The Bigger Crisis We Must Address

CNN World’s “On the Move” column features a worthwhile debate between two experts who support high-speed rail. One, Friends of the Earth’s Tony Bosworth, tempers his support for HSR with skepticism that it can draw enough people away from cars and planes, and that governments facing defecits and financial stress will be able to undertake such large infrastructure projects:

Photo by L.C. Nottaasen on Flickr

One of the main factors is cost. Despite soaring fuel prices, motoring and flying are still expected to be cheaper than high speed rail. If faster rail travel is to become a realistic alternative it must be affordable too.

The UK’s [planned London to Manchester] high speed rail link is expected to cost a whopping $54 billion. But living as we do in cash-strapped times there’s surely a strong case for investing some of that that money in less grandiose, but more effective, projects.

Affordability and cost-effectiveness are important considerations. Several high-speed rail lines around the world, though, manage to be financially sound and attract lots of riders while offering very attractive fares. Most notably, France’s TGV more than covers its operating costs and owns more than half of the air-rail travel market on its key routes, while its lowest fares are cheaper than driving (especially considering France’s higher gas taxes) and flying.

And, as we have noted many times in supporting California High-Speed Rail, the cost of accommodating our growing population’s travel needs is going to be much greater without a network of high- and higher-speed rail lines than with them.

The other expert in the CNN debate—author, urban studies professor, and former NARP staffer and Board member Dr. Anthony Perl—argues that no conceivable technology other than electrified rail has the ability to move large numbers of people (and freight) without oil within the time frame necessary to avoid catastrophic oil conflicts and price spikes. He summarizes the case he and his colleague Richard Gilbert make in their 2010 book, Transport Revolutions:

If [a major shift to grid-connected electrified trains] does not begin during this decade, the risk of a global economic collapse and/or geo-political conflict over the world’s remaining oil reserves would become dangerously elevated. Making a significant dent in transportation’s oil addiction within 10 years is sooner than fuel cells, biofuels, battery-electric vehicles and other alternative energy technologies will be ready to deliver change.

Biofuels that could power aircraft now cost hundreds of dollars per gallon to produce. Batteries that a big enough charge to power vehicles between cities are still too big and expensive to make electric cars and buses affordable.

But grid-connected electric trains have been operating at scale and across continents for over a century. And when the Japanese introduced modern high-speed trains through their Shinkansen, in 1964, the utility of electric trains was greatly extended.

In response, Bosworth notes that the electricity to power these trains, at least in the short term, will still come from fossil fuels (primarily coal). But at least much less fuel will have to be burned to power trains than to power all the cars and planes that would otherwise be moving our growing population. This will buy the world time to fully develop renewable, non-polluting energy sources.

America’s political and business leaders should not let the short-term (and largely manufactured) debt crisis serve as an excuse not to address the much larger, longer-term mobility and energy crises into which our society is running headlong. The time to make needed investments in rail—passenger and freight; intercity, regional and transit—is now, and we do have the money to make them if we close tax loopholes and curtail spending in other areas that are truly counterproductive.

—Malcolm Kenton