selectric. That Internet thingy is just a new gadget that we ought to ignore and maybe it will go away.
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This reminds me of a recent article by smart-growth advocate Michael Lewyn, who argues that rail transit is better than buses, even if it is more expensive, because it makes cities more “legible.” In other words, rail transit in most cities goes to very few places, but if you are willing to confine yourself to those places, you are less likely to get lost than if you take a bus.
Visitors to Washington, DC, for example, can choose from over 100 bus lines or getting around by car (or bike) on thousands of streets. How confusing! Please, save us from complexity by building an expensive transportation system that consists of just six rail lines that go to relatively few places!
Of course, rail transit isn’t always legible, especially in cities like New York and many European cities that have so many rail lines. Just ask a New York City visitor how easy it is to take the subway from Penn Station to Grand Central (which requires a change of trains — with a long walk between then — at Times Square because the people who designed the subway system didn’t think it was important to have a direct connection between the city’s two major rail terminals).
On the other hand (as another blogger points out), “bus services can be pretty legible, if your transit agency cares enough to get it right.” One city that gets it right is Boulder, Colorado, whose frequent buses have colorful names like Hop, Skip, and Jump, with distinctive paint jobs to match. This makes it easier to find the bus you want in Boulder than to find the train you want in Washington.
Moreover, with services like Google Transit and GPS devices, bus riders and auto drivers will never again have to worry about cities being “illegible.” So much for building expensive rail lines to protect poor little tourists from confusion.
The Antiplanner wrote:
> Given that this blogger believes in “investing†billions of
> tax dollars into a mid-20th-century technology instead
> of promoting a 21st-century technology that will require
> no subsidies, I wonder why he is not typing on an
> IBM Selectric.
The IBM Selectric typewriter still produces great quality typewritten documents, and for some work, it is (in my opinion) a fine tool.
But I will never demand that The Antiplanner (or anyone else) use a Selectric just because I happen to like them, nor will I ask The Antiplanner (or anyone else) to pay higher taxes to support my beloved Selectrics.
I am skeptical about robo-cars in the next few decades. In the real world of potholes, construction zones, bad weather, and human drivers with cell phones, I think it will take quite a while to prove itself. And if we are looking for robo-cars to increase peak capacity, then just about every car has to be on automatic. I just don’t see that all working in many decades.
On the other hand, it seems to me that improving the “legibility” of buses has enormous potential. I know many people who would use buses more if they could figure out and rely upon the schedules. Considering the enormous improvement in information technology in the last few years, this seems very promising.
You are being deceptive about the 60% figure from Japan. The modal split for private automobiles is 40%. These are the regular sized cars we know and love.
For light vehicles it is 20%. These are not cars but light vehicles like scooters and motorcycles. If we started riding scooters around we’d do a lot for fuel efficiency and capacity (especially parking!).
http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/handbook/c09cont.htm
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I don’t think my taxes should be used to subsidize roads I never use. Rail would be quite cost a bit more cost effective if all roads were toll roads and taxpayers stopped subsidizing them.
Roads would be different as well. If roads were financed through tolls only, they would all have fewer lanes and the most popular roads would also be the most expensive with fewer single occupant vehicles and many multi-occupant vehicles including car pools mini-buses and large buses. With toll roads there would be no need for publicly subsidized mass transit. High tolls and market forces would cause natural substitutions of single passenger transit for multi-passenger transit.