The Midwest High-Speed Rail Association (MHSRA, as distinguished from the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative or MRRI) has a web page that supposedly separates facts from fiction. In fact, this page plays fast and loose with the facts. Since many of the “fictions” that the group supposedly exposes are from the Antiplanner, I’ll take this opportunity to respond.
As you read through the MHSRA’s supposed list of fictions, keep in mind that the reports the MHSRA is reviewing were written in response to Obama’s and MRRI’s plan to boost the speed of Midwestern and other passenger trains on existing freight lines to 110 mph. The MHSRA wants to build brand-new tracks that will allow much higher speed passenger trains. Without making the distinction, it often conflates these two proposals, responding to criticisms of 110-mph trains by arguing that the criticism is wrong when applied to 150-mph or faster trains. In fact, proposals for 150-mph or faster trains have their own flaws that the MHSRA conveniently ignores because they were rarely mentioned in reviews of 110-mph rail proposals.
Supposed fact: Critics of high-speed rail are “advocates for the status quo,” meaning “gridlock, high fuel costs and severe pollution.” Reality: The critics cited by the MHSRA (Cato, Heritage, and Reason) all support devolution of federal transportation programs to the states, an end to all transportation subsidies, and cost-effective means of enabling mobility while protecting the environment. This is hardly the status quo and is arguably further from the status quo than advocates of high-speed rail.
Supposed fact (in response to a statement that the time for high-speed trains has come and gone): “The public, increasingly flocks to this clean and efficient form of travel.” Reality: Amtrak ridership grew when gas prices were high, but it has now dropped for nine months straight.
Supposed fact: Amtrak Acela’s share of the rail/air market between New York and Boston is 41%. Reality: The Acela doesn’t even have a 41% of the rail market between Boston and Washington — in 2008 it was only 31% (see p. A-5, physical page 23) — the other 69% was carried on conventional trains. So there is no way it could have 41% of the rail plus air market between New York and Boston. Not surprisingly, the MHSRA pretends that intercity buses don’t even exist, even though they carry more passengers in the Boston-to-Washington corridor than all Amtrak trains combined, and do so far more energy efficiently.
Supposed fact: The fact that high-speed trains in select European travel markets have nearly put air carriers in those markets out of business proves that high-speed rail is not obsolete. Reality: The cash-for-clunkers program proves that if you throw money around, people will pick it up. The fact that heavily subsidized high-speed trains manage to capture passengers away from relatively unsubsidized airlines doesn’t prove that high-speed rail is not obsolete — it only proves that if you subsidize something enough it will be used.
Supposed fact (in response to a statement that Amtrak trains are often late): Unlike Amtrak, high-speed trains will never be late. Reality: High-speed trains in Europe and Japan maintain on-time records by having dedicated routes and practically no freight trains to interfere even on mixed routes. The Obama/MRRI proposal calls for running high-speed (actually, moderate-speed) trains on the same routes as freight trains throughout the Midwest. Since the density of freight traffic on American railroads is far greater than on European or Japanese railroads, there is a much higher likelihood of interference between the two.
Supposed fact (in response to a statement that automobiles today are more energy efficient than Amtrak): Electrified high-speed trains are far more energy efficient than Amtrak. Reality: The Obama/MRRI proposal does not call for any electrified high-speed trains in the Midwest. Instead, it calls for boosting Amtrak trains to higher speeds. The MHSRA may have a different proposal, but that is not the proposal being discussed in the Cato report that the MHSRA is supposedly fact checking. Moreover, electric high-speed trains will only be more energy efficient if they are significantly lighter in weight than current trains and if they fill a significantly higher percentage of seats than Amtrak does — both of which are problematic.
Supposed fact: “Adding passengers to a train is done ‘with virtually no additional energy use’ while adding car travelers means more cars on the road, with their own additional costs and pollution.” Reality: The MHSRA is comparing apples with oranges, imagining that it can, with a wave of the hand, add passengers to train but assuming that the only way to get more people on a highway is to add more cars. In fact, the MHSRA has no more power to fill seats on a train than to fill seats in an automobile — meaning it can do both if it persuades taxpayers to subsidize them enough, but without subsidies, trains will be far less energy efficient than autos.
Supposed fact (in response to a statement that trains are expensive): “Trains fares tend to be cheaper than competing airfares, and even driving.” Reality: Advocates of subsidized transportation never count subsidies as a cost. As documented in this paper, passengers pay about 13 cents a mile to fly and 26 cents a mile to ride Amtrak. At an average of 2.4 people per car (the average in intercity travel), driving costs about 15 cents a passenger mile. So both flying and driving are cheaper than trains. Add subsidies and trains fare even worse: subsidies to airlines and highways average about a penny a passenger mile, but subsidies to Amtrak are 22 cents per passenger mile. High-speed rail will cost more than Amtrak. Without gigantic subsidies, there is no way that high-speed rail will be cheaper than flying or driving.
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Supposed fact: “Passenger trains are not the only mode of travel that receives federal subsidies.” Reality: Okay, this one is true. But a subsidy to airlines and highways of less than a penny per passenger mile does not justify subsidies to passenger trains of 22 cents per passenger mile or more. Let’s just get rid of all the subsidies.
Supposed fact: “In July 2008 Congress voted a $8 billion subsidy from the General Fund to the Highway Trust Fund, which had gone broke because the federal Motor Fuel Tax was not raised to cover highway expenses.” Reality: In July, Congress voted an $8 billion transfer from the general fund to the highway fund because Congress had recklessly overspent out of that fund on earmarks, public transit, and other programs not related to highways.
Supposed fact: “The taxpayer return on public investment in rail will be as great if not greater than it is with roads or airports because of the reduction of pollution and dependence on foreign oil that high-speed trains bring.” Reality: If you want to reduce pollution and dependence on foreign oil, focus on forms of transportation that people will actually use, such as electric cars and plug-in hybrids. High-speed rail carries just 4 percent of all passenger travel in France, and it is not likely to come even close to that in the United States.
Supposed fact (in response to a statement that no high-speed train in the Obama plan will ever cover its operating costs): “Acela trains already covers their operating costs” and California and Florida both project that their high-speed trains will cover their operating costs. Reality: A projection is not a fact. The Acela only barely covers its operating costs because it shares overhead with other trains that lose money and because it serves the densest, most heavily populated travel market in the United States. No other high-speed trains in the U.S. are likely to attract the fares or ridership of the Acela, which makes it unlikely that any will cover their operating costs.
Supposed fact (in response to a statement that less than 1 percent of travel in the U.S. will be on Obama’s high-speed trains): “This projection is based on current ridership numbers for regular Amtrak service.” Reality: This projection had nothing to do with current ridership numbers for regular Amtrak service. Instead, it was based on the often optimistic projections made by high-speed rail advocates like the MHSRA.
Supposed fact (in response to a statement that it doesn’t work in Japan or Europe): “The economies of those countries would come to a halt if the high-speed trains stopped running.” Reality: As documented in this report from the European Union, only 4 percent of French passenger travel, 6 percent of Japanese passenger travel, and no freight travel is by high-speed train. The French ride buses more, they fly within Europe twice as much, and drive twenty times as much as they ride high-speed trains. The Japanese ride buses almost as much, they fly within Japan more, and drive 10 times as much as they ride high-speed trains. End the gigantic subsidies to high-speed trains and the number of taxpayers who will thank you will greatly outnumber the riders who will have to find unsubsidized modes of travel.
Supposed fact (in response to a statement that very little freight in Europe goes by rail): “European countries have built separate, dedicated high-speed rail lines while keeping their other rail network for ‘low-speed’ passenger and freight traffic. High-speed trains are not the culprit.” Reality: In a sense, the MHSRA is correct: the culprit is not high-speed trains; it is central planning that has made European freight trains as inefficient as passenger trains.
Supposed fact (in response to a statement that there is a trade-off between taking cars off the road and putting trucks on the road): “The new tracks and better signals built for fast, frequent and dependable passenger trains will also allow for more — not fewer — freight trains getting across the country faster.” Reality: That’s not what BNSF Railway CEO Matt Rose says. According to Rose, passenger trains faster than 90 mph are incompatible with freight trains. Building new tracks for trains faster than 90 mph will not help freight trains. Improving existing tracks, which are mostly designed for 79 mph trains, to 90 mph will not do much to improve passenger service. Moreover, as this article notes, even California’s true high-speed trains “may prove disastrous for freight rail.”
For a lot of money, we can boost trains that now go a top speed of 79 mph (average speed of about 50 mph) to a top speed of 90 mph (average speed of 60 mph). That will increase Amtrak’s share of travel from about 0.10 percent to 0.11 percent. Or, for more than ten times as much money, we can build new tracks that will allow passenger trains to run at top speeds of 125 to 220 mph (average speeds of 90 to 140 mph). That will increase rail’s share of passenger travel to, maybe, 1 percent.
Is it a cost-effective form of mobility? No. Will it help protect the environment? No. Will it relieve congestion? No. Then why do it?
As this critic — an airline consultant (scroll down to “Today’s Math Question”) — observes, “a lot of this track-of-dreams stuff is postured not as a solution to the nation’s transportation problems.” Instead, “Rail is a magic, non-polluting, sustainable new-age solution.” And don’t question these claims or we will have to demonize you as an advocate for “gridlock, high fuel costs and severe pollution.”
The Antiplanner wrote:
> Supposed fact (in response to a statement that there is a
> trade-off between taking cars off the road and putting trucks
> on the road): “The new tracks and better signals built for
> fast, frequent and dependable passenger trains will also
> allow for more  not fewer  freight trains getting across
> the country faster.†Reality: That’s not what BNSF
> Railway CEO Matt Rose says. According to Rose, passenger
> trains faster than 90 mph are incompatible with freight trains.
The only long section of track actually owned and controlled by Amtrak is the N.E. Corridor between Washington Union Station and Penn Station in New York (and sections beyond, all the way to South Street Station in Boston, Mass.).
I suppose we can call the NEC medium-speed rail.
It’s interesting to note that Amtrak (and not the freight railroads that have trackage rights on the NEC, mostly Norfolk Southern but also CSX) forbids most freight trains from using its tracks except during overnight hours (roughly 10 P.M. to 6 A.M.).
So strange as it sounds, Amtrak and the Antiplanner would seem to be in agreement (though I doubt that Amtrak’s management and unions would ever want to admit to that).
> Building new tracks for trains faster than 90 mph will not
> help freight trains. Improving existing tracks, which are
> mostly designed for 79 mph trains, to 90 mph will not do
> much to improve passenger service. Moreover, as this article
> notes, even California’s true high-speed trains “may prove
> disastrous for freight rail.â€Â
As I understand it, freight trains will not be allowed on California’s high-speed rail network.
The big problem with their ‘fact sheet’, is that there are no references to what they are quoting. I can understand that to provide the references is annoying with paper reports, but the whole point of HTML is that it encourages linking to other web pages.
Antiplanner wrote:
“Supposed fact: The fact that high-speed trains in select European travel markets have nearly put air carriers in those markets out of business proves that high-speed rail is not obsolete. Reality: The cash-for-clunkers program proves that if you throw money around, people will pick it up. The fact that heavily subsidized high-speed trains manage to capture passengers away from relatively unsubsidized airlines doesn’t prove that high-speed rail is not obsolete  it only proves that if you subsidize something enough it will be used.”
Airlines, under international law, do not pay tax on their fuel. In the UK, which raises a lot of tax this way, this gives the airlines another £9bn per year. Is this a subsidy? What is the amount of (?) subsidy in the US airline business?
Antiplanner wrote:
“Supposed fact: “Adding passengers to a train is done ‘with virtually no additional energy use’ while adding car travelers means more cars on the road, with their own additional costs and pollution.†Reality: The MHSRA is comparing apples with oranges, imagining that it can, with a wave of the hand, add passengers to train but assuming that the only way to get more people on a highway is to add more cars. In fact, the MHSRA has no more power to fill seats on a train than to fill seats in an automobile  meaning it can do both if it persuades taxpayers to subsidize them enough, but without subsidies, trains will be far less energy efficient than autos.”
The difference, I would have thought, is that as more people are added to trains, the fuel efficiency (emissions/pax) improves sharply until a given yield is reached, at which point another carriage must be added, the yield collapses, and the emissions/pax rocket back up again. More people travelling by cars provides a more constant efficiency.
Antiplanner wrote:
“Supposed fact (in response to a statement that it doesn’t work in Japan or Europe): “The economies of those countries would come to a halt if the high-speed trains stopped running.†Reality: As documented in this report from the European Union, only 4 percent of French passenger travel, 6 percent of Japanese passenger travel, and no freight travel is by high-speed train. The French ride buses more, they fly within Europe twice as much, and drive twenty times as much as they ride high-speed trains. The Japanese ride buses almost as much, they fly within Japan more, and drive 10 times as much as they ride high-speed trains. End the gigantic subsidies to high-speed trains and the number of taxpayers who will thank you will greatly outnumber the riders who will have to find unsubsidized modes of travel. ”
They appear to have got confused with the numbers. 90 million trips in France, a country of 65 million people, means, on average, 1.5 trips per year each. Not very much for the amount of money sunk, then.
Antiplanner wrote:
“Supposed fact (in response to a statement that there is a trade-off between taking cars off the road and putting trucks on the road): “The new tracks and better signals built for fast, frequent and dependable passenger trains will also allow for more  not fewer  freight trains getting across the country faster.†Reality: That’s not what BNSF Railway CEO Matt Rose says. According to Rose, passenger trains faster than 90 mph are incompatible with freight trains. Building new tracks for trains faster than 90 mph will not help freight trains. Improving existing tracks, which are mostly designed for 79 mph trains, to 90 mph will not do much to improve passenger service. Moreover, as this article notes, even California’s true high-speed trains “may prove disastrous for freight rail.—
They are proposing new high-speed tracks, so the trains run on one set of tracks, and the freight on another. So one will not interfere with the other.
Antiplanner wrote:
“Supposed fact (in response to a statement that very little freight in Europe goes by rail): “European countries have built separate, dedicated high-speed rail lines while keeping their other rail network for ‘low-speed’ passenger and freight traffic. High-speed trains are not the culprit.†Reality: In a sense, the MHSRA is correct: the culprit is not high-speed trains; it is central planning that has made European freight trains as inefficient as passenger trains.”
The reason that so little freight goes by rail in the EU is that there isn’t much point. The journeys are much shorter than in the USA, and so moving freight by rail only adds to the cost of the product. British Rail tried this strategy, building large freight handling terminals, and the attempt cost them a shed-load of money.
CPZ:The only long section of track actually owned and controlled by Amtrak is the N.E. Corridor between Washington Union Station and Penn Station in New York (and sections beyond, all the way to South Street Station in Boston, Mass.).
I suppose we can call the NEC medium-speed rail.
It’s interesting to note that Amtrak (and not the freight railroads that have trackage rights on the NEC, mostly Norfolk Southern but also CSX) forbids most freight trains from using its tracks except during overnight hours (roughly 10 P.M. to 6 A.M.).
So strange as it sounds, Amtrak and the Antiplanner would seem to be in agreement (though I doubt that Amtrak’s management and unions would ever want to admit to that).
THWM: Even with the NEC there are streches of track that are freight only, even the Hell Gate Bridge has a freight on track.
CPZ:> Building new tracks for trains faster than 90 mph will not
> help freight trains. Improving existing tracks, which are
> mostly designed for 79 mph trains, to 90 mph will not do
> much to improve passenger service. Moreover, as this article
> notes, even California’s true high-speed trains “may prove
> disastrous for freight rail.â€Â
As I understand it, freight trains will not be allowed on California’s high-speed rail network.
THWM: Though the French do have a few TGV sets that only handle mail.
The Autoplanner:Supposed fact: Critics of high-speed rail are “advocates for the status quo,†meaning “gridlock, high fuel costs and severe pollution.†Reality: The critics cited by the MHSRA (Cato, Heritage, and Reason) all support devolution of federal transportation programs to the states, an end to all transportation subsidies, and cost-effective means of enabling mobility while protecting the environment. This is hardly the status quo and is arguably further from the status quo than advocates of high-speed rail.
THWM: Though Cato, Heritage & Reason have a ideological axe to grind.
Most Amtrak’s operations are pretty much PPP.
I have no problem with the street in front of my house, even though you guys have a problem with railroads.
I think your analysis is pretty solid overall. But to be fair – if the passenger rail is moved to a new set of tracks, that means that freight trains can occupy those “slots” on the network, which would mean we could run more freight trains on the now-less-utilized slow-speed lines.
johnbr said: I think your analysis is pretty solid overall. But to be fair – if the passenger rail is moved to a new set of tracks, that means that freight trains can occupy those “slots†on the network, which would mean we could run more freight trains on the now-less-utilized slow-speed lines.
THWM: Just keep in mind that the US has 100,000+ miles of rail line missing.
Even the UK has 10,000+ miles of rail line missing.
Francis King, you’re confused, but understandably. Airlines do not pay tax on fuel used for international travel. Domestic airline fuel is taxed. Since trains are being discussed for domestic travel, your objection does not apply.
Sure. But that’s not what the Administration proposed, not what the states proposed in the Midwest through the MRRI, and for that reason not what the Cato paper they’re responding to was criticizing. The MHSRA’s plan would have different possible criticisms than the current MRRI plan for the Midwest.
As the Antiplanner said:
John Thacker wrote:
“Francis King, you’re confused, but understandably. Airlines do not pay tax on fuel used for international travel. Domestic airline fuel is taxed. Since trains are being discussed for domestic travel, your objection does not apply.”
That’s interesting. In the UK, aviation fuel doesn’t attract any tax at all (except VAT – sales tax – for internal flights – I didn’t know that before). Petrol for cars is taxed at ridiculously high levels, at one time exceeding 400% tax. The usual argument given for this state of affairs in the UK is that airlines will buy aviation fuel in the neighbouring country – effectively a race to the bottom, and a substantial subsidy.
http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageExcise_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_000186&propertyType=document