Posted on 02/08/2010 2:03:29 PM PST by SeekAndFind
High-speed rail has emerged as the Obama administration’s signature transportation initiative. While advocates hail the project as a long-overdue commitment to the nation’s passenger-rail infrastructure, in reality it reflects a remarkable marginalization of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) at a time when bold federal leadership is crucial. The administration has chosen to elevate an expensive program targeted at an extraordinarily narrow segment of the traveling public over programs that could provide meaningful relief to tens of millions of travelers on a daily basis.
The last twelve months have shown convincingly that transportation issues can’t compete with signature Obama initiatives such as health-care reform, climate-change measures, or economic-recovery plans, even as our annual infrastructure deficit balloons into the hundreds of billions of dollars. More than one year into the Obama administration’s tenure, federal transportation policy languishes, a stepchild to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the victim of half-hearted attempts to promote mass transit as an alternative to the more nimble automobile.
Until January, the DOT served as little more than a spigot for federal dollars to fund a dubious jobs program. While the department justifiably bragged of its ability to get dollars out the door, many of these projects were low-priority — they had already been passed over by state transportation departments for higher-priority projects. No attempt was made to distinguish projects that might improve traffic speeds or reduce congestion from make-work curb replacements on local roads.
The administration’s high-speed-rail initiative is at least conceived as an actual transportation program with a goal of improving mobility between cities. But the plan’s stunningly narrow impact disqualifies it as a marquee program. Intercity rail currently accounts for less than 1 percent of all travel in the U.S. It will compete primarily with short-haul (less than 500 miles) air travel, but all air travel, including long-haul trips, accounts for just 10.8 percent of all travel in the U.S. Even if the project is a success, business travelers and well-heeled tourists will reap most of the benefits.
Meanwhile, despite the recession, the far more pervasive and economically debilitating problem of urban traffic congestion continues largely unabated. After brief retrenchment in 2008, congestion began to creep up again in the top 100 metropolitan areas in 2009. By 2030, the Reason Foundation estimates, 42 percent of the U.S. population will live in urban areas with severe congestion problems. Yet congestion barely registers on the national-policy radar screen, a holdover from the more aggressive leadership under former DOT secretaries Mary Peters and Norm Mineta.
Even if the DOT shifted gears to dramatically bolster urban mass transit, its chances of making a meaningful dent in traffic congestion outside of New York City and certain corridors in Chicago would be small. Mass transit accounts for just 1 percent of travel overall, and about 5 percent of commuting.
The Obama administration’s focus on narrowly targeted programs with a veneer of glitz and glam deflects policy discussion from trenchant challenges and game-changing reforms that could determine the course of the nation’s economic competitiveness. This is a potentially devastating outcome for the U.S. economy.
For example, the focus on intercity travel ignores festering problems that add significant costs to American businesses. Freight bottlenecks in Chicago disrupt the distribution of goods and services nationwide. Nearly $350 billion worth of goods travel by rail to, in, and from the Chicago region each year. By some estimates this activity accounts for nearly $5 billion of economic activity and $1 billion in output annually nationwide. Moving goods from the Port of Los Angeles to Chicago can take two days, but moving through Chicago can tack on two more.
Perhaps even more troubling is the Obama administration’s apparent unwillingness to tackle seriously our dysfunctional approach to funding the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure. Our nation needs to spend $170 billion per year more than we currently do simply to maintain the existing transportation infrastructure, and nearly $30 billion more than that to improve it. The gas tax, our principal means of financing our roads and bridges, is increasingly untenable: The inflation-adjusted value of the gas tax has fallen by one third since 1993. As hybrid and non-gasoline-powered vehicles take the road, the gas tax will become even less reliable.
Thousands of earmarks and outdated funding formulas have bred inefficiency, and two national commissions have outlined strategic blueprints for managing our way out. The DOT, however, is nowhere to be found in this debate or discussion. Indeed, the White House forced a time out so it could decide what it wants to do on its own schedule. The result is a “hold” on critical initiatives.
For example, the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission argued that drivers should pay a fee based on the distance they drive rather than the gas they consume. This would tie revenues to road use while creating a framework for moving our funding system to a more transparent user-pays approach. The technology is not quite off the shelf, but a national system could be implemented by 2020.
Local businesses in Chicago have partnered to identify specific regional projects that would resolve the freight-bottleneck issues. Major regional transit and road projects capable of being financed with private funds through public-private partnerships, leveraging scarce public resources, are languishing from uncertainty over federal rules and priorities.
Shepherding these initiatives and reforms through the process won’t be easy, and they are not quick fixes. They require knowledgeable and bold leadership. But they are crucial for putting U.S. transportation policy back on track.
After wallowing in political Never Never Land for more than a year, it’s time for federal transportation policy to move forward. Unfortunately, this won’t happen as long as the Obama administration continues to marginalize the DOT with low-impact projects that sidestep the major transportation challenges of the day.
The White House should cut transportation policy loose and let the DOT work with state departments of transportation and others with a vested interest in the transportation system’s success to identify challenges, prioritize policy responses, and develop proactive policy solutions to our nation’s challenges.
We can’t afford to let the DOT sit on the sidelines as Congress and the White House play out a tug of war over higher-profile issues and policy priorities while our national infrastructure languishes.
— Samuel R. Staley is Robert W. Galvin Fellow and Director of Urban & Land Use Policy at the Reason Foundation
HSR is a total waste of money.
Follow the money, as Lenin said.
The companies that make the cars, the rails, do the roadwork, etc have all given kickbacks to our legislators and/or their friends.
This is pure, unadulterated theft.
Ray in the Hood thinks so...
**LaHood defends mass transit push **
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/05/lahood_defends.html
“Government ‘promoted driving’ by building the Interstate Highway System”
He says, “People are getting out of their cars, they are biking to work.” High-speed intercity rail, such as the proposed bullet train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, is “the wave of the future.”
Dawg,
There has to be a reason to go from point A to point B before it makes sense to build a speed train between them. Not only is this going to be a superfluous curiosity, it will probably be a terror target.
Why is the USA not like Japan or Europe, which both have hihg-speed rails ( and please, no mentioning of Japan’s current economic malaise, they have had the Bullet Train since the prosperous 1960’s).
Because people don’t like them.
If you want high speed rail, there has to be a vast transportation network to get you to where you want go head to.
The reason why Japan’s HSR system works is because the trains stop at city centers which then have subways that FEED you to go to other places within the big cities.
Try for instance going from Osaka to Tokyo using their Shinkansen ( Bullet train ) and back. Minutes after you get to the HSR station in Tokyo ( or back to Osaka ), you can simply walk a block or two to take the ‘Chikatestsu’ ( subway) to get to your destination.
Can you do that with a high speed rail link between say, Orlando and Tampa or LA to San Francisco ?
Won’t work. Better to drive a car.
We are a VAST country unlike Japan. That is the main difference.
Whos going to want to take a ride for 2-3 hrs when you could be there in 30 mins by air and cheaper. Purely a make work project of graft and corruption.
Pray for America’s Freedom
We DON’T HAVE any money, unless we print more of it.
Is there any part of Mussolini’s timeline this fakir won’t follow?
When there are no gamblers in the private sector - the government steps into the abyss.
http://www.raken.com/american_wealth/other/newsletter/chronicle010306.asp
Among the robber barons of the Gilded Age, that period of vast expansion and industrialization which followed the American Civil War, the railroad tycoons deserve privileged attention. They were the motive powers behind the conquest of the American continent and the opening of one great national market for U.S. merchants and industrialists. Building and controlling the highways of American commerce in the 19th century, the railroad tycoons were the first to accumulate the huge personal fortunes so characteristic of the Gilded Age.
If there is a market for high speed rail and government gets out of the way, it will be provided by entrepreneurs!
IIRC, Japan Rail is privately owned and operated.
Suggestion: rent a car, and head West on I-10, I-40, I-70, I-80, or I-90. When you get back, explain the practicality of intercity passenger rail...
I rode them while there a few years ago for the MLB opener.
Couldn’t believe how clean they were.
Because the U.S. is many times bigger than Japan and Europe combined and our population is far less dense per sq. mile?
Oops! I see now that you were asking a rhetorical question.
Japan is a much smaller country geographically. Major cities are considerably closer to one another, compared to Major cities across America. The same holds true for Europe to a lesser degree (mileage wise). Also, Americans have a love affair with their cars.
So Called High Speed Rail has been studied by the Federl government at least twice before, starting in 1964, and was found to be a money pit. At least before they were not liberal morons that think that everyone will gladly forget their cars and ride it.
Just to see how crazy these people are go to the California High Speed rail site where they project that if it was in operation today, running between LA and San Fran, there would be 100,000 people a day riding it (that is so the rail commission could say that it would make money) That means that every 20 days you would have the entire gay population of West LA and San Franciso traveling from one city to the other.
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