Last week, the Antiplanner participated in a conference on the future of transportation in southern California. The conference consisted of four panels: high-speed rail, congestion, finance, and experiences in other countries. Since they invited me, I assumed the conference would offer a balance of pros and cons on the various issues. It turned out I was the only skeptic of passenger rail and giant subsidies to transit.
The high-speed rail panel opened with a statement by the moderator that the state has to build high-speed rail because there is no way that the airlines could handle the projected growth in travel between the Bay Area and southern California. Really? Most of the planes in that corridor today are 737s or smaller; a switch to 757s or similar-sized planes would instantly increase capacity by 50 percent or more.
The first formal presentation was by Dan Richard, who chaired California’s High-Speed Rail Authority from 2012 until being replaced by Governor Gavin Newsom last month. Richard noted that, as of 2008, the year California voters approved selling $9 billion worth of bonds for high-speed rail, China only had one high-speed rail line that was about 250 miles long. Since then, in the time it has taken California to complete no lines, China has opened nearly 18,000 miles of lines.
China was successful, observed Richard, because it had several advantages over California. First, it didn’t have to worry about land acquisition, which delayed the California project, because the government in China owns all the land. Second, it didn’t have to worry about lawsuits, which also delayed the California project, because Chinese citizens don’t dare sue their government. Third, they didn’t have to worry about convincing voters to support the project, because China’s government just does whatever it wants. Richard didn’t exactly endorse China’s form of government, but he certainly sounded wistful that California didn’t share these advantages.
None of these things would have solved the real problem, which is that California simply didn’t have the money to build the line. The $9 billion approved in 2008 was less than a third of the projected cost at that time; it’s less than 12 percent of today’s more realistic (but still probably underestimated) cost of $77 billion.
Richard also defended the authority’s decision to start construction when it had only a fraction of the money needed to complete the project by noting that the federal matching funds, approved under the 2009 stimulus bill, had to be spent by 2017. Sorry; I don’t buy that logic. Even with the federal funds, the state couldn’t afford it, so all the authority did was waste more money based on a hope and a prayer that more money would magically appear.
Richard maintained that none of the things that increased costs and prevented completion of the project were predictable in advance (even though Wendell Cox and Joseph Vranich predicted them). Tellingly, he added that next time the state was considering a megaproject like this one, it would again fail to predict these problems.
Nor did Richard mention whether China’s high-speed rail lines have succeeded in reducing flying and driving, which is the ostensible goal of the California project. In 2003, when China’s first high-speed rail line opened, China had ten passenger cars per thousand people. Today, after China completed 18,000 miles of high-speed rail, it has 168 cars per thousand people, and air travel is growing at 15 percent per year. If it didn’t work in China; how could it work in California?
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The Antiplanner was on the second panel, which was supposed to be about relieving traffic congestion. The first two speakers on the panel, however, focused on getting people out of their cars and onto “sustainable and affordable” public transit. One was particularly enamored by subways even though the Los Angeles subway is one of the biggest flops in the city’s transit history.
My show began with a photo of a congested highway in Orange County. “We can address this problem in one of two ways,” I said. “We can pretend that people will behave the way we want them to behave, and plan for that, or we can realistically ask how people will actually behave, and then try to make our transportation system safe and efficient for them. Repeating words like ‘sustainable’ and ‘affordable’ is pointless when transit uses more energy and costs four times as much per passenger mile as driving.”
The speaker who claimed transit was “sustainable” and “affordable” in his presentation later responded that transit would be sustainable if only more people would ride it. Thank you for proving my point.
Unfortunately, most of the speakers in the later two panels continued with the fantasies that, somehow, the experiences of China and other countries with lower incomes and lower rates of auto ownership can somehow be applied to the United States. Jonathan English, for example, contends that transit would work better if we just increased frequencies, which would cost a lot more. But he completely misreads the history of mass transit in America, suggesting that ridership declined because service decline when it was the other way around.
English also thinks that “almost every streetcar line in the U.S. failed” while “nearly every grade-separated subway or elevated system survived.” But the streetcars didn’t fail: they were replaced by buses because buses were better. Many heavy-rail lines were also replaced by buses. But some heavy-rail lines survived in four urban areas — New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia — largely due to subsidies, not because heavy rail was somehow immune to obsolescence.
While my presentation endorsed congestion pricing of major highways to relieve congestion, speakers on the finance panel only saw congestion pricing (or cordon pricing, which is what they meant) as a fundraising tool for transit. On that same panel, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis bragged that he saved Boston from building so many freeways that it would be like Los Angeles. I wanted to tell him that, fortunately, he failed: Boston has 110 miles of freeway per million residents while Los Angeles has only 53, which is why Los Angeles is more congested than Boston.
It’s clear that advocates of high-speed rail and public transit would rather live in a fantasy world than the real world. Sadly, they have managed to persuade many people to join them. A recent poll of Orange County residents found that 74 percent of them never use transit and 70 percent say they wouldn’t use it even if it were significantly improved. Yet 86 percent agree that development of a “much improved transit system” is important for Orange County and 54 percent support the $400 million streetcar the county is building. Perhaps it’s no surprise that, for many in southern California, fantasy trumps reality.
“In 2003, when China’s first high-speed rail line opened, China had ten passenger cars per thousand people. Today, after China completed 18,000 miles of high-speed rail, it has 168 cars per thousand people, and air travel is growing at 15 percent per year. If it didn’t work in China; how could it work in California?”
So, high speed rail goes from nothing to 18,000 miles. Car ownership goes from 10 cars to 168 cars per thousand people, with air travel increasing at 15%. It appears that a) all forms of transport are increasing, and b) rail travel is increasing as much as anything.
As for rail being competitive, it can be. To pick a couple of examples:
UK. Going from Bath to London, you have a choice of car, train, plane. For a distance of 100 miles, airplanes don’t work – it’s quicker by rail. London has limited capacity for cars. So rail it is.
Saudi Arabia. Going from Riyadh to Buraidah, again you have a choice of car, train, plane. The distance is 200 miles. By plane, it takes one hour, by train two hours. But you have to arrive at the airport at least an hour in advance. It’s too far to go by car.
“But the streetcars didn’t fail: they were replaced by buses because buses were better.”
I’m not sure about ‘better’. The old streetcars/trams picked up and dropped down passengers from the centre of the street, which was OK at first but became dangerous as traffic flows increased. The passenger flows decreased, which was bad news because the business was both capital and manpower intensive.
On busy routes in large conurbations, streetcars and trams are still very viable, indeed better than buses. What advantages would buses have on such a route? That they skip stops? Given the high passenger flows, the vehicles would have to stop everywhere anyway. That they can be rerouted? With such a major flow identified, it’s more about meeting demand than identifying new routes.
“A recent poll of Orange County residents found that 74 percent of them never use transit and 70 percent say they wouldn’t use it even if it were significantly improved. Yet 86 percent agree that development of a “much improved transit system” is important for Orange County and 54 percent support the $400 million streetcar the county is building. Perhaps it’s no surprise that, for many in southern California, fantasy trumps reality.”
No, that is reality. The car drivers support transit, because from their point-of-view, everybody else will use transit, freeing the road up for their cars. Whether this will work is another thing.
That was the language that was written into the bill authorizing the bond issue by proponents. It wasn’t negotiable. Without it, the bond proceeds wouldn’t have been available. If it wasn’t technically feasible, they shouldn’t have agreed to it.
It’s hard to tell from that comment just what he believes “work better” would mean, but increasing frequencies on routes is a fairly low-cost improvement that most transit operators can afford without having to request large increases in funding. Which leads me to believe that the truth is that demand elasticities with respect to service frequency are a lot lower than they suggest. If they were very high, then there would be an incentive for operators to put more service on the street immediately and reap the rewards of large increases in boardings and revenue.
For just 2 billion dollars, The airports around the Bay and Los Angeles area could buy 747’s and carry 3 times as many people……….Assuming 747’s even are capable of taxiing or riding those runways.
As I mentioned before. the 1930’s saw the end of the airship era. Blimps and Airships however may make a comeback. An Ohio company Ohio Airships, combines the advantages of air cargo while significantly reducing logistical problems. They achieve this by designing cargo airships, called “Dynalifters”. Lockheed Martin is exploring similar avenues. These air vessels mix the travel concepts of planes and Zeppelins. The company completed 4 conceptual designs for four different sizes. All designs are equipped with detachable cargo pods for rapid loading and off-loading, and a prototype with a length of 37 metres has already been built and tested. The idea is infrastructureless societies like Africa and Asia rather than go thru the joys of begging the World Bank or China for that matter; billions to build infrastructure like ports, highways and trainlines can only need a thousand foot runway and a warehouse…..
They’re not blimps, they do not float away without a tether. The Dynalifert is a airship/plane hybrid, it uses the helium bag buoyancy to reduce the vehicles weight penalty by 50% but it’s not light enough to float. The airship has wings and engines and wheels and takes off and lands as passenger aircraft do. Imagine 20 pound weight, tie enough balloons to eliminate 10 of those pounds, the weight is much easier to lift. The aircraft do not fly at stratospheric altitudes and can navigate safely in as little as 2,000 feet or less. The prototype’s top speed is 200 km/h or 124 miles an hour and improved aerodynamics and engines from GE or Rolls Royce would no doubt make her faster, while three – four times slower than a jet it uses a fraction of the fuel to travel the same distances. A cargo gondola can carry over 160 tons of freight. A passenger gondola offers wider floor plans than jet’s, a 747 is 240 inches wide (20+ feet) a passenger gondola can be over 25 feet wide and windows the size of house windows because cabins don’t require pressurization and open floor plans means no coach style seating.
While the antiplanner has argued passengers are not willing to sacrifice speed. Never the less; A craft that can do 150 mph+, no cramped leg room seats and potentially carry 100-200+ passengers means distances of less than 500 miles are whittled down to no more than 3.5 hours way shorter than the 12 hours on a bus, the six hours by car. The big advantage is efficiency. There’s no need for any new construction or infrastructure; blimps have to be anchored, dynalifters do not. Other than storage depots, they run on the same runway as any plane and do so on shorter ones.
@antiplanner, I’m not sure how the quip over protests made it in there. If I were you, I’d remove it. China is boiling with protest including all sorts over the building of things like these rail lines. This is often spoken about by China experts.
Anyway, Dan Richard is probably doing what we all tend to do, we tend to only see the bits that fit what we like.
At the time of Cali’s referendum, China had a handful of HSR projects that were being constructed. There wasn’t just one because those at the top decided to go after this sort of thing. Within 5 years another dozen were underway.
How does China do it?
a) Centralized decision making == power in the hands of a few
b) They had almost nothing are were dirt poor; now they’re much wealthier and have the means
c) China’s a huge country
d) China’s freight lines – running steam well into this century – didn’t have capacity for more trains.
They had the room, fresh money ( especially since much is printed ) and Beijing was on-board.
Mr. Richard sees what he likes, building all these lines. What he doesn’t want to see is that debt from building these lines alone is a bubble that could sink the Chinese economy for a generation. It’s that insanely big.
What he also doesn’t want to see is that the centralized power is being used for evil things, like putting people in reeducation camps because they’re not Han. What he doesn’t want to see is that much of that mileage was built in hopes of making the non-Han areas of China easier to control, suppress and “Han-ify”.
And it’s not just about the Han. The south and the north of the core are very different. The south has a history of aligning with “outside powers”. Which of course means they have a history of being their own boss, not cowtowing to Beijing. A driver in building these lines is a bit of a prayer by the bureaucrats in the north that this line will tie the two together. It won’t. But what else can they do?
And then there’s the question of how much of this is really high speed rail. A lot of the lines have speeds that top out around 100MPH. That’s HSR?
And the central problem is that in modern times there are 2 types of quality work in China –> export quality ( decent to really good ) and China quality ( cut ever corner you can ).
”
For just 2 billion dollars, The airports around the Bay and Los Angeles area could buy 747’s and carry 3 times as many people……….Assuming 747’s even are capable of taxiing or riding those runways.
” ~ lazyreader
I wouldn’t get too hung up on the type of plane uses. 737s are going for what? $150mm? You can have a fleet of those flying all over the place all the time. Of course Cali already has to do that. And they didn’t have to buy the planes. They just run the airports and pay for it with user fees. And as Europe has shown us, they don’t even have to run the airports.
That does remind me that, IIRC, there was a variant of the 747 built for JAL, 747SR, for flying as an air shuttle between Osaka and Tokyo. Chew on that one, despite all those world class high speed trains, Japan saw such a ginormous growth in air travel that Boeing designed a 747 for JAL to fly 30, 40-something times a day between Osaka and Tokyo, each time carrying 500+ passengers.
Which circles back to China. Mr. Richard gives people no context . If you think the growth of HSR in China is insane, check out the growth in domestic air travel. It makes the HSR trains look useless.
It’s also worthwhile to point out that a lot of these projects are make-work projects, intended to absorb a lot of the low-skilled labor that is migrating to the large cities. It’s basically intended to forestall the slowing of the Chinese economy, which is already occurring. Many of these projects are not, by themselves, socially desirable. In fact, many have become easy targets for corruption and graft. But as long as they keep the plebs busy they can deflect attention elsewhere.
”
On busy routes in large conurbations, streetcars and trams are still very viable, indeed better than buses. What advantages would buses have on such a route?
”
a) Modern buses have 2 to 3 times as much seating as a modern streetcar. If you’re in a pedestrian oriented environment, which is the whole intention of these things, being able to sit down for 10 minutes is a blessing modern streetcars rarely afford.
b) In the US, trams cost 2 to 6 times as much as __COMPARABLE__ Bus Rapid Transit lines. There’s a huge advantage of with the same money being able to build rapid transit on 3 corridors instead of just one. Hell, that’s huger than huge.
”
Second, it didn’t have to worry about lawsuits, which also delayed the California project, because Chinese citizens don’t dare sue their government.
” ~antiplanner
I totally misread that one. The first time. In my mind sue and protest were the same.
Sueing is not the same as protesting. I was wrong; it’s a much different claim.