Reason Foundation on High-Speed Rail

The Reason Foundation just published its analysis of California’s high-speed rail plan. The full study is also accompanied by a series of policy briefs on the effects of high-speed rail on congestion, greenhouse gases, and California finances.

“The current high-speed rail plan is a fairy tale,” says Adrian Moore, Ph.D., Reason’s vice president of research. “The proposal suggests these high-speed trains will be the fastest ever; the most-ridden ever; the cheapest ever; and will convince millions of Californians they no longer need to drive or fly. Offering up a best-case scenario is one thing, but actually depending on all of these miracles to happen simultaneously is irresponsible public policy.” Moore also has an op ed on the subject in today’s Orange County Register.

The actual study was written by Wendell Cox and Joseph Vranich. Rail transit advocates love to portray Cox as “Mr. Anti-Transit,” because if you aren’t for their very expensive version of transit then you must be against all transit. They have a more difficult time demonizing Vranich, as he wrote a 1991 book advocating high-speed rail and served as president of the High Speed Rail Association in the early 1990s. He also once served as Amtrak’s public affairs spokesman.
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The 144-page report attempts to do a “due diligence” analysis of the California high-speed rail business plan, which calls for private investment funding some percentage of the project. Cox and Vranich conclude that investors would be foolish to put their money into a project whose ridership projections far too high and cost projections are far too low.

In particular, they call the Rail Authority’s ridership projections “the most unrealistic projections produced for a major transport project anywhere in the world.” They also note that the average speeds called for in the plan “are not be achieved anywhere in the world,” and if California fails to achieve them the rail system will not compete as well with air service as planners claim. The report estimates that actual time from San Francisco to Los Angeles will be more than 3 hours and 40 minutes rather than the 2:38 projected by the Rail Authority.

Cox and Vranich estimate that the cost of the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles segment alone will be $40 to $50 billion, so the $9 billion in bonds voters will consider this November will cover less than a quarter of that first phase. The total system, they estimate, will cost $65 to $81 billion. Moreover, far from becoming a profitable operation by 2020, the Reason report concludes that operating the high-speed rail line will still be losing money well beyond 2030.

Tomorrow, the Antiplanner will present the thrilling conclusions to an eight-part series on high-speed rail.