$1 Billion for What?

In anticipation of a Democratic takeover of Congress opening the floodgates of spending on rail boondoggles, the state of Oregon has written a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for more passenger trains between Portland and Eugene. The DEIS considered three alternatives in detail:

• No action, which means continuing to run three trains a day (two of which are state-subsidized) taking 2 hours and 35 minutes (48 mph) between Eugene and Portland, all of which go on to Seattle;
• Alternative 1, which would triple the frequency of state-subsidized trains and reduce travel times to 2 hours and 20 minutes (53 mph, the same time currently used by Bolt Bus);
• Alternative 2, which would offer the same number of trains as alternative 1 but reduce travel times to 2 hours even.

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The DEIS briefly considered a true high-speed rail option of running trains as fast as 180 miles per hour on an entirely new rail line. This was rejected not because of its high cost but because it would require “substantial regulatory hurdles.” If I were a high-speed rail advocate, I would consider this a specious excuse, but at least the state isn’t currently contemplating a project that (given California’s experience in similar terrain) would cost at least $10 billion.

Yet alternatives 1 and 2 aren’t cheap. The state estimates alternative 1 would cost around $1 billion and alternative 2 would cost around $4 billion. The reason high-speed rail advocates should be upset is that none of the money spent on alternative 1, which is the state’s preference, would contribute to the cost of a true high-speed rail line, which would require all-new construction. Thus, a decision to go for alternative 1 effectively commits the state to not build a true high-speed rail line for a couple of decades at least.

The cost of alternative 1 comes from adding 75 miles of new track, either long sidings or double-tracking existing single-track lines. This would allow for the increased frequencies without reducing freight capacities.

The DEIS does not say how this new track will reduce Portland-Eugene travel times by 15 minutes. I suspect this “savings” comes not from any capital spending but from removing the “pad” from the current schedules. Currently, the northbound time from Oregon City to Portland is 41 minutes, while southbound is 23 minutes. The extra 18 minutes is included to allow trains to catch up if they are late. Similarly, 19 minutes of pad exists in the southbound schedule between Albany and Eugene. Removing most of this pad would allow the state to claim a time savings even though it would have nothing to do with any of the new tracks.

The cost of alternative 2 comes from building an entirely new route parallel to Interstate 5. The trains on this route would run at top speeds of 120 mph, and they would save additional time because the route is about 15 miles shorter than the existing rail route. However, because I-5 avoids the downtowns of cities along the way, the state expects this route to attract fewer riders despite the faster speeds.

The ridership projections are the most questionable part of the DEIS. The existing trains carry 105,000 riders a year — about 72 passengers per 250-seat train — and the state optimistically projects this will double by 2035 under the no-action alternative. The state also subsidizes seven to eight buses a day in this corridor that carry another 93,000 riders a year, and projects this would also nearly double under no action.

To justify the assumed annual growth rate of 3.5 percent, the state points out that corridor bus plus rail ridership has grown by 7.3 percent per year since 1995. However, most of this growth was due to increased frequencies; the state added a train in 2001 and several daily buses in 2009. Since reaching the current frequencies, bus ridership has grown much more slowly and rail ridership has actually declined.

Under alternatives 1 and 2, bus frequencies would be reduced to 1 a day while train frequencies would increase from 3 to 7 a day. Supposedly, this would increase total ridership by 90 percent under alternative 1 and 85 percent in alternative 2. Most of the bus riders would switch to trains, of course, but the state must also assume that people love trains so much that an additional four trains a day would attract more riders than would be lost by cutting six to seven buses a day.

Where would the other 349,000 annual riders come from? Greyhound and Bolt Bus (which is owned by Greyhound) run six to nine buses a day in the corridor whose ridership numbers were not available to or estimated in the DEIS. While they are probably greater than the 93,000 carried by Amtrak buses, even if every bus were full, they could carry only about 150,000 riders. Amtrak Eugene-Portland fares start at $28 whether by bus or train; Bolt and Greyhound fares are typically half that. Bolt and Greyhound would lose some of their business to the trains, but certainly not enough to account for 349,000 trips. The rest would come from auto drivers or be “induced” travel.

I suspect the numbers are highly optimistic, but let’s say they are valid. What would spending a billion on the rail line do to auto traffic in the corridor? According to the state’s latest estimates, the portion of Interstate 5 that carries the least amount of traffic between Eugene and Portland moves nearly 42,000 vehicles per day. The state also says that more than three-fourths of those vehicles are cars or light trucks. If they have average occupancies of 1.67 people per vehicle, that means the least-used portion of I-5 sees 1.9 million passengers per year. The state further predicts that the Willamette Valley’s population will grow by 1.1 percent per year, so if traffic merely keeps up with population growth this will increase to about 2.4 million passengers per year by 2035.

Thus, if the state were to spend a billion dollars on new track and higher frequencies, and if all of the new passengers came from I-5 and not from Greyhound or Bolt, it would reduce traffic on the least-busy portion of I-5 by less than 1.5 percent. On busier portions of I-5, it will be much less than 1.5 percent.

By comparison, the same billion dollars could add two new lanes to the entire length of I-5 from Eugene to Portland. That billion dollars might not cover all of the costs of reconstructing viaducts over the freeway, but then it isn’t likely that two new lanes will be needed for the entire length either. The point is that passenger rail costs a lot of money to move a small number of people.

Naturally, the ridership estimates give no consideration to the effect of autonomous vehicles of Oregon travel habits. It is highly likely that by 2035 people will be able to take driverless cars anywhere in the Portland-Eugene corridor and do it faster and at a cost competitive than Amtrak. If so, there’s no reason to think that state-subsidized trains will be able to maintain their current ridership, much less increase it by 90 percent.

Oregon has a lot of better ways to spend a billion dollars. But that’s irrelevant if Congress opens the spigots to rail spending. If there’s federal money to be wasted, the state wants to be ready to waste here.