That, I think, is a fair description of the Obama administration’s attempt to build high-speed-rail lines across America.
It hasn’t failed because of a lack of willingness to pony up money. The Obama Democrats’ February 2009 stimulus package included $8 billion for high-speed-rail projects. The Democratic Congress appropriated another $2.5 billion.
Advertisement
But Congress is turning off the spigot. The Republican-controlled House has appropriated zero dollars for high-speed rail. The Democratic-majority Senate Appropriations Committee has appropriated $100 million in its budget recommendation.
That’s effectively “a vote of ‘no confidence’ to President Obama’s infrastructure initiative,” concludes transportation analyst Ken Orski, “a bipartisan signal that Congress has no appetite for pouring more money into a venture that many lawmakers have come to view as a poster child for wasteful spending.”
The Transportation Department is struggling to push some of the previously appropriated money out the door. Some $480 million of planning, engineering, and construction grants were made to eleven state governments in September.
But this doesn’t build many rail lines, and with one exception, none of them is really high-speed, like France’s TGV or Japan’s bullet train. The governors of Wisconsin and Ohio nixed train lines that wouldn’t provide faster service than current parallel interstate highways. The governor of Florida cancelled a faster line between Orlando and Tampa, which are only 90 miles apart.
The one remaining project that really promises high-speed-rail travel, in California, faces cost overruns that would be astonishing — except for the fact that cost overruns have been standard operating procedure in high-speed-rail projects around the world.
The feds insist California build a 160-mile segment in the Central Valley that is estimated to cost at least $10 billion and will have virtually no riders. The estimated cost of the whole project has zoomed from $43 billion to $67 billion, and there seems to be no prospect of any more public or private-sector money.
Obama has rhapsodized about the wonders of getting on a train across the street from your office and traveling to another city, and he has presented high-speed rail as a technology of the future. But high-speed rail is futuristic in the same way as Disney’s original Tomorrowland. Gee, someday you’ll be able to take frozen peas from your freezer and heat them on your electric range.
Passenger rail is an old technology that is particularly attractive to planners, the folks who want to force us out of our cars and into subways that travel only on the routes they design. Let’s make everyone live the way people do in Manhattan!
This is contrary to the thrust of emerging information technologies, which let us take whatever path on the Internet we want. Sort of like automobiles.
Moreover, the idea that it would be great to put high-speed-rail lines all over the country shows an underappreciation of American geography and of some of the nation’s genuine strengths.
High-speed rail can compete with air travel only over limited distances, but the United States is a continent-sized country. Japan and France, as you may have noticed, are a lot smaller.
China, which is continent-sized too, has been building high-speed rail, but it’s cutting back now and slowing down the trains after a bad accident. Brazil, also continent-sized, is dropping plans for a Rio de Janeiro–Sao Paulo line. Its airlines and buses already work fine.
America’s alleged lag in high-speed rail is also a consequence of our excellence in freight rail. Over three decades after Jimmy Carter’s deregulation, freight rail has squeezed out costs and made shipped goods much cheaper for all of us. Europe and Japan have lousy freight rail and pay more for things.
The reason that’s important is that truly high-speed trains cannot use freight tracks. Freight trains travel slower and have a hard time getting out of the way of passenger trains traveling 200 miles per hour. Japan’s bullet train and France’s TGV operate on dedicated tracks specially built for them. That’s expensive.
As a frequent traveler from Washington to New York, I’d love to see a real high-speed train in the Northeast corridor — the only place in the country where it might make economic sense. But if not having one is the price to be paid for the demise of the Obama high-speed-rail boondoggle, I’m happy to pay it.
The country is Obama's miniature train set. He pictures himself putting in a hard day's work manipulating the pieces for the betterment of our little society, whereupon he sighs, turns out the light, and heads off to the links to discuss tomorrow's adjustments.
The country already has high-speed trains they are called airplanes. They are faster, require less real estate, and likely to be safer than the ground based version.
Obama and his left-wing supporters don't seem to realize that even if you took a high-speed train to Tampa, you might be stranded at the Tampa train station!
Tampa has no effective mass transit system. So even if you took a high-speed train to Tampa, once you got there you would have to rent a car. That takes time, and can be very expensive if you plan to stay in Tampa a long time.
Liberals tend to be concentrated in cities with big mass transit systems: Chicago, New York City, Boston, San Francisco. Maybe that's why they forgot about the fact that to make high-speed rail work in other cities, you need a staggering investment in mass transit as well.
Obama, the industrial and business genius, wants to do for travel the same thing he did for Solar Power with Solyndra.
I just have to wonder, what crony is advocating high speed rail? Let's identify him, give him $20 million, and skip all the steps in between.
You can't completely defeat the Texas Republicans until you completely destroy the oil and gas industry. The Dems need coal* powered trains to do that, just like the coal powered Chevy Volt and Leaf.
*Where do they think all that electricity comes from...Solydra?
Except for Illinois, of course. Here, (the most corrupt state in the country) they've just announced plans to improve the rail lines, between Chicago and Detroit, to high-speed standards.
Who would be in a hurry to get to either city? Although being in a hurry to leave does make more sense. . .
Loved the Orlando - Tampa line from the git-go! By the time you drove to the train station (sorry, I meant to say 'rode mass transit to the train station') obtained a ticket, waited while the train boarded, took the 90 mile ride (non-stop, I assume?), disembarked at the other end, and found transportation to your final destination, you could have driven it twice. And that assumes no delays en-route and no luggage checking or claiming.
As far as California's Central Valley project is concerned, unless they can make it cheap enough so that the migrant laborers can ride it up and down the valley (hint; they can't), it is a ghost train in its gestational phase - and this is one case where abortion would be a good thing.
Clearly a couple of multi-billion dollar projects only a politician could love!
We already have something to go high speed across the country. They are called planes. We also have something for pretty speedy ground transportation. They are called cars on the Interstate highway system. We also have something which is little used, very inefficient, and is heavily subsidized by the government. It is called Amtrak. What we don't need is another government subsidized rail system.
Let's take for example that rail line in Florida between Orlando and Tampa which are only 90 miles apart.
Time to drive between Orlando and Tampa, maybe an hour and a half. Time to go to the station in Orlando, let's say 30 minutes. Time to buy ticket and get on train before it departs, at least 15 minutes. Even at high speed rail transit times, maybe 30 minutes to travel between cities. Once you get there, time to get to a rental counter to get a car and get in it, maybe 15 minutes. Time to drive to destination in that city, about 15 minutes. Total time, door to door, about one hour and 45 minutes. Time saved driving versus taking government boondoggle high speed train, about 15 minutes. Of course, it might take longer by car if you were to use a government subsidized electric car which requires charging time, but that's a whole different story.
I lived in Japan for a total of 5 years, and have worked there since 1973 making countless trips to Japan. I have ridden the Bullet Train many times. It's a great way to get between the major congested cities such as Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe...the distance from Tokyo to Kobe is about 260 miles and encompasses most of the Japanese population. HOWEVER, many people opt to FLY even from Tokyo to Osaka because it's faster, and to any other destination (e.g. Tokyo to Kyushu) it makes much more sense to fly. In short, high speed rail is a great system IF the population density makes it sensible, and IF it's not too far, otherwise planes still are the best bet. I guess Obama was so busy taking lessons on how to bow to the Emperor in Japan that he didn't have time to really study their transportation system. In all my years of living and working in Japan, I've driven a car maybe 10 minutes, otherwise I've entirely used the public transportation system (trains, planes, taxis, subways) and because of that I can see that high speed rail across our continent, or between vastly separated cities in the U.S. makes no sense, despite the fact as Obama (the brightest President ever) pointed out we developed the INTERcontinental railway system.
I visited Japan for a couple of weeks (loved it) and took the Bullet Train from Osaka to Kita Kyushu and it was a great three hour trip. It was fun to see the speedometer travel from 180-200 mph. The train did make a couple of stops, one in Hiroshima and I forget the other.
On the return trip by plane, one hour.
You stole my thunder on the INTERcontinental railroad. By high speed rail how long will it take to get to Europe?
The most basic limitation on public transportation is that it is seldom able to provide a single-seat ride.
And so, a trip on "high speed" rail ends up being a bus or taxi to the train, a trip to the train, and then a bus or taxi from the train. And the waits between each seat, plus the (usually) circuitious route, result in a slow and inconvenient trip.
I don't know of any solution to this. But it's why increasing train speeds from 79mph to 110mph doesn't really make much of a difference in door-to-door travel times.
Finally, I used to think that the Boston-NYC-Washington route was well-served by trains. Yet unsubsidized buses seem to compete well with the subsidized trains on this route, with the buses offering slightly slower travel and somewhat less comfort in return for much lower fares (and sometimes the ability to pick up travelers closer to where they live or work).
So, perhaps trains don't work so well even when they work "well." Except for commuter and subway service in very dense metro areas.
High speed rail might also be commercially viable between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. It has been proposed several times.
If an orginization with enough funding becomes convinced it will make money, it will be built. Government needs to leave well alone and let the market determine what is financially worth doing here.
Passenger and freight trains don't play nice together because of very different requirements for the rails and underlying structure as well as differences in speed.
I've been making a personal study of the issue of rail transport for about a year now. I've a career in electric infrastructure and wanted to do a compare-and-contrast.
I've taken Amtrak's long-distance trains here in the West and recently rode a 125 mph train from London to Glasgow and back.
Yes, high speed rail investments in the US for passenger service seldom make economic sense. The Northeast Corridor is an exception and it does require some credit for reducing externalities to make the cut to positive.
As a public transit agency, Amtrak is not, relatively, "heavily subsidized." It gets 87% or so of operating costs from fares. My local transit authority here in Silicon Valley (VTA) only gets 10%. Relatively, Amtrak is doing well.
In the US freight is the rail business that works. The feds are doing ccst-sharing with private railroads to remove bottlenecks, increase capacity, increase speeds, and lower operating costs. This is worthwhile work, in general, and generally positive.
However, even in this area some clinkers appear. For example, in Iowa, the railroad was upgraded with federal dollars to lower the shipping costs of ADM for their ethanol plants. In Indiana, a railroad was refurbished and put back in service just to get coal to a DoE-supported "clean coal" project when trucks could have done the job for less operating costs.
Here in the West, long-distance train travel is a niche but but if one has the extra time, the comfort and convenience and lack of stress is valuable. It also offers transport to people who otherwise can't travel on airplanes (the feeble, the obese, and the neurotic are three such groups.)
Amtrak also provides a backstop to other means of travel. Holding a reservation on Amtrak on September 12th, 2001 was a godsend to many.
So, the issue of government and the railroads is not a simple one in the US. There's good and there's bad. Citizens have to pay attention to increase the former and reduce the latter.
They won’t give up. High Speed Rail is part of the Progressives Catechism of Faith, like Global Warming, Green Jobs, Taxing the Rich, and Bigger Government. I will link to this from my Old Jarhead blog.
Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
(All royalties go to a charity to help wounded veterans)
For a free PDF of the book, write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com
Our remarkably un-useful 'toy train' in Houston cost about $10,000 per foot for the initial segment. About 50% of businesses along the route closed during construction. And it is taking cars off the road - one at a time; accidents are frequent.
Well...see everyone...there really is a God. I am down on my knees, at this moment, in humble thankfulness to the God of fiscal sanity. Not ready to praise our esteemed public servants, yet. 'Fraid the money will just speed away to some other equally disastrous sinkhole of a project. Lord, please keep watching and counting.
