Posted on 06/09/2010 6:19:25 AM PDT by Willie Green
Two hundred years ago, New York state and city leaped ahead of the rest of the country economically with the construction of a publicly financed, inter-city transportation project called the Erie Canal.
Today, the city and state are part of a megaregion called the Northeast, which competes with other megaregions in this country and the world. Is there an inter-city transportation project that would allow the Northeast today to gain advantage the way New York State did in 1817?
High-speed rail may be that project. If trains zipped between Boston, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington at average speeds of 160 mph plus, with local service to smaller cities as well, the Northeast would have a leg up on Chicago, Seattle, or Los Angeles and help it keep pace with London, Shanghai, and other world cities that are proceeding with similar investments.
For the past two years, Amtrak, a dozen states, Washington DC, eight commuter railroads and three freight railroads, the Regional Plan Association, and The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, among others, have been preparing an initial Northeast Corridor Infrastructure Master Plan. It's an impressive document. The estimated $50 billion in improvements would upgrade infrastructure along the entire line and, for example, lower travel time from Washington DC to New York by 20 to 30 minutes. The coalition is asking the Federal Railroad Administration for $18 million for an Environmental Impact Statement.
But despite its merits, the report does not call for or even consider true high-speed rail.
Recently a graduate planning studio class at the University of Pennsylvania, led by Robert Yaro, RPA President, and Marilyn Taylor, Dean of the School of Design at Penn and an RPA board member, have come up with a plan for true high-speed rail in the Northeast. It includes new tunnels under Long Island Sound and taking over highway median right-of-way. It's a plan that, as Daniel Burnham said, thinks big and has the power to "stir men's blood."
Under this plan, two new dedicated high-speed rail tracks would be built from Washington DC to Boston. Trains traveling from DC to New York would take only 90 minutes versus the current top time of 2 hours and 45 minutes. New York to Boston would take 1 hour and 45 minutes instead of 3 1/2 hours. Capacity would exist for 10 to 12 high-speed inter-city trains to travel along the new line each hour allowing for an expanded mix of both high-speed, inter-city, and commuter rail trains in the corridor. The huge boost in capacity would free up track space for commuter railroads in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York to accomodate their expected growth in rider demand.
True high-speed rail service, the plan estimates, would revitalize center cities like Hartford by concentrating growth there and helping make possible an environmentally friendlier and more pleasant lifestyle. People could use cars less and bicycles and transit more. The plan paints a picture where the Northeast leverages its already extensive investment in mass transit and commuter rail to create a true high-speed system that both enhances local connections and improves on them. The estimated cost - $98 billion - is conceivable.
The plan is appealing in its boldness and apparent feasibility. North of New York City, for example, rather than attempting to carve out new tracks through the existing highly congested Northeast Corridor along the Connecticut shore, the high-speed line would travel east by tunneling beneath Long Island and then travel under Long Island Sound through an imagination-capturing 20-mile, three-tube tunnel to New Haven. From there, it would travel along existing rail right-of-way to Hartford before diverting to Boston along the median of I-84, in one fell swoop obtaining much of the corridor for new dedicated tracks. South of New York, tracks would follow along a mix of existing passenger and freight right-of-ways, and new tunnels.
In preparing this report, Penn faculty and graduate students were aided by top transportation and economic development professionals. Scholars from both the United States and the United Kingdom participated in developing the studio's recommendations, giving its recommendations real credibility. The kind of true high-speed service envisioned in this report should be considered under the Environmental Impact Statement the Northeast coalition is about to undertake.
Virtually all of our competitors in the industrialized world have already built or are planning new high-speed rail systems. Even developing countries, including Brazil, India, Indonesia and Morocco, are moving ahead with projects. But there is an argument for moving incrementally toward high-speed rail, rather than leaping there. Former Amtrak and New York City Transit president David Gunn gave a convincing pitch in an interview six years ago with me that the nation would be better off upgrading its current train service to merely fast speeds, before attempting true high speed rail.
But we should at least consider it.
There is no question in my mind that there is a need and demand for true high-speed rail in the Northeast. Maybe it's time for another great leap forward. Or maybe a combination of hops, skips, and jumps will do the trick.
If the trains from NYC to DC and DC to NYC were one way and dumped into their related water ways, I could support this idea.
EPA studies kill these things before they ever get started.
Pay for your own toys without spending tax money.
The Erie canal shipped freight. Moving commerce will always improve your economy. If moving people fast on high speed rail would improve your economy then Europe and Japan would dominate the world already. The fact is our private rail is more efficient at moving freight then their rail. In fact Europe moves most of its commerce by trucks on highways. Europe has a lot to learn from the U.S. in moving commerce. The problem moving people by rail in the U.S. is that rail is competing with highways. You would have to triple the price of gasoline and charge sky high tolls to get people travel by rail. This is what Europe and Japan do.
We have airplanes if one wants to go fast. We are to spend untold billions to save an hour? As long as it’s not tax money, fine. Otherwise it’s Amtrak 2.
Moving commerce will always improve your economy. If moving people fast on high speed rail would improve your economy then Europe and Japan would dominate the world already.
That's a silly objection.
Business commuters ARE commerce.
And since when has Japan become an example of a non-competitive economy?
I keep saying, don’t give this bunch any bright ideas about rebuilding the Erie Canal...
‘the high-speed line would travel east by tunneling beneath Long Island’
BIG DIG 2-—the Sequel.
So Willie, does you band play any songs other than “Loco-Motion” (Little Eva 1962)?
I just dream of making the northeast corridor as “competitive” as possible. We'll all be SO much better off.
Yes, our nation would be "SO much better off" if we shot ourselves in the partisan foot and starved the northeast corridor into economic collapse and submission.
/sarc
(Good grief... no WONDER "the Stupid Party" can't get elected in this region.)
If you are only moving people you will not improve your economy. It is silly to compare the Erie canal to high speed rail. One moved freight and helped to industrialize America. The latter moves people only and has limited ability to improve the economy. This article was trying to compare the two in which there is no comparison.
It is silly to compare the Erie canal to high speed rail.
It'silly to imply that settlers didn't migrate westward as passengers on the Erie canal.
Freight may have been shipped back east, but it was people who were moving west.
Correct. They moved. They didn't commute. And the freight lines followed them.
I keep saying, don’t give this bunch any bright ideas about rebuilding the Erie Canal...
Hey! Thanks for the inspiration!
I just found a Great YouTube for that also!
“In preparing this report, Penn faculty and graduate students were aided by top transportation and economic development professionals. Scholars from both the United States and the United Kingdom participated in developing the studio’s recommendations, giving its recommendations real credibility.”
“Scholars” = Marxism impaired members of the Academented Nomenklatura.
“Penn faculty and graduate students” = appeal to Ivy league aura of infallibility.
The basic premise needing examination is whether AMerica should be crammed into a seething mass of UberUrban development?
Huge urban areas are dependent on centralized large government. That is what differentiates America from Europe.
We are decentralized, land owning, sovereign citizens.
Europeans are subjects acted upon by their Ubermenschen in the agencies of their multitudinous levels of government.
IMHO, America is best served by a historic demographic, not crime ridden “Urban Paradises” like NYC (America’s finest example of Big Sh*tty run amock).
And, let us not forget the many smaller, but all too real examples of the socialists “Big Sh*tty end game. I refer, of course, to “The Debacles in Blue” - Detroit, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and America’s ultimate pool of urban cess, New Orleans.
Correct. They moved. They didn't commute. And the freight lines followed them.
The only reason they didn't start to commute on the canal was because someone built high-speed rail. THAT was when it became easier for people to travel back and forth across the mountains on business.
The Box Tops ain’t got time to take a fast train.
I think you are missing my point. Moving people only will not benefit your economy. Rail use to move freight as well as people. Then the federal highway bill was passed along with the U.S. mail switching to air planes that killed passenger rail. The Erie canal mostly moved freight and that was its primary mission and why it was built. Building “high” speed rail will shift some people out of airplanes but its impact on travel and commerce is minimal. And will never have the economic impact that the Erie canal had. If you really want people riding trains again then work on ending the Federal Highway bill. Force the government to sell the highways to private investors and let them pay for the roads with tolls. Private railroads would then activate their long abandoned rails and start shipping freight and moving people again.
BS. People moved, period.
They did not commute. The rail passenger travel was rare and was in mixed consists of freight with minimal passenger cars and RPO's.
Back and forth across the mountains on business travel was done by a very, very small few and even they did not do it on a regular enough basis to warrant more passenger cars.
High speed trains were more accommodating to vacation travel than business travel the same as airline travel now is more for people visiting family and pleasure than conducting business.
The business traveler kept then and keeps things now barely going during the off season.
Well, those trains in those big cities were all private companies and privately built and run. After WWII the transit lines were taken over by the government.
The internet is starting to make commuting to work obsolete.
I now work at home two or three days a week.
It would be silly to spend tax money to build commuter railroads. If unsubsidized private industry thinks they can make a profit at it, let them try.
The free market, unencumbered by government planners, will find the most productive uses for capital. Let’s give it a chance to work.
You make a good point! (Except the foot shooting part)
Gasoline is heavily taxed to produce revenues which support many projects above and beyond roads and highways.
We should heavily tax train tickets to pay for railroads.
Then we can treat train tickets the same way we treat gasoline. Whenever we need to generate extra revenue, we can simply add a tax to train tickets.
I kind of agree with you but the gas tax is not enough to pay for the highways anymore. It hasn’t been enough for about ten years now.
I now work at home two or three days a week.
It would be silly to spend tax money to build commuter railroads.
The vast majority of Americans shun monastic lifestyles and prefer social contact with their coworkers.
The free market, unencumbered by government planners, will find the most productive uses for capital. Let’s give it a chance to work
Been there, done that.
Wall Street invested in a bubble and it cost us a Trillion dollars to bail them out.
No, no thanks... I'm not gonna get swindled by that "let the free market do it" crap again.
If I gotta pay taxes, I at least want to get some new trains out of the deal.
Paying taxes to bail out bozos a lot richer than me is stupid.
Stop trying to be practical !
The fact that this boondoggle would be another huge tax parasite on the backs of the people is immaterial !
(Bravely marching backward to socialist utopia bump.)
The Box Tops ain’t got time to take a fast train.That song was about snail mail.
I've got a present for brother,
Choo choo train
And I'm just dyin' to see my dear old mother,
Choo choo train,
So don't slow down 'til you see my home town
Choo choo train, choo choo train,
I know you're not a jet aer-e-oplane,
But you see my baby's waiting at the station,
So give me just a little more acceleration,
Choo choo train. Yeah!!!
I got me a one way ticket home,
Choo choo train,
All my wild oats, choo choo, done been sown,
Choo choo train,
So don't slow down, 'til you see my home town,
Choo choo train, choo choo train,
Can't you see the poor boy's going insane?
Choo choo train, choo choo train,
I got to see my baby one more again
Choo choo train
“No, no thanks... I’m not gonna get swindled by that “let the free market do it” crap again.”
Maybe deep in your heart your a Democrat?
“If I gotta pay taxes, I at least want to get some new trains out of the deal.’
Sorry, but your hobby is just too expensive.
Maybe deep in your heart your a Democrat?
No, I'm a true, America First!, grassroots conservative.
That "free market" mantra is globalist/libertarian/neocon gibberish.
Those ham-fisted partisan frauds will destroy the entire American Middle Class as long as it boosts the Down Jones and they can point a finger at the 'Rats.
Sorry, but your hobby is just too expensive.That's why you won't get elected to office,
“No, I’m a true, America First!, grassroots conservative.
That “free market” mantra is globalist/libertarian/neocon gibberish.”
Long ago the word “liberal” used to mean what we now call “conservative”.
Now it seems you would like to redefine the word “conservative” to mean “socialist”, as long as the socialists build new train lines!
George Orwell would certainly be amused.
Unfortunately for your dreams, government at all levels is currently broke, so you will very likely have to get by with existing trains.
“Sorry, but your hobby is just too expensive.”
“That’s why you won’t get elected to office,
so who gives a rat’s patoot what you think?”
I won’t get elected to office because you are a trainiac?
I think a slightly better reason is because I won’t run!
“That’s why you won’t get elected to office,
so who gives a rat’s patoot what you think?”
Lot’s of elected officials have this attitude. Doesn’t seem to be working for them lately.
Long ago the word “liberal” used to mean what we now call “conservative”. Now it seems you would like to redefine the word “conservative” to mean “socialist”, as long as the socialists build new train lines!
You're the one practicing Orwellian revisionism.
History records that it was Samuel Ryan Curtis of Iowa (First Republican to ever serve in Congress) who initiated the legislation for subsidy and construction of the first transcontinental railroad. And it was the GOP's greatest president, good old Honest Abe himself, who signed that legislation into law.
Fast-forward 90 years or so and history will also tell you that it was Dwight David Eisenhower (another great, venerated GOP icon) who was the impetus behind federal construction of the Interstate Highway system.
So don't try to feed me that disingenuous libertarian propaganda about "laissez-fair" being conservative and infrastructue construction being marxist. It just plain isn't true.
The history you cite was all done in the name of national defense, not economic development, and happened to also have important economic impact.
A better example is the Erie Canal, which was done for economic development, and was a big success. Unfortunately almost all of the subsequent copycat canals were terrible failures, and led to several American States defaulting on debts during the crash and depression of 1837-42. And of course times, technology, and economics change. The New York State Canal System, the successor to the Erie Canal, is now subsidized by truck and car tolls collected by the New York Thruway toll road. Should we now also be taxing bus riders to subsidize train riders? I think not.
In spite of your scorn for the free market, I believe it is the best single tool we have for regulating economic activity. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out in his 1922 classic “Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis”, when the government builds things there is no mechanism for properly valuing the resulting capital goods that have been created. That is why mostly socialist economies are doomed to failure.
In the past our country was rich and could spend money without carefully considering the return on investment. Today that is no longer the case. Our country is now deperately short of funds, and we cannot afford to waste any more money on projects that won’t pay for themselves. Government-subsidized trains are an excellent example of what we can no longer afford.
In spite of your scorn for the free market, I believe it is the best single tool we have for regulating economic activity. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out in his 1922 classic “Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis”, when the government builds things there is no mechanism for properly valuing the resulting capital goods that have been created. That is why mostly socialist economies are doomed to failure.My scorn isn't for the 'free market' as much as it is for your feeble attempt to brand infrastructure development as "socialism".
Although government may be funding passenger rail systems, it is actually the private sector who will be building it, with value being established by competitive bid. There are MANY companies engaged in such business: Alstom, Bombardier, Siemens, JR Tōkai and others...
Heck, the "government" doesn't even build locomotives for Amtrak... they buy 'em from GE or EMD... private American companies.
Just think if that song were written these days. "My baby just sent a text message" doesn't seem to have the same lyrical quality.
President Reagan and Coach Wooden were known to have written many letters to their wives. One day (unfortunately), we're going to hear about someone who will be lauded for all the texts he sent to his live-in girlfriend.
They'll be considered pillars of romance and writing with gems like "Do u know how gr8 u r?"
“Although government may be funding passenger rail systems, it is actually the private sector who will be building it”
Our government buys military equipment from an assortment of private companies, but that doesn’t make our military a capitalist enterprise.
When the government expends public funds to build and operate an enterprise, that is a socialist enterprise, no matter who the equipment is purchased from, and no matter whether you call it “infrastructure” or not.
The case where the government only offers subsidies to private business for the construction of an enterprise is less clear. If there are also government subsidies for the ongoing operations of the enterprise, then it is economically equivalent to a socialist enterprise.
Some socialist enterprises, like the Erie Canal or the New Jersey Turnpike, may prove to be very successful; but in general it is an unproductive way to organize an economy. In general socialist enterprises are sinkholes that suck up public money, and stay alive due to political influence rather than economic efficiency.
Our government buys military equipment from an assortment of private companies, but that doesn’t make our military a capitalist enterprise.
Oh, so now you're going to rant and rave about our military being "socialist"????
Some socialist enterprises, like the Erie Canal or the New Jersey Turnpike,
???
The Erie Canal and New Jersey Turnpike were "socialist enterprises"????
ROTF-PIMP-LMAO!!!! That's a hoot!!!
I bet you must think that the Grand Coulee Dam was a pinko-commie plot... LOL!!!
"Josef Stalin made us build it"
Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Because railroads came along and took their business.
Railroad building was often subsidized and the railroads worked well -- until regulation and motor transport did them in.
Whether we need to subsidize railroads now is another question, but historically government canal or railroad or highway building has had a positive impact on economic development.
“Oh, so now you’re going to rant and rave about our military being “socialist”????”
I don’t rant and rave; I’m not nearly as talented at it as you are.
What you say is interesting. The railroad boom that started about 1830 may have contributed to the 1837 crash by adversely affecting canal revenues. In a similar way the automobile boom of the 1920s contributed to the great depression by adversely affecting the horse farm economy.
Which still suggests to me that government should be reluctant to make economic investments because it is difficult to pick a winner. As with canals, it is easy to get the timing wrong and fund yesterdays winner and todays loser ... like passenger railroads!
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