From Crosscut.com
Obama’s Fast Train to Sprawl
An economist is skeptical about the goals and benefits of Obama's rail vision.By Knute Berger Crosscut.com, Guest Writer, 8-23-09
 |
|
 | |
| Courtesy All Aboard Washington. | |
|
Harvard economist Edward Glaeser is skeptical about high-speed rail as an economic stimulus strategy. The Obama administration has laid out a plan for investing in corridors around the country, including the Vancouver, BC to Eugene, OR stretch in the Pacific Northwest, a route pushed by groups such as the Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center. Indeed, so happy about the president’s proposals is Cascadia’s executive director Bruce Agnew that he told me recently that Obama is “the best president for rail since Lincoln.”
Blogging for the New York Times, Glaeser’s own analysis (using a hypothetical link between Dallas and Houston) suggests costs will likely significantly exceed benefits. Another conclusion is that such large undertakings won’t have the hoped-for stimulus effect. He writes: “There is an iron rule of infrastructure that it is impossible to build massive projects wisely and quickly. Serious rail projects take years to build, and it is impossible to tell whether that spending will come during a recession or a boom.”
High speed rail can stimulate growth, however, especially if it provides access to cheap land. Intermediate stops along high speed rail corridors can bring previously remote communities within the commuter shed. Which causes another problem to rear its head: that high speed rail can actually create more sprawl.
Glaeser also points out that the most extensive study of 30 years of intracity rail in 16 cities (including Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Portland, San Francisco, etc.) suggests that in-city rail can reduce car trips to central business districts (good for the carbon footprint and congestion), but that there’s no guarantee that rail lines like Sound Transit’s new link light rail in Seattle will generate significantly greater densities. In fact, for rail projects between 1970 and 2000, some cities (e.g. Baltimore, St. Louis) actually saw population and density declines along rail routes because rail itself fails to reverse suburbanization, and in some instances might enable it.
Glaeser suggests this should make us skeptical about the power of rail, intercity and well as intracity, to change broader land use patterns, which many rail proponents argue is its chief benefit. Rail is not necessarily a magnet that reverses suburban sprawl by generating higher urban densities. The costs of making rail work this way are high, the social and economic engineering complex, and the benefits mitigated.
Knute Berger is Mossback, Crosscut’s chief Northwest native. He also writes the monthly Gray Matters column for Seattle magazine and is a weekly Friday guest on Weekday on KUOW-FM (94.9). His new book, Pugetopolis: A Mossback Takes On Growth Addicts, Weather Wimps, and the Myth of Seattle Nice, has just been published by Sasquatch Books. You can e-mail him at mossback@crosscut.com.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
I toured most of the newer light rail lines in California a few years ago, including some that had been in place for a decade or more. Many were largely devoid of new development around stations, especially on lines that followed old freight rail corridors -- areas of low density and low economic expectations.
Link light rail is built to serve urban centers and urban villages, areas where redevelopment is much more likely to occur when the economy recovers.
I would question use of the term "sprawl" as applied to high-speed rail, however. Fares on such a service are likely to be too high to allow daily commuting on longer trips, such as Centralia to Seattle. And if HS rail stimulates transit-oriented redevelopment in existing communities along the i-5 corridor, in areas already designated for urban development, it's really hard to call that sprawl. To read more: http://personalmoneystore.com/auto-loans/auto-financing/
"Would you pay $1,000 so that someone, probably not you, can ride high-speed trains 58 miles a year? That's what the Obama Administration's high-speed rail plan is going to cost every federal income taxpayer in the country. One thousand dollars per taxpayer is only the beginning . Count on adding $400 for cost overruns. Taxpayers will also have to cover operating losses: Amtrak loses $28 to $84 per passenger in most of its short-distance corridors. At first glance, President Obama's enthusiasm for building a high-speed rail network linking major cities seems like a wise move. On closer inspection, however, it is clear that the plan would cost taxpayers billions of dollars and do little to reduce traffic congestion or improve the environment. Although every taxpayer would share the cost of these trains, high-speed rails are not about serving the common people. Instead, they are aimed at the elite. Japanese and French high-speed trains are attractive to tourists, but they're not heavily used by local residents. Residents of Japan and France and average ride their bullet trains less than 400 miles a year.
http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/Research/hsr_corridors_2009_LV.pdf
It's unclear why he would choose something that's not proposed rather than something that is: perhaps the fact that the costs exceed the benefits is a key reason why Dallas-Houston is NOT a proposed route? That's a not-so-wild guess.
In addition, his conjectures for why HSR is desirable are flawed. He avoids the most-obvious and oft-cited, which is that it would improve business travel between cities. His "environmental analysis" ignores the fact that traveling inter-city via rail leaves a smaller carbon footprint than car or jet travel. Finally, his analysis derives from studies of INTRA-urban rail, not INTER-urban rail.
Basically, his post is useless.
One, the trip costs (time and money) of all other modes are higher than for rail.
Two, the infrastructure cost of rail is lower than adding the same capacity to a highway, or air.
If you don't have that, then no amount of smoke and mirrors will obscure the fact that a relatively large number of non-users are supporting a comparatively few users.
I use Amtrak once in a while, when my trip costs work out AND I have a wild hair for a train ride. Used to work for the railroad, by the way. But I am also fully aware that my ticket is partially bought by the taxpayers. If I had to pay full-cost, I probably would not ride as while I like riding the train, I don't like riding it that much...especially when the $*$^% falls down on the schedule.