In a four-part article on the New York Times Economix blog, Harvard economist Edward Glaeser scrutinized high-speed rail and concludes that the benefits are overwhelmed by the costs. Part one focused on construction costs and concluded that true high-speed rail would cost about $50 million per mile.
Part two compared the costs with the benefits to users and calculated that, even using the most optimistic ridership numbers, the costs would be at least three times the benefits. Part three added in environmental benefits, and even with generous assumptions about those benefits concluded that total benefits still fall far short of the costs.
Part four asks whether high-speed rail would cause cities to become more centralized or if it would simply lead to more sprawl as distant towns effectively become suburbs of major cities. Glaeser takes the questionable position that centralization is a good thing, and he questions whether high-speed rail would contribute to that supposedly desirable outcome. But he concludes that, even if high-speed rail makes cities more centralized, the benefits of such centralization would still fall short of the costs of the rail projects.
Naturally, the rail enthusiasts are irate and have gone so far as to accuse Glaeser of lying about rail. The reality is that Glaeser (like the Antiplanner) “almost always prefer trains to driving.” If anything, he was too generous in many of his assumptions about high-speed rail.
With abstruse improvements & tax benefits, solar-electric modules accept now become downtownsault.org levitra prices added cost-effective. The solemn union of two hearts comes to downtownsault.org super viagra uk you of no use if the cause happens like that. Sildenafil Citrate is an exception dose for men who wish to know how to levitra generic get rid of dandruff. Step 2: invigorating spleen for diuresis is http://downtownsault.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2016-Outhouse-Race-Registration.pdf cialis 5mg tablets to promote the sexual health. One of the things that has the rail nuts upset is that Glaeser’s examples focused on a Dallas-to-Houston route, which (thanks to lobbying from Southwest Airlines) isn’t even on the Federal Railroad Administration map. They consider this “unrepresentative” of potential high-speed rail routes in the nation, pointing out that San Francisco transit ridership (which the consider an indication of potential high-speed rail ridership) is much higher than in Dallas or Houston.
But it is San Francisco, the nation’s second-densest major city, that is unrepresentative of the rest of the nation. If anything, Dallas and Houston are just about the best-case examples of potential high-speed rail lines. As of 2007, they are are the nation’s fifth- and sixth-largest urban areas, and they are located around 240 miles apart, an ideal distance for high-speed rail. San Francisco and Los Angeles, by comparison, are well over 400 miles apart on the planned high-speed rail route, meaning the California high-speed rail project has to be faster than any regularly scheduled high-speed trains in the world to be marginally competitive with flying.
Compare Dallas and Houston with some of the other FRA-sanctioned high-speed rail routes: Eugene to Vancouver? New Orleans to Mobile? Tulsa to Oklahoma City? St. Louis to Kansas City? These are, frankly, jokes compared with Dallas to Houston. If high-speed rail can’t work between two urban areas of 4.5 million people each, how is it going to work between urban areas of 1 to 2 million people each?
The rail nuts don’t want to hear Glaeser’s numbers because they fantasize the field-of-dreams myth, that building rail will “create the demand for the rail lines.” That may have been true in nineteenth-century America, when no alternative forms of transportation could compete with rail. But it wasn’t true in twentieth-century France or Japan (where high-speed rail carries only 4 to 6 percent of passenger travel), and it won’t be true in twenty-first-century America.
Building high-speed rail will be like standing in the chilly vestibule of a mid-winter Amtrak train in Chicago and burning million-dollar bills to keep warm. But that’s what happens when you base your transportation policies on the slogan from a Kevin Costner movie rather than on real data.
The Autoplanner:“almost always prefer trains to driving.â€Â
THWM: Yet your job is to prevent people from having that as an option.
highwayman wrote:
“THWM: Yet your job is to prevent people from having that as an option.”
Despite the odd lapse (e.g. his article on New York subways), Antiplanner is usually right about rail. The USA is a Big Country which means a lot of money need to be spent to link two places together by rail. Rail is often not competitive to airlines.
Antiplanner wrote:
“Compare Dallas and Houston with some of the other FRA-sanctioned high-speed rail routes: Eugene to Vancouver? New Orleans to Mobile? Tulsa to Oklahoma City? St. Louis to Kansas City? These are, frankly, jokes compared with Dallas to Houston. If high-speed rail can’t work between two urban areas of 4.5 million people each, how is it going to work between urban areas of 1 to 2 million people each?”
The gravity model says this: the number of trips between two places is proportional to the population of one, the population of the other, divided by the distance between them squared. Tusla and Oklahoma City may be small, but they are much closer together than Dallas and Houston. So the calculation needs to be done properly.
My take is that rail should be reserved for the east and west coasts, which is where the highest population density is.
So what’s your point, HSR wouldn’t be viable any where through Montana for that matter, though good local/regional passenger rail service is viable.
Though there isn’t even regular passenger train service between Dallas & Houston.
Mr.King you need to realize that the USA fails on the most basic levels.
http://tickets.amtrak.com/secure/content/atlas/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_current_Interstates.svg
On the contrary, Railwayman, the USA has the best freeway network in the world. Oh, some countries have built short highway strips (generally at crushing cost) here and there that measure up against the better roads we have to offer, but no other country with anywhere near our area has anywhere near our highway connectivity. A person can travel from Tucson through Salt Lake City through Omaha through Kansas City down to San Antonio back to Tucson without ever hitting a red light and potentially without ever slowing down below 75mph, assuming for the sake of hypothesis that sufficient fuel could be carried on board. That sort of mobility is unheard of ANYWHERE else in the world. With that kind of road availability, who the hell needs a train?
The interstate highway system has studied and proven military application, so it is within the legitimate purpose of government to fund from general taxation. At the local level, police and fire departments require a basic grid of arterial streets to function, so it is legitimate for local governments to fund THOSE out of general taxation. All other roads, rail, and air travel should be private and unsubsidized.
So LIMITED ACCESS roads can be public, but the street in front of your house should be private?
With that kind of road availability, who the hell needs a train?
The 1/4 of the population who doesn’t drive, which will be increasing in the future as the population ages. Those who want a choice. Those who want freedom. Those who can’t afford fossil fool, those who don’t like to drive, those who want to read a book while traveling, those who don’t want to put any more wear and tear on the crumbing infra that we can’t seem to want to pay for…
BTW, when I lived there the Autobahns were much smoother, more fun to drive, faster (save for rush hour), and cheaper to maintain as they built them right the first time. And I could hop on B19 or B13 with no problem to get to them, or to get somewhere else (like the train station).
IOW: Murrican exceptionalism bores me to f’n tears.
DS
Dan: At what cost? The Autobahns weren’t built on a cut-rate budget.
THWM: Obviously this is prospective, not retrospective. Nobody’s going to tear up roads that are already there. In fact I think we had this discussion here before. It would be up to the housing developer to create roads for the “last mile” to homes. Utilities have typically behaved in a similar (but not exactly congruent) way: they’ll pipe and cable you to the threshold between public and private property, but after that it’s up to you. That threshold merely moves to the arterial street.
The other big private road industry would be commuter highways, which are probably the first things you’d see if the sea change began. (since quasi-private commuter highways exist now, generally government-owned but administered on a pay-per-use basis the way fully private highways would be.)
ROT:“Compare Dallas and Houston with some of the other FRA-sanctioned high-speed rail routes: Eugene to Vancouver? New Orleans to Mobile? Tulsa to Oklahoma City? St. Louis to Kansas City? These are, frankly, jokes compared with Dallas to Houston. If high-speed rail can’t work between two urban areas of 4.5 million people each, how is it going to work between urban areas of 1 to 2 million people each?”
ws: You’re basing your opinions solely off of population alone. Eugene to Vancouver passes through more cities than Dallas to Houston that I am aware of. Eugene, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver…I think we should factor in not only the population of the cities, but their particular economies.
Dane & highman,
Do guys have a point [ever]?
I could de-construct your individual supposed arguments.
But, what are you advocating?
Sure, it would be nice to walk up to 2000′ to a station & walk the same to work.
What are the odds of work & home being on that route?
And what about either changing or the potentiality?
Do I want to walk 10 minutes+, each day, in cold, rain, snow, heat, etc.?
I could de-construct your individual supposed arguments.
Not if your past qualityless comments full of sentences lacking objects are any guide.
Nonetheless, 99.9999999975% of other people don’t have a problem understanding my comment, esp as I made it simple with the short declarative sentences. Now go take a rhetoric class so you can stop embarrassing yourself.
——–
Dan: At what cost? The Autobahns weren’t built on a cut-rate budget.
Pssssst: I wrote ‘cheaper to maintain’ above.
That is: not built by the lowest bidder and then not funded for maintenance. Drive one sometime and wonder how we put up with ours (psssst: Murrican exceptionalism).
DS
You’re faux free-market types pushing covert socialism, you just want to tread on others.
Dan: “The 1/4 of the population who doesn’t drive…”
Can I get a source on this statistic, please? Also, does this include those too young to drive? How about those too old to drive?
I did read that approximately 90% of households have at least one automobile.
Thanks in advance.
4THWM: Please read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Frank, this isn’t Cox’s “Transport Policy” group.
If you want to play in the mud, don’t complain about getting dirty.
“…you give people a reason to get out
of their cars. Coffee, great music…”
Frank, look at the US Census age breakdowns. Then look at the projections in 10, 15 years.
DS
So this 25% of non-drivers does not yet exist?
So we need transit for the old. Although, riding a light rail–with all its jerks and lurches–proved too tricky for my 72-year-old relative.
“If you want to play in the mud, don’t complain about getting dirty.”
Hmm, so this is a game to be played with you, THWM? To me it’s a discussion. And as usual, you’re flinging dirt.
“…you give people a reason to get out
of their cars. Coffee, great music…â€Â
“And I think they’ll, they’ll just park and ride.”
Although, riding a light rail–with all its jerks and lurches–proved too tricky for my 72-year-old relative.
One suspects this is a better indicator of the quality of the familial gene pool or the inability to help an elder’s mobility than it is the quality of a transport mode.
So this 25% of non-drivers does not yet exist?
One suspects this is a better indicator of the quality of the rhetoric and analysis than it is an assessment of the population breakdown.
DS
“One suspects this is a better indicator of the quality of the familial gene pool…”
Yes, there is a genetic component to osteoporosis, which affects 28 million Americans. So go ahead, keep up the slurs, especially those aimed at the elderly you purport to defend.
The point is your logical fallacies and weak-*ss rhetoric. But I guess I’m just belaboring the glaringly obvious, for which I stand accused.
DS
Response to previous:
Dan, by accusing of “logical fallacies and weak”, that doesn’t make it so. Please elaborate & explain (w/facts), why, oh great one.
For that point: older people who don’t drive, should move to conducive circumstances. One cannot expect for transit to come them.
Anyway, for general discussion (late):
Regardless of hope, wants, preferences, in regards to rails (“I prefer, chooseâ€Â, just like gold silk shirts), sure, it would be nice if that was available. It is a question of cost-benefit, & payment, which includes covering true cost, vs, being subsidized by others (taxpayers). Hey, wouldn’t it be great if I could, get products paid by others? Public transit is not self-sufficient, even in NY, where most-many (SIC) transit riders reside. Despite that, high-density does not cover transit costs (????). Oh, you say highway. Well, if the gas-tax were raised by $0.40-.80, it would take care of it. That’s not considering the minimal, local cost of street, which Hi-man had has made a double standard, against [in addition to letting his abode burn). Hey, many taxes are unfair? You use—You pay., or others pay?
HSR in Montana? What kind of ludicrous example, to the extreme low density, is that? Example (loose): the avg person cannot go thru & excel thru 10 years of med school, therefore, highwayman should be euthanized. Well, there might be numerous other reasons for that.
Hman, no rail service, Dallas to Houston? So? Big indication that HSR is a no-go.
Dan, my past comments have no “qualityâ€Â? Please mention specifics? Often, when people counter facts or principles [steadfast, albeit unknown], they go for the supposed “jugular†insult, but have no content to their comments. Your odds, that you “sayâ€Â, 99.9….%, of people understanding, means that a billion+ have read this & have not had doubts. Well, I’m not sure how many readers you think there are, how many people don’t check back (re-read) & how many will necessarily comment on opposition points,…, but your perceptions clearly have shortcomings.
Also, Dan, 1/4 don’t drive. Are you twisting stats again? (as Frank pointed out) You are including who? About 90% of those eligible, do drive. There are more vehicles than licensed drivers. You do know that, Mr. Wizard. And many with a license don’t drive. The dif w/business vehicles is insig.
Dan, Re: Cox, you made specifics: What’s the objection: You went on, mud-play dirty. What is the “dirt’? You are not playing!