Governor Brown on why California needs a high-speed rail line:
Gov. Jerry Brown is on a mission to prevent the United States from becoming a Third World country, and he says the solution is a high-speed railroad in California. ”We’re not going to be a Third World country if I have anything to do with it,” Brown said in a Friday morning interview on KCBS-AM in San Francisco. Fourteen countries already have high-speed rail, but the United States does not.
Having a high-speed rail line is hardly a prerequisite for first-world status. Factors like the quality of the education system, health care, income levels are the standard metrics used by economists. All programs being heavily cut by the Brown Administration.
However, it is interesting how many cities and states fool themselves into building things like trains and sports stadiums — for appearances. The thinking is that anyone living without such things is merely third-class. Because, well, trains and stadiums are way more sexy than maintaining a world-class university or health care system.
…so there are first-world countries that get by without high-speed rail, topping out at a mere 200 km/h, but have serious plans to go higher within a few years. Meanwhile, we’re stuck at, what, 130?
This doesn’t seem like a strong argument.
Actually, right now, between LA and Bakersfield, we’re stuck with… no train at all. And after the HSRA’s Central Valley boondoggle is built, we’ll still have… no train at all. So we’ll have an improvement from taking an Amtrak train at 130 km/h to transfer to a bus to LA, to an Amtrak train at 180 km/h to transfer to a bus to LA. In the end, there’s still going to be a bus to LA, which really ought to be a major sort of embarrassment to those who care about whether it looks like we have a “world-class” rail system.
Drunk Engineer,
You know as well as I that there are strong technical justifications for a California HSR line (just not that travesty CHSRA/Parsons Brinckerhoff is trying to shove down our throats). One of the compromises we have to make as technicals is that for us to get the things we want done, done, we need to keep quiet when political justifications are thrown about. So normally I would suggest that it’s better not to piss off somebody we don’t need pissed off at us.
Unfortunately, Gov. Brown has fallen for CHSRA hook, line, and sinker. Since the technicals jumped off its bandwagon en masse since its business plan was revealed to be absurdly overpriced, the beast that exists is a political machine lumbering toward an inevitable boondoggle. (Much like most state DOTs.) In this case, calling out the political justification for what it is–political and not really rooted in reality–is justifiable.
This, I think, is the real import of your post.
(BTW if our passenger rail network weren’t burdened by those onerous FRA regulations and our de facto transportation policy were more modally biased, methinks we would have a rail network like Sweden’s on a large scale.)
You’re overlooking the ownership (overwhelmingly private) of the rail rights of way and the operations (chaotic, untimetabled, unreliable, low speed, always delayed) of the owners and predominant users of those railroads.
Getting the FRA off the backs of a small number of “commuter railroading” agencies won’t change that. (Nor the “failure is the only option” mindset of the agencies themselves.) It’s only one of many necessary preconditions, none of which are met. A scary thought for you is that technical changes are always easier to make than cultural ones.
But yeah, passenger rail as not awful as Sweden’s … luxury!
* I meant less, not more, modally biased.
I’ve been using the term “cargo cult urbanism” for a while to describe attitudes and projects like this.
Passenger trains actually generally *are* a prerequisite for being a first world country. Perhaps surprisingly, since trains were invented, they have generally arrived *before* universities, schools, and even a lot of health care.