Map of potential high-speed rail routes funded, in part, by the stimulus plan.
Amtrak's current service map
A century ago, Ford Motors began mass-producing automobiles, sparking the personal transportation revolution that continues to define our car-centric culture today. That’s the way the story usually goes, anyway, but one question that normally isn’t asked is how valuable those new vehicles would have been without the massive infrastructure they engendered. Pre-automobile, the few roads that existed between cities were stagecoach-rutted and neglected, and a large portion of the country was only reachable by sea or river. The National Highway System, completed in the 1960s, was the first of its scale in the world, connecting the states with over 160,000 miles of pavement. The federal government shelled out upwards of 25 billion dollars for the project, and continues to subsidize its existence by paying for constant maintenance and upgrades. Highways, as much as abundant fuel or cookie-cutter automobiles, were responsible for developing our hard-to-kick dependency on personal transportation.
If infrastructure can have such a powerful influence on how people move from point A to B, eliminating the inherently inefficient personal vehicle from our lives should be a simple matter of building new kinds of transportation corridors – and some intense cultural reconditioning, of course. This, at least, seems to be the attitude of policy makers and advocacy groups bent on resurrecting Amtrak, the U.S.’ federally owned passenger rail service. The cultural reconditioning they’re leaving for more capable hands, but plans to put to use the $8 billion recently allocated to Amtrak* in the federal stimulus package are gathering the speed of a runaway train. Can all that money really lure travelers off the roads and airways? More important, is reviving Amtrak enough to recharge our economy, reduce oil dependence and cut emissions?
One of Amtrak's more creative advertising approaches.
An artist's rendering of California's vision for it's high-speed rail lines.
Perhaps this was the figure the writers of the stimulus plan had in mine when they included $8 billion for Amtrak’s expansion in the bill. Unfortunately, this kind of cash does not buy as much new Amtrak service as one would hope, at least not according to the above-mentioned report on potential high-speed rail routes in the U.S. In it, Amtrak names eleven “corridors” in which it believes trains running at speeds upwards of 100 mph would generate high numbers of riders and revenue. Most carry price tags of between $2 and $8 billion, with the exception of California’s corridor, priced at a mind-blowing $44 billion. None of the corridors have moved beyond the planning process, but not for a lack of public support. In Florida, lawmakers and private citizens have rallied behind the cause, asking for $2.5 billion of the federal stimulus money to start construction on their corridors.
The stimulus package funding for Amtrak was earmarked specifically for high speed routes, and it’s easy to see why. While the regular old choo-choo that has carried passengers across the continent since the industrial revolution is decidedly lacking in sparkle, the words “high-speed rail” seem to magically catapult the listener into a super-high-tech future of bullet trains and Disney-style monorails. Who wouldn’t want to go there? Meanwhile, a mostly overlooked but earnest group of citizens from the mostly overlooked but decidedly populated northwestern part of the country are asking for their piece. The request is simple: Revive an Amtrak line retired in the 1970s that brought passengers through what is now one of the bigger blank areas on the Amtrak map. The route, named the “Hiawatha”, traveled from Seattle through southern Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota. It hits centers of population and industry along the way, as well as connections to tourist destinations like Yellowstone National Park and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Better yet, an Amtrak study of the route calculated the projected farebox recovery (operating costs covered by ticket, food and beverage sales) at 58%, higher than Amtrak’s average. Restoring the route is also expected to generate 269 permanent jobs (compare that to 600 permanent jobs for the entire $10 billion Florida high-speed rail project). And what will all this cost the federal government and eight states covered by the Hiawatha? A cool one billion dollars.
The first two decades of the 21th century are sure to go down in history as the time when – as in the early 1900s – the transportation status quo underwent significant changes. Today, technological optimism is rampant. We’re told we can save the planet and prevent a post-oil apocalypse by purchasing a hybrid Escalade, or a fancy new road bike, or a multi-billion rail project. As usual, none of these “solutions” involve scaling back, traveling less, and buying less stuff that needs to be moved around.
Given that this kind of social change will be slow in happening, policy makers seem to be on the right track by building new rail “superhighways” that will push people away from reliance on personal automobiles. There are efficiencies to be gained with this strategy; Amtrak estimates that train travel is 20% more efficient than airline travel and 28% more than car travel on a per-passenger basis. Still, a 2006 study by the Center for Clean Air Policy estimates savings of 2.7 billion tons of carbon emissions per year if the entire high speed rail system (all 11 corridors) is put in place. Sounds like a lot, until you consider that your average coal-fired power plant emits about twice that.
Even if Americans do want to fund new high-speed rail lines around the country, what will it take to get the average traveler out of his or her car and into trains and other, more efficient means of transportation? Alternative transportation studies have again and again shown that the deciding factor always comes down to price. A straightforward carbon tax – one that does not give breaks to hybrids running on coal-generated electricity – will provide the needed disincentive to drivers and airplane travelers. Meanwhile, if the government must pour money into Amtrak, it should use it to build the entire train system, making routes available to people in every part of the country instead of only those in urbanized areas. Efficiency and travel time could also be improved greatly by repealing the rule that gives freight trains the priority on shared tracks – an unnecessary inconvenience that delays dozens of Amtrak trains each day.
We certainly need better, more efficient and rider-worthy rail service in this country. The popular support exists both to improve Amtrak and implement a carbon tax that would put people into its seats. Construction on the National Highway System started not out of some sudden need to allow every last American to become mobile but as a way to pull the country out of the depression. If we can avoid the temptation to go with whatever technology seems most in style, and invest in a rail system that best serves the public need, the transportation future of this country will be a good measure more sustainable than its past.
*CORRECTION: The $8 billion in stimulus money was not allocated specifically for Amtrak. It was earmarked for high-speed-rail development, which Amtrak is the most likely candidate to undertake. Thank you, readers, for pointing this out.
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Tuula Rebhahn is a freelance farmer and food security advocate. She grew up in Oregon, where she recently received undergraduate degrees in Environmental Studies and journalism. Immediately thereafter, she escaped to Canada for a practical education as an apprentice on an organic farm on Vancouver Island. Tuula enjoys being on the move; her travels have included Central America, the Galapagos Islands, Europe, and South India, where she spent three months as an intern with an agricultural NGO. Her passions include writing, cooking, eating, goat-walking, and plotting the local food revolution. She proudly blogs for Conducive as well as at notulips.blogspot.com.
“We don't just vote in the ballot box, we vote for the kind of world we want every time we choose what to eat." –Alice Waters
At present Amtrak accounts for only 2 tenths of 1 percent of intercity travel in terms of passenger miles travelled, the only significant measure. The writer is correct in questioning the high speed assumptions. There are too many blank places on the current rail travel map. These do need to be filled in, the current system serves too few locations. It is not a good idea however to hinder freight traffic, more capacity needs to be built into the track system at the time passenger trains are being added. Interfering with freight traffic would have a very destructive effect on the larger economy. Both freight and passengers need to be efficiently accommodated with improved infrastructure.
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Tuula–
Right–but a correction is in order. We actually have two “national highway systems.” You have described the “Interstate Defense Highway System,” devised in the Eisenhower administration, and brought close to completion by the 1970s. Long before that, in 1938, Franklin Roosevelt’s administration developed the Federal Highway System. This system was the one that knitted the country together, including roads from US 1 in the east to “the 101″–US route 101 along the west coast. East-west, such routes included Route 66, famed in song and story, and Route 40, the Lincoln Highway.
By the 50′s we needed to match Germany’s autobahns, and that’s what Eisenhower created. In urban areas, the plan was to run the Interstates right through the centers of cities, as a form of “urban renewal,” known in many cities as “negro removal.” In many places–Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, to name a few in the east–People truly revolted against the planners and forced the abandonment of the city segments of these routes, running through traffic around the loop-roads instead. Anyhow, credit for knitting the nation together by road belongs to Roosevelt, although Eisenhower’s system deserves vast credit for forming modern America.
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I agree with mostly everything you said. But a few corrections: Amtrak is not receiving the $8 billion. It is going to the agencies that have the best proposals in place at this time to begin developing their corridors. It’ll be mainly for engineering and some construction. In the end Amtrak, may end up operating many of the corridors or another entity might run the trains. Also Amtrak did not come up with the 11 corridors. Congress designated those corridors back in the 90′s. Amtrak gets a totally different subsidy from the Fed. Plus many states pay Amtrak to operate their own corridors such as California, Illinois, and North Carolina.
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New England and the northeast corridor has had a high speed rail for years. It cost a great deal of money to build, and a lot to run . For as many years as I can remember it has lost money and the Feds have had to bail them out. My wife and I looked into taking it to D.C. the cost was unbelievable . We flew for a fraction of the cost. My question is it worth the expense to build?
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by cleancartalk, JacksonHole Vacation, Florida OL, Florida OL, GoForit1102 and others. GoForit1102 said: Amtrak's Big Comeback: Is High-Speed Rail Our Best Option? http://bit.ly/8xaxuN [...]
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I think that Amtrak will be very valuable secondary transport systems to support nationwide
transport net works centered by high speed train corridors connecting east-west and north-south. Amtrak can serve as feeders to the high speed train corridors.
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[...] reading here: Amtrak's Big Comeback: Is High-Speed Rail Our Best Option? Share and [...]
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I believe in some form of rail service, but I am highly skeptical as to whether Amtrak is an organization that can make that happen. As for our “automobile culture”, I am for automotive freedom for people who can exercise that privledge (yes, I said “privledge” not “right”) responsibly. A certain percentage of people in this country are irresponsible drivers and should have their lisences revoked immediately. I would start with drunk drivers, who should lose their lisences for an extremely long period of time, if not indefinitely, and would add to that list people who can’t figure out whether they want to text, talk on their phone, or pay attention to the road while they are operating a two ton piece of steel that could kill someone. Maybe when these irresponsible people are removed form ther road, the busses, rail lines, and airlines would all see a boost in ridership.
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Your article is erroneous on several important facts, and your thesis is, respectfully, incorrect.
Amtrak is not getting the $8 billion.
California’s is not “mind blowing” — it is an accurate estimation for a project in the state that holds nearly a third of the nation’s population. You also owe it to your readers that California taxpayers have voted a $10 billion bond to help build the system.
Saying the Hiawatha “hits centers of population and industry along the way” is ludicrous. Rail works where there is dense population. The territory served by the old Hiawatha is blank on Amtrak’s map because there are no centers of population there. The Boise to Spearfish trade does not deserve high speed rail money, low speed rail money, or trolley money.
Saying “Efficiency and travel time could also be improved greatly by repealing the rule that gives freight trains the priority on shared tracks ” shows lack of knowledge on your lecture subject. Amtrak gets sidelined because it doesn’t own the tracks it uses in rural areas, and buying that trackage to gain passenger priority would cost billions.
You advocate investing “in a rail system that best serves the public need” and then advocate dumping a billion dollars into a rail line that took three days to cross from Seattle to Chicago, at enormous federal subsidy. That makes no sense.
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Again the blah blah blah about the population density. Please tell me why the most used long distance train of the Amtrak network (the Empire Builder) traverse one of the less density populated areas in the USA. The North Coast Hiawhatta (that´s the correct name of the train) will go along the same area, so good results could be expected. Other: several stations on the route of the Empire Builder are more used (more passengers per year) than stations in big cities like Cleveland or Dallas (as an example). And the last one: one thing that makes NO SENSE is the really HUGH subsidy to the “essential air service”, with a LOT of money spent to mantain planes in the air with one or two passengers. That s a non sense.
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Ya, the relationship between Amtrak and the federal government is kind of confusing. But, as John and Chris point out, the stimulus money for high speed rail is not for “resurrecting Amtrak”. Saying that HSR is for the expansion of Amtrak is closer to saying that money for an airport is money for the expansion of Southwest Airlines.
Thank you to Scades for distinguishing between the highway systems of Roosevelt and Eisenhower. I didn’t know that.
Another confused point from this article that I would like to clear up relates to hybrid vehicles. The electric motor in a hybrid gets its power from the alternator of the combustion engine, and also from regenerative braking. At no point is it connected to the grid. Probably the author is referring to the plug in electric vehicles that are soon to hit the market. They will get their power from the grid, which is largely fueled by coal-burning power plants; but I think the emissions comparisons are still favorable. I don’t remember where I read that. Even if the carbon emissions did break even, plug in electric cars would at least give Americans the option of personal vehicle transportation from a domestic fuel source.
There is another misconception here, too. The author mentions that Alaskans provide us with cheap, domestically produced fuel. I did some checking on that, and got some statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
In October 2009, Alaska produced 20 million barrels of crude oil.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbbl_m.htm
(Although I don’t know what “PADD 5″ means. If someone does, help me out).
Compare that to the 142 million barrels of crude oil imported from OPEC in the same month:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm
Not every country that is a part of OPEC is hostile towards the United States, but to me it looks like a lot of bad company. And as much as people would like to think that drilling up the Wildlife Reserves in Alaska would provide a perpetual source of cheap oil, I just don’t think it could increase production seven times over. And remember that the 142 million barrels of oil from OPEC is only part of the 336 million barrels that we imported in October 2009.
A Contradiction exists within this article because the author points out that HSR works in countries because they are only a few hundred miles from one end to the other; and yet the article proposes building an entire HSR system that would travel hundreds of miles through sparsely populated areas.
High Speed Rail does have very high upfront costs, and that carries with it some very tough concerns. Californians are wondering who is going to foot the bill if the train line through their state doesn’t get the ridership it needs to generate revenue. Yet, consider this: the 44 billion dollar price tag for the California system is projected out to account for inflation. In other words, construction that will be paid for in 2020 is being budgeted in 2020 dollars. Compare that to the $90 billion that the federal government is expecting to pay (from various funding sources) for highway transportation in 2010… obviously in 2010 dollars.
The FRA shouldn’t waste money on routes that won’t get sufficient ridership. Also, they need to build dedicated tracks as much as possible. As R. van Wormer points out, HSR shouldn’t interfere with freight rail operations. Passenger trains that have to share the tracks with freight trains won’t really be high speed rail anyways.
If the FRA handles it right, High Speed Rail can be a great option. The efficiencies can be even better than what Tuula gives in the article. (I think those figures are from the current slow-speed trains.)
The last point I want to make about this article is that it seems to have a fear of the people who are advocating it. No one wants to eliminate personal vehicles, force people out of their cars, or subject Americans to “cultural reconditioning”. Adding High Speed Rail to the transportation infrastructure simply gives people another option when traveling on certain popular routes.
In fact, if you are a car enthusiast, I think you will benefit a lot from HSR. If you live in densely populated areas, there will be fewer yayhoos clogging up the roads, because they are on the train instead. Because the trains will run on domestically generated electricity, there will be less dependence on crude oil, and less demand for it. That will mean the price of it won’t skyrocket, and future drivers will be able to pay $3-4 per gallon rather than $7-8 per gallon. And that will benefit people who never even see one of the high speed trains.
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Thanks for all the thoughtful comments. As a blogger, it’s my job to generate discussion, which I’m glad to see I’ve done here.
I apologize for the confusion around HSR funding, where it’s coming from and who it goes to. I’ll admit that before I started researching for this post, I knew very little about Amtrak and the plans for HSR, so the distinction between Amtrak, the federal government and rail service in general never came across clearly here. I think the comments posted here clarify it nicely, so I’ll not go into it further.
Some other interesting points have also been made that I would like to address in no particular order:
Jake said: “No one wants to eliminate personal vehicles, force people out of their cars, or subject Americans to ‘cultural reconditioning’.”
I do. Well, if we can’t eliminate personal vehicles altogether, their use should at least be drastically curbed. The cultural reconditioning I’m speaking about is simply abandoning the idea that as Americans, we have the right to get anywhere we want whenever we want and by whatever means we want. It’s simply not rational from a planetary and long-term-survivability perspective. The problem goes deeper than that though – just look at the landscape surrounding us. We build our homes with garages where front porches used to be; highway interchanges take up larger areas that university campuses; streets lined with big box stores offer no amenities to pedestrians. If that’s not car culture, I don’t know what is, and it needs to change. Maybe rail is one way to make that happen, which is why I wanted to provoke a little discussion about how it can be done right.
On the “Alaskans” comment – again, I was misleading. I simply meant to say that Alaska is our main source of domestic oil. I called it “cheap” because, by ignoring future costs to our environment, the price of oil from any country is currently lower than what it should be if it took into accounts the externalities inherent in its production and use.
On John’s comment on the Hiawatha line. The line would actually hit several key cities in the region, including Billings, the biggest city in Montana. My argument is not to improve rail service to densely populated areas, but to make rail an option for the entire country – which means serving rural areas.
Thanks, scades, for differentiating the highway systems. This sounds like a great subject for a future blog post.
Finally, I stand corrected about hybrid vs. electric vehicles. Suffice it to say, neither will solve the transportation quagmire we’re in.
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I am involved with the effort to re-instate Amtrak’s North Coast Hiawatha route. If this is something you are interested and passionate about please join our Facebook group, link is above.
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http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=112953599991&ref=mf
Here is the link for our facebook group
Adam
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Some random comments on this article…
The “free roads” movement was active in the 1920′s. This was the beginning of the concept of tax funded public roads. While most of the funding for the two federal systems are fuel tax (user) based, much of the state and local funding is from some sort of general obligation taxes. In addition there are many hidden costs such as pollution requirements on industry where the pollution is really mostly from cars, and issues of inadequate insurance to pay for catastrophic injury from car crashes (and the several thousand people killed outright each year). The “free roads” pretty much distroyed the interurban rail network (and private capital invested in infrastructure) mostly because of capital costs.
Private cars are the most flexible. Go when you want, where you want, by what route you want.
My understanding is that much of the Alasksa oil is exported to Asia as it has a high sulpher content which makes refining very expensive. Middle East oil is prefered because of a low sulpher content.
In talking about “High Speed Rail” be sure to seperate the apples from oranges. European and Japan usually talks 200+ mph, where many of the proposals in the US are to try to simply get to 100 mph. That said, David Gunn when he was president of AMTRAK once observed that it would be better to try to gradually improve our system by small increments than to try to magically to to the 200+ club.
The proposed reenstated AMTRAK North Coast Hiawatha meets a couple of criteria for successful service but misses a couple of others. First there just is not much population along the route, Billings may be the biggest city in Montana but it is a small town by most states standards (rail loses). Montana and the Dakotas are BIG, because of that with the small population are poorly served by air (rail wins). Rail is generally atractive for 200-750 mile trips, much over that air becomes more cost effective because of time issues and air fuel use is mostly taking off not so much in cruising (rail loses). Most of the citys in Montana and the Dakotas do have a concentrated population in the city area rather than being spread out over the entire area making viable station stops (rail wins). One other issue is that most of the route is a secondary lines to the host freight railroads which will require extensive and expensive upgrading even to reach the current 79 mph maximum for normal US passenger rail, these upgrades likely do not fit the host freight railroads business model to finance themselves. (The more northern “Empire Builder” route has been upgraded by BNSF to mostly 79 mph double track as the primary main line.)
Railroads are a labor and captial intensive business, with the potential to be highly fuel efficient. The higher the Fuel Cost/Labor Cost ratio the lower relative cost of rail to air, with the highway in the middle. If fuel prices skyrocket (in relation to labor) we will need a rail option.
Public investment in passenger rail may well pay off in the future in lower overall costs, and lowerer enviromental impact, but will needs WAY more than the 8 bil stimulus money this year.
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i always prefer to travel using those budget Airline travel, they seem to have some good service too.”‘*
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This is why I keep returning to this blog. I can’t believe everything you’ve put up since last time!
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I like it here, how he is to me more new things
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What a post!! Very informative and easy to understand. Looking for more such comments!! Do you have a facebook?
I recommended it on digg. The only thing that it’s missing is a bit of speed, the pictures are appearing slowly. Anyway thank you for this blog.
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airline travel is the best but the high cost of air travel makes it a not so great option::~
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