Why I reluctantly dislike the plan for high-speed rail

First of all, I love trains. At the very least, I love the IDEA of trains. They are both romantic and powerful, representing the glory of an earlier time and the power of industry. Unfortunately, the reality of train travel in America is nothing like that, at least not in the age of Amtrak.

So I'm a bit torn on the idea of High-Speed Rail in this country. As a train-lover, I enjoy the idea that investing in faster, better trains could make transcontinental rail travel competitive with airlines. But, at the same time, I'm forced to admit that it's a wasteful dream that will never be fulfilled, for a number of reasons.

The most important reason is simple geography.

We frequently hear that building High-Speed Rail in this country will give us a system that is similar to what they have in Europe. Having ridden trains in Europe (at least in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, and Germany), I must say they have a pretty good thing going (with Italy being the exception, but even that wasn't all bad). However, as much as I would love a European-style train network in this country, the lack of dense population centers anywhere between the coasts makes it virtually impossible.

Megan McArdle explains it well:

"They [the liberals] also underestimate the role of geography. It is true that most Americans live near relatively dense cities. But that is still very different from the European situation, where virtually every town is basically a suburb of one of a handful of major national cities. (Before the various regionalists start stoning me, I mean this geographically; almost every town in Europe is close enough to a major city that in America, it would be considered to be a suburb.) This enables them to build rail networks on a scale that I just don't see us being able to match here."

In the Kato Daily Podcast back on June 19, Kato Senior Fellow Randal O'Toole pointed out that the proposed "High-Speed Rail network" will connect about 60 cities in 33 states, but it doesn't actually connect them at all, because there will be six separate high-speed rail lines that don't link up with one another.

"For example, the Obama plan includes a line from San Antonio to Dallas, and from Houston to New Orleans, but no line between Houston and any other city in Texas....People in Texas are going to say, we want a line from Dallas to Houston. People in Florida are going to say, 'why are we building a line from Atlanta to Jacksonville, and from Orlando to Miami, but not from Jacksonville to Orlando?' People in Colorado are going to say, 'why did you skip the Rocky Mountains altogether?'"

So the geography of America makes transcontinental high-speed rail an economic impossibility. We just have too many big parts of the country where there are so few people that we would never be able to justify the cost of building a line (through Wyoming, for example) there. The only chance high-speed rail has is in regional sections where it might be an attractive alternative to flying or driving.

However, that doesn't get around the second big problem: money. More specifically, it's all the money that has to go be spent to cut through all the red-tape that is sure to be created anytime you want to build something that is massive and will certainly disrupt the lives of people and/or possibly endangered plants and animals. The irony, of course, is that it's usually left wing groups who create those headaches that stall other left-wing groups plans.

McArdle give a great example:

"The Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor, established in 1992, is expected to finish its final environmental impact statement sometime in 2011. Some unspecified time after that, it will begin building out the links between Washington DC and Charlotte, North Carolina. For somewhere between 2-5 billion dollars, and three or more decades, we will finally be able to travel from Washington to Charlotte in 6 hours and 50 minutes--just 30 minutes more than it takes to drive the same route. On the plus side, you can read while you travel. On the minus side, it will cost at least three times as much, and you'll still have to rent a car when you get there."

Given those options, most people will choose to either fly (they'll still have to rent a car, but the trip is faster and not much more expensive), or drive (which will take the same amount of time, but it will be a lot cheaper, and you have your own car when you get there). Sadly, even for regional trips it will be impossible for high-speed trains to compete well enough with airlines to ever be financially workable.