The New York Times Sunday Magazine focused on infrastructure this week and included an article on California high-speed rail. The article included a chart comparing the fares or costs for driving, flying, or taking the high-speed train from Los Angeles to Sacramento.

According to the chart, the airfare is $100, driving is $50, and the train will be $55. That is exceedingly optimistic: the current Amtrak fare is $55, and most other high-speed rail lines cost more than the conventional trains.

But the chart leaves out a big cost: the subsidies. Subsidies to driving and flying are about a penny a mile, or about $4 for the trip from L.A. to Sacramento. But when the construction cost of the California high-speed rail system is amortized over 30 years and then divided by the projected annual passenger miles, you get a construction subsidy of 32 cents per passenger mile, or more than $120.

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Riders of Washington, DC’s Metrobus system are much more likely to be low-income minorities than users of the Metrorail system, according to a 2007 survey. The median income for Metrorail riders is $102,100, while the median income for bus riders is only two-thirds as much at $69,600; more than half of bus riders are minorities while three-quarters of rail riders are non-Hispanic white.

Back in the 1970s, public subsidies to transit were justified on the grounds that cities needed transit to serve low-income people who could not afford to own their own cars. That reason has been forgotten in the rush to build rail lines that will attract middle-class people out of their cars.

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Add Austin’s Capital Metro to the list of transit agencies that have gotten themselves into serious financial trouble because they insisted on building an expensive rail transit line. After blowing $300 million on a commuter-rail line and other questionable improvements, Capital Metro is heavily in debt and lacks the resources to fund bus and other planned expansions.

High-cost transit: Scheduled to begin operating in March, the tracks are built, the vehicles are not yet paid for, the system isn’t running, and no one knows when service will begin.

Just a few years ago, the agency had $200 million in the bank. But its CEO considered that a liability, not an asset, because “everyone in town thought we were rich, and they were coming after it.” He argues that blowing a bunch of money on unnecessary projects was necessary to protect the agency’s assets.

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True high-speed rail — trains going 150 mph or more on newly built tracks — would be “prohibitively expensive” in the United States, says Amtrak President Joseph Boardman. Testifying before the Illinois House Railroad Industry Committee, Boardman said that it makes more sense to improve existing tracks so trains can run at up to 110 mph.

“It’s really not about the speed,” Boardman reportedly said. “It’s about reduced travel times and more frequency.” He added that 110 mph “is double the national speed limit” of 55 mph on highways. Apparently he hasn’t heard that this national speed limit was repealed a mere 22 years ago. (Or maybe he is privy to a plan to re-establish this limit.)

Few media reports about high-speed rail note that a top speed of 110 mph works out to an average speed, including scheduled stops, of just 60 to 75 mph. Between New York and Washington, Amtrak’s regular Northeast Corridor trains, for example, have top speeds of 110 but average 70 mph, whereas the Acela has a top speed of 135 but averages less than 85 mph.

At today’s speed limits, most people can easily average more than 50 mph on intercity freeways, including stops for gas and food, so rail’s advantage is not that great — especially when you consider that your car will go when you want it, will take you directly to your final destination, and will be available for sidetrips along the way.

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The Obama administration believes in recycling, as shown by the so-called high-speed rail plan it announced last week. Below is a map of the plan, and below that is a map of the Federal Railroad Administration’s 2005 high-speed rail plan. As you can see, the proposed routes are identical. (The grey lines on the first map represent conventional Amtrak trains.)

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“History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas,” President Obama told Congress last night. “In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry.”

The rails meet. Many versions of this photo, such as the painting below from the U.S. Capitol, sanitize it by removing the bottles of alcohol.

Aside from the simple factual issue that most of the first transcontinental railroad was constructed after, not during, the war, most of Obama’s audience would have forgotten that its construction caused one of the first and biggest financial swindles of the nineteenth century. That scandal was the result of a simple fact: such a railroad made no economic sense in the late 1860s.

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RTD, Denver’s rail transit lobby group, claims that a poll shows that most voters support a sales tax hike to pay for its boondoggle FasTracks rail plan. Voters previously agreed to a 0.4 percent sales tax increase in 2004, but now RTD says they will have to double it to get the rails built on time.

The actual survey results reveal that this was a “push poll,” meaning the interviewer asked leading questions to get people to support the project.

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