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Friday, December 10th, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
The Obama administration yesterday called the bluff of two newly elected Republican governors and regained control of its high-speed rail program. Confronted by Governor-elects Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio, who vowed to kill the administration’s signature high-speed transportation initiative in their states when they take office next month, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood preemptively yanked $1.195 billion not yet spent by the states.
This is good news and something we had urged. It shows resolve by the administration against politically motivated obstructionism. A backlash has been growing in Wisconsin against Walker’s anti-rail rhetoric. Now voters can mull over how he “saved” them money by destroying thousands of construction jobs that the proposed Milwaukee-Madison rail line would have created. Plus Wisconsin and Ohio may owe the federal government upwards of $25 million already spent on rail planning.
The administration said it would redirect the bulk of the freed funds to California and Florida, assuring that these truly transformative projects can move forward even if a Republican House blocks rail funds in the upcoming federal budget.
California will receive $624 million of the redirected funds, adding to the $3 billion previously awarded toward the construction of a 220-mph railway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Combined with matching state funds from a voter-approved bond referendum, California now has $7 billion committed to the project.
Both outgoing Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and incoming Democratic governor Jerry Brown are strong supporters of the rail project, despite California’s current budget woes. Last week, the California High Speed Rail Authority approved construction of the first leg of the line, a 65-mile stretch in the Central Valley running through Fresno. The redirected funds are likely to enable the authority to extend construction to Bakersfield.
Florida will get $342 million on top of the $2.05 billion previously allocated to build a high-speed train on a new right of way between Orlando and Tampa.
Incoming Republican governor Rick Scott initially opposed the line, but has softened his position, saying he is in favor of high-speed rail so long as Florida taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill. Yesterday’s allocation basically closes the funding gap. It strengthens LaHood’s prediction that the Florida project will break ground next year.
Of the remaining $230 million redirected by LaHood, the state of Washington will receive $162 million to rebuild trackage and signaling on an existing Amtrak route between Portland and Seattle. The other major recipient ($42 million) was Illinois, whose re-elected Democratic Governor Pat Quinn is an ardent rail advocate.
Focusing federal funds on a few core projects is a smart strategy as the administration realizes that additional rail allocations in a Republican-controlled House are far from certain. The redirected rail funds give the administration breathing room to keep the program afloat at least through the 2112 election cycle.
Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), the likely chair the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in January, has been critical of rail projects – such as the now-rescinded Wisconsin and Ohio lines – where trains would only reach maximum speeds of 110 mph.
Mica has repeatedly said he favors speeds of over 150 mph and wants private partners to help fund the projects. Earlier this week, a consortium led by Central Japan Railway said it may offer $210 million in loans to help pay for the Tampa-Orlando line if its high-speed equipment was selected by the state.
Tags: Amtrak, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bakersfield, California, California High Speed Rail Authority, Central Japan Railway, Central Valley, Florida, Fresno, high-speed rail, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, HSR, Illinois, Jerry Brown, John Kasich, John Mica, Los Angeles, Milwaukee-Madison, Obama Administration, Ohio, Orlando, Pat Quinn, Portland, Ray LaHood, Rick Scott, San Francisco, Scott Walker, Seattle, Tampa, Transportation, Transportation secretary, Wisconsin
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Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
Talk about a blessing in disguise. Just as the Obama administration’s high-speed rail program was running out of congressionally-appropriated cash, Governor-elects Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio have come chugging to the rescue.
By vowing to kill planned passenger train lines in their states, the newly elected Midwest Republicans have potentially freed $1.2 billion in federal rail money that can be used to build “true” high-speed routes elsewhere. The windfall represents more than the $1 billion that the White House has requested from Congress in next year’s budget. It gives the administration breathing space to keep the program going even if the Republican-led House blocks rail appropriations in 2011.
Since the Wisconsin and Ohio grants are of secondary importance to the national goal of getting a 150-mph-plus rail line up and running, the governors’ anti-train stance amounts to an unintended gift to the Obama administration
To be sure, benefiting high-speed rail was not the intent of Walker and Kasich. Both politicians have a history of hostility to public transit. Walker has opposed light rail, commuter rail and other transit initiatives in his current job as Milwaukee County Executive. Kasich, a former Ohio Congressman turned Fox News host, likes to say that the only kind of train he approves of is a freight train.
Both have called on Washington to divert the rail money to state highway projects. Ray LaHood, U.S. secretary of transportation, said this isn’t permitted under the law. LaHood told a rail conference last week that he plans to reallocate the money to other states and will bill Wisconsin and Ohio for federal funds already spent on the suspended rail lines.
Poor Choices for Rail Aid
The $810 million in Wisconsin money was to extend Amtrak’s existing Milwaukee-Chicago Hiawatha line to Madison, with a top speed of 79 mph in 2013, rising to 110 mph in 2015; Ohio’s $400 million was to build a Cleveland- Columbus-Cincinnati route operating at 79 mph maximum speeds over existing freight tracks. It received a $400 million grant.
The Obama administration funded these projects largely because they were “shovel ready” (a key criteria of the stimulus act that provided $8 billion in rail aid to states) and because they represented “regional balance” for the Midwest that Congressmen from both parties demand when money is allocated for highways.
As we have argued, spreading out federal funds to too many marginal projects is a mistake operationally and politically. Operationally, intercity passenger rail will succeed only if it provides an obvious and understandable margin of superiority over highway trip times. Politically, moderate-speed lines advertised as high-speed (or as “emerging high speed,” in Obama administration nomenclature) confuses the public and opens up the federal initiative to legitimate criticism.
Studies indicate that somewhat-faster service will not create the transformational transportation that will get Americans out of their cars and jumpstart regional economies. This was underscored by a recent study of high-speed rail compared to conventional rail commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Because the up-front costs of truly modern train lines are high, the administration needs to concentrate on finishing one or two routes with state-of-the-art equipment to prove that fast rail is an efficient and even profitable venture once construction is completed.
Florida Should be Centerpiece
The administration now has the opportunity to fund true high-speed rail by reallocating the Midwest money. It can fully fund the high-speed Tampa-Orlando line in Florida as well as help get a segment of California’s proposed 200-mph railway between San Francisco and Los Angeles into revenue service. There may even be money left over to accelerate “shovel-ready” projects in busy rail corridors with proven ridership in Illinois and Connecticut.
Newly elected California governor Jerry Brown (D) is a strong supporter of his state’s rail program – as is outgoing Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both Illinois incumbent governor Pat Quinn (D) and Connecticut governor-elect Dan Malloy (D) are also pro-train.
Florida’s Republican governor-elect, Rick Scott, initially opposed the Tampa-Orlando line (the current governor, Charlie Crist, supports the project). But Scott has recently relaxed his rhetoric and says he is in favor of high-speed rail so long as Florida taxpayers don’t pay for it.
What reportedly swayed Scott was $800 million in fresh federal funds for the project last month. Florida now has $2.05 billion to complete the $2.6 billion line, including the $1.25 billion in federal funds it received in January.
Public-Private Partnerships
By reallocating a portion of the Wisconsin-Ohio funds, the $550 million gap could be closed. Or better yet, Washington could encourage private companies to invest in the Florida line by using federal funds as an incentive. Already Siemens, the high-speed locomotive maker, has announced interest in bidding on the Florida project if government shares a portion of the operational risk.
Such a public-private partnership would appear to satisfy Scott’s objections and could go a long way to appease Rep. John Mica (R – Fla.), a fan of public-private rail partnerships who is expected to become chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in January.
All of this could leave Wisconsin’s and Ohio’s new chief executives on the wrong side of the tracks. Or as a transportation official told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week, “Expanding passenger rail is a national priority. Just because Wisconsin says no doesn’t mean it’s going away.”
Tags: 110 mph, 200-mph, 79 mph, Amtrak, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California, Charlie Crist, Cleveland- Columbus-Cincinnati, Connecticut, Dan Malloy, Florida, Fox News, high-speed rail, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, HSR, Illinois, Jerry Brown, John Kasich, John Mica, Los Angeles, Madison, Midwest republicans, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee-Chicago Hiawatha, Obaa administration, Ohio, Pat Quinn, Public Transit, public-private partnerships, Rail Aid, Ray LaHood, regional balance, Republican Governors, Rick Scott, San Francisco, Scott Walker, shovel ready, Tampa-Orlando, Transportation, U.S. Conference of Mayors, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, White House, Wisconsin
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Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
Give Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson credit – he’s a strong believer in recycling. Last year, he loudly derided the “mirage” of high-speed rail as “the triumph of fantasy over fact.” Yesterday, he denounced the “absurdity” of fast trains as “a triumph of politically expedient fiction over logic and evidence.” OK, he’s gotten a bit wordier, but you can see that once his mind is made up, it’s fixed in stone.
The same kind of thinking comes from nearly all critics of high-speed rail who bunker at the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and other right-leaning groups – they have a curiously static view of transportation. To them, investing in future high-speed rail is an extravagant and illogical expenditure of public money because the lack of prior investment in high-speed rail has done little to change our travel patterns.
By that logic, America should never have built a transcontinental railroad. Consider that only a handful of wagon trains made it to California in 1862. Had Samuelson been writing then, he probably would have criticized President Lincoln’s proposal to spend taxpayer money on a steam railroad to San Francisco as a plan that “would subsidize a tiny group of travelers and do little else” – to borrow a phrase from yesterday’s column.
What’s missing from Samuelson’s worldview is that major advances in transportation drive economic growth. They have throughout human history. The joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads in 1869 ushered in what economic historian Walt Rostow called the “takeoff period” of American industry.
Likewise, President Dwight Eisenhower did not justify interstate highways on the basis of established transportation patterns. U.S. railroads – not roads – carried the bulk of interstate freight, military personnel, and civilians during World War II. Instead, he warned that our national security in the Cold War 1950s depended on our ability to establish fast new highways to transport supplies throughout the country.
So when Samuelson denounces high-speed rail by citing today’s Amtrak ridership levels, he’s forgetting that rail traffic is far below what it would be if our passenger trains were remotely up to world standards. When we begin opening 200-mph railroads, a new level of traffic will appear very rapidly. It’s been dormant, waiting for a chance to move.
It is impossible to predict how much dormant traffic is waiting for a truly modernized rail system. Economic models don’t tell us, and Samuelson fails to even pose the question amid his attacks on high-speed rail as government “pork barrel.”
What’s remarkable (though not surprising, if one reads Cato’s Randal O’Toole and other rail critics) is Samuelson’s utter blindness to the fact that highways and airports require massive government “pork” to build and maintain. They don’t pay for themselves through fuel or ticket taxes, as their backers like to assert.
A Texas Department of Transportation study found that a new section of highway in Houston would generate only 16 percent of its total lifecycle cost from gas taxes. Texas DOT estimated a gas tax of $2.22 per gallon – nearly six times the present state and federal tax of 38.4 cents – reflected the actual cost of building and maintaining the highway.
Constructing 800 miles of high-speed rail in California is liable to cost more than $40 billion. Constructing and operating all 13 corridors proposed by the Obama administration could easily approach $200 billion. But these dramatic headline figures need context. The current transportation act allots $300 billion to highways – not for new construction since the interstate system is completed, but just for maintenance and rebuilding.
Huge costs loom as America’s highways reach the end of their productive life. Replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York State is estimated to cost $17 billion. That figure is guaranteed to rise.
If interstate thoroughfares and vital bridges paid their way, private investors would be clamoring to commit funds to refinance them. They aren’t.
All modes of transporting people require subsidies. Amtrak’s direct subsidies of about $1.5 billion a year are transparent and highly publicized. Subsidies for cars and airlines are hidden in trust fund appropriations, user tax breaks, and local and state programs paid for by all taxpayers, including those who rarely drive and never fly.
In portraying himself as a hard-nosed realist free of the “fashionable make-believe” of rail advocates, Samuelson would do well to explain how he’d fix congestion, advance mobility, lessen pollution, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by jettisoning an infrastructure program that directly addresses these issues.
photo credit: arbyreed
Tags: 200-mph, airlines, airports, Amtrak, California, cars, Cato Institute, Cold War, Dwight Eisenhower, fast trains, gas taxes, hard-nosed realist, Heritage Foundation, highly publicized, highways, Houston, HSR, interstate freight, Lincoln, military personnel, mobility, modernized rail system, national security, New York, Obama Administration, pollution, pork barrel, public money, Randal O'Toole, recycling, Samuelson, San Francisco, subsidies, Tappan Zee Bridge, tax breaks, taxpayers, Texas Department of Transportation, transcontinental railroad, Transportation, travel patterns, U.S. railroads, Washington Post, World War II
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Friday, October 29th, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
Hats off to the Obama administration. The $2.4 billion in high-speed-rail grants announced yesterday by the U.S. Department of Transportation not only helps fix deficiencies in the original round of rail awards back in January, but shows welcome political moxie.
By allocating the bulk of its FY 2010 investment to California and Florida, the administration has thrown its support behind true “bullet train” service, or trains running on dedicated rights of way at more than 150 mph. It now appears possible that high-speed segments could be open in California’s Central Valley and between Tampa and Orlando, Fla., by 2016.
That’s a big change from the first round of grants last January, which we argued was flawed by a scattershot approach of approving projects that only marginally increased passenger train speeds on upgraded freight track. What was needed, we believed, was funding focused on “do-able” 150-mph-plus links that would serve as templates for an emerging state-of-the-art passenger train initiative.
For the most part, the administration has done just that. To be sure, it has not come up with a way to finance HSR over the long haul and it still faces multiple challenges in Congress, especially if Republicans take over one or both chambers. But what’s striking about yesterday’s awards is the administration’s firmer grasp of how to get HSR segments up and running in the face of local obstacles.
Consider California, which received the biggest grant yesterday, $902 million. The DOT award requires the state to primarily focus on rail development in the Central Valley between Merced and Bakersfield, where land acquisition costs are low and trains could reach their full speed, rather than build costly urban segments through greater Los Angeles and between San Francisco and San Jose that have stoked Nimby opposition.
That’s a shrewd way to get a workable segment built and in revenue service to make the case that HSR is an attractive choice of transportation for Californians. Kicking off construction in the Central Valley also gives a political boost to Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), a strong HSR backer who is in a tough race with Andy Vidak, a Republican with Tea Party backing.
Likewise, the administration took a decisive step toward fully funding the Tampa-Orlando HSR line (which we’ve repeatedly supported) by awarding $800 million to the project yesterday. Florida now has $2.05 billion in the kitty to complete the $2.6 billion project, including the $1.25 billion it received in January.
The new grant has already softened criticism by Republican gubernatorial hopeful Rick Scott. In the last few days Scott has dialed down his rhetoric against the rail line as an example of federal overreach. With groundbreaking scheduled for early 2011 and the Obama administration hinting at more money from discretionary funds, it appears unlikely that Scott would sacrifice thousands of construction jobs by scrapping the project outright. The Democratic candidate, Alex Sink, is a strong supporter.
Two other projects awarded grants yesterday, while not strictly high speed, will improve rail service in critical corridors. DOT gave Connecticut $121 million to help double track the Amtrak line between New Haven and Springfield, Mass., and upgrade service to 110 mph.
As part of the agreement, Connecticut agreed to release $260 million in state funds to rebuild other infrastructure, which will eventually increase train service from six daily roundtrips to 25 or more. This would make the Springfield segment an integral part of the Northeast Corridor and eventual route of a proposed “inland” corridor between New York and Boston.
A flaw of past federal policy was its failure to flag rail lines abandoned by freight carriers as potential passenger routes. As a result, thousands of miles of secondary lines between major cities, considered duplicative by freight railroads, were torn up between 1970 and today.
A similar fate now threatens 135 miles of rail line between Kalamazoo and Dearborn, Mich., owned by Norfolk Southern (NS). The track, used for Amtrak’s Chicago-Detroit trains, was downgraded this summer, a preliminary step toward a petition for abandonment by NS.
Yesterday, DOT stepped in with a $150 million grant to fund Michigan’s purchase of the line. Since Amtrak already owns 97 miles adjacent to this section, the proposed purchase would result in public ownership of nearly 80 percent of the Chicago-Detroit corridor, laying the foundation for a high-speed passenger route.
Yesterday’s awards include the remaining funds in the $8 billion stimulus package as well as money allocated for FY 2010 by the Democratic Congress. Funding for HSR has yet to be agreed upon by Congress for FY 2011. Outside of discretionary funds within DOT, yesterday’s announcement represents the last definite federal distribution for high-speed rail.
For a full list of DOT grants, see http://www.fra.dot.gov/rpd/passenger/2243.shtml
Tags: 110 mph, 150 mph, Alex Sink, Amtrak, Andy Vidak, Bakersfield, Boston, bullet train, California, California’s Central Valley, Chicago-Detroit, Connecticut, Dearborn, DOT, federal policy, Florida, freight track, FY, high-speed rail, HSR, Jim Costa, Kalamazoo, Los Angeles, Merced, Michigan, New Haven, New York, Nimby, Norfolk Southern, Obama, Obama Administration, Orlando, Rick Scott, San Francisco, San Jose, Springfield, Tampa, Tampa-Orlando, Tea Party, Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation
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Wednesday, October 27th, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie had the power to kill the Hudson River rail tunnel or improve it. Today, for the second time, he killed it, saying, “I cannot place upon the citizens of the state of New Jersey an open-ended letter of credit.”
Lost in the controversy about Christie’s blunt style or national political ambitions, which drew a lengthy story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, is the fact that Christie’s own state agency, run by his own political appointee, is the prime reason why the project faces the reported runaway costs that the governor says the state can’t afford.
Originally, the trans-Hudson tubes were aligned to connect in Manhattan with Amtrak’s rebuilt Penn (Moynihan) Station, with a future connection to Grand Central Terminal on Manhattan’s East Side.
This plan was to connect trains using the new tunnel to Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, as well as to rail lines spreading to Long Island, upstate New York, New England, and eastern Canada.
Instead, New Jersey Transit opted, mostly for parochial reasons, to abandon the Penn Station alignment in favor of a dead-end terminal under 34th Street usable only by NJT.
This decision was made under the administration of Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine. Christie defeated Corzine last November and appointed a new executive director for NJT, James Weinstein. It was Weinstein who Christie turned to in September to chair a committee whose three-page memo the governor subsequently used as the rationale for his decision to terminate the tunnel— a memo that never brought up the obvious design flaws of the dead-end plan or even addressed the potential cost overruns of the current project in any detailed way.
Among the co-signers of the memo was Bill Baroni, a prominent New Jersey Republican who Christie appointed as deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey last February.
The Port Authority had pledged $3 billion to the Hudson tunnel, but now seems very happy to use the money for road purposes. In an interview earlier this year, Baroni cited two New Jersey projects, expanding the Goethals Bridge, and raising the Bayonne Bridge by 65 feet to allow larger ships to enter Newark harbor, as high-priority items for the port authority.
In trying to salvage the tunnel project during a two-week reprieve granted by Christie, federal officials reportedly offered several options to the state. They included one that eliminated the state’s risk of cost overruns.
But Weinstein, who acted as Christie’s representative in the talks, said the state wanted more hard cash than the $3 billion already pledged by the Federal Transit Administration.
It’s widely known that the transit agency has no ready funds because Congress has delayed passage of a new surface transportation authorization bill.
So as it stands today, the country’s largest rail infrastructure project will stay sealed at the whim of a single governor relying on a few hundred words of vague analysis by handpicked cronies.
For more details, see “A Tale of Two Tunnels.”
Tags: 34th Street, Amtrak, Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, Bayonne Bridge, Bill Baroni, Chris Christie, Democratic Governor, eastern Canada., Federal Transit Administration, Goethals Bridge, Grand Central Terminal, Hudson River rail tunnel, James Weinstein, Jon Corzine, Long Island, Manhattan, New England, New Jersey, New Jersey Transit, Newark, NJT, Penn Station, Port Authority, Port Authority of New York, Republican Governor, runaway costs, trans-Hudson tubes, Tunnel, upstate New York, Wall Street Journal
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Thursday, October 21st, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
1993. That’s when both Switzerland decided to construct a low-elevation rail line through the Alps and New Jersey committed itself to a new train link to Manhattan under the Hudson River.
But here the similarities end. Switzerland is now celebrating the breakthrough of the Gotthard Base Tunnel – at 35½ miles, the longest rail tunnel in the world – while New Jersey waits to see if Republican Gov. Chris Christie will officially kill a much shorter tunnel that began construction only last year. (His decision is expected shortly following a two-week review requested by federal officials.)
Chalk up the contrast – mission accomplished vs. mission barely begun before halted – to the cumbersome and increasingly dysfunctional way America handles infrastructure projects.
The problems in New Jersey began with the enormous array of legal and environmental hoops required to get the tunnel – dubbed Access to the Region’s Core or ARC – through local, state and federal approval processes. These “soft costs” added years of delay and were a major cause of the cost overruns that Gov. Christie cited as the reason for his decision to cancel the tunnel.
But the real hurdle was not bureaucratic red tape but the absence of a government entity that structures, strategizes and finances infrastructure projects free from the transient squabbles of politicians and their appointed minions.
Swiss Precision
An orderly system was developed for the biggest infrastructure project in Swiss history. An infrastructure fund was established with long-term financing based on taxes approved by voters. A single minister, Moritz Leuenberger, has been responsible for guiding the tunnel project through the shoals of Swiss politics as well as negotiating a bilateral agreement with the European Union.
When completed in 2019, the tunnel and related improvements will funnel about 300 high-speed passenger and freight trains (the latter running upward of 99 mph) beneath the Alps every day. The line is expected to serve as a key overland corridor between northern and southern Europe for the rest of the century.
The ARC tunnel is considerably less ambitious in scope, but nevertheless critical to the future of one of the most economically important regions in the U.S. The double-track rail line into Manhattan, opened in 1910 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, is now saturated to capacity with Amtrak and NJ Transit trains. ARC would add two more tracks, doubling the number of trains that could pass under the river and terminate at a new underground station in Manhattan.
Breaking a Campaign Promise
Serious study of the project began in 1993 as a venture between NJ Transit, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The MTA bowed out and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) stepped in more recently.
The three agencies have been uneasy partners, cooperating on the engineering side of the project while simultaneously seeking to limit their share of the costs. The FTA has committed $3 billion, but says it doesn’t have more because of Congress’ failure to pass a new surface transportation authorization bill.
The Port Authority has also pledged $3 billion, but with a growing lack of enthusiasm after Bill Baroni was appointed deputy executive director of the Port Authority by Christie. (Baroni is a prominent New Jersey Republican with no background in infrastructure or transportation policy.)
And then there’s Christie himself, who inherited the project after defeating ardent tunnel advocate, Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, last November.
Christie supported the project during the gubernatorial race, but now says he began doubting the project’s financial viability last winter. After a cursory report from a committee that included Baroni and other Christie appointees, the governor concluded that the tunnel could cost between $2 billion and $5 billion over its current price tag of $8.7 billion.
Armed with that headline figure, Christie announced two weeks ago that he was canceling the project because “I can’t put taxpayers on a never-ending hook.” Admitting that he was breaking a campaign promise, he added coolly, “This is a mathematics question. We’re broke. I’m not going to be contributing to that and put us further into debt for a project if we can’t afford it.”
Nearly $500 million has already been spent, and a $583 million contract was awarded for the design of the Manhattan side of the tunnel. New Jersey is on the hook for about half of the already expended funds.
Following the announcement, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood met with Christie. He wrested out a concession that the governor would agree to a two-week review of the project by NJ Transit and FTA officials.
Word in the media is that Christie’s resolve has only increased since then. He has refused to consider increasing the state’s gas tax or placing a small surcharge on motorists going into Manhattan to pay for possible cost overruns, eliciting scathing criticism from U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg and other Democratic officeholders.
Nobody (neither federal nor state officials) has informed the public of detailed cost estimates for the project. Indeed, it appears that the two parties are barely talking as mutual distrust and recriminations paralyze the process.
Angling for Higher Office
Christie’s decision to withdraw from the project has only solidified his reputation as a darling of the Republican right. In recent weeks Christie was on a national tour backing GOP candidates for governor, two of whom (John Kasich in Ohio and Scott Walker in Wisconsin) have announced their opposition to accepting federal stimulus money to build passenger rail lines.
By scrapping ARC, Christie can burnish his reputation as a cost cutter to deficit-minded Republicans and independents who don’t have to commute to New York. From this point of view, the cancellation is an easy call for a man widely believed to be angling for a slot on the national Republican ticket in 2012 or 2016.
Last Friday, the breakthrough of the shaft of the Gotthard Tunnel was carried live on Swiss television. Since then, an outpouring of praise and admiration has rained down on the country from the world press and politicians. A recent poll found that 67 percent of Swiss residents support the rail project as a way to divert traffic from highways and protect the country’s mountains, lakes and resorts.
Meanwhile, wags in New Jersey have labeled the fruits of 17 years of planning and preliminary construction the “tunnel to nowhere.” Of course, the problem of moving people through one of the most congested parts of the world isn’t going away. Long after Christie leaves office, New Jersey’s economic well-being will suffer, while the costs that the governor says taxpayers can’t afford will only escalate.
But that’s not part of the political hardball now being played along the banks of the Hudson River.
Photo credit: Becka Spence
Tags: Alps, Amtrak, ARC, ARC tunnel, Bill Baroni, Campaigns and elections, Chris Christie, cost cutter, deficit-minded, Democrats, double-track rail, environmental hoops, environmental protection, European Union, federal stimulus, Federal Transit Administration, Frank Lautenberg, freight, FTA, government entity, gubernatorial race, high-speed, highways, Hudson River, independents, infrastructure projects, John Kasich, Jon Corzine, long-term financing, low-elevation rail, Manhattan, Moritz Leuenberger, MTA, national Republican ticket, never-ending hook, New Jersey, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, NJ Transit, Ohio, Pennsylvania Railroad, Politics and politicians, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Ray LaHood, red tape, Region’s Core, Republican, Scott Walker, soft costs, Swiss, Switzerland, taxpayers, train, Transportation, tunnel to nowhere, Tunnels, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Wisconsin
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Thursday, September 30th, 2010
Lee Drutman
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Lee Drutman
How should we build high-speed rail in the United States? And how should be pay for it? Do we need dedicated lines and dedicated funding? Or can we build a system incrementally?
Yesterday morning, the Progressive Policy Institute brought together some of the leading thinkers on this issue to kick off our Second Annual North American Strategic Leadership Infrastructure Leadership Forum in Washington, DC.
The discussion centered around three questions:
- Do we need a dedicated right of way for high-speed rail or can it be developed incrementally? (Panelists agreed that a dedicated right of way would be ideal, but generally felt that the politics would be difficult);
- How can we fund high-speed rail? (Panelists agreed that we need a dedicated source of funding, though again, the politics of establishing such a fund are tricky); and
- Should private capital be enlisted? (Panelists agreed that definitely, private funding should play an active role, and offered some ideas how).
The event’s panelists were: Pierce Homer, Transportation Director, Moffatt & Nichol; Ken Orski, Editor and Publisher, Innovation Newsbriefs; Mark Reutter, Fellow, Progressive Policy Institute; and Petra Todorovich, Director, America 2050. Michael Riley, managing editor of Bloomberg Government, moderated.
Do We Need a Dedicated Right of Way?
Mark Reutter made the strongest case for a dedicated right of way, arguing that a self-contained track free of interfering traffic was necessary for true high-speed rail.
“New rights of way is the only technologically sound approach to genuine high speed rail,” Reutter said. “Dedicated rights of way provide the necessary platform for greater safety and sustained speed, and eliminate choke points and interfering track. It’s the only way high-speed rail can compete with air traffic.”
Reutter also pointed out that on most corridors, trip times on Amtrak are no faster than they were in 1971 (when Amtrak was created) and in many places slower than they were under private rail in the 1950s.
Other panelists thought that incremental development also had to be part of a strategy.
“I think the answer is both,” Todorovich said. “Some corridors are suitable for dedicated rail systems. Other places need time to build markets, and in those places it makes sense to invest in incremental improvements. Operationally, there’s no question a closed, dedicated system is better. But you have to maintain support.”
Orksi was the most skeptical. “If money were no object, I’d say we can do both,” he said. “But since we live in a world of limited resources, I’d say invest whatever limited resources there are on improving existing freight lines.”
How Do We Fund High-Speed Rail?
This week, PPI released a memo written by Reutter arguing that a cleaned-up and repurposed Highway Trust Fund could become a dedicated source of funding for high-speed rail, a proposal that formed the backdrop of the conversation. Panelists agreed that dedicated funding was a good idea, but political feasibility remained an issue.
“I’m attracted to the notion of a trust fund,” said Orski. “But there are great obstacles. First, will there be enough political support in Congress? Or will concerns about deficits oblige them to focus on other more urgent infrastructure projects? Any proposal will raise howls of indignation from highway interests.”
Reutter responded by arguing that, “there have always been special interests, that’s how government works. Groups always want to cling to the allocations they get. All that means is we need leadership. You have to have an overall vision of economic development.”
Homer, meanwhile, argued that they key to funding high-speed rail was to identify economic interests who might benefit from it. “There have to be individuals, organizations, and regions who would see benefit in this and would be willing to pay for it,” he said.
Homer also noted that any funding plan had to think about not just the capital expenditures to cover the building, but also the long term operational and maintenance costs, which are likely to exceed the capital costs. “The larger and more difficult question is how to pay for operations,” he said.
Is Private Funding Necessary?
On the question of private funding, there was widespread agreement that it was necessary. The more difficult question is how to attract that investment.
Homer argued that government needed to do more to reduce the risk inherent in such investments. “In the U.S., the biggest obstacle is regulatory risk,” he said.
He added that if there is a market where ridership exists, “private capital is going to find where there is the greatest economic benefit.”
Todorovich agreed. “Private interests are interested because they want revenue streams, and that could come from passenger fares.”
But Reutter added that regardless of private money, government needed to provide a reliable source of government money that “private investors can count on. There needs to be a level of government guarantee, that’s why a surface transit fund is so essential for this.”
Homer also argued that rather than focusing on speed, what might drive the most investment was focusing on reliability. “If I knew it was a two-hour trip from Richmond to Washington, I’d take that any day over I-95,” he said. “As this evolves, I think we should be talking about high-reliability rail.”
The forum continues tomorrow. For a full schedule of PPI-sponsored events, click here.
photo credit: Jim Arkedis
Tags: America 2050, Amtrak, Bloomberg Government, dedicated funding, dedicated lines, deficits, high-reliability rail, high-speed rail, Highway Trust Fund, HSR, I-95, incremental development, infrastructure projects, Innovation Newsbriefs, Ken Orski, leadership, maintenance costs, Mark Reutter, Michael Riley, Moffatt & Nichol, Petra Todorovich, Pierce Homer, PPI, private capital, Private Funding, Progressive Policy Institute, regulatory risk, reliability, Richmond, Second Annual North American Strategic Leadership Infrastructure Leadership Forum, Track, Transportation, Washington
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Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
A report in the Wall Street Journal that freight railroads are balking at sharing their tracks with high-speed passenger trains highlights a long-standing dispute that threatens to stall the progress of high-speed rail. It’s an issue that needs to be resolved, and resolved soon.
The railroads fear that the high-speed program will hamstring freight operations at the very time when freight traffic is undergoing a renaissance and track capacity on many mainlines is limited.
While some of the posturing by the railroads has bordered on “public-be-damned” insolence, the bottom line is that they are right. Fast passenger trains are not compatible with slow freight trains on the same track. They have different track dynamics, different acceleration and braking ratios, and different weight characteristics.
What’s more, even if freight trains were banished from some routes, the existing rail plant, with its sharp curves, meandering river routes and tight clearances, is incompatible with high-speed (more than 150 mph) train service.
As PPI pointed out last January, the reality is that if we are going to get serious about high-speed rail, we need new, dedicated lines. We can learn from elsewhere: High-speed lines developed overseas all require a self-contained right of way free from interfering traffic.
Yet only California and Florida have proposed construction of dedicated new lines that would allow true high speeds; the other 31 projects awarded federal stimulus money involve upgrades of existing rail infrastructure.
The freight railroads – which own 99 percent of America’s 140,000 miles of line – are mindful of a potential backlash if they walk away from “stakeholder agreements” negotiated with state transportation officials to facilitate federal stimulus spending. But public promises of cooperation that mask private bickering and lengthy delays are a poor way to get the administration’s ambitious rail program up and running.
Amtrak’s Troubled History
This clash should come as no surprise. We already know from 40 years of Amtrak that sharing lines does not work well. Freight railroad executives have complained that passenger trains disrupt operating practices, delay freight traffic, and present safety risks. And from Amtrak’s perspective, a government report found that poor performance by freight railroads, including sidelining passenger trains to let freight trains pass, was a major cause of late-arriving Amtrak trains.
A clash became almost inevitable last May when the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued guidelines that included penalties for railways failing to meet performance standards dependent on improved speeds for future passenger traffic.
Freight rail executives were stunned by what they perceived as federal interference with their private property, according to transportation analyst Ken Orski. Although Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood tried to paper over the uproar by saying the FRA would be flexible, the die was cast as rail executives reconsidered the worth of cooperating with Washington.
So far, friction between railroad and government has taken place mostly on the state level, where railroads are negotiating the stakeholder agreements with state transportation officials needed to release federal stimulus funds.
But slow progress on these agreements means that FRA has distributed just $597 million of $8 billion in stimulus funds awarded in January to jumpstart the high-speed program, the Journal reported. Even when states and freight railroads have signed agreements, disputes remain over the speeds at which future passenger trains will be allowed to run.
For the most part, the freight rail industry wants upgraded service at no more than 90 mph. That’s less than half the speed trains travel in Europe and China and only marginally faster than the present 79 mph limit.
Seeking a Solution
Surely there’s a better way to untangle this problem. One approach would be for the rail industry to come clean. Through the Association of American Railroads, the industry could announce its support of dedicated passenger lines as a better use of public investment and throw its lobbying clout to achieve that end in Congress.
What’s more, the industry could back up its words by offering capital to facilitate construction of at least a demonstration line. After all, the American railroad wasn’t built by faint-hearted entrepreneurs who followed existing rights of way, which in the 19th century were old Indian trails. It was built by those who lit out for the new territory.
Photo credit: David Sherret
Tags: Amtrak, Association of American Railroads, California, demonstration line, Federal Railroad Administration, Florida, FRA, freight railroads, high-speed passenger trains, high-speed rail, Indian trails, Journal, Ken Orski, late-arriving Amtrak trains, Obama’s Rail Plans, passenger traffic, performance standards, PPI, rail infrastructure, rail plant, Ray LaHood, safety risks, Secretary of Transportation, track dynamics, Transportation, Wall Street Journal
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Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
A report released yesterday concludes that high-speed trains would significantly boost economic activity and job creation over sped-up conventional Amtrak service. Released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the report examines how the introduction of different types of train service would impact business activity and jobs in two midsized cities – Albany, N.Y., and Orlando, Fla. – and a regional hub, Chicago.
Its findings clarify that the current debate over train speeds is not a dispute over “complementary means to the same end,” but a basic question of national aspirations that goes straight to the heart of 21st-century transportation and economic development.
Simply put, does the country want to pay less for an infrastructure that will make marginal improvements or does it want to spend more in order to multiply its gains?
Incremental vs. High Speed
Incremental improvements on existing railroad rights of way would cost about $15 million-$20 million a mile to build, whereas full high-speed rail (HSR) – with a dedicated right of way – might cost $40 million or more a mile.
Currently only Florida and California are pursuing the full HSR option. Some 15 states are developing projects that would result in what can best be called “higher speed rail” or “improving Amtrak on-time-performance rail.”
Joseph Szabo, head of the Federal Railroad Administration, has thrown his weight behind incremental improvements, saying in recent congressional testimony that trains that operate at 200 mph aren’t really necessary.
The calculations of the Boston consultancy, Economic Development Research Group, who prepared the new report, point to a different conclusion.
For Albany, the report looked at three scenarios in year 2035 – the introduction of marginally improved train speeds (79-90 mph), medium speeds (maximum of 110 mph) and full high speeds (maximum of 220 mph).
The report estimated that annual business sales would increase in the range of $358 to $534 million a year (in 2009 dollars) for incremental and medium-speed service, but would jump five-fold to $2.5 billion a year with full high-speed service.
The employment impact similarly varied, from 3,200 to 4,700 permanent jobs added for incremental and medium-speed service, compared to 21,360 jobs with HSR. Because the quality of jobs would increase with a more mobile workforce, roughly $1 billion a year would be added to Albany wages by 220-mph service.
Transformative Effect
The report attributed fast rail’s transformative powers on Albany to the fact that it would bring the region within the orbit of New York City. The two cities are separated by 140 miles, but Amtrak service currently takes 2 hours 35 minutes.
Reducing travel time to under an hour – possible when reaching a maximum 200 mph balanced with slower speeds in the urban districts – would spark a huge travel flow and make Albany a destination for commuters as well as tourists and business travelers. Connecting Albany to Buffalo, Boston and Montreal with fast trains would create additional opportunities.
This in turn would “support the growth of office activities and services that support state government, emerging nanotechnology, clean energy and computer chip-related industries,” the report concluded.
Growth projections for the three other cities studied:
- In Chicago, 220-mph trains radiating to St. Louis, Detroit and St. Paul-Minneapolis would nearly triple yearly business activity to $6.1 billion and more than double employment to 42,200 new jobs compared to 110-mph service.
- In Orlando, 220-mph trains from Tampa-St. Petersburg and Miami would bring $2.9 billion in yearly business sales, including 27,500 new jobs, compared to $2.1 billion in sales and 19,900 jobs from service operating at 168 mph.
- In Los Angeles, 220-mph service to San Diego and San Francisco would generate $7.5 billion in new sales, including 54,000 new jobs. Because California is only planning a high-speed line, there was no economic comparison to slower service.
The economic benefits of HSR would grow over time as the new service was fully implemented and savings in travel time, expenses and congestion reduction were realized.
The new report is titled “Connecting America with High Speed Rail” and can be downloaded at http://www.usmayors.org/highspeedrail/.
Photo credit: Beto’s Photostream
Tags: Amtrak, Business, California, Chicago, Clean energy and technology, Federal Railroad Administration, high-speed rail, Infrastructure, Joseph Szabo, New York, Orlando, Railroads, Transportation, U.S. Conference of Mayors
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Monday, June 14th, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
The Obama administration’s determination to enforce 100 percent American content for high-speed train systems is roiling the rail supply industry, with some executives saying the rule would be “impossible” to achieve and others wondering how much it will slow down high-speed rail (HSR) development and add to the sticker price.
“We’re living in a global rail industry,” said an official at a large U.S. transportation manufacturer that depends on foreign parts. “Insisting on all-American content could mean losing 10 years in building our HSR supply chain.”
Karen Rae, deputy director of the Federal Railroad Administration, surprised rail advocates when she announced last month that the White House has decided to enforce the “domestic buying preference” provision of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA), which authorized $8 billion in HSR grants to state governments earlier this year.
Rae said at a conference sponsored by America 2050 that the administration had determined there was “enough excess manufacturing capacity in the country” to permit HSR equipment to be made of U.S. content. As a result, the administration did not anticipate issuing exemptions from the domestic buying rule, as permitted under Section 504(2) of PRIIA.
While Rae lauded the decision as a tool “to help reenergize manufacturing in the U.S.,” executives canvassed in the railway supply business say the provision could have the opposite effect.
“We could wind up getting 100 percent of nothing,” said one executive who exchanged candor for anonymity.
Things We Don’t Make Anymore
He and others say the biggest obstacle to American content is simply that this country does not produce some critical components. Take computer chips. They are not made in the U.S. There are American-owned suppliers, such as Intel, but the product itself is manufactured in Asia.
Computer chips are everywhere in modern rail cars, controlling the electric doors, regulating the heat and air conditioning, monitoring the mechanical and electrical systems, managing the P.A. systems and customer-information signs, to say nothing of Wi-Fi and other electronics that would be required in any HSR car order.
Outside of components, the sad fact is that there has not been a builder of passenger cars since Pullman-Standard Co. completed an order for Superliner cars for Amtrak in the 1980s and then went out of business.
In place of Pullman-Standard and other former U.S. manufacturing powerhouses, such as the Budd Co., a number of foreign-based companies have developed facilities to assemble rail cars.
The German giant, Siemens, builds light-rail vehicles (streetcars) from imported parts at a factory in Sacramento. Japan’s Kawasaki assembles commuter railcars in Lincoln, Neb., and New York City subway cars in Yonkers, NY.
French-based Alstom built Surfliner shells for the state of California in Brazil, shipped them to Baltimore and trucked them to a former railroad shop in Hornell, NY, for final assembly.
Bombardier built the shells for Amtrak’s Acela trains in Quebec and then shipped them across the border to a plant in Vermont for finishing. Talgo builds in Spain, but can do final assembly in the U.S.
Morrison Knudsen tried to break into the car-building business 20 years ago, but failed when projects like the proposed “Texas Triangle” HSR line collapsed.
In short, while there are many abandoned manufacturing plants in the U.S., it would take time to convert these plants into usable spaces for HSR equipment. Even more time and treasure would be required to develop a workforce capable of building technology that has more in common with modern aviation than lumbering freight trains.
What’s Consistent with the Public Interest?
China has offered to supply the equipment and engineers to help build California’s proposed HSR line between San Diego and Sacramento. If California accepted China’s offer, would the state have to repay the $2.25 billion it was awarded in PRIIA funding?
The language of the federal law is broadly written. In carrying out a rail project “funded in whole or in part with a grant under this title,” PRIIA calls for recipients to purchase “only unmanufactured articles, material, and supplies mined or produced in the U.S.” or “articles, material, and supplies manufactured in the U.S. substantially from articles, material, and supplies mined, produced, or manufactured in the U.S.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) can waive this rule under three conditions: if the article is unreasonably expensive, if it is not produced in sufficient quantities, or if the requirement is “inconsistent with the public interest.”
It was assumed by the supply industry that the administration would use the law’s exemption liberally in order to expedite development of HSR lines. But Rae said that DOT’s No. 2 official, John Porcari, has been working with the White House to develop plans for 100 percent content and did not plan to issue any waivers.
Unintended Consequences
According to several suppliers, the literal interpretation of PRIIA could actually discourage American companies from entering the HSR field.
“Who wants to go through all these hoops only to find out you’re disqualified because some component is not considered American by a bureaucrat,” asked an executive.
One of the clearest-cut beneficiaries of the rule would appear to be domestic steelmakers supplying new track and structural steel. But who or what is a domestic steelmaker these days? Is it a company that owns plants in the U.S., a company owned by U.S. stockholders, or a company domiciled in the U.S.?
At present, foreign-owned-and-headquartered corporations control more than 35 percent of steel produced in the U.S. What’s more, half of the steel made here originates from raw materials mined outside of the country.
Similarly, GE Transportation, based in Erie, Pa., does a brisk business selling heavy-haul freight locomotives to China, Mexico, Brazil and Australia. Creating barriers for foreign suppliers may mean that overseas railroads won’t buy American in retaliation.
Getting Back on Track
The Obama administration would be wise to break free from the protectionist impulses of PRIIA and let all domestic and global rail suppliers compete for HSR contracts. Out of such competition, the best equipment and lowest prices should emerge.
A robust government policy toward high-speed rail would do wonders to revitalize entrepreneurship and encourage the private sector to enter the field.
This is the true challenge facing the Obama administration — establishing a long-term strategy for HSR, including how to finance the system. Parsing what is and isn’t “100% American” isn’t sound policy, it’s crowd-pleasing politics that will only delay the implementation of the administration’s own program.
Photo credit: Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Photostream
Tags: Amtrak, Asia, Australia, Baltimore, Barack Obama, Brazil, California, China, Federal Railroad Administration, high-speed rail, Japan, John Porcari, Karen Rae, Mexico, New York, Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, Pullman-Standard Co., Quebec, Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation
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Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
How did America get to where it is today, a country with the slowest and most threadbare intercity passenger rail service of any advanced nation?
Not so very long ago, we were not in this humiliating position. In fact, we operated trains that amazed and impressed the rest of the world. These trains were called streamliners, and their very names – Silver Meteor, Flying Yankee, Rocky Mountain Rocket, Denver Zephyr – connoted speed and luxury. In the period between 1935 and 1950, the 10 fastest scheduled passenger trains in the world were all U.S. streamliners.
One of the great racetracks of this period was the New York Central Railroad’s four-track mainline between Buffalo and Cleveland. Paging through an old timetable, I counted 42 daily passenger trains running on this line in the 1940s. Such trains as the Commodore Vanderbilt, Fifth Avenue Special and the extra-fare choice of tycoons and Hollywood starlets, The 20th Century Limited, routinely topped 90 miles per hour on straightaways and averaged 60-65 mph, including station stops.
The 187 miles between Buffalo and Cleveland were covered in 3 hours then. Today, the sole passenger train traveling this route, Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited, takes 3½ hours, if (and this is a big if) the train is on schedule.
The Rise and Fall of American Rail
What differentiated our streamliners from contemporary trains in Europe and Asia was advanced technology. American railroads and equipment suppliers had not only pioneered the diesel-electric locomotive in the 1930s – a quantum leap over from the old steam locomotive – but introduced lightweight cars with better wheel sets, couplers, braking systems and lower centers of gravity to negotiate curves at higher speeds.
The interiors of these streamliners abounded in creature comforts – wide double-paned windows, recessed fluorescent lighting, luxurious reclining seats and the first air-conditioning found in any commercial transport.
Streamliners attracted customers by the carload. In fact, they made money. Wall Street consultants Coverdale & Colpitts surveyed 58 streamliners in 1948 and found that they grossed $98 million and netted $48 million after out-of-pocket costs, for a return of 49 percent.*
And then almost as quickly as the streamliner era flourished, it ended. There were a number of reasons for the rapid decline of rail passenger service, but the overwhelming factor was the explosion of government funding for new highways and airports. In 1956, Dwight Eisenhower signed the Interstate and Defense Highways Act. First estimated to cost $27 billion, the Interstate system took more than 30 years and $200 billion to complete. At the same time, state and local governments bankrolled airport construction, while Washington subsidized air carriers by fixing artificially high rates for U.S. airmail contracts.
The twin impact of airways and roadways was devastating on American railroads, which, after all, were private companies that paid property taxes and ticket taxes on their operations. For example, between 1956 and 1969, a total of 28,800 miles of interstate highways were opened to traffic. In the same period, 59,400 miles of railroad were taken out of passenger service.
From 2,500 daily intercity trains in 1954 (that’s excluding commuter service), fewer than 500 trains were left when the National Railroad Passenger Corp., or Amtrak, took over intercity rail service in 1971. Outside of the Boston-Washington Northeast Corridor, America’s passenger train had virtually disappeared.
American Technology Goes Abroad
So carelessly tossed away by our policymakers and politicians, the American streamliner did not simply die during those dismal decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, it rose from the ashes as its key technological features moved overseas, welcomed by a visionary group of railroaders.
An all-electric test train ordered by Louis Armand, head of the French national railway, shattered world records with 208-mph speeds in March 1955. This achievement proved the capacity of rail equipment using overhead electricity for propulsion to operate far above 100 mph on a sustained basis.
The French experiments inspired Japan’s Minister of Transport Shinhi Sogo. In 1956, the same year that President Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highways Act, Sogo began planning a rail line without sharp curves or up and down grades that would permit streamlined, all-electric trains to run at extremely high speeds with utmost safety
To operate the Shinkansen, or “New Trunk Line,” between Tokyo and Osaka, Sogo actively imported technology from America, including the two-axle trucks of the Budd Manufacturing Co. and dynamic braking pioneered by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division. To top it off, the Japan ordered the most advanced computer used outside of military applications (built by yet another American company, Bendix) to operate the line’s signal and dispatching systems.
Remarkably, the U.S. government gave Japan foreign aid – money purportedly going to an underdeveloped country – to build a rail infrastructure far superior to our own. Opened in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, the first Shinkansen train traveled at a maximum of 125 mph. The latest-generation Shinkansen runs at 188 mph, and its ancestor is in a museum.
Japan wasn’t alone. After developing moderately high-speed trains on mixed freight-and-passenger lines, France opened Europe’s first all-new railroad between Paris and Lyon in 1981. This route featured the now-famous TGVs, or “Trains of Great Speed.” Six thousand of 20,000 rail miles in France are now covered by TGV trains. High-speed service has expanded into Belgium, Germany, Holland, Italy, Switzerland and Spain in Europe and in China, South Korea and Taiwan in Asia.
Playing Catch-Up
Compared to these developments, we’re still in the horse-and-buggy stage. Amtrak’s self-declared high-speed line, the Northeast Corridor, does not even qualify as high speed by world standards. The Acela Express is designed for 150 mph, but only goes that fast for about 25 miles in Rhode Island.
Overall, Acela trains average only 67 mph between Boston and New York. South of New York, Acela operates at an average of 77 mph and can’t go faster than 125 mph anywhere because the overhead electric wires are obsolete and can slip off the train’s pantographs at higher speeds.
This is what happens when you starve a business for 60 years. It becomes stunted. Our passenger rail system is stunted today not because of some inevitable law of economics or natural outgrowth of competition. It’s stunted because of longstanding government policy that thoughtlessly, absentmindedly, let some wonderful American-made technology slip away.
This piece is an excerpt from Mark Reutter’s keynote address at the High-Speed Rail Summit last week in Erie, Pa.
* “Streamliners Earn More Than Ever,” Railway Age, March 4, 1950.
Tags: Amtrak, France, high-speed rail, Infrastructure, Japan, Railroads, science and technology, TGV, Transportation
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Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
Mark Reutter
PPI Fellow Mark Reutter is the former editor of
Railroad History and author of
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).
by Mark Reutter
President Obama made a splash in Florida last month when he announced the award of federal stimulus money to start building a high-speed rail (HSR) line between Tampa and Orlando. “I’m excited. I’m going to come back down here and ride it,” he told a cheering audience at a town hall meeting.
The president certainly got it right when he said that we must break our dependence on the automobile and imported oil. Safe, reliable, and incredibly fast rail promises a breakthrough that people will be willing to pay for and private investors willing to operate. Passenger trains cruising at 150 miles per hour provide a decisive margin of superiority over highway travel and can compete effectively with commercial air in short- and medium-distance markets while cutting overall fuel consumption and greenhouse gases.
But for all the hype surrounding the president’s announcement, this exciting new mode of transportation won’t be arriving in America anytime soon unless the Obama administration and Congress make some “course corrections.” The crux of the problem is that the administration has begun a major civic work without laying down engineering and design protocols that match the standards of fast train lines built elsewhere in the world. Even worse, the distribution of funds from the stimulus package ensures that the most promising projects will remain underfunded.
Defining High-Speed Rail
One thing that’s been little understood by policy makers and the public is that HSR trains operate quite differently from conventional Amtrak trains. First and foremost, they cannot share tracks with much slower freight trains and must be walled off in their own protected corridors. They can climb steeper gradients than regular trains, allowing them to “hug” the landscape and minimize noise and environmental impacts. But in order to maintain top speeds, the lines they travel on must be built with the fewest possible curves. And where curves are unavoidable, they must use larger turning circles to change direction.
Trains running at more than 150 mph need to be far more powerful than conventional trains and use overhead electric lines for power rather than diesel engines. Trainsets are lightweight and based on aerodynamic designs that make for quicker acceleration and more economical braking.
A regular diesel-powered train running on track shared with freight trains is not high-speed rail. It never will be. It cannot and will not compete with highways and commercial air because it is stuck on a 19th-century right-of-way filled with curves and narrow clearances that reflect a period when trains ran no faster than 60 mph. And yet such projects, designated as “Emerging HSR” by the Obama administration, got far too much of the HSR stimulus pot last month.
A Smarter HSR Strategy Is Needed
Of the 29 rail projects that shared $8 billion in Recovery Act stimulus funds, only two – the Tampa-Orlando proposal in Florida and a projected San Diego-Sacramento line in California – qualify as high-speed rail by international standards. The rest can most accurately be called “higher speed rail” or “improving Amtrak on-time performance rail.”
The best of these projects, a $1.1 billion upgrade of the existing rail corridor between Chicago and St. Louis, will eventually permit Amtrak trains to achieve 110-mph maximums and 70-mph averages between the two cities. That’s far below the 150-mph standard set by the European Union. Several other corridor projects funded last month won’t even reach 100-mph speed maximums because they are limited by the curves and congestion on track they share with freight railroads.
The Florida and California proposals that we believed should have served as templates for an emerging HSR program got far fewer funds than they deserved. Both proposals call for lightweight, electrically propelled trains on dedicated guideways running at 150 to 220 mph. Each state got enough stimulus money ($1.25 billion for Florida and $2.25 billion for California) to begin construction, but without any assurance that a working segment can be finished and placed in revenue service. This is a big problem that needs to be remedied.
The Recovery Act provided the first-ever direct federal funds for passenger rail improvements outside of the Northeast Corridor. Responsibility for the program was handed to the Federal Railroad Administration, a small branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) that deals primarily with railway safety. There was no precedent for what it had been tasked to do by President Obama. Awarding high-speed passenger projects was a new responsibility for which the agency was largely unprepared and unequipped.
Because it lacked personnel with backgrounds in HSR, the FRA fell back on what it knew best – conventional railway operations – to evaluate grant applications from the states. And the state applications were mostly dusted-off commuter-rail or incremental Amtrak projects, because most state DOTs have no more experience in executing HSR projects than the federal government.
Out of this confluence of modest state applications chasing humble FRA guidelines came a welter of small-scale upgrades – fixing signal systems here and adding a new siding there – that collectively do little to advance a new mode of intercity travel in America.
We have to do better. Minor upgrades of low-speed freight systems will give government critics a perfect target to paint HSR as a “runaway spending train” (as the Wall Street Journal dubbed it) that benefits only a small group of people. If the public’s current enthusiasm for HSR turns into disappointment, there will be little political support for the expenditure of hundreds of billions needed to construct real high-speed networks.
Getting it Right
To rectify this situation, we make the following policy recommendations to the administration and Congress:
- use the $2.5 billion that Congress has authorized for HSR in 2010 to fully fund the Tampa-Orlando project and provide enough aid to the California project so that a segment of the system can be operational by 2015.
- provide HSR funds only to projects that feature a dedicated, electric-powered system operating at 150 mph or higher. Adopt international standards for HSR design and construction to guarantee the highest-quality engineering.
- define upgraded rail corridors as “CSR,” or conventional-speed rail, which could be funded by a separate aid program.
- develop a sustained source for both HSR and CSR funding, such as a national infrastructure bank advocated by PPI, to ensure a regular and predicable source of funds outside of annual congressional appropriations.
- set up a Federal HSR Administration, distinct from the FRA and comparable in staff and technical expertise to the Federal Highway Administration. An agency with a specified infrastructure-building mandate is necessary to move the program forward.
- locate high-speed rail lines, wherever feasible, along highway corridors instead of privately owned freight railroads. The Florida HSR line will use an alignment alongside I-4 between Tampa and Orlando. In other areas, interstates pass through land that is often owned by the federal government, so land-acquisition costs are minimal.
- encourage the private sector to invest in HSR-building by offering real-estate opportunities along the rights-of-way, such as reserving land near HSR terminals for companies that help underwrite rail projects.
- open HSR train and station services to bids from private contractors to enhance the revenue stream from ticket sales.
- encourage domestic manufacture of HSR cars and locomotives through well-targeted tax credits and “green” credits.
Moving Forward
There is no doubt that President Obama is committed to upgrading intercity passenger rail. But last month his administration failed to exert optimal leadership by spreading federal stimulus funds far and wide rather than concentrating on two or three corridors that would give us trains equal to those in Europe and China.
No one said that building a passenger rail network worthy of the 21st century would be easy or cheap. But neither was the transcontinental railroad nor the interstate highway system that transformed overland travel in America in the past. Each required a bold vision accompanied by smart planning, perseverance, and sustained financial support.
The administration’s current plans for HSR represent a welcome change from the neglect of years past. But unless improvements to our HSR strategy are made, we risk squandering the renewed momentum for building a true high-speed network.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mujitra/ / CC BY 2.0
Tags: Amtrak, Barack Obama, California, Federal Railroad Administration, Florida, high-speed rail, Infrastructure, Innovation, Railroads, stimulus, Transportation, Transportation Department
Posted in
Clean Energy and Modern Infrastructure, Daily Fix, Policy Memo |
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