“You never know what the future will bring,” says Steve Polzin, of the Florida Center for Urban Transportation Research. “If we are not careful, we could do some things that would make corn ethanol look like a wise investment.”
What things are those, Steve? For his answer, take a look at his July 11 article in the Urban Transportation Monitor. The recent Surface Transportation Policy Commission recommended investing in intercity rail, saying that trains “consume 17 percent less energy per passenger mile than air carriers and 21 percent less than automobiles.”
But, Polzin notes, the recently passed Energy Independence Act requires autos to become 40 percent more efficient in the next 20 years, and the next generation of airplanes is also likely to be at least 17 percent more efficient than the current one. So, Polzin asks, why should we “spend decades and billions for intercity rail”?
