Tag Archives: high-speed rail

In early 2016, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) published a 187-page report on interregional travel, which it defined as trips between 100 and 500 miles. To help publicize the report, the federally funded TRB placed a five-page summary in the May-June, 2016 TR News.

In response, rail advocate Vukan Vuchic, who is an emeritus professor of urban planning at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote a lengthy diatribe, published as a letter to the editor in the September-October 2018 TR News, complaining that the TRB report had a “negative tone” about high-speed rail. Vuchic’s case is weakened by the fact that he appears to have only read the five-page summary, not the entire 187-page report. Yet even that summary had plenty to say about high-speed rail, and much of it in the Antiplanner’s opinion was far too optimistic.

Vuchic charges that the report makes an “incorrect claim that HSR might only be feasible for the Boston-Washington.D.C., corridor.” In fact, neither the summary nor the full report made that claim, but the report did conclude, after many pages of lengthy analysis, that “In the United States, the NEC is unique in having many of the geographic, demographic, and demand conditions that European and Japanese experience suggests are favorable to public investments in intercity rail” and thus “presents far less uncertainty [than other corridors] with regard to the potential for passenger rail investments, including investments in high-speed service.” “Uncertainty” and “feasibility” are two completely different things.

Contrary to Vuchic’s heated letter, the Antiplanner would argue that the interregional transportation report spends far more pages on high-speed rail than makes sense for the United States. By the modern definition of high-speed rail — trains with top speeds faster than 150 mph — high-speed rail has zero market share in this country. Based on what we know about high-speed rail in other countries, it is fair to say that it will never be relevant here outside of the Boston-Washington corridor, and even there it is only “feasible” if we ignore capital and maintenance costs. Continue reading →

It seems like every article about a ridiculous high-speed rail proposal starts out with something like, “Imagine stepping on a train in Portland at noon and stepping off about two hours later in Vancouver, British Columbia.” What a great imagination you have, Andrew Theen of the Oregonian!

How about this: imagine stepping aboard a plane at Portland International Airport at 10 am and landing in Vancouver a little more than an hour later. You don’t have to imagine it because you can do it! One-way fares are under $150, which is a lot less than it would cost to build a high-speed rail line between the two cities.

Of course, someone is going to say that the downtown-to-downtown time of the train will be competitive with flying. But most people don’t live downtown anymore, so that is really irrelevant. Those who do can take light rail to the Portland Airport and the Skytrain to downtown Vancouver. Driving would be quicker, but no one who lives in Portland ever drives anywhere, do they? Continue reading →

The last time we looked at Brightline, Florida’s private moderate-speed rail line from Miami to West Palm Beach, it had killed three people before even opening for business. Since then it has killed five more. While you might think that people will learn not to cross the tracks in front of fast passenger trains, it turns out that freight trains on the Florida East Coast Railway (which owns Brightline) have consistently killed about two people per month for the last several years.

This helps explain why some Florida residents are vehemently opposed to Brightline’s plans to extend service to Orlando. So far, opponents have been unable to stop the train in the courts.

They appear to be doing better, however, in the court of financial opinion. Brightline hoped to fund the extension to Orlando (which will require the construction of new tracks between Cocoa and Orlando) with $1.15 billion worth of tax-exempt private activity bonds. The tax exemption would allow Brightline to pay lower interest rates. But Brightline was unable to convince investors to buy the bonds by its deadline of May 31. The U.S. Department of Transportation generously extended the deadline to the end of the year, but Brightline still has to find buyers. Continue reading →

“When you build a high-speed rail line,” says Washington governor Jay Inslee, “you are building a monument to optimism.” He is 100 percent correct except that he thinks that’s a reason to build it when in fact it is a reason not to build.

Inslee made the statement at a joint press conference with British Columbia premier John Horgan announcing that B.C. would contribute to the costs of a study of building a line from Seattle to Vancouver. Governor Inslee no doubt meant that spending money on high-speed rail represented optimism for the future of the Northwest. But what his statement really meant is that he is clueless about the extensive planning literature associating optimism bias with strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying.

The other half of Inslee’s phrase — monument — accurately describes the real purpose of high-speed rail. It’s not meant to be a mode of transport. Instead, it is a monument to the egos of politicians who get it built. Continue reading →

Finishing the high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles is now expected to cost $77.3 billion, says the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s latest cost estimate. This is a big jump from the 2016 estimate of $64.3 billion and an even bigger jump from the $25 billion estimated in 2000, which was the only one available when voters approved the project in 2008. Completion has also been pushed back from 2020 in the 2000 plan to 2029 in the 2016 plan to 2033 in the latest plan.

While the cost increase has gotten a lot of media attention, less noticed is the fact that this $77.3-billion plan is for trains that will go at “speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour” and “typically” take “under three hours” to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The 2000 plan called for trains going 220 miles per hour and taking two-and-a-half hours from LA to San Francisco.

Of course, 220 “exceeds” 200 and two-and-a-half hours is “under” three hours, but the softening of the language makes it clear that the authority doesn’t expect to meet the original 2000 targets. This is partly because of a 2013 law effectively limiting speeds in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. A further quibble is that the “under three hours” estimate is for non-stop trains, and most trains “typically” won’t go non-stop. Continue reading →