High speed rail.
It’s got a romantic vibe. You think of a sleek, bullet-nosed slab of steel flying along at unimaginable speeds. Inside, passengers lounge in plush chairs, sipping cocktails, clacking away at laptops and iPads, reading a trusty Kindle. No pesky traffic jams, no worries about the cost of fuel, no-stress travel.
Just leave the driving to … the state.
President Obama, not surprisingly, wants to spend, excuse me, invest, 53 billion tax dollars—that’s money you and I have earned through very hard work—in high-speed rail.
Not surprising because liberals-socialists-progressives-statists have always had a love affair with trains. It’s a great way of maintaining control over unruly, freedom loving citizens.
Railroads are a perfect expression of the utopian collective favored by the left. This, in contrast to the individual who prefers making his own way, in his own vehicle, by his own route.
The ultimate expression of a state’s love affair with the railroad was, of course, the cattle cars used by the Nazis, The National Socialist Party, to ship millions of Jews to death camps.
Relax, I’m not saying that Obama is a Nazi.
I am pointing out that there is a pronounced tendency among big government advocates to favor railroads as a natural extention of their power.
Take away a citizen’s car and you make him dependant on the state for his mobility.
Liberals dress it up as a means of creating jobs and building infrastructure, but governments do not create jobs, they create ill-tempered clerks. And if government wants to help build infrastructure why not improve existing city bus lines? And hey, I’ve got pot holes on my block that are deep as the pits of hell.
Let’s be clear, government “jobs” are created through the imposition of high and ever higher taxes.
This is fiscal insanity.
Obama claims that America is falling behind Japan because they have really great high-speed rail lines. What Obama didn’t mention is that all the profitable high speed rail lines in Japan are privately owned. The state-owned lines, what a shock, lose 50 million a day.
Has Obama ever heard of Amtrak?
Government owned and run.
It leaks money like a sieve.
According to Julie Borowski of Freedom Works:
In fact, Amtrak actually loses money on 41 out of 44 of their train routes. Taxpayers are forced to pay $32 per Amtrak passenger to make up for these losses. Even still, riders often complain about spotty Amtrak service and frequent delays.
Look, if the American consumer wanted high-speed rail, private industry would build it. That’s how our great railroads were originally built, by the private sector, capitalist visionaries.
Obama, like most democrats-liberals-progressives—whatever they’re calling themselves this week—have unlimited faith in an unlimited government.
Conservatives believe in a limited government that unleashes the power of individual enterprise.
History shows, time and again, that the nanny state is, ultimately, dedicated to maintaining its own power at the expense of its citizenry. And what better expression of power than nice neat lines of steel bisecting the landscape carrying hordes of compliant citizens to destinations chosen and approved by government bureaucrats—who cruise around in limousines.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
14 Comments
Speaking of trains, a new version of Atlas Shrugged is headed for the big screen. It is being produced as a trilogy like Lord of the Rings.
I am really looking forward to seeing it. I hope Hollywood doesn’t totally trash it.
It was fun to read the spew that Mother Jones wrote about the people who might want to see the film. (“If you’re excited about the filmic adaptation of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, you’re probably a tea partyin’, Obama-hatin’ “individualist” whose many interesting qualities don’t include coolness, composure, or constancy.”)
http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00038463.html
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Batya:
The solution is the easing of government regulation of business so the private sector can evaluate routes and build rail lines for commuters. Of course there are always the lunatic environmentalists who block everything because some slimy beetle’s habitat will be threatened. These groups hold up projects for years and years in the courts. I have no idea how to deal with envirocrazies.
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ProphetJoe…one key factor is that electric trains are omniverous in their use of fuel: electricity can be generated by coal, natural gas, hydro, or nuclear. Diesel trains are restricted to oil-based fuel.
Regarding the cost of the wiring..I think the light-rail numbers you’re citing are for the total cost, not only that caternary, etc? If so, the cost has to be very dependent on local real-estate acquisition costs, which will be much higher in urban areas than for inter-city mainlines.
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David,
I’m not sure that electrification of the freight lines would have the cost savings you anticipate. I have read that diesel-electric freight trains (those currently used) have an energy efficiency of roughly 27% while a purely electric train operates at about 29% efficiency. These calculations take into account the costs of producing the electricity and refining the diesel fuel.
The cost of adding a catenary system (the electrical wiring) to existing rail lines would probably cost more than $5M/mile. Light rail projects estimate between $15M-$100M/mile, with Seattle’s project reaching a whopping $137M/mile. The catenary system allows for high speeds, but it also means significant reconstruction for bridges, tunnels, etc. which can’t easily be modified to accept the wiring.
$5,000,000 per mile sounds like a lot, but it’s not any more!
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One thing that one should always do when making an investment is to look at alternate uses for the money. What *other* things could be done with that $51 billion?
–A “typical” technology startup probably takes somewhere in the range of $10-100 million before it goes cash-flow positive (or eventually fails). If we use $25 million as a nominal value, the money proposed for passenger rail could fund over 2000 startups. (And make no mistake: the money *is* being sucked out of the private sector, whether by taxes or by debt, and is hence unavailable for such purposes)
–While I don’t have solid numbers at my fingertips, I doubt if the electrification of freight railroads (now powered exclusively by diesel) costs more than an average of $5 million per mile. The electrification of 10,000 miles of main-line railroad would handle a substantial % of America’s freight traffic, and would take a meaningful bite our of American’s oil consumption, in addition to expanding the traffic capacity of the existing track. If my $5 million number is correct, the project could be accomplished for $50B…and would have very definable and predictable benefits.
There are lots more examples.
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I haven’t traveled by train and I was a child the last time I traveled by bus, so I thought I’d compare prices. From Champaign, IL to Chicago. I based the prices for tomorrow (Feb 11th).
Amtrak $26-38 (2hr 45 min travel time)
Greyhound $19-26.50 (3hr 40 min)
Local Bus Shuttle $22 (2 hr 30min)
American Airlines $384 (1 hr)
The varied prices depend on departure times — obviously the more desirable times are more expensive. The leisure travel times are less expensive (although it costs no less to operate the trains are those times!)
I thought it wouldn’t be fair to look at last-minute prices for the airlines, so I also priced the ticket for March 11th and it was $334.
Just glad I have a car to drive — although I try to avoid the Windy City like the plague. I will venture in for the special cultural event (seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls on display at the Field Museum, for example), but for pleasure or business, I’ll almost always try to go to Indianapolis or St. Louis.
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Great post, Robert!
My last experience with Amtrack was when I wanted to take my son and daughter to Oregon from No. California on Amtrack. We drove 12 miles to the station only to find out that the train was cancelled. The next day we went to Sacramento and took a ride on their city train — much cheaper and much more dependable.
Wouldn’t Obama and his gang just love to put us all in trains and have us all clumped together in cities so he could have a compliant, manageable population to “rule?”
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I’m a train enthusiast. The commercial trains of my youth were fast, comfortable and if you could afford a bedroom, luxurious.
Since Amtrack was established, it has been on the express track to hell. They redesigned the bedrooms and turned what was roomy and comfortable into a Houdini escape trunk. The food has gone from 5 star restaurant to 2rd rate hash house and in my last and final cross country journey even the toilets didn’t work. Never again.
Proponents of government health care should be forced to take Amtrack cross country – as a preview of coming attractions.
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American trains are awfully expensive to ride. I don’t know if there is a way to make them both affordable and breaking even. I do believe in the necesity of public transportation. What’s the solution?
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People who talk about US “backwardness” in rail very rarely seem to mention **freight**, where the US has a solid and very large system. Compared with Europe, we are moving a higher % of freight via rail–Europe makes up some of the difference with waterways, but not all. There is lots of freight going by truck in Europe that would go by rail in the US.
A Chinese railway expert recently criticized that country’s spending on H/S passenger rail, arguing that more of the money should go to expanding their freight network. Indeed, there is a stretch of road in China where there is a 70-mile traffic jam because of endless streams of coal being brought to a port via TRUCK. (Historically, the first application of railroads was for coal-hauling, and for very good reason)
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The original railroads were, I believe, heavily assisted by government bonds and land grants. But the key was private risk and private initiative. I wish the same could be done now- limited government involvement, heavy entrepreneurial involvement. Like Buffet, who just spent billions in a vote of confidence in the railway system.
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Great scene from “The Hunt for Red October” really hammers Robert’s point home:
Capt. Vasili Borodin: I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck… maybe even a “recreational vehicle.” And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Captain Ramius: I suppose.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: No papers?
Captain Ramius: No papers, state to state.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Well then, in winter I will live in… Arizona. Actually, I think I will need two wives.
Captain Ramius: Oh, at least.
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See The future of capitalism.
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Reminds me of the famous Simpsons monorail episode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail
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