For decades prior to President Obama, the federal government invested only $4 billion to upgrade a 437-mile High Speed Rail line for passengers in the Northeast Corridor (Washington-NYC-Boston). Meanwhile, less than $1 billion of federal funds upgraded the remaining 22,000 rail miles.
Early in 2010, the Obama Administration sent $8 billion from the economic stimulus package directly to intercity passenger rail corridors that are designated to ultimately achieve High Speed Rail (HSR) status. He also directed $5 billion to Amtrak, who will primarily use the money over 5 years to address its maintenance backlog. By far, $13 billion is the largest ever federal funding of U.S. intercity passenger rail. His actions suggest a poetic bookend to President Lincoln who authorized construction of the transcontinental railroad amidst the Civil War. America’s first black President, whose mantra is “Change We Can Believe In“, is upgrading intercity passenger rail amidst two wars and a great recession. So what’s not to like?
THE DISTRESSING STATE OF 22,000 MILES OF U.S. RAIL ROUTES
U.S. rail routes, to an overwhelming degree, are owned by freight train companies and to a lesser degree, by commuter transit agencies. By law, freight train companies and transit agencies lease tracks to Amtrak. Though more overpasses and underpasses separating rails from roads are welcome, higher speed is not required for freight trains or commuter trains. More importantly, leasing fees from Amtrak are relatively low. Hence, freight train companies and transit agencies have little incentive to upgrade routes for high speed travel.
That partly explains why, excluding the Washington-NYC segment and a short Rhode Island segment owned by Amtrak, passenger rail routes are plagued with any combination of Slow Zone factors:
• sharing curvy, bumpy tracks with slow freight trains and commuter trains
• too many places where autos cross train tracks
• trains traveling in opposite directions sharing a single track
• capacity limiting the number of passenger trains per hour
• antiquated trains, bridges, tunnels & traffic control signaling that can’t support high speeds
• people and animals wandering onto unfenced tracks
Excluding the Northeast Corridor, it is common for Amtrak trains to average under 50 mph over their routes and run only 1-4 trains daily with lousy on-time performance. As distressing as these issues are for Amtrak trains, they are fine for freight trains and tolerable for commuter trains.
Aware of these systemic issues impacting Amtrak service, President Obama, smartly positioned his $13 billion investment as a High Speed Rail Kickstart to several systemic upgrades and a couple new projects that would ultimately spur an Interstate HSR System as comprehensive as the Interstate Highway System. In mid-2010, Congress added $2 billion from the federal transportation budget.
FUNDING INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS “SHOULD” BE THE TEMPLATE TO FUND INTERSTATE HIGH SPEED RAIL
President Eisenhower has the legacy of kickstarting our Interstate Highway System in 1955-56 and witnessing the commercial aviation switch from shorter distance turboprops to longer distance jets in 1958. Since then, the federal government has invested an inflation-adjusted $1.35 trillion for interstate highways. It has also invested an inflation-adjusted $450 billion in national aviation. As a result, our Interstate Highway System and Federal Aviation System helped vault America to global superpower while transforming our lifestyles, land-use and energy-use in ways unimaginable. Now we can’t imagine a great America without them.
Despite America’s love affair with interstate highways, from a cost-per-passenger perspective, many projects in rural states were not cost-justifiable and some projects in states with large metro areas were gold-plated. Thus, spending $1.35 trillion of taxpayer money to build 50,000 miles of interstate highways required political horse-trading sustained over decades.
Such horse-trading between urban and rural politicians was commonplace regardless of political party. Here’s an example. Many Congressmen objected to an interstate highway project in Boston called the “BIg Dig.” Since that uber-expensive project benefited drivers to Boston from other parts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and Connecticut, there would be no problem getting congressional funding votes from the Northeast. Meanwhile Congressmen in sparsely populated Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah also needed congressional votes for their lightly-used interstate highway and airport projects. So Congressmen horse-traded funding votes across states and across party lines.
Using the cost of interstate highways as a partial guide, we need an order of magnitude more than $15 billion to build an Interstate HSR System. Yet it seemed that stars were aligning to build it in earnest.
Original plans for the Interstate Highway System completed in 1992. By any reasonable definition in 2012, that work is finished. Amtrak already runs one sub-par Northeast HSR line that operates at a profit, growing patronage and compliments Rapid Transit. Thus, America has a major proof point that HSR works. Thousands more rail miles can be upgraded to support HSR at a cost far less than new Interstate Highway or lanes added. For these reasons and many more, most states that contain or are part of large urban corridors, want a larger percentage of transportation funds directed towards Rapid Transit, HSR and Interstate Highway maintenance, rather than Interstate Highway new construction or lane additions.
When Obama was elected President, a nearly equal number of Democrat and Republican congressmen, governors and mayors supported HSR projects that most economists and the Institute for Civil Engineers say we need. Thus, HSR projects would spread construction jobs around like Interstate Highway construction did for all states, even in Hawaii. The timing seemed right and even the federal deficit didn’t seem too big a hurdle.
In FY2010, the federal government collected over $2 trillion in taxes. If we invested $10 billion per year, it would represent 1/2000th of our federal budget. Thus, spending $10 billion/year on HSR has no meaningful impact on the federal deficit and is significantly less than the $47 billion spent on Federal Highways and $16 billion spent on Federal Aviation per year. That $10 billion/year spent on HSR would create nearly a half a million jobs. With so many Amtrak routes needing upgrade, new routes and potential jobs while benefitting existing freight and commuter train routes, HSR funding should be perfect for urban-rural, bi-partisan horse-trading.
Unfortunately, HSR horse-trading is harder to come by due to the power of having or not having strong industry lobbyists and too many neophyte, extremist Congresspersons dominating the political agenda.
HIGH SPEED RAIL KICKSTART UNDER HEAVY THREAT
The $15 billion kickstart is a threat to two powerful industries who want to cut HSR off at the knees. For reasons I explain in Part 4 of this article, those industry lobbies believe that a “Green Transportation Trio” of electric-powered cars, rapid transit and HSR will significantly reduce oil and coal consumption.
For years, oil and coal lobbies funded think-tanks (Cato, Heritage and Reason) who frown upon Green Transportation. Prior to the Obama Administration, their efforts were sufficient to limit HSR to the Northeast Corridor and constrain the growth rate of Rapid Transit. Nor was America investing much in battery technology and charging stations to make electric cars viable.
When President Obama bailed out the American automotive industry and stipulated that more hybrid and electric cars be part of their future, he fractured the close-knit relationship between the auto and oil lobbies. He also used recovery money to kick-start private investment in battery technology. When allocating recovery funds towards Rapid Transit and HSR, he spoke of cutting oil company subsidies and suggested that we build more sustainable (“non-oil” and “clean coal”) energy for a smart electric power grid. Obama’s actions invoked a spiteful response from the oil and coal lobbies in the form of higher funded anti-HSR think-tanks and Tea Party politicians elected in November 2010.
Before I go any further, I want to be clear that this article is not a critique of the Republican Party as a whole, since the party has a long track record supporting new transportation infrastructure, including Amtrak. I limit my critique to the Tea Party because their “political football” opportunism concerning transportation investment has dangerous implications for our nation. We don’t need more highway bridge failures like the one in Minnesota in 2007.
Hybrid-Electric Cars and Rapid Transit can defend themselves against political attacks. With GM and Chrysler bailed out by the government, and Toyota, Honda and Ford leading the industry towards electric-hybrid cars, U.S. automakers have no alternative to going green this decade. Though Transit is dependent on the cumbersome federal funding process, over several decades it has cultivated millions of voting commuters to defend its interests.
The story is quite different for Interstate HSR. It has no experienced constituency outside the Northeast to defend its interests and is overly dependent on the cumbersome federal funding process. Throw in the federal deficit and that makes Amtrak/HSR a convenient political football to toss.
Tea Party politicians need not agree with Cato, Heritage and Reason think-tanks on every issue. But to receive campaign funding from oil and coal lobbies, they too must be anti-HSR and mischaracterize HSR as a waste of taxpayer money.
HOW THE HIGH SPEED RAIL POLITICAL FOOTBALL GOT TOSSED
In America, transportation project funding is requested by each state’s governor. But nothing happens until the U.S. House of Representatives approves federal funds to cover 50% to 80% of major transportation projects. The U.S. Senate accepts, modifies or rejects the bill proposal. Once a version of the bill makes it through the U.S. Senate, it requires the President’s signature or veto. In the case of HSR, lets assume he signs the bill, even if watered down, because the President first proposed to increase HSR funding. Federal funds are then placed in a transportation budget.
Using the budget as a ceiling, the President informs the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) how much of that congressionally-approved funding to award. The U.S. Secretary of Transportation selects state applications to be awarded funding and their amounts. Then each governor, which is often different from the original governor who requested it, decides whether to accept the money. Assuming a governor accepts award money, additional engineering studies must be completed, public input solicited and construction contracts bid upon. Provided no lawsuits introduce major delays, shovels finally break ground. This process often takes 2-4 years from U.S. House of Representatives vote until to groundbreaking.
In 2010, $13 billion of American Recovery Act funds represented a unique opportunity for the President to bypass Congress and shave 12-18 months off the process. But even with $2 billion more from Congress, $15 billion was only enough to “properly” kickstart 3 HSR projects. If Obama chose that approach, 90% of the funds would have landed in states that voted for him, giving other politicians plenty of attack fodder. If he spread the recovery funds to more states having shovel-ready projects, then Conventional Speed Rail projects would suck away valuable funds from High Speed Rail projects. The most shovel-ready HSR project in one state picked up a new Tea Party governor who might turn down money for political reasons.
Trying to be non-partisan and fair, yet kickstart as many jobs as possible on approved projects, Obama used a mixture of approaches.
Pro-HSR critics lashed out at his mixture approach for too many Conventional Speed Rail projects. Anti-HSR critics made up lies and half-truths to stop or delay High Speed Rail projects. One opportunistic Tea Party governor even created a website to Stop The Train. That was just the warm-up. With millions of people out of work, three Tea Party governors turned down $3.6 billion in USDOT grants for shovel-ready intercity passenger rail projects that were studied and applied for by their predecessor governors and state DOTs — demonstrating the worst in political football.
USING AMTRAK AND HIGH SPEED RAIL START-UPS AS CONVENIENT WHIPPING BOYS
Trains can only run as fast, frequent and dependable as their routes permit. As mentioned earlier, Amtrak mostly runs on freight and commuter rail routes that it does not own. Even its best route, the Northeast Corridor, has issues. NYC-New Haven and Boston-Providence segments NOT owned by Amtrak, are loaded with Slow Zones that repeatedly cause delay ripples throughout the corridor. The NYC-Washington and Rhode Island segments owned by Amtrak, rarely causes delay. Whenever there’s a passenger train delay in the Northeast Corridor, news media are quick to blame Amtrak as a whole. Confined to a 2-3 minute time slot, news media don’t take extra time to specify which Slow Zones are causing delay and need upgrades.
Here’s another unfair HSR criticism that does not involve Amtrak. A Washington Post columnist attacked California’s HSR project for starting in mid-state farmland, then extending to Fresno and Bakersfield. He equates it to Alaska’s “Bridge to No Where.” Living 3000 miles away with a great DC Metro system and good Amtrak service, its easy for the Washington Post columnist to sit in his ivory tower, blind to the health costs of extra congestion, smog and traffic accidents to California residents.
Illustrating a lack of homework on the subject, the Washington Post columnist did not mention that airlines have been cutting Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area service to the Central Valley because the short flight (under 400-mile) economics no longer fit their business models. He conveniently overlooked that California HSR used the same construction start approach as the Interstate Highway System, which began in Kansas and Missouri cornfields for a faster construction timetable, then built in each direction towards large cities. He also ignored that Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, Merced and other growing cities in California’s Central Valley are forecast to add 10 million people by 2030. The Central Valley already has significant traffic congestion and the nation’s worst transportation-related smog.
Worst of all, the columnist omits mentioning that the alternative is to increase auto traffic from Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area passing through two steep mountain passes to the growing Central Valley. Thus, it would be even more expensive carving another 6 lane freeway through mountains for more traffic congestion, smog and accidents. Lastly, he failed to mention that by using wind, biofuel and solar energy to generate electricity for the HSR system, California can significantly reduce its foreign oil consumption.
When evaluating options to address this long term transportation, energy and health challenge, the California Department of Transportation under both Democratic and Republican governors clearly understood that a No Transportation Build Option does not exist. Instead, the two Transportation Build Options are as clear, as they are diametrically opposite:
A. Spend less taxpayer funds to take 2 lanes of land that divert passenger traffic growth to HSR thereby, REDUCING foreign oil consumption, smog, CO2 and traffic accidents.
B. Spend more taxpayer funds carving mountain sides and acquiring more land for 6-8 more super-highway lanes, thereby INCREASING foreign oil consumption, smog, CO2 and traffic accidents.
Even in the state most dominated with highway culture, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury, Sacramento Bee and San Diego Union newspapers and state voters carefully weighed those two options over several years. They endorsed and Californians voted for the HSR Build Option in a $9.9 billion bond measure.
The shameful lack of homework by a Washington Post columnist who failed to illuminate what drove state transportation planners, news media, politicians and voters is common to other news media around the country. Most formulaically announce that a HSR corridor is up for funding, then give airtime to an anti-HSR source without a corresponding amount of airtime for a pro-HSR source. The coverage boils down a soundbite that confounds more than it illuminates.
Some news media realized they were had by anti-HSR sources and now disclose back-channel funding to politicians citing reports by anti-HSR think-tanks, as rationale to kill HSR projects. But this type of coverage has been too little, too late.
TIMID HIGH SPEED RAIL LEADERSHIP BY MANY GOVERNORS AND CONGRESSPERSONS
Understanding the lack of insightful media coverage, most governors who submitted High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) construction applications in 2010, reduced the scale of their HSR funding requests, even after engineering studies confirmed that larger scale was merited for high-traffic, high population growth corridors. Other governors only requested a few million dollars for more HSR engineering studies. Those same governors had no problem asking for a larger amount of federal funding for more super-highway construction — a safe political choice that does not require leadership.
The 2001 U.S. High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program Map is a grim illustration of how political football crippled leadership for new transportation infrastructure whose benefits the news media have yet to trumpet.
When you click on the HSIPR Program map to see a larger version of our investment, ask yourself why glaring gaps remain in so many high-traffic, high population growth corridors. Why is there no HSR connection between the heavily populated Northeast and Midwest? Why didn’t fast growing Texas and Arizona apply for construction funding? In the fast growing Southeast, why does HSR construction funding stop in Charlotte, rather than down to the larger travel destinations of Atlanta, Orlando and Miami? What about Las Vegas to Los Angeles?
LEADING NATIONS ARE BUILDING HSR AS STRATEGIC 21st CENTURY INFRASTRUCTURE
A lot of smart people worldwide have studied HSR pros and cons. The vast majority conclude that public benefits justify the public costs to build, even amidst the global recession. Unlike America, other leading nations are on pace to complete comprehensive intercity HSR networks by 2020-26 and many developing nations will have HSR networks by 2030.
Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, India, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela are investing single, double, and triple-digit billions of dollars. Those investing single-digit billions are spending a higher percentage of annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on HSR than America, in one case as high as 8% of GDP.
Given the huge financial investment, there must be even bigger motivations to complete intercity HSR networks between 2020-30. I address those motivations in the next two parts of this article.
