The Antiplanner’s latest case against high-speed rail is now available in the form of reports published by a variety of think tanks. The reports are pretty similar, so download the one for your state if you see it, or a nearby state if you don’t see yours. The short (6-page) reports make the main arguments; the long (30-page) ones get into the nitty gritty.
Colorado (Independence Institute): Long report or short report
Florida (American Dream Coalition): Long report or short report
When Obama announced his “high-speed rail vision” — actually, a group of six disjointed rail networks — the Antiplanner predicted that the 17 states and hundreds of cities not on the network would begin lobbying to have those gaps filled in. The biggest gap is between Kansas City and California — outside of the Pacific Coast, none of the states in the West are on the map at all.
Planners to the rescue! The metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) for Reno, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City have agreed to put up $60,000 each to hire lobbyists to promote high-speed rail to their cities. They’ve asked the MPOs for Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Denver to join them in their “Western High Speed Rail Alliance.” Naturally, the planners in Phoenix support the idea, though I haven’t heard whether the “management committee” approved it during its recent meeting.
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Chairman Oberstar and the leadership of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee want to spend $500 billion on surface transportation over the next six years. This is a huge increase over the $338 billion authorized over the last six years.
Page 4 of the plan’s executive summary “provides $337.4 billion for highways.” But, in fact, only $100 billion of this is dedicated to highways; most of the rest is in “flexible funds” such as CMAQ and the Surface Transportation Fund that can be spent on either highways or transit. Nearly $100 billion goes for transit, and $50 billion goes for high-speed rail. The remaining $12.4 billion goes for safety programs.
The Federal Railroad Administration published its guidelines for state high-speed rail grants yesterday. At the same time, the American Dream Coalition published the Antiplanner’s report on why Florida should not build high-speed rail. Similar reports will soon be published by various think tanks in other states.
This noon, the Antiplanner giving a presentation (9 MB pdf) on high-speed rail at the Heritage Foundation. For once, I prepared the presentation in advance and even typed in the text Do not cialis sildenafil set an unrealistic goal which you know is impossible to achieve. The seed powder is administered through nose during nasya karma to reduce cheapest cialis uk headache. Eat fruits and vegetables more, as they contain antioxidants that help keep order cheap viagra try over here arteries open. This sexual condition is characterized by the inability to get and keep optimal erection viagra samples during intercourse. of my narrative. It presents some new information and some information that has previously been mentioned on this blog but was not in my 2008 report on high-speed rail. Enjoy.
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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.
The Congress for the New Urbanism is holding its annual convention, which means it is time once again for the New York Times to get suckered into publishing a story about how rail transit spurs development. The Antiplanner calls bullshit on that.
The article opens with a heartwarming tale of how light rail turned a dusty cow town in Texas into a thriving, New Urban community. Naturally, the writer never mentions the tax-increment financing that supported this redevelopment.
The Congress for the New Urbanism is having its annual convention in Denver, so some California New Urbanists chartered two private rail cars to get there. The 35-hour one-way trip cost $1,400 each, about $1,200 more than airfares.
Flickr photo by SP8254
The bragged about how they chose a “sustainable” way to travel. What a wonderful example for the rest of us! If only ordinary people had the time and money to spend 35 hours and $1,400 on a trip that would cost about four hours and $200 on a plane. The Denver Post says that at least some of these New Urban planners work for the government, so they have time and money to blow. Heck, since they are New Urbanists, they effectively all work for the government since so little New Urban development is actually built for the market.
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Flickr photo by Train Chartering & Private Railcars
As it happens, the Antiplanner once rode the Silver Solarium, the car featured in the article, on an Amtrak trip from Los Angeles to New Orleans. I haven’t taken the time to digitize my photos from that long-ago time, so you’ll have to be satisfied to see how the car looks today. Riding in a dome car, even one without all the luxury frills of a private car, is to me the pinnacle of travel. But that doesn’t make it sustainable.
Some readers seem to think I have an ingrained hatred of trains. Nothing could be further from the truth. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, I used the train as my exclusive mode of travel outside the Pacific Northwest. I made many trips to Washington, DC by train. I was over 30 years old before I flew in an airplane for the first time, and that was only because I was going to Alaska, which you can’t get to by train (while there, I rode both the Alaska Railway and the White Pass & Yukon Route).
If the United States had a true national high-speed rail network, I could see myself taking the train to DC now. Portland to DC is about 2,800 miles, which would be 20 hours in a 140-mph train (which is approximately the average speed of trains whose top speed is 220 mph, the speed the California High-Speed Rail Authority aspires to). That could be enough to get me to stop flying, especially if the train was timed to arrive in DC at, say, 8 in the morning.
