Why A Bullet Train Is No Silver Bullet

I've never, until I read this article, heard the words "easy" and "airport expansion" used in the same sentence.

There are no easy answers to solving our transportation dilemmas and what I would hope to see, with the utmost respect, is Academia suggesting specific solutions. I have a hard time seeing the cancellation, let alone cuts, to the HSR as a good solution.

Dr. Moore, What specific initiatives could airport operators, regulators and elected officials do to make necessary airport expansion easier and faster to implement? How do they build the political will to overcome opposition to airport expansion?

In a former life, I worked in Manhattan, and often traveled to D.C. It was the ultimate in convenience to hop on the subway to Penn Station, often less than 20 minutes before the train's departure, and take a productive, pleasant journey on Amtrak to D.C. It would be interesting to know what percentage Amtrak captures, on the East Coast corridor, of people who would otherwise take a flight. I wouldn't be surprised if that figure were upwards of 30%. Since a large share of the travel from/to Southern California's Airports are to/from major destinations in Northern California, one could argue that HSR is quite a good investment for California, if, for no other reason,because the HSR is "one project" as opposed to trying to herd all the airports in Southern California to focus on a regional, if not a state, solution. I believe there are also opportunities to design the HSR system to link airports, a double benefit.

I believe that people and businesses in California might be willing to pay to make the additional improvements to the levies and the schools that aren't covered by the last election, especially if the state government is successful in actually making progress on the promises made in 2006.

In terms of security, I would hope that "the best and the brightest" are trying to figure out how to deal with terrorism at its root cause vs. trying to mitigate it at a never ending continuum of weak links in the transportation system.

Consider this a challenge - develop a model which calculates the time it would take to build the HSR vs. building airport capacity at all of the airports in California.

As a regional aviation planner in Southern California I thought that the article made several good points about the relative merits of a state HSR system compared to air travel. However I feel that several additional comments need to be made:

--A state HSR system would only substitute for a small fraction of current travel made by California air travelers. The system will have no impact on interstate or international air trips.
--A state HRS system would accelerate urban sprawl in the Southern San Joaquin Valley north of the Tehachapis, which would become much more accessible to commuters from the LA Basin in search of affording housing in sububan/rural areas.
--Tha article glibly mention how relative inexpensive airports are compared to HSR. However, it fails to mention that it is virtually impossible to build new airports in Southern California that are close enough population and employment centers to be commercially viable, due to the extensively developed nature of the region that is mostly surrounded by oceans, mountainous terrain and national forests. Computer modeling conducted by my agency has indicated that remote airports such as Palmdale would need substanital access improvements to be viable over the long term, including, ironically, access by high-speed rail.

The year is 2024, after $43.1 billion (2003 dollars) the CA-AHSR is
finally running between Oakland Caltrain Terminal and Union Station Los
Angeles. Capable of speeds of up to 185 mph except where prohibited by
noise or safety the system makes nearly 20 trips per day with more than
8000 passengers.

The nice terrorist with the cell phone sees the governor get on board
one of the 8 limited stop specials that make the Oakland Los Angeles
journey in under 4 hours with only 3 stops, Fresno, Bakersfield,
Palmdale. The nice terrorist calls his buddy in the central valley
with the lettuce truck that's been waiting for just such an occasion.
Due to cost overruns and reduced service expectations the right of way
in places like Delano is only 100 feet and large portions are nothing
more than 12ft cyclone fence (mostly to hold back tumbleweeds from
fouling the pantographs) criss-crossed by numerous semi-automated
private at grade crossings. These were concessions to saving money
rather than using emminent domain against the very powerful Central
Vally Agricultural Industry. The lettuce truck has been working the
fields for six months and by now is well known to all the rail
monitoring cameras. Perfect; $43 billion, 400 people, a governor and
America's newest societal icon of dominance and supremacy taken out in
spectacular fashion for the cost of a phone call and lettuce truck.
These terrorists known as the naftaistas not only will never be caught
but their ties to their rouge nation masters in Ottawa will never be
traced. Eco-extremists cheer as the fences come down and the free
range tumbleweeds are finally released to resume their natural migration
patterns. Eventually a minor splinter group of the governors own Green
Party affiliation is blamed. The Bakersfield Dozen (there are 13
conspirators) as they are called eventually win freedom when Supreme
Court Head Justice Lance Ito overturns their convictions when it is
learned that the lettuce found at the scene was not only non-union but
non-organic. The Greens are absolved. President Clinton says she is
pleased and only wishes her mom and dad the former Presidents would
stop feuding long enough to let her appoint them both to the Court so
more such legal ground could be broken before the next election cycle
where it is Jenna Bush's turn to be President.

Back to the present day; Anybody wanna buy this choo-choo?

Maybe high-speed rail doesn't make sense on a state level, during the era of low fuel costs. But those of us who plan on a 25-50+ year time frame realize that high speed rail is the sustainable solution for mid to long distance travel across our nation.

Moore makes a lot of assumptions and ommissions:

"Gasoline prices in Europe are, at a minimum, twice those in California" Yes, that is currently true. But how long will that last as we approach and surpass peak oil production?

"More Americans than Europeans use their cars to make trips longer than 300 miles, and more Americans than Europeans board low-cost jets to travel to destinations less than 500 miles away" Also currently true. But that's only because there is no viable alternative to car and airline travel in the US. Passenger rail in this country is a joke, I suspect the only reason we still fund Amtrak is as a favor to the auto and airline industries. Sure, you could spend $300 and 30+ hours to take an 800 mile trip via Amtrak, but you could do it much faster and cheaper by car or airplane. If we invested a little money in providing and maintaining a dedicated right-of-way to passenger rail we would be able to travel much faster than by car.

"The 2004 train bombings in Madrid demonstrate a lethal point..." Umm, go ahead and compare rail fatality rates to those of automobiles. And if you want to talk about terrorism, you might recall 9/11. It would be very hard to drive a train into a skyscraper.

"...Japanese and Europeans still have to subsidize their systems." Didn't our federal government just bail out the airline industry? Again? And who laid down all of those highways and interstates? I guess some subsidies are worse than others...

Moore's solution: Build more airports. Assuming we continue to subsidize and bail out the airlines, and assuming fuel prices stay artificially low, and assuming we continue to ignore the pollution caused by air travel, that might work. But just think of how many jobs we could create and how much better for the environment it would be if we built a high-speed rail network for our country.

What a sad bit of conventional thinking. The article ignores the enormous tax we pay already to finance a military to secure the oil for cheap air travel.

We can wait until scarcity, oil production declines and military challenges and defeats increase that cost and make trains viable (by which time the earth will be warming that much more) or we can try to get ahead of the curve with a carbon tax that would generate revenue for lower carbon emission transportation systems to be begin to be built.

Of course the real change will come when we begin to reduce use of all transport systems and begin a process of national and global energy descent and relocalization. But that's so far outside of the scope of conventional thinking that most people will have no idea what I mean.

Miles Hochstein

Portland Ground: Photographs of Portland Oregon

Not a word in this article about global warming or about the fact that high-speed rail emits about one-sixth as much CO2 per passenger mile as airplanes. In Europe, high-speed rail has begun advertizing itself as an environmentally superior alternative to flying.

The article proves its point by assuming that things will not change:

"Europe has a high-speed rail system that out-competes cars and planes for trips ranging from 120 miles to 230 miles, but there are good reasons for that. Gasoline prices in Europe are, at a minimum, twice those in California. Airline deregulation came late to Europe, making it more expensive to fly in those countries. More Americans than Europeans use their cars to make trips longer than 300 miles, and more Americans than Europeans board low-cost jets to travel to destinations less than 500 miles away."

But what happens if we act to slow global warming or if gas prices go up because world oil production peaks? The price of gasoline and of flying could increase, and all of these points would no longer be true.

Charles Siegel