Tag Archives: high speed rail

The Case for Higher Speed Rail

amtrakby James A. Bacon

Yes, it is possible to be a conservative and support high-speed rail in the United States. Indeed, in a paper prepared for the American Public Transportation Association, “High-Speed Rail: A Conservative Appraisal,” conservatives William S. Lind and Glen D. Bottoms have outlined a practical, disciplined approach to build a better passenger rail system. 

Rather than spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build a national, high-speed rail system and gamble that someone uses it, Lind and Bottoms urge an incrementalist approach that minimizes public investment. Instead of attempting to replicate Japan’s Tokaido Shinkansen (top speed 180 mph) or France’s Train a Grande Vitesse (top speed 200 mph) from scratch, they would make small, targeted investments to address rail bottlenecks with the goal of raising the average speed rather than the top speed. Higher average speeds and more reliable service will bring in more passengers and revenue, they argue, laying the groundwork for upgraded service and, eventually, for genuine high-speed rail in markets like the northeastern U.S. where existing (not hoped-for) rail traffic would support the investment.

“We face a choice,” they write, “a choice between ‘best’ and ‘good enough,” between true high-speed rail and higher speed rail. … We would choose the latter, restoring passenger rail to its former glory in a deliberate, incremental fashion.”

President Barack Obama’s ambition is to build a rail system serving 80% of the public — a project similar in magnitude to building the interstate highway network. As fiscal conservatives, Lind and Bottoms say that a nation hefting a $17 trillion national debt and running massive deficits cannot afford such a dream. They compare building such a system as top-down, cost-be-damned monument building worthy of a pharoah.

While some people look to high-speed service in Japan and Europe for inspiration, Lind and Bottoms look to the business models of the successful high-speed trains. The high-speed rail line between Paris and Lyon took only 12 years to pay for itself. The original forecast showed a 12% rate of return; the line ultimately posted at 15% rate of return. Likewise, the Tokaido Shinkansen, which connects Tokyo and Osaka, not only operates at a profit, it has earned enough to pay back its original construction costs in full. 

As those cases demonstrate, high-speed rail can operate profitably. They can even pay their up-front capital costs, a hurdle that seems  impossibly high in the United States. What many people forget is that those high-speed lines served existing markets that had arisen around slower trains. High-speed rail was not summoned by imperial decree from the desert.

The conservative way forward is to build incrementally on what already exists, gradually (and affordably) creating higher-speed rail.  As ridership grows on a corridor, more trains are added and average speeds, but not necessarily top speeds, are raised.  It costs far less, both in capital and for maintenance, to raise slow sections of track to the initial [Federal Railway Administration] speed limit of 79 mph than to try for “gee whiz” top speeds.  The objective should be to make travel times competitive with the automobile, not to compete with airplanes.  As business builds further, it may justify raising top speeds on some sections to the next notches on the FRA scale, first 90 mph, then 110.  But speed increases should follow the market.

Lind and Bottoms point to three examples where the U.S. has done it right — the Cascades corridor connecting Portland, Oregon, and Seattle; the Hiawathas route between Chicago and Milwaukee; and the Downeasters between Portland, Maine, and Boston. The story in each case was one of making incremental improvements, shaving a few minutes off the travel time each each project. “All three of these corridors, as they continue to build ridership and offer more frequent trains, will at some point justify raising top speeds, from 79 mph to 90 or 110.  That is how higher-speed rail works.  It builds on success, not on oversold plans handed down by Pharaoh. ”

Lind and Bottoms concede that none of those routes fully covers its operating costs. The Downeasters does best, with a take of 86.7%. But the authors note that user fees, including the gas tax, cover only 51% of the cost of building and maintaining highways.

“As in the fable of the tortoise and the hare, slow and steady wins race,” they conclude. “The prudent, conservative way to true high-speed rail is through higher-speed rail.”

Bacon’s bottom line:  Two points. First, it’s true that roads and highways are subsidized. However, rather than subsidizing both transportation modes, which makes it impossible to tell which is truly the most cost-efficient, we should try to create a level playing field in which each mode pays its own way. Only then can we allocate capital rationally.

Second, the Lind-Bottoms approach appears to be similar to that pursued in Virginia, where the Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) has cobbled together some of the most cost-effective passenger service outside the profitable Northeast corridor. I have not studied the matter closely, but DRPT appears to favor the incrementalist strategy of building routes step by step and making modest, affordable improvements on the Richmond-Washington route with a focus on reducing average travel time, not goosing top train speeds. It may be worth taking a fresh look at Virginia’s approach through a Lind-Bottoms lens.

How Federal Safety Regs Hurt Passenger Rail

European train design -- faster, safer, lighter, cheaper...

European train design — faster, safer, lighter, cheaper…

by James A. Bacon

There has been increasing interest in passenger rail around the United States in recent years but the high cost of building and operating rail systems has posed a major barrier. One reason rail service is so expensive, writes David Edmondson for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is that Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) safety regulations lock U.S. trains into antiquated standards based on 1945 technology.

FRA regulations require train undercarriages to withstand 800,000 pounds of force without permanent defamation, explains Edmondson in “Reducing Passenger Train Procurement Costs.” The purpose of this “buff strength” requirement is to ensure that train cars can resist the impact of other cars. That may have made sense in 1945 when the standard was implemented, but European and Japanese train design has taken very different directions since then. In Europe train cars are built with crumple zones in non-occupied areas, reducing the need for rigid buff strength of only 337,200 pounds. Not only are European cars just as safe, Edmonson asserts, but trains are lighter, allowing them to decelerate and stop more quickly, and they are less prone to “telescoping,” in which the force of a crash causes passenger cars to climb over one another with devastating effect.

As a result, American trains are more expensive to build, weigh twice as much, require more energy to move, wreak havoc on rail infrastructure built for lighter cars, degrade performance and cost more to operate. Perhaps worst of all, because European (and Japanese) train designs are effectively precluded from the U.S. market, foreign manufacturers anticipate shorter manufacturing runs and charge more per train.

Thus, when Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) purchased trains for its new system in 2009, the least expensive option came from a Japanese coalition that charged 50% more, $3.3 million per unit. When Acela ordered trains from a European consortium, Edmondson contends, the result was a “Frankenstein’s monster” that today faces frequent breakdowns and incurs expensive maintenance.

The FRA, suggests Edmondson, “could easily address this problem by adopting European design standards. This would give U.S. transit agencies access to a vast array of more affordable and effective vehicles. … The FRA should also move beyond crash survival and start to focus on crash prevention. Positive train control, which can significantly reduce the incidence of crashes, is an important piece in this puzzle, but the FRA does not take stopping distance into account when evaluating a train’s safety.” He continues:

The requirements force Amtrak and transit authorities across the country to purchase custom-made trains that are unnecessarily expensive, underperform, and do not meet the best safety practices of the rest of the world.

Bacon’s bottom line: As I have argued repeatedly, the United States needs to invest in rail mass transit and inter-city rail — but we cannot afford the massive capital and operating subsidies that rail requires. One approach — the brain-dead approach — is simply to lobby for bigger grants and subsidies from federal and state governments whose finances are increasingly precarious and unsustainable. Even if we get the rail service established, if it loses money, there is no assurance that we can maintain it in the future.

A better approach is to understand why rail is so economically uncompetitive. How can taxpayers capture more of the economic value created by their infrastructure investments? How can we reduce union featherbedding and improve labor productivity? And how can we reform federal regulations to encourage more design innovation and promote competition? Edmondson addresses the third of those questions. As a society, we must confront them all. If we don’t re-think passenger rail transportation from stem to stern, rail will never amount to more than a costly, niche transportation option.

The Staples Mill Station: An Opportunity Gone Begging

Google Maps view of the Staples Mill station.

Google Maps view of the Staples Mill station. (Click for larger image.)

by James A. Bacon

Here’s the good news about the Amtrak Station at Staples Mill in Henrico County: The number of passengers increased 8% last year to 345,000, making it the busiest rail station in the South.

Here’s the bad news: The suburban station’s 288-space parking lot is totally swamped. On any given day, as many as 50 vehicles park on curbs, driving lanes, grassy areas and other non-parking spaces, according to Peter Bacque’s article this morning in the Times-Dispatch. Passengers have encroached upon the lots of nearby businesses, who have resorted to erecting signs threatening to tow.

So, what’s the solution emanating from the Department of Rail and Public Transit (DRPT)? Enlarge the parking lot!

Yes, the first instinct of the department in charge of encouraging rail and public transit in Virginia is to make it easier to access the station by car. Thelma Drake, DRPT director, told Bacque that the department would like to acquire enough land near the station to double the parking. “We hope there are property owners in the general area interested in selling. We will not use eminent domain,” she said.

Somewhat more encouragingly, the state also is working with an outside vendor to provide a shuttle service between the Staples Mill station and a nearby park-and-ride lot. But it’s discouraging that DRPT’s first instinct is to spend more money and dedicate more land to parking.

The parking predicament at the Staples Mill Station creates an opportunity to think differently about things. A couple of ideas…

Charge more for parking! The state charges only $5 per day for parking at present. Has anyone at DRPT heard of the law of supply and demand? When demand exceeds supply, the price needs to rise! This is not a difficult concept, people!! I know that’s not the ideal solution for train lovers, who worry that a higher parking price will discourage train ridership. But doubling the charge to $10 per day still would make it cheaper than airport parking. Moreover, when the financial return on parking rises, parking supply tends to materialize. Perhaps it would become profitable for a private vendor to run a shuttle. Maybe some of the neighboring businesses would lease out some spaces, which, judging from Google maps, aren’t exactly filled to the brim with cars.

Rezone the area around the Staples Mill station. The land around the station is clearly under-utilized with nothing but low-density commercial right now. Among other consequences, Henrico County is not generating nearly the tax revenue that it could from the presence of an extraordinary asset, the most heavily used inter-city rail station in the South.

DRPT should initiate a conversation with Henrico County along these lines: “Dudes, would you like to increase your tax base without incurring a lot of additional infrastructure costs? Why don’t you try rezoning the land around the station?”

The Staples Mill Station represents a tremendous opportunity for both DRPT and Henrico County. Instead of having a station surrounded by the likes of Miles Auto Services, Gundlach Plumbing, Heritage Antiques and Anthony George Steak House, why isn’t it encompassed by walkable, transit-oriented development including mid-rise offices and apartment buildings? Professionals who travel frequently to Washington, Philadelphia or New York might place a premium on convenient access to the station. Not only would higher-density development stimulate a built-in market for the Amtrak service, it would support the construction of structured parking that potentially could solve the station’s parking problem.

Staples Mill is an under-utilized six-lane boulevard that could easily handle  additional traffic generated by higher-density development. Such a project would be no-pain, all-gain for Henrico. Why aren’t Henrico supervisors pursuing re-development around the train station to bolster the county tax base instead of pushing for a meals tax that nobody wants? Because they are stuck in a rut of out-of-date thinking, that’s why. As a citizen of Henrico and Virginia, I’m not willing to tolerate such mental lethargy anymore.

Holy, Moly! Private-Sector Passenger Rail in Va.?

High-speed rail in the UK.

While the McDonnell administration seeks funding to extend Amtrak passenger service in Virginia, Hampton Roads planners are pushing European-style high-speed rail from Norfolk to Richmond and Washington — financed largely by the private sector.

by James A. Bacon

There’s an inherent difficulty in getting High Speed Rail to Virginia. Amtrak leases its rail lines from freight railroads. Freight rail tracks are designed to handle heavy-laden cargo trains, not fast-moving passenger trains, effectively limiting speeds to about 75 miles per hour. But 75 mph is barely faster than vehicles can travel the Interstate. Motorists stick to their cars and Amtrak is hard pressed to generate enough fares to pay its operating costs, never mind the capital cost of upgrading the rail lines.

But what if… What if a public-private partnership built its own line from Norfolk to Richmond and Washington that didn’t have to share the rail with freight trains? Such a partnership could design the rail line for passenger trains to run as fast as 150 mph. In that case, says Alexander E. Metcalf, president of Transportation Economics & Management Systems, Inc., a passenger rail consulting firm, the economics would change dramatically.

The faster a train can travel and the more frequent its schedule, the greater the number of people who want to use it and the more they are willing to pay for a ticket. As a rule of thumb, says Metcalf, a 110-mph train can contribute fares equivalent to five to ten percent of its capital cost. A 150 mph train can kick in 20%. Also, as demonstrated repeatedly in Japan and Europe, stations serving fast trains act as magnets for development. Office landlords charge higher leases, property values rise, and, if some of that value can be captured through a special tax district or other means, it could be possible to pay even more of the the rail line’s up-front capital cost.

Unbeknownst to most Virginians, Metcalf says, the Norfolk-Richmond-Washington route may be the best prospect in the country for high speed passenger service outside of the densely populated Washington-New York corridor. Driven by the rising price of aviation fuel, airlines are retreating from short flights. Meanwhile, rising gasoline prices and increasing Interstate congestion make long car trips increasingly expensive and inconvenient. The middle-range distance between Norfolk and Washington is the sweet spot where rail is most competitive.

While Virginia rail policy has achieved some notable successes, such as extending the slower Amtrak service from Washington to Lynchburg — a profitable route, incidentally — and from Norfolk to Richmond, the McDonnell administration has focused its high-speed rail initiatives mainly on the Washington-Richmond-Raleigh corridor, leaving Hampton Roads out of the loop.

However, the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization has been building a case for a high-speed Washington-Richmond-Norfolk route. For the military-dependent region, a fast rail connection is a strategic economic-development imperative. Providing military personnel the ability to reach the Washington area, participate in a meeting and ride back in a normal work day would make Hampton Roads more competitive with other regions as the Department of Defense grapples with budget cuts and base closings.

“A two-hour trip to D.C. changes the way Hampton Roads does business,” says Dwight Farmer, executive director of the HRTPO. “We become a suburb of Washington, D.C. … If you downsize the military, where would you consolidate [operations]? Hampton Roads!”

According to the Preliminary Vision Plan published in 2010, there could be as many as 14 stations between Norfolk and Washington, D.C., including the terminus at Union Station. The route would swing south of the James River, running through Suffolk and Petersburg before stopping at Main Street station in downtown Richmond. Then the route would run north to Washington, with at least one major stop in the Pentagon/Reagan National Airport area. Some trains would halt at smaller stations along the way but others would blast through without stopping. Read More.

The Sterile Debate over High-Speed Rail

by James A. Bacon

Thomas R. Frantz, CEO of the Williams Mullen law firm and board member of the Virginians for High Speed Rail, paints a picture to Times-Dispatch reporter Michael Martz of what it would be like if Virginia had good inter-city rail connections. He imagines riding The Tide light rail line from his law office in Virginia Beach to Norfolk’s Harbor Park, where he could catch a train to Main Street Station in Richmond. From there, it would be a walk of several blocks to the law firm’s headquarters building.

Undoubtedly, many other people would like the same convenience. I, for one, would enjoy taking the train to Norfolk to visit my parents, who live one block from The Tide’s terminus in downtown Norfolk. My family also likes to travel to Washington, D.C., and, less frequently, New York, and it is nice to dispense with the car on such trips. Moreover, I think it makes far more sense to locate an inter-city rail station in downtown Richmond rather than a dismal commercial strip on Staples Mill Road in Henrico County.

Yes, inter-city rail to downtown Richmond would be nice. But would Mr. Frantz be willing to pay what it costs to cover the up-front capital improvements — estimated at $300 million by City of Richmond officials and $600 million by Department of Rail and Public Transportation Director Thelma Drake — as well as the operating costs for the rail service? Martz doesn’t tell us what the cost of subsidized versus un-subsidized ticket would be. If the ticket price for the Richmond-to-Norfolk trip went much higher than $50 per person, I’d just as soon take my family in a car.

High-speed inter-city rail is one of those ideas that sounds great when somebody else is paying for it but not so great if you have to pay the full cost yourself. Moreover, unlike rail transit, where stations create significant wealth for neighboring landowners that can be tapped to help cover the capital costs, real estate developers don’t appear to be willing to pay a premium to locate near inter-city rail stations.

Remarkably, government and civic leaders in the Richmond region have elevated inter-city rail to the top of their list of regional priorities, even though there is no chance that the state can find the money and next-to-no chance that the feds will cough it up.

Former City Council President Bill Pantele sums up the case for the high-speed rail lobby, “It’s good for the public. It’s good for the economy. It’s good for the environment.” I like Bill, and I think he was a good City Council president, but I have to ask an impertinent question: Inter-city rail may be good for everyone if it were free, but how good can it be — how much economic value is it creating — if ticket sales cover only a tenth or a fifth of the full cost (not just the operating cost) of  providing the service? That sounds like it would be bad for the economy.

Now, the inter-city rail enthusiasts have one good come-back. The commonwealth is subsidizing roads and highways, why not inter-city rail? That’s very true. Once upon a time, it could be said that roads and highways paid their own way through the motor fuels tax. But a reluctance to raise the highly visible gas tax has prompted politicians to subsidize roads by means of a wide range of taxes. Most of those taxes are automobile-related — taxes on the sale of vehicles, taxes on drivers licenses — but they have been supplemented increasingly in recent years by the General Fund and other sources.

The pro-rail lobby also can argue that rail has fewer externalities, or spillover costs incurred by society. I agree that there is a value to curtailing gasoline/aviation fuel consumption, reducing imports of foreign oil and cutting the resulting pollution.

It strikes me, however, that the debate over high-speed rail specifically, and transportation policy generally, is totally incoherent. First, so many costs are diffused, hidden or hard to calculate that no one knows the true cost of anything. Second, there is absolutely no effort by anyone (other than the lone crusader, Fairfax Del. Jim LeMunyon) to prioritize transportation projects by Return on Investment. Without an impartial methodology for ranking transportation projects by ROI, there simply can be no intelligent conversation. In an analytical vacuum, capital funding will be allocated on the basis of special interest politics and log-rolling with a bias toward high-visibility projects that generate headlines, if not passengers.

And third, there is no acknowledgment of transportation alternatives, such as the burgeoning inter-city bus industry. How much would a bus company charge to convey Mr. Frantz from Virginia Beach directly to downtown Richmond in accommodations as commodious as a train — without public subsidies of any kind? If no such service currently exists, what does that say about the size and viability of the market for that service?

Bacon’s Rebellion — asking the questions no one else dares ask.

High Speed Rail’s End

by Norm Leahy

The latest issue of Ken Orski’s “Innovation News Briefs,” delivers a blow to the hopes of those who thought that, one day, high speed trains would zip between Washington, DC and pokey old Richmond:

By including only a token $100 million for high-speed rail as a “placeholder” in their FY 2012 budget recommendations (a sum that is likely to be further cut in the House-Senate negotiations on the FY 2012 appropriations), Senate appropriators have done more than merely declare a temporary slowdown in the high-speed rail program. They have effectively given a vote of “no confidence” to President Obama’s signature infrastructure initiative. Along with their House counterparts who had denied the program any new money, the Senate lawmakers have sent a bipartisan signal that Congress has no appetite for pouring more money into a venture that many lawmakers have come to view as a poster child for wasteful government spending.

That doesn’t mean the feds aren’t trying to spend whatever monies they still have at their disposal. Quite the contrary:

In the meantime, the Department of Transportation has rushed to distribute the balance of the authorized HSR dollars, lest Congress decides to rescind any funds that remain unobligated. Continuing its practice of scattering money far and wide rather than focusing it on one or two worthwhile projects, the Federal Railroad Administration approved in September over $ 480 million worth of planning, engineering and construction grants “to improve high-speed and intercity passenger rail service” in 11 states. The beneficiaries are New York, Texas, New England (Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut), North Carolina, Virginia, Washington State, Oregon and Pennsylvania. The awards range from $149 million to New York State to as little as $13 million to the state of Oregon, and they average under $40 million per individual grant. It remains to be seen how quickly the recipient states will put these funds to work— and what kind of service improvements these grants will bring about.

Probably not much. As BR’s own Peter Galuszka noted in this Style Weekly piece from 2010, bringing the rails that run through Richmond and the preferred Main Street Station site up to high speed snuff would cost anywhere between $122 million and $600 million. The $44 million federal grant given to Virginia is reserved for “environmental analysis and preliminary engineering.”

In other words, the trains won’t be getting faster, but there will be a few more studies published.