Obama’s HSR plan is not good enough
I was really excited to see the CNN headline “Obama unveils high-speed rail plan” this evening. Anybody who knows me or has read this blog can probably attest to my great interest in this topic, so I was very pleased to see that Obama would be coming through on his campaign promise to bring HSR to America.
Except that’s not at all what he’s suggesting. It is High Speed Rail in name only, and from what I can tell most of what he’s proposing would be slower than the “High Speed” Acela service that Amtrak currently runs between Washington D.C. and Boston.
Now I understand that definitions of what constitutes “high speed” rail differ from person to person and I know that my definition is up there, but CNN informs us that Obama “cited the success of high-speed rail in European countries such as France and Spain” while at the same time presenting a plan that would have “some trains traveling at top speeds of over 150 mph.”
Let me enlighten you, Mr. President: the trains you speak of in France and Spain cruise at speeds up to 186mph or even 199mph. And I believe even faster trains are in the works (can’t find the link right now, but I think France is planning a 220mph train to be launched sometime in the next few years).
And so, having gotten fairly familiar with the trains in Europe (the 186mph Eurostar is an amazing, fun and smooth ride from London to Paris) and the struggles to bring that type of train technology to American shores and seeing what went wrong I have this to say about your HSR plan, Mr. President: scrape it until you can go all out. The last thing we need is a “sort of” version HSR that nobody rides because it’s just not quite fast enough, but that cost enough to get every single taxpayer in America mad at the government, you AND (worst of all from my viewpoint) the idea of HSR. If we don’t do this correctly right out the gate, America might not give us another chance. Americans are going to be tough to sell on HSR already: we’re wary of it because it’s European, we’re wary of it because it’s really, really expensive.
But I’ve noticed something: America is not totally averse to the idea. California just passed the proposal to build a $40 billion+ 220mph High Speed Rail system from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and with gas prices creeping ever higher and Al Gore still on his global warming campaign Americans are seeming to slowly change our minds about HSR.
On the third hand I think that just means we have ONE chance now. Before we had no chance and quite a few HSR proposals have been killed in the past in various states and regions (Florida, Texas, etc.).
Mr. President, don’t be an idiot and dishonest. You promised us High Speed Rail last year, but your proposal of sub-150mph trains on outdated routes for $13 billion over 5 years is a joke and should be treated as such. Do you think we’re that stupid and gullible? If you and the Vice President are really so concerned about HSR for America you need to remember just two things:
1. lots and lots and lots of money. California is building a system that is currently budgeting in at $40-50 billion for 700 or so miles. That means that for national HSR we’re looking at an amount of money that can be measured in meaningful fractions of a trillion dollars. Sounds bad, but you’re giving Wall Street that much money unsupervised, can’t our nations failing transit infrastructure have some, too? (I mean, more than the laughable-in-comparison $13 billion you’ve proposed for HSR thus far?)
2. 200+ mph. Don’t try to pass off Acela-type trains on the whole country and call it HSR. It will fail. If done right, super-HSR (what France and Japan have crisscrossing their countries) won’t fail, but your brand of HSR-lite will fail. And it will bring billions of our dollars down with it. Don’t patronize us by pretending it will work.
Now I should really be working on my research paper, which is interestingly enough on this exact same topic.
Cheers.
-j
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