Jonathan Cohn writes:

The Recovery Act, of course, has a lot of transportation funding in it–with a particular emphasis on high-speed rail, the area in which the U.S. may be most conspicuously behind other countries. It’s one of those investments that virtually every reasonable expert, from left to right, would agree is worthwhile. But reasonable people appear to be in short supply in the Republican Party these days.

Jonathan is an exceptionally kind and thoughtful person, but I don’t get the sense that he’s deeply engaged with the debates surrounding rail transportation in the United States. I’ve written a number of posts on HSR in the U.S., including this one, and I’d say that large numbers of reasonable experts are skeptical about large federal investments in HSR, let alone true HSR.

There are many competing uses for public funds at the moment, and it’s not obvious that HSR should have priority over a wide range of other investments, including investments in bus rapid transit and other low-cost modes of intrametropolitan as opposed to intermetropolitan transportation, and of course human capital, etc.

My friend Yonah Freemark, who is an expert on HSR and transportation issues writ large, and who is definitely left-of-center, has written eloquently on the dangers of overselling the virtues of HSR, in reaction to an essay by Richard Florida on the idea of a “spatial fix.” I offered my own thoughts on the subject.

And as I noted in a post published way back in 2008, George Monbiot, the celebrated left-of-center environmentalist, has also expressed skepticism about HSR.

Reasonable people disagree about HSR.