High Speed Rail

Gas Costs Spark High-Speed Rail Interest

Amtrak booming amid bust

I'll probably have more on the specifics of these articles later - although the topic will undoubtedly come up again.

I am a big fan of high speed rail and have ridden on it in Europe and Japan. It is expensive, but much cheaper than the airlines. I'm not sure how much of a subsidy it gets from the various governments, but a guess is that both the airline and rail get a rough equivalent in subsidies which is why they are both pricey but not astronomical. In the U.S., we subsidize the roads and the air traffic control system (and bailout the airlines periodically), but the rail lines, without a subsidy, that compete with heavily subsidized forms of transportation, lose money, and so are accused of being inefficient, a relic of the past, a waste, etc.

The stats are already out there regarding how little public rail gets compared to our roads and air traffic control system, so I won't go into that here.

My thinking though is not to worsen the problem of government subsidies by giving even more taxpayer money away - this time to the railroads, but that the subsidies for the other forms of transportation should be taken away. Let the airlines pay for the air traffic control system or add it to the price of the airline ticket. Toll the interstates and make them independent commissions so that the money goes solely to funding the care and maintenance of the road instead of just another source of revenue for government to waste. I'm sure that will keep the tolls sufficiently low enough to not burden interstate commerce while lifting that expense out of the federal budget. If not, then the amount of money to support the highways must be for out of proportion for the benefit they bring.

If all of these forms of transportation were allowed to compete fairly - without government subsidies, we would see a huge turn-around in the use and profitability of passenger rail. It could likely be turned over to a private company and a private company would probably bring high speed rail to the country a lot faster and on better terms than any central planning from the government.

That said, I think the government may have a role to play in passenger rail in two major areas. The first is deregulation so that trains can travel faster in residential areas. The second is in straightening out the right of ways. I don't like the idea of government seizing private land for someone else's gain, but this would be a public need. Even then, although I'm not fond of the idea of government seizing property except for emergencies, I think the government could at least help in obtaining the rights for the right of way to avoid litigation that might be undertaken solely for the purpose of driving up costs, rather than giving people a strictly fair sum for their house. The devil will be in the details of that undertaking however.

So, in short, stop subsidizing everything with our tax dollars, give them back to us, and we will use them to determine what forms of transportation we want to take. Right now we all have to drive in cars or take planes because that still makes the most economic sense since we are already keeping those prices low with our tax dollars. Let the trains compete on equal terms and I'm sure we will see high-speed passenger rail in 10 years. At the going rate, we will either have no change or have some massive tax increase to cover a government controlled fiasco/boondoggle that will promise high-speed rail and deliver an Edsel.

And if we follow this plan and passenger rail still fails, we should let private companies take over Amtrak. They will immediately increase the amount of freight on those lines and be able to deliver freight at a much cheaper costs that trucking. This will take more trucks off the roads and decrease the amount we have to spend on maintenance of the roads.