Biden’s Senior Rail Moment

All during the debate over the 2021 infrastructure bill, President Biden kept talking about how much the country would benefit from high-speed rail even though there was no high-speed rail in his own version of the bill. He seems to be having another senior moment with his proposal to build a railroad from India to Europe via Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

The problem with this plan is there are 600 to 700 miles of Arabian Sea between India and United Arab Emirates. If you are shipping from India to Europe, once you transfer cargo from a train to a ship, you might as well run the ship all the way to Europe because it costs a lot less than transferring the cargo back to a train and running a train to Europe.

There are alternate, land-based rail routes, of course. It is possible to go from India to Europe on rails via Pakistan and Iran with a gap of perhaps 200 miles in Iran. But Iran isn’t on friendly terms with Saudi Arabia or the U.S. and Pakistan isn’t on friendly terms with India. A route via Russia, which would require rail construction across Afghanistan, is even more problematic.

India already has plenty of railroads, and there are rail lines from Europe via Turkey extending south through Syria (not exactly a friendly place either) and Israel and Jordan. The gap that remains would be across Saudi Arabia and UAE. I suspect there is a good reason for that gap: a lot of desert sand that sometimes likes to move around, covering up any rails or roads along the way.

This is supposed to be Biden’s answer to China’s road-and-belt initiative. It’s a stupid answer to a stupid initiative that hasn’t worked very well for China or the countries China has roped into it. Under that initiative, China loaned money to other countries to use for hiring Chinese companies to build roads, railroads, and other infrastructure. Many of the countries have not been able to repay the loans, leaving both them and China financially strapped.

Which part of this initiative does Biden hope to imitate with his rail plan? The part where a rich country loans money to less-wealthy countries that they can’t afford to repay? The part where the less-wealthy countries are obligated to hire contractors in the wealthy country? The part where less-wealthy countries build infrastructure they really don’t need and can’t use? Or the part where the wealthy country ends up writing off the loans as uncollectible?

When you only have a hammer, everything is a nail, and when you only think trains, everything (even the ocean) is a potential roadbed. We already have good transportation between India and Europe: ocean ships for most freight and air for passengers and time-sensitive freight. We don’t need to blow billions of dollars on a wacko attempt to imitate China’s failed policies.