High Speed Rail in California to be seriously dialed back

In his State of California speech, new Governor Gavin Newsom pulled back on the plans for a high speed rail line/semi-system in California, because of the high cost and opposition, committing only to going through with the currently underway project in the Central Valley.

Original plan

I'd argue that the California project was somewhat misdirected. But it's possible I am completely wrong.

1. I've learned that "big hairy audacious goals" can be as they say "the hobgoblins of small minds."

It's better to start smaller sometimes, and have proof of concept, and especially important to start where you can be wildly successful.  That usually means postponing social justice outcomes to later phases of a project, because in earlier phases, such goals are likely to imperil a project.

Yes, it's a big lift to say start with Los Angeles, but who is going to use HSR in the Central Valley of California?

Tijuana to San Diego to Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, plus LA to Las Vegas, would have been a more productive way to start. It's not that there isn't a lot of demand theoretically for LA to SF, it's just there's a lot of area of not demand between SB and SF.

It's 291 miles from Santa Barbara to San Jose and about 50 miles to San Francisco from San Jose. It's 120 miles to Sacramento from San Jose.

LA Union Station btw is f*ing beautiful. But most of the stations in those bigger cities along the California coast, such as San Diego are also quite attractive.


2.  I don't think HSR in Central Valley on its own will have that much in the way of economic impact.  The value of train transit is in a network of breadth and depth.  Without either, it won't have much effect.

3. Maybe, given the contentious political situation in the US, when the right is against almost anything done by government, especially train service, out of a fear that it verges on communism, it was too big of a lift for California to try such a big project, at least at first.

It would have delayed HSR by ten years or more, but perhaps the thing would have been to focus on making the various existing regional rail passenger programs in Southern California, the San Francisco Bay area, and between Sacramento and the SF Bay much better.  For example:

• the ongoing electrification program for Caltrain could have been accelerated, and extended to the Capitol Corridor (Sacramento to San Jose) line.
• Train service to the Transbay Terminal Station in San Francisco could have been accelerated.  See Richard Mlynarik website concerning broad civil engineering design problems generally, plus the civil engineering problems with the current station now.
  
• Double tracking and other improvements could have been implemented for the Metrolink system in Southern California
• other improvements could include integration of Coaster (San Diego County) with some of the Metrolink lines for continuous service rather than hiccup of a connection between the two systems at Oceanside in North San Diego County.

4. The other thing with the various HSR projects in Europe (outside of the UK) is that countries like France and Spain are very committed, the national government takes the lead, they don't have the same kind of f*ed up politics in the US when it comes to rail investment.

-- "High-Speed Rail Gains Traction in Spain," New York Times
-- "Spain's high speed rail system offers lessons for California," Orange County Register

This was demonstrated by the Obama Administration's failed attempt to move HSR along in large part as an economic development initiative.  Many of the states where lines were proposed had Republican Governors, who blocked the proposals.

5.  Yes, there are lots of articles about how the US pales in HSR compared to China especially and of course Japan, and yes France or Spain.

-- "Watch Out, Airlines. High Speed Rail Now Rivals Flying/," Bloomberg Businessweek

But now we are being outspanned by Morocco too! A high speed rail service launched last December, funded and designed by French interests.

-- "Will Africa's first high-speed train be a £1.5bn magic bullet for Morocco?," Guardian

(And yes, Moroccan activists argue the money should have been spent on programs for the impoverished.)


6. I don't know what it means exactly but the Brightline privately launched and funded higher speed rail program in Florida has (1) licensed the Virgin Trains brand and will be rebranding; (2) bought the Las Vegas to Southern California's Victorville HSR line, formerly called XPress West, and will also call it Virgin Trains ("High-speed train connecting Las Vegas, Southern California gets new owner," BusinessInsider).

The service currently runs between Miami and Palm Beach with plans for extensions to Orlando and Tampa Bay.

7. Except for vociferous lobbying by airlines, I'd focus HSR on high usage relatively short trip airline corridors (e.g., DC to NYC, NYC to Boston) and build from there.

I think the Texas service proposed between Houston and Dallas, called Texas Central Railway, can be successful, but besides acquiring property, a major problem is the same for the Brightline program--the train stations aren't in the center of the Downtown but on the outskirts, and historically that doesn't work out so well in terms of maximizing the benefits of urbanism, density, and centrality.

However, given the state's conservative bent, the Texas project may well be doomed.

-- "Face the stats: Texas high-speed rail destined for failure [Opinion]," Houston Chronicle
-- "COUNTERPOINT: High-speed rail takes aim at traffic and dangerous highways"

8. There's been a bunch of coverage about decline in passenger rail service quality with Deutsche Bahn and of course the high cost of train travel in the UK, but these countries have dense networks and frequent service, including higher speed rail in Germany.  (European style HSR is being developed in the UK, although not without problems.)

Outside of the Northeast Corridor, we don't have anything like the train service in those countries, although the suburban regional rail networks in Chicago, Philadelphia, NY/NJ, and Boston are pretty great, comparatively speaking, with all-day and weekend service.

Could "fast freight rail" service be a way to make High Speed Rail more viable?

High Speed Rail is uniformly discussed in terms of passenger service, and is usually promoted for operation in high density corridors between major cities, pairs such as New York-Boston, or San Diego-Los Angeles-San Francisco, or Dallas-Houston.

It happens that the freeways connecting these cities typically are engorged with delivery truck traffic too.

Passenger rail service in the modern era isn't hugely profitable, at least in the US, while freight delivery remains reasonably profitable.

Plus, demand ("More surcharges, rejected freight sting US truck firms," Journal of Commerce) is making it hard to find drivers ("'What Does a Trucker Look Like?' It's Changing, Amid a Big Shortage," New York Times)) and simultaneously, demand for long distance truck delivery services is increasing, in part because of the rise of online commerce.

Why not consider trying to shift some freight service to a high speed rail network? Which would also help to reduce truck traffic on major interstates, reduce GHG emissions, etc.  It would also make HSR more economically viable.

Italy is about to launch such a service.  From Railway Gazette International ("Mercitalia launches high speed freight service"):

FS Group freight subsidiary Mercitalia is to launch its first high speed freight service on November 7. FS says the Mercitalia Fast service is designed to meet the needs of express courier companies, logistics operators, producers and distributors.

Operated by a converted ETR500 trainset, the Mercitalia Fast overnight service will convey express parcels and premium freight between the Maddaloni-Marcianise terminal near Caserta and Bologna Interporto, using the country’s north-south high speed line. According to Mercitalia Logistics General Manager Marco Gosso, Mercitalia Fast will be the first express freight service to use the Alta Velocità/Alta Capacità high speed network. With the train running at an average speed of 180 km/h, the end-to-end journey time will be just 3 h 30 min.

The trainset has been adapted to carry 1 m3 roll cages with a 220 kg payload, which will make loading and unloading ‘quick, efficient and safe’. With the 12-car train able to carry the equivalent of 18 articulated lorries or two Boeing 747 freighters, the daily train is expected to relieve the main north-south A1 motorway of around 9 000 lorries a year, reducing CO2 emissions by 80% compared to road haulage.

If it works, they intend to expand the service to other nodes in Italy's high speed rail network.

In Dresden, Volkswagen uses the local light rail system to move vehicles and parts between plants, with a special trainset called the "CarGoTram."  That example has spurred more local transit agencies to look at their light rail systems for other opportunities in freight logistics and delivery ("Light rail network used for freight transport," Rail Freight).


Granted, this is more of what I call intra-district transit rather than long distance freight transportation, but it's still an example of rethinking passenger transit systems as being solely focused on passenger service.

Back in the day, sttreetcar systems and interurban--a mode that mixed shorter distance streetcar transit over long distances today the South Shore Line in Indiana and Illinois with service to Chicago is the only remaining functioning interurban in the US--would be used for overnight freight service.

High-speed rail: too bad Texas didn't take the first leap

A Texas correspondent (Stuart J.) recently forwarded to me a piece about high-speed rail planning in Texas ("High speed rail: an idea with no funding," San Antonio Express-News), and it got me to thinking that Texas, maybe more than California, would have been a better place to try to pilot high-speed rail as a practical transportation service.

It's because the three major cities in Texas: Dallas; Houston; and San Antonio are relatively close, Austin is on the way from Dallas to San Antonio, New Orleans isn't super-far from Houston, and Monterrey, Mexico is a reasonable distance from San Antonio.

It's 225 miles from Houston to Dallas, 250 miles from Dallas to San Antonio, 180 miles from Dallas to Austin, the state capital, and 306 miles from San Antonio to Monterrey, Mexico, but the trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles is longer, 380 miles--although HSR as currently proposed stops in Bakersfiled, 100 miles from LA.  It's about 350 miles from Houston to New Orleans.

At those not so "Texas-sized distances," you can shift a lot of trips from the road or air to the rail, and a high-speed rail trip is faster than driving and faster than flying that distance, if you factor in the time getting to the airport, and waiting to board, and getting to your final destination.

-- Texas-Oklahoma Passenger Rail Study - Overview
-- "TxDOT Taking Steps to Further Explore High-Speed Rail," Texas Tribune
-- "Houston-to-Dallas high-speed rail could break ground in two years," Community Impact Newspaper, (story discusses the possibility of doing this privately)

High-speed rail planning.  Where is the American Conservative Magazine's Center for Public Transportation when we need them?, to lay out the conservative case for high-speed rail in Texas.  They have this piece:  High Speed Rail: A Conservative Appraisal By Williams S. Lind and Glen D. Bottoms.  They make the point that it's best to move towards higher speed rail incrementally, and use the Cascades, Hiawatha, and Downeaster Amtrak services provided with financial and planning assistance by the respective states as models. 

Also see the past blog entry, "Second iteration, idealized national network for high speed rail passenger service."

California.  There is an interesting piece in the San Francisco Business Times, "Southwest Airlines meets high-speed rail? Bay Area rail boss on $68 billion project," about the current status of their project, and how they could seek bids from airline companies to run the system.

That's an interesting idea, because it could better integrate airport and rail services and get airlines thinking more broadly about end-to-end customer service, which they don't do so much now ("Airlines likely to balk at LAX transit link," Daily Breeze).

In the UK, the Virgin family of companies has subsidiaries doing both railroad service and air travel.  I don't know if they work to integrate promotion, marketing, and other elements of the service footprint.

Heritage Foundation op-ed against California high speed rail

Impact of high speed rail service in Spain, California Watch graphic.

Three things that people often fail to properly distinguish in discussions of government spending:

(1) this year's budget, what it comprises, and how it's paid for;
(2) the difference between program (current) spending and investment in capital improvements (paid for now, but with multi-decade return on investment)
(3) the various funding sources (federal, state, etc.) and mandates for different programs.

I think it's fair to say that Emily Goff of the Heritage Foundation mis-represents all three, plus reasons for privatization of rail transit in Japan and the United Kingdom, in the Orange County Register op-ed "State can't afford 'free' rail money" to support an anti-rail argument.

The State of California is projected to have a $16 billion deficit this year (and she uses this number to imply that California is far more mismanaged than JPMorgan despite that firm's announcement of multi-billion dollar hedging losses, which is completely irrelevant to the article--I think Jamie Dimon would be in over his head managing a state government) which is the result of many reasons, some due to restrictions on the ability to tax, and others due, yes, to the disconnect between new economic realities and the conditions under which old program commitments and contracts were made--some things do need to change, to better fit reduced economic circumstances (a/k/a "you can't have your cake and eat it too" especially if you aren't willing to pay for the cake).

But the investment in high speed rail will have a multi-decade payback, and whether or not California makes this investment, it won't have any impact on the state's current account projected deficit for FY13--the high speed rail project will be funded in part by bond money and in part by federal funds.

Chris Nash, University of Leeds, on wider economic benefits of high-speed rail [PDF]

Gines de Rus, University of Las Palmas, on economic effects of high-speed rail [PDF]

Roger Vickerman, University of Kent, on research into economic benefits of high-speed rail/transportation investments [PDF]

Gines de Rus, University of Las Palmas, on benefit-cost analysis of high-speed rail [PDF]

Two other problems with the piece:
1.  Her statements about "privatization" of rail in Japan and the United Kingdom are misleading (but are deliberate, to make the point that "the government" shouldn't be making this kind of investment).

The main reason that rail is private in Japan is that it's profitable, although this in part has to do with how Japanese land use practices maintain dense centers and focus on maintaining investment in cities, and how the rail companies are able to monetize development opportunities in association with the rail system (like how rail transit systems were first created in the US in fact).  

None of this is mentioned in the piece.  Actually, this sets the stage for an interesting conservative argument in favor of privately run transit systems--by coordinating land use and transportation policy, promoting mixed use development, and eliminating subsidies of sprawl and the automobile, rail transit service could be successfully privatized (but still there would have to be government support for the infrastructure probably) because the ridership volumes would be significantly higher.

As long as the competition to transit is deeply subsidized, which it is, it's impossible for transit to function as a privately owned service or without subsidies of its own.

In the UK, rail was privatized for political and ideological reasons, not for business reasons, and for the most part, rail service has suffered for it.  Certainly, compared to continental Europe, for the most part, UK rail service does not measure up.  See this 2001 piece from the International Herald Tribune, "Why privatization of public utilities can be a disaster," which discusses the UK rail experience.

Transit doesn't have to be a government service inherently.  But as long as land use decisions are not made in an integrated fashion with transportation planning decisions and motor vehicle use is significantly subsidized in many ways (the cost of roads, the cost of gasoline, public and environmental health impacts, the cost of military forces stationed overseas, etc.), and the majority of the economic benefits of transit access are gained by other economic interests, privatization of transit doesn't work--it's why transit services had to be taken over by the government. 

2. The new trope going around in conservative circles, related to the general emphasis on "state's rights" and the sentiment that the federal government is incapable of doing anything right, is that transportation planning and infrastructure investment is "increasingly Washington-centered," that "bureaucrats make decisions about projects hundreds of miles away," and that states "know their transportation priorities much better than Washington."  These are all quotes from the Goff piece.

While there is some truth to the point that decisions can be disconnected, at another level the completely ignores the necessity of national planning for transportation.  This is from a past blog entry:

Speaking of exercise, my  thinking about transportation planning generally occurs at five scales:

1. International -- connections between countries.

2. National -- anchors of a national transportation system, current anchors are the Interstate Highway system, the freight railroad system, and airplane travel. We do not have a national passenger railroad network presently.

3. Regional --connections between states or two or more metropolitan areas in a state -- for the most part these don't exist for public transit, except for passenger rail service, but do routinely exist for freight railroad service, airplane travel, and the Interstate highway system, which in turn supports inter-city motor coach (bus) service.

Railroad passenger service with regional scale includes Amtrak's Northeast Corridor railroad passenger service, along with the Amtrak Cascades service from Portland Oregon to Seattle and Vancouver BC, and the Capitol Corridor in California.  Passenger service provided by local rail systems in the New York-Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Delaware region, Illinois-Indiana, serving Chicago, in Southern California, and between Maryland/West Virginia/DC are other examples.

4. Metropolitan -- transit systems like the WMATA subway and bus system in the Washington metropolitan area or the combined railroad, subway, bus, and waterborne transit services in the NYC or Boston metropolitan areas are examples of transit provided at the scale of a metropolitan area, with one major central city at the core.

5. Sub-metropolitan transit systems (in the DC region, locally provided services such as RideOn in Montgomery County Maryland or the Downtown Circulator in DC are examples of services within the subnetwork category of the Metropolitan Transit Network).
--------------------------
At the state level, transportation budgeting tends to be dominated by road building interests and rural interests, so monies are spent on roads, not on making decisions focused on optimizing the use of the most efficient transportation modes.

And transportation planning is not solely a local responsibility although at the end of the day, infrastructure is built and maintained locally. 

Transportation infrastructure is a system that is designed to be integrated, to connect the entire country, to serve a variety of needs, especially freight transportation.

Even the vagaries of local politics and gerrymandering of political districts and sprawl and its negative impact on center cities, the local political environment is focused not on optimizing transportation efficiency, but on maintaining the automobile-focused status quo.

The Heritage Foundation knows this, which is why it uses the bogeyman of the "federal government" to pressure politicians to push the control of federal transportation monies to the state level.

Finally, the reality is that high-speed rail is a 21st century public investment in California's (and ideally the nation's) future, just as the creation of transcontinental railroad service in the 1860s united the country and laid the foundation for a century of incredible success--economic growth, the development of a mass internal US market, consolidation of the nation, tremendous wealth creation--high-speed rail can reset the mobility and economic paradigm for California for the next five decades, not unlike how high speed rail service is changing Spain.  See "Spain's high-speed rail system offers lessons for California" from the Fresno Bee/California Watch.  

It is tragic that such a strong ideological bent focused on negativizing federal, state, and local government activities is being justified to support a failure to invest in the future of the nation.

I don't understand why progressives have such a difficult time making counter arguments (except for the fact of misfeasance in so many instances, from the war in Iraq to government corruption, which I suppose can be hard to counter, especially when the conservatives are so quick to provide excuses for massive business failure, i.e., JPMorgan's failure in London or BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, etc.)

Article about high speed rail comparing Spain and California

"Spain's high-speed rail system offers lessons for California," from the Sacramento Bee. The article makes at least five interesting points:

- that Spain built the system because they wanted to--it was partly built as a post-Franco unification device

- but as a country, Spain doesn't have the population density to support economically many of the lines, based on ridership

- although there has been large shifts from driving and especially flying to rail as a result of the creation of the AVE high speed rail system in Spain (which is complemented by improvements in regional railroad transportation)

- that if you want to build support for high-speed rail, you need to build it first where people will use it, and build from there, unlike the way that construction for high speed rail is supposed to start in California

- that Spain should have prioritized investment in rail, to ensure the system's long term success.

There is a video with the story and this great graphic.

(US) National Train Day, Saturday May 7, 2011

Website: National Train Day

Amtrak is sponsoring events in Washington, DC; New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; and Los Angeles, and in many other cities across the nation.

-- California High-Speed Rail Authority
-- High Speed Rail Corridors, Federal Railroad Administration
-- Railroad Station webpage
-- different railroad station webpage
-- Railroad history
-- Maryland Railroad Commuter line, Growth and Investment Plan
-- Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation
-- Bill Wright's book/dissertation on Washington's Union Station, incredibly well-written


Go by Train sign, Union Station, Portland, Oregon by sfgamchick, on Flickr

It's cool when bad decisions have consequences

Newly elected Republican Governors in Wisconsin and Ohio repudiated plans for high speed rail in their states, presuming that they would be able to keep the federal transportation monies and use them for roads and such.

Nope. See "High-speed rail funds scatter to other states: Wisconsin won't have to repay money already spent; California gets lion's share" from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Plus, from an economic development standpoint, Spanish high speed rail equipment manufacturer Talgo has decided to not go forward with a manufacturing plant in Milwaukee. See "Talgo: ‘We can’t stay and manufacture in Milwaukee’" from the Daily Reporter. From the article:

The decision was made after U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced Thursday that the federal government was rescinding the $810 million allocated to Wisconsin. Wisconsin Gov.-elect Scott Walker had strongly opposed the state’s high-speed rail plan. “We can’t stay and manufacture in Milwaukee without the high-speed rail to Madison,” Friend said. “This is terrible news.”

Friend said the state’s decision to back away from the high-speed rail project sends a terrible message to businesses considering locating in the state. “We were encouraged by the business community,” Friend said. “We are really discouraged by what has happened.” State residents should also be discouraged, she said. Talgo and the construction of the rail line would have created jobs badly needed in the construction industry.

Also see "Talgo seeks work in states given Wisconsin's rail share" from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

1. Make such decisions have consequences. Typically, in U.S. politics, such decisions don't normally have consequences.

2. It does demonstrate problems with creating "nationally-important" transportation infrastructure by working with individual states.