High Speed Rail: Report

Movement signifies the existence of life. Where there is no movement, internally and externally, at absolute spatial and temporal scales, there can be no life. We are biased as a species to acknowledge only life that we can observe and movement is the parameter for observation. This is why we have difficulty grasping the changing circumstances of our environment; we do not readily notice the movements of bacteria and plants, organic and geologic materials, demographics, and many other constantly shifting factors that affect our daily lives at every level. We, ourselves, are increasingly judging the quality of our own livelihoods by the limits of
our movement and reach, expanding indefinitely through the massive processes of digital/cultural globalization and sprawling urbanization, fueled by continuing population growth. Both processes are simultaneously and harmoniously driving increases in per capita vehicle ownership (and fuel demand, pollution emissions, etc.), per capita consumer demand for foreign products (as well as per capita volume of waste exports) and consequently, economic development based on unsustainable consumption practices. This is the “mode of development based on mobility” referred to in the article on “Oil Supply and Demand” (Rech 2005). Mobility, at this point, is over 90% dependent on oil as a fuel (The Oil Depletion Protocol). Oil moves transportation and transportation moves people and all the goods/services they now depend on.
Population growth and income growth are creating mobility demand beyond current capacity for all related resources from fuel to road space to ecosystem sink functions. Current dominant modes of transportation mostly rely on highways and roads: private vehicles making up 82% of passenger miles, trucks making up most of intracity freight and 30% of intercity freight ton-miles, and airplanes for longer distance intercity travel (RITA 2008). Pollution and congestion are two major consequences of dependence on private vehicles along with dwindling accessible fossil fuel supplies. Combustion of precious carbon fuels like gasoline emits terrible chemical compounds like sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides, both of which form acid rain and smog, conditions that seriously harm vegetation, soil, and human respiration. Combine this toxic cornucopia with 70 hours stuck in traffic annually, wasting over a thousand dollars worth of gas every year, as was the case of Chicago, America’s currently most congested city and we have an economic and environmental nightmare (Velez 2011). As a whole, America burns 3.9 billion gallons of fuel just sitting in traffic with $115 billion worth of gas and time not spent productively (Velez 2011).
American mobility developed to the current conditions of dominance by privately owned motor vehicles through the creation of the Interstate Highway system under President Eisenhower in the 1950s as a national defense strategy and accidently as way to facilitate suburbanization for housing returning World War II veterans, leading to urban sprawl and automobile dependency (Rosenberg). This system has paid for itself via tolls and petrol taxes, but is due for major repairs as is much of America’s underinvested infrastructure (The Economist 2008). This American image of freedom, independence, and wealth with endless highways, paved roads, and cheap gas has permeated throughout the world with many developing country cities still modeling their transportation infrastructure after ours in order to reach the same levels of personal and commercial mobility. Because there are no feasible replacement fuels for vehicles right now and because it is far too controversial to really suggest limiting economic growth in a world based on the idealization of the free market, our best shot at sustainable transportation systems is through developing alternative modes.
While America was busy laying down its ten-lane freeways, cutting up habitats with roads, disrupting soil and water systems with impermeable pavement, and drastically decreasing the amount of social interaction involved in travel, European and Asian countries were busy repairing their war-damaged rail infrastructures (James 2009). Beyond simply repairing, these countries were investing in a type of rail that vastly improved and altered the meaning of mobility: high speed rail. Japan was the first to open a high speed rail system to public service in 1964 called the Shinkansen between Osaka and Tokyo, followed closely by Germany, Italy, and France. High speed rail is defined as fast trains, typically bullet-shaped for aerodynamics, running at speeds above 124 miles per hour on upgraded track and 155 miles per hour on new track (International Union of Railways 2010). The fastest high speed rail record in the world has been the 361 miles per hour run in Japan on magnetic levitation railway, which is the most advanced type of rail technology at the moment with trains levitating on magnetic fields about 1 to 10 centimeters above guiderails, thereby nullifying the slowing force of friction (Bonsor).
This technology, especially maglev rails, of course, has very high investment costs for construction, operation, maintenance, and extension. According to data from five European countries, Belgium, France, Italy, The Netherlands and Spain, average construction cost per kilometer of a HSR line ranges from 9 to 40 million Euros (12.7 to 56.4 million US dollars) with an average of 18 (25.4 million US dollars); railway operating costs per seat ranges from 41,000 to 72,000 Euros (58,000 to 101,600 dollars); infrastructure maintenance costs per kilometer of a single track are, on average, equal to 30,000 Euros (42,330 dollars) per year (De Rus 2008). The French infrastructure manager pays more than € 600 million (846.6 million dollars) of financial costs, linked to the construction of new HSR lines annually (De Rus 2008). Comparatively, the external costs of land take, barrier effects, visual intrusion, noise, air pollution and contribution to global warming of HSR must be considered in context of what it replaces; for example, the HSR line between Paris-Brussels runs with an external cost of 1,000 passenger-km equal to €10.4, whereas external costs are calculated to be 43.6 Euros for cars and 47.5 Euros for air transport (De Rus 2008).
In terms of revenues in comparison to costs of operation in Europe, typical results are 14,920 million Euros cost and 8,441 million Euros revenue in France, 21,443 million Euros cost and 13,109 million Euros revenue in Germany, and 5,828 million Euros cost and 1,495 million Euros revenue in the Netherlands (Levinson et al. 1997). As you can see, these all seem to be only paying for about half the cost and this continually happens throughout the years and never changes to paying much more than half. The only two high speed rail routes that actually break even with costs and make a profit are France’s TGV between Lyon and Paris and Japan’s Shinkansen between Osaka and Tokyo (Burnett 2009).
Despite these economic considerations, perhaps from taking note of America’s growing transportation issues of highway/road/airway pollution and congestion, China has delved deep into the development of high speed rail across the country. After opening the Guangzhou-Shenzhen upgraded rail line that ran sub-high speed at 100 miles per hour in 1994 and increasing to 124 mph by 1998, China currently has the most extensive operating network of 5,193 miles of track with 11,000 miles under construction in the world, leading above Japan by far (Freemark 2009). Unlike the smaller, denser structures of Europe and Japan that motivated high speed rail development long ago, China can be compared much more readily to America considering the similarities in land mass and city distribution, though China clearly has a faster growing middle class and population as a whole. With that in mind, we can understand America’s pending massive (re-)investment in developing high speed rail across the country via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that included 53 billion dollars investment for high speed rail.
The development of a high-speed train system in the United States actually began in 1965 with the passage of the High-Speed Ground Transportation Act, which current President Lyndon B. Johnson described as a program that “really gives us, for the first time in history, a coordinated program for improving the transportation system that we have today, and making it a better servant of our people (Johnson 1965).” The act provided $90 million in funding for high-speed transport (Stiles 1998), leading to the development of the Metroliner, a high-speed railway that opened in 1969. The Metroliner, which had a maximum speed of 125 mph, ran between New York City and Washington D.C, making the trip in approximately 3 hours at the height of its performance, but had several periods where work on the Northeast Corridor increased its transit time into the 3-hour range, up to nearly 4 hours during 1980 (Goldberg 2006).
On December 11 2000, the first of Amtrak's Acela Express trains went into service. They have since replaced the Metroliner, which made its final trip in 2006. Acela Express cars reach up to 150 mph, only a 25 mile improvement from the Metroliner. However, they make use of tilting. This technology tilts the train slightly during its turns, which makes bends in the track more comfortable for passengers. Tilting thus allows them to travel the Northeast Corridor's winding tracks at higher speeds than older cars, and maintain more of their speed through curves in the track.
Still, a variety of issues keep our system from reaching anything like the performance of existing high-speed trains in Europe. These include a number of problems with the train's construction - federal crash safety regulations required the train cars to be twice as heavy as their European counterparts, necessitating that Amtrak commission cars different from the models established in Europe. Apart from the natural decrease in speed, the extra weight is believed to be responsible for a number of engineering problems with Acela's train cars (Dao 2005). Furthermore, the Northeast Corridor's dated construction and winding paths hamper the train's performance. These problems prevent the Acela Express from reaching its top speed on more than 28 miles of the railway it travels. Across its whole line, the Acela averages 71 mph.
Compared to the dedicated high-speed tracks in other countries, it falls far short – for comparison, the TGV in France averages 133 mph on its Paris-Lyon route. According to the European Union's standard, which defines a high-speed train as traveling “at a speed of the order of 200 km[124 miles]/h on existing lines (UIC),” Acela barely even qualifies as high-speed rail. For the effort and expense involved in establishing it, Acela Express is a remarkably small improvement - one White House release about the administration's plans for high-speed rail notes that Acela's undelayed travel time from New York to Washington, 2 hours and 45 minutes, is only 45 minutes faster than the same route in 1940. Despite its problems, it generates significant income – in 2010, it accounted for $440 million dollars of Amtrak's profit, more than half of the company's revenue.
In its summary of the HSIPR, the FRA notes that it took 50 years to build the Interstate Highway System. Planning and implementing high-speed railways is currently a similar long-term investment. To operate at anything approaching their full speed, high-speed trains require their own dedicated tracks. Outside the Northeast Corridor, where Amtrak holds sole ownership of the railways it uses, the Acela Express shares the rails with much slower freight trains. In these areas, far fewer of its trains arrive on time.
The nature of high-speed rail naturally means that it needs certain very specific conditions to be an ideal transport option. To function best, a high-speed train requires as straight a track as possible and destination points within a certain optimal distance. European studies rate high-speed rail as most competitive with airlines and cars in a window of trips that take 2-4 hours (EC 2009). On too short a trip, the improvement over conventional trains is unnoticeable, but once the distance becomes too great, it's more efficient to just use airplanes. The United States are far larger than any of the European countries with established high-speed train systems – indeed, any of the countries bar China – and its population density varies wildly between locations. Accordingly, there are relatively few destinations where high-speed rail is an appropriate option. The vast majority are centered around the densely populated east coast, as shown on the White House's map of planned high-speed destinations (Lee 2009).
Expanding America's limited high-speed railways (currently, the Acela Express remains the only one in operation) has been a long-standing goal of the Obama administration. Of the $48 billion allocated to transportation in the 2009 stimulus package, $8 billion was set aside for the High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail program, an initiative dedicated to implementing high-speed rail development in several potential corridors around the nation. According to the Federal Railroad Administration, this will include funding for improvements to existing lines, but all new high-speed railways will aim to support 150 to 220 mph trains (FRA). More recently, the current draft of a pending transportation bill includes $53 billion in high-speed rail funding, to be spent over the next six years. Given the current Congress's fixation on deficit spending, though, the bill's status is somewhat questionable. Conflict over the bill's provisions is expected, but if it's to be passed, it will need to be in August, before SAFETEA-LU (the current transportation funding plan) expires.
Apart from the Acela Express, the high-speed rail plan closest to realization is the proposed line in California. Voters passed a proposition allocating $9.95 billion to railway development in the 2008 election, and the California High-Speed Rail Authority has since been planning the project. The first section of the planned rail system, running from Los Angeles to Fresno, is slated to begin construction in September 2012 (Carpenter 2011).
Recently, high-speed rail programs and funding have become a target of opposition for opponents of the Obama administration. The most common criticism of planned rail developments charges that high-speed rail is a money sink that cannot hope to support itself. Looking at most other forms of transports makes it clear that expecting high-speed railways to support themselves entirely is singling them out unfairly. Very few modes of transportation make a profit in America. Highways, for instance are heavily subsidized – in 2007, road tolls and fuel taxes paid for 51% of the $193 billion set aside for highway maintenance and construction (SS 2009). Many small airlines struggle to pay for themselves, and have long been supported by government subsidies (Bailey 2006).
During the recent confrontation over the national budget in Congress, the Obama administration accepted a $1.5 billion budget cut from the $2.5 billion a year formerly allotted to high-speed rail development (Stein 2011). In spite of the cut, the proposed $53 billion grant in the transportation reform bill has yet to be removed.
Opposition to high-speed rail is strong enough that it has become a partisan issue. So far, the governors of three states – Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida - have outright rejected funding for proposed high-speed railways in their states, which has been reapportioned to the rail projects in California, New York, and Washington. All of these governors were Republican candidates backed by the Tea Party, and all cited anti-government rhetoric in their refusals. Florida's Scott Walker decried high-speed rail as a waste of tax dollars that Florida could not afford (despite numerous corporations offering to pay the state's portion of the bill in return for the right to operate the trains (Freemark 2011)), and declared in his statement on the subject that “The answer is to reduce government spending, cut government's leash on our state job creators, and then hold that government accountable for the investment it makes (Scott 2011).” Walker's rejection of high-speed rail is emblematic of the American political climate's hostility toward high-speed rail – more so than any of the other countries with major rail products, America is highly dedicated to its cars, and investment in alternative transport is often looked at as so long-term an investment as to be considered a waste of money.
The benefits of high speed rails are plenty in the context of global environmental and historic social challenges. Comparing high speed rail to private vehicles and airplanes for passenger and freight travel, the emissions of harmful pollutants, most famously carbon dioxide the greenhouse gas, are much less with less dependence on burning gasoline for fuel since these trains typically are powered fully by electric motors; transportation accounts for 53% of carbon emissions in the Northwestern states (Sightline Institute). The area of impermeable pavement necessary for proper structural support of cars and planes compared to trains is also likely much larger, contributing to disruption and destruction of bodies of water, both surface and below ground, through toxic runoff and lack of groundwater recharge. The problem of congestion would also be much ameliorated by the creation of an alternative transport mode as high speed rail can carry high volumes of passengers and be scheduled so that trains would run smoothly. Accessibility to reliable, clean transport is a vital issue in social justice as low income families typically cannot afford to buy and maintain a car, but tend to live in locations most directly affected by road pollution (Chakraborty 2009). With high speed rail, more people would be able to travel farther and better as the costs of efficiently producing, powering, operating, and maintaining the vehicles would be in the hands of producers, rather than consumers. In these economic times, job creation is the non-partisan goal that can be reached through investing in high speed rail as “every $1 billion in infrastructure spending, 18,000 jobs will be created” (Sires 2011).
Of course, these benefits are very much dependent on external factors such as the volume of demand of the affected corridors, the degree of airport or road congestion, the existing capacity in the conventional rail network, values of time, travel distance, construction costs, or the source of electricity generation and the proportion of urban areas crossed by the trains. The reduction in carbon and pollutant emissions of HSR compared to internal fuel combustion in cars will only be significant assuming the electricity powering the high speed rail lines are generated primarily through nuclear fission or renewable sources like wind and solar. Public accessibility will only be widened if intracity mass transit systems connecting to central high speed rail stations downtown are also extensively developed and equitably distributed to reach beyond the urban core and into suburbs. To maximize efficiency of high speed rail systems and reduce passenger costs sufficiently, public regulation of transportation systems would be most effective as the European and Asian systems have been developed under government control, rather than through simply subsidized incentives to private companies. Privatized development of the car and gas industries is what led to the take-over and demise of the interurban trolleys and prevented more investment in existing railroads that pre-dated our vision of high speed rail connections.
The ideal of super fast trains connecting dense, urban centers all over America, reducing travel time, highway and airway congestion, foreign oil dependence, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions related to travel and freight transport, while also increasing social interactions and accessibility, cannot be achieved successfully without a shift in national valuation. Controversies over high speed rail development in America boil down to the fact that it is not profitable financially and in times of debt, it would seem a silly investment when we have existing transport modes. However, it is a questionable assumption that economic profitability, especially without a unified way to quantify external costs of social and environmental sustainability, is the bottom line for how worthwhile any investment is. The value of money lies in its ability to equitably provide qualities of life and certainly, high speed rail would be a vast improvement to American quality of life in terms of both local and global well-being.

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