America wrong continent for High-Speed Trains
Today the White House released a plan to invest anther $53 billion in High-Speed rail.
The New York Times headlines this "U.S. Plays Catch-Up on High-Speed Rail", admiring High-Speed trains in China and Europe. Basically, the American Left argues that since Western Europe and China have high-speed rail, and since they believe that Western Europe and China have better economic policy than the United States, we should emulate them and build fast trains.
I often argue that European style policies will not work in America because of demographics and cultural differences. I can understand that not all readers are convinced that Americans are that different from Europeans. However, I hope every reader accepts that the U.S is geographically different from Europe and Asia.
High-Speed train countries Spain and France have 3 times higher population density than America. China has 4 times higher, Germany 7 times higher, Japan 10 times higher, South Korea 15 times higher and Taiwan 20 times higher population density than the U.S. Germany is more densely populated than New York state, and China more densely populated than California.
Countries that like America have a lot land compared to people, such as Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and Australia have not made any large scale investments in high-speed trains.
Let me illustrate this graphically. I take the total high-speed miles from The International Union of Railways, and plot the density of the high-speed-rail network with population density.
4.bp.blogspot.com
The United States is not an outlier as the White-House suggests, the U.S is exactly where our population density would predict. Only after President Obama's plan will the U.S become a outlier, a country with more High-Speed Train that population density would predict (the figure after Obama's plan is my estimate based on White House material).
High-Speed trains are not only expensive, they are slow when compared to air-travel. Take one of the least crazy high-speed train projects, connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. The White House estimates are that this trip will take 2 hours 40 minutes. The same trip by commercial flight takes 1 hours 20 minutes. Even if you add an extra one hour for security check, the trip is faster by air (you also have to drive to the airport, but the same is true for trains).
After the first terrorist attack against high-speed trains, the security advantage would diminish. If we really wanted to and had an extra $53 billion over, we could invest in flying faster, in making the security process more effective, or (most sensibly) improving the high-way system.
Another fact Liberals ignore is that air-travel is cheaper in the U.S, costing about half per mile of what it does in Europe (perhaps due to economies of scale and higher competitiveness).
Investing in High-Speeds trains is likely a "White Elephant", a massive visible project that gets politicians attention, but is a bad deal for tax-payers. I hope we are not building it just to fulfill juvenile fantasies of making the U.S more like Europe.
super-economy.blogspot.com
Tino said...
1. They are not just planning to build in the most dense areas of the U.S. Look at this map:
media.npr.org
2. The population density of the North-East as a whole, the most dense area of the U.S (including New Jersey, Connecticut, New York) is still only half of Germany.
The remaining areas where they are planning to build, such as California, the South, Texas, Nevada, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, are even lower.
3. Some countries subsidize Aviation gasoline, but the U.S taxes it, according to Wikipedia at 19 cents per gallon currently.
4. I agree that trains will never be as much of a target at planes, because trains are less scary (although they are still high-profile, and you can still de-rail them). But it's enough with one terrorist attack to introduce a security check.
The question is not if it's cheaper, I am sure it is. But Obama's claim is that there will be no security at all, so people will save time compared to flying. I will bet you that they will introduce security once terrorist target the trains.
Al-Quaida has previously targeted mass-transit and sub-ways, so I doubt if trains are off-limit.
5. If this was cost-effective, they wouldn't need to subsidize it with $60 billion. Even cheap slow passenger trains in the U.S in the most dense areas have been losing money every year for the last few decades. There are just too few areas in the U.S where it makes sense economically for millions of passengers to take the train rather than flying/driving.
super-economy.blogspot.com
And even in the denser countries
"...Of course, if the Chinese do finish their system, it is likely to require operating subsidies for many years - possibly forever. A recent World Bank report on high-speed rail systems around the world noted that ridership forecasts rarely materialize and warned that "governments contemplating the benefits of a new high-speed railway, whether procured by public or private or combined public-private project structures, should also contemplate the near-certainty of copious and continuing budget support for the debt."
That's certainly what happened in Japan, where only a single bullet-train line, between Japan and Osaka, breaks even; it's what happened in France, where only the Paris-Lyon line is in the black. Taiwan tried a privately financed system, but it ended up losing so much money that the government had to bail it out in 2009..."
washingtonpost.com |
