The Antiplanner is an unabashed rail nut. My office walls are filled with pictures of trains and rail memorabilia. I’ve traveled at least a quarter of a million miles on Amtrak and Canada’s VIA. When I’ve visited Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, my preferred method of local travel has always been by train. I helped restore the nation’s second-most powerful operating steam locomotive, and my living room has the beginnings of a model railroad.

There is no doubt that, if high-speed rail worked, I would be the first to support it. But my definition of “works” is somewhat different from that of rail advocates, one of whom once told me that he considered a rail transit project successful if it allowed just one person to get to work a little faster — no matter how much it cost everyone else.

For me, “works” means that a project is cost-effective at achieving worthwhile objectives. “Cost-effective” means that no other projects could accomplish the same objectives at a lower cost. “Worthwhile objectives” might include reducing traffic congestion, air pollution, or energy consumption. Though high-speed rail advocates are gleeful about the prospect, I don’t consider shutting down competing air service to be a worthwhile objective.

This series of posts on high-speed rail has revealed at least twelve important facts.

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The 2005 environmental impact statement for California’s high-speed rail includes two alternatives to building rail: a no-action alternative and a “highway-air” alternative that proposes major expansions of both freeways and airports in the rail corridor. The highway component alone of this alternative was projected to cost twice as much as high-speed rail, allowing rail proponents to claim that rail is cheaper than roads (page 4-1).

But this alternative was a “straw man” designed to make high-speed rail look good. One reason for the high cost is that the alternative proposed to expand every freeway along the rail route, even highways that are not expected to be congested in the rail project’s time horizon. For example, the alternative adds one-third more capacity to freeways in the Central Valley that are expected to operate at only 92 percent of capacity in the no-action alternative (page 3.1-12).

On top of that, the highway-air alternative is more than five times as effective at relieving congestion than the rail project. Where high-speed rail is expected to take 3.8 percent of cars off the road, the highway-air alternative reduces congestion by more than 20 percent (page 3.1-12). This suggests that an alternative that costs only one-fifth as much as the highway-air alternative, or about half as much as the rail alternative, would be more comparable to rail.

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The costs are exorbitant and rising. The risks are staggering. And the benefits? Even if you believe the Authority’s optimistic assumptions, you pretty much need a magnifying glass to see them.

What are the benefits claimed for the rail network? Less traffic congestion, less energy consumption, less air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, economic development, and, of course, saving people’s time.

Congestion: With or without rail, the EIS predicts that highway congestion will be far worse in 2020 than it is today. With rail, highways parallel to the rail lines will have an average of 3.8 percent less traffic than if rail is not built (p. 3.1-12). Rail will do most on the L.A. to San Diego route (which will probably be one of the last segments to be built), taking 7.9 percent of cars off the road. It will remove 6.6 percent of cars on the Bay Area-to-Central Valley portion. Elsewhere the relief will be less than 3.5 percent.

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