Fast Track to Lazy Analysis

The worst thing about having a President throw their Administration’s support behind your cause is all the presidential politics it injects into what should be a discussion about good policy.

Don’t get me wrong; we here at NARP are grateful to finally have someone in the White House who understands the benefits of trains, and the transformative potential of a truly world class passenger rail network.  But it certainly has lead to a lot of head-scratching analysis. 

Take Charles Lane’s recent post “Fast track to nowhere”, hosted over on the Washington Post’s politics blog.  Lane criticizes President Obama’s American Jobs Act proposal, which calls for investment in the modernization of our transportation network.  In an address before a joint session of Congress, the President argued that transportation projects can create jobs immediately, and increase U.S. competitiveness in the long term:

“Building a world-class transportation system is part of what made us an economic superpower. And now we’re going to sit back and watch China build newer airports and faster railroads? At a time when millions of unemployed construction workers could build them right here in America?”

To Lane, however, July’s deadly high-speed rail accident that took place on China’s newly opened Yongtaiwen rail line should have put an end to all high-speed rail planning (In America?  Globally?  He doesn’t ever say.):

“It’s a bit odd that the president wants simultaneous investment in air transport and high-speed rail, since they are competing modes of travel. But his invidious comparison between U.S. and Chinese airport-building is as spurious as his effort to shame us into imitating Chinese high-speed rail.”

First off, there’s no rational basis to assume that high-speed rail will drive airports out of business in the communities the train serves (or vice versa).  Amtrak’s Acela Express has captured over half the market share for air-train travel between Washington and New York City.  But LaGuardia Airport isn’t sitting unused because of this.  Rather, the two modes complement each other.  City center-to-city center trains make more sense for trips of 100-500 miles.  As a result, trains ease congestion at airports, clearing space for airplanes traveling 500 miles and farther.  At these distances, time savings from airplanes’ higher top speeds have a chance to make up for the transit time between your house and the airport on the outskirts of town (and the wait in line to strip down to your stocking feet).

And while Lane is quick to identify the unsatisfactory results of China’s race to become the world’s leader in high-speed rail, he never does the hard work of connecting President Obama’s High-Speed & Intercity Passenger Rail Program with China’s super-accelerated rail program.  The simple fact that they have the same end product—trains—is reason enough for him to draw broad conclusions about its ultimate failure.  By that logic, 2007’s revelation about lax manufacturing controls in China—which resulted in lead paint being used on products targeted at children—should have been the final nail-in-the-coffin for the whole “toys” undertaking.

So let’s do the work for Mr. Lane. 

China has announced they are going to spend $300 billion on high-speed rail between 2010 and 2020, on top of tens of billions of dollars already spent in the previous decade.  This will build a 16,000 mile network of super fast trains with little to no public input or environmental review.  They will use technology appropriated and digested from foreign manufacturers—often without these companies’ permission.

The President is asking for $4 billion in the coming year, to be spread across a wide spectrum of passenger rail projects that range from California’s 220 mph service between Los Angeles and San Francisco, to the elimination of highway grade crossings and track upgrades in Pennsylvania that will reduce travel times and improved on time performance for Amtrak trains.  Unlike China, federal and state planners will work closely with experienced train manufactures, with decades of building and operating trains without serious incident (the Japanese Shinkansen has been operating since 1964 without a single passenger fatality and France’s TGV has almost as sterling a record).  Planners will work closely with communities to solicit input and determine environmental impacts.

Lane goes on to quote Kevin Drum, a writer for Mother Jones (making sure to point out that he’s a liberal, thereby establishing his bona fides to criticize the project):

“So how is California’s fabulous high-speed rail project between LA and San Francisco going?  You know, the one approved by California’s fabulous voters as part of California’s fabulous initiative process. Well, a new estimate for the nice, easy part between Merced and Bakersfield puts the cost at $10-$14 billion, up from earlier estimates of $6.8 billion… What’s more, the ridership estimates are still fantasies, and it won’t be able to compete with air travel without large, permanent subsidies.”

Surprisingly, in spite of the fact that Drum is a progressive, he get’s a few things wrong about California’s rail project.  The first problem is the cost figures.  Mr. Drum is probably referring to a 2009 estimate which put the cost for the San Joaquin Valley sections at $8.1 billion.  Let’s demystify further: the low-end estimate for the entire San Francisco-Los Angeles-Anaheim route has only been increased by $3 billion from the 2009 estimate of $43 billion.  This is hardly a project spiraling out of control.

Secondly, there isn’t a lot of thought behind his fairly casual dismissal of ridership models. A peer review committee, convened by the California High-speed Rail Authority specifically to address questions about ridership projections, deemed the ridership model a solid foundation for project planning.

“We are satisfied with the documentation presented in Cambridge Systematics, and conclude that it demonstrates that the model produces results that are reasonable and within expected ranges for the current environmental planning and Business Plan applications of the model,” wrote the peer review board in the September 1 report [PDF]. “We were very pleased with the content, quality and quantity of the information.”

Now, I don’t know how “progressive” the individuals in the peer review group are.  But I’m tempted to give a little more weight to the analysis done by the Professor from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich than the political blogger.

The third glaring error: the Los Angeles to San Francisco high-speed rail corridor wasn’t approved as part of “California’s initiative process.”  An initiative is a ballot measure placed on the ballot by the voters.  In truth, the California high-speed rail project measure was placed on the ballot by a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature and granted final approval by the Governor (a Republican, by the way), pursuant to the constitutional requirement for approval of general obligation bond measures. 

So “no”: the project is very much a collaborative effort between California’s elected officials and its public.  It’s an effort to solve serious mobility and congestion problems.  The reason high-speed rail proponents are willing to stomach the high price-tag is because the alternative is even more costly.  California is projected to add around 25 million people by the year 2050, bringing its total population to around 60 million people.  If the state didn’t build the high-speed line, transportation officials estimate California would need to spend an estimated $100 billion on 3,000 miles of new freeways, five new airport runways, and build 90 new departure gates through airport expansion or new construction.

But Mr. Lane doesn’t concern himself with the future.  Or rather, he is only concerned in two- and four-year increments.  The election in 2012 won’t fix our struggling transportation network, however.  A fix will require hard work, and real dollars spent on things that have value.  NARP, for one, isn’t going to wait around until January 20, 2013 to do the work of advocating for the world-class transportation network that Americans need.

- Sean Jeans-Gail