One interesting dynamic I've observed among people on the left (like myself) is that we confuse critiques of the current incompetence and inefficiency of American governments with critiques of government's inherent incompetence.
Governments aren't inherently inefficient, but it's hard to ignore the cost bloat and slow timelines of American government projects in the past few decades.
Government can be competent. The French high-speed rail system was, after all, built by the government. NASA sent men to the moon. Our government is can't build because of deliberate choices we've made, and we could change that.
On the left, we can advocate for rebuilding competence and efficiency in American government AND be practical. Right now, public/private partnerships may be the best way to build big projects like high-speed rail.
I think that's right. France's approach to passenger rail is just totally different from ours. They wanted to build fast trains as a service (run as a business), whereas we cobbled together the remnants of a collapsing private system (that government did a lot to help collapse) into more of a social welfare project than a transportation service/system. For Amtrak to operate like France's SNCF would take a radical rethinking of how the organization is set up and governed, but for now it remains a political creature with non-economic aims and not a rail company.
...but I can't. The ability of Brightline to build HSR is still unproven, and the obstacles are obvious: Amtrak is uninterested, their expertise is dubious, and the whole point of Hyperloop is that Musk holds HSR in disdain [see my essay about it, https://www.changinglanesnewsletter.com/p/nature-abhors-a-vacuum-tube , for more]; in other words, I don't see the propitious circumstances you do.
My dubiety extends to my local HSR project; apparently Canada will, at long last, get HSR on the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor in the next decade, but I've heard that claim before.
I am increasingly of the mind that North America can't do transport megaprojects; we no longer have the capacity to do them on time or for a reasonable budget. I think we need to spend a few decades building smaller projects—21st century airports, multi-modal hubs, and the like—so as to Git Gud first.
An out-of-shape runner doesn't sign up for a marathon. They have to train for months first. With regret, I think that's what the USA and Canada have to do.
I remain optimistic but not idealistic. A 200-mile track seems like a good starting point for learning how to do HSR, especially as compared to the 700-mile CAHSR. If Brightline can't pull it off, then yes, it is unlikely we'll be building any HSR anywhere. But why don't we see how it goes, first?
The only reason why Brightline works is their location and their business model. They chose a corridor they already owned and built the improvements themselves. Also, the rail operation is subsidized by real estate leases in properties also owned by the railroad.
Amtrak, on the other hand, has always been set up to fail. The expectation in 1971 was that they would continue operating a handful of trains for a few years and then quietly go away. They were set up with no consistent funding source, instead having to beg for funds in an annual congrefsional appropriations fight. Their business definition is schizophrenic. Are they supposed to provide transportation options to rural communities, or are they supposed to only support the heavy generators of revenue in highly developed corridors and short trips? When the fuel shortages of the 1970s or the 2001 terror attacks sent an avalanche of passengers to rail, they were unable to accommodate them because of decades of life-support funding (nothing more), and an inability to plan long-term (due to being beholden to an annual appropriations cycle).
The California project is a consultant-fest. Consultants on transportation projects have very little incentive to actually complete the project, and the design-build project delivery method is great for getting projects moving but never completed, and driving up costs. When you venture into unfamiliar areas like HSR in North America, the risk of cost overruns goes way, way up, and that’s what happened out west.
Every time some (allegedly) well-meaning politician trots out the “privatize Amtrak” idea, reality seeps in. Private operators won’t be able to make much more revenue than Amtrak on the long-distance routes. Also, outside the NEC, no private operator has negotiated for track access over the freight railroads who currently host Amtrak (and according to them, at a very steep bargain).
On the NEC, in order to achieve time savings, someone is going to have to rear the ugly concept of eminent domain and straighten out the curves. I don’t think anyone has enough political capital to manage that. The IIJA made a down payment on some of the infrastructure needs of the NEC, but they’re going to be crazy ‘spensive and take years to complete.
If we had been pouring public funds into the rail system no-questions-asked for 70 years as we had the highways, or if rail lines were on tax-exempt land, the playing field would be much more equitable to the actual costs involved.
One of Trump's big opportunities with passenger rail is to get the Dept of Government Efficiency on the case. They can kickstart with questions like: Why do environmental reviews kill transit projects but allow road expansions?
Ryan, you are so right. But I must suggest that you check the safety record of Brightline in Florida. While the concept is great, but the fatality rate is not to be believed.
Agreed. It should be noted Brightline has slightly different aims in mind from Amtrak. Brightline FL is owned by a company funded by SoftBank and derives most of its business case from real estate near stations along a right of way that hasn’t had many curve upgrades or grade separations, the key to understanding the fatality rate. Diesel locomotives drove its speed boosts but can only go 125 mph; electrification (fairly doable given Boston-New Haven cost $3.5 million/mile) would raise it a lot. Meanwhile, Brightline W has the wind at its back in the form of Interstate 15 (though curve radii are still quite tight in some places), but the stations are fairly far outside the city centers of LA and LV, understandably so due to land costs but not convenient for business travelers.
As for what the rest of the world can tell us, if one wants to optimize for cheaper tickets, the Continental European best practice is to have a strong state planning agency, open access for multiple operators, and a long-term focus on public service. Eurostar’s not a good model here. If one wants to optimize for faster construction, China has different eminent domain laws, a small, tight-knit circle of domestic suppliers and strong standardization. If one wants a system of multi-company ‘walled gardens’ providing high-frequency, but high-maintenance service for business travelers, Japan has it.
Brightline actually works, unlike Amtrak. Maybe we should make them the default rail company, with Amtrak as their assistant. I love Japanese and European trains, and it’s long past time the US built some.
If they deliver on Brightline West, then I think they'll have a commanding lead in the marketplace. The worst we could do is to make them another political creature.
Perfectly-timed. I just drove from El Paso to Austin this morning and thought, “if we could have a private high-speed rail way and grant a 50sq mi charter city somewhere near Ft Stockton (Muskville, Zuckerberg, Bezostown), Texas could easily house another 5 million Californians and New Yorkers… (and ‘illegal’ immigrants).” We don’t even really need 200mph. Give us an avg of 100 mph!
I would also love if Amtrak could facilitate having competing providers on the Northeast Corridor, a line where trains run often enough that multiple competing providers could still individually offer robust frequencies.
The problem is jurisdiction friction, the corridor has more commuter railroads running on different, overlapping sections than a European counterpart would. Plus freight trains at night. Plus Amtrak doesn’t own the whole NEC, Boston’s agency and Connecticuts’s transport department own some sections and run their trains slower than optimal. It’s an organizational fix, perhaps best complemented by Amtrak spinning off its infrastructure manager as a separate company--but there are too many entrenched local interests in the way
After the crash and debt problems in Southern California Europe in 2008 (PIIGS) the EU gave grants to these countries. Spain spent the money on new highways and on a new high speed rail system centered on Madrid. The trains are fantastic, fast (200 KPH) and cheap. The scenery is just like Texas. They mostly run on elevated berms, fenced to keep out animals. The built all this on time, on budget in less than 10 years. And they have the passenger load to sustain in profitably. Spain is roughly the size of Texas.
The biggest difference I see is that the cities that are the nodes are all cities that are walkable where only a minority own cars. So when you arrive, no car is needed. In Texas, once you get TO Dallas, San Antonio, Austin or Houston -- well you need a car. If these routes had links to DFW, AUS, IAH then I think you'd see people adopting trains.
I’d love to see a Brightline or similar company set up HSR in Texas. But IMO the Dallas <-> Houston leg has to have a stop in College Station to make sense. Put the “station” back in College Station :)
One interesting dynamic I've observed among people on the left (like myself) is that we confuse critiques of the current incompetence and inefficiency of American governments with critiques of government's inherent incompetence.
Governments aren't inherently inefficient, but it's hard to ignore the cost bloat and slow timelines of American government projects in the past few decades.
Government can be competent. The French high-speed rail system was, after all, built by the government. NASA sent men to the moon. Our government is can't build because of deliberate choices we've made, and we could change that.
On the left, we can advocate for rebuilding competence and efficiency in American government AND be practical. Right now, public/private partnerships may be the best way to build big projects like high-speed rail.
I think that's right. France's approach to passenger rail is just totally different from ours. They wanted to build fast trains as a service (run as a business), whereas we cobbled together the remnants of a collapsing private system (that government did a lot to help collapse) into more of a social welfare project than a transportation service/system. For Amtrak to operate like France's SNCF would take a radical rethinking of how the organization is set up and governed, but for now it remains a political creature with non-economic aims and not a rail company.
[I_Want_to_Believe.gif]
...but I can't. The ability of Brightline to build HSR is still unproven, and the obstacles are obvious: Amtrak is uninterested, their expertise is dubious, and the whole point of Hyperloop is that Musk holds HSR in disdain [see my essay about it, https://www.changinglanesnewsletter.com/p/nature-abhors-a-vacuum-tube , for more]; in other words, I don't see the propitious circumstances you do.
My dubiety extends to my local HSR project; apparently Canada will, at long last, get HSR on the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor in the next decade, but I've heard that claim before.
I am increasingly of the mind that North America can't do transport megaprojects; we no longer have the capacity to do them on time or for a reasonable budget. I think we need to spend a few decades building smaller projects—21st century airports, multi-modal hubs, and the like—so as to Git Gud first.
An out-of-shape runner doesn't sign up for a marathon. They have to train for months first. With regret, I think that's what the USA and Canada have to do.
I remain optimistic but not idealistic. A 200-mile track seems like a good starting point for learning how to do HSR, especially as compared to the 700-mile CAHSR. If Brightline can't pull it off, then yes, it is unlikely we'll be building any HSR anywhere. But why don't we see how it goes, first?
Indeed yes! I am not optimistic but I wish them every success, and would be pleased to be proven wrong.
The only reason why Brightline works is their location and their business model. They chose a corridor they already owned and built the improvements themselves. Also, the rail operation is subsidized by real estate leases in properties also owned by the railroad.
Amtrak, on the other hand, has always been set up to fail. The expectation in 1971 was that they would continue operating a handful of trains for a few years and then quietly go away. They were set up with no consistent funding source, instead having to beg for funds in an annual congrefsional appropriations fight. Their business definition is schizophrenic. Are they supposed to provide transportation options to rural communities, or are they supposed to only support the heavy generators of revenue in highly developed corridors and short trips? When the fuel shortages of the 1970s or the 2001 terror attacks sent an avalanche of passengers to rail, they were unable to accommodate them because of decades of life-support funding (nothing more), and an inability to plan long-term (due to being beholden to an annual appropriations cycle).
The California project is a consultant-fest. Consultants on transportation projects have very little incentive to actually complete the project, and the design-build project delivery method is great for getting projects moving but never completed, and driving up costs. When you venture into unfamiliar areas like HSR in North America, the risk of cost overruns goes way, way up, and that’s what happened out west.
Every time some (allegedly) well-meaning politician trots out the “privatize Amtrak” idea, reality seeps in. Private operators won’t be able to make much more revenue than Amtrak on the long-distance routes. Also, outside the NEC, no private operator has negotiated for track access over the freight railroads who currently host Amtrak (and according to them, at a very steep bargain).
On the NEC, in order to achieve time savings, someone is going to have to rear the ugly concept of eminent domain and straighten out the curves. I don’t think anyone has enough political capital to manage that. The IIJA made a down payment on some of the infrastructure needs of the NEC, but they’re going to be crazy ‘spensive and take years to complete.
If we had been pouring public funds into the rail system no-questions-asked for 70 years as we had the highways, or if rail lines were on tax-exempt land, the playing field would be much more equitable to the actual costs involved.
One of Trump's big opportunities with passenger rail is to get the Dept of Government Efficiency on the case. They can kickstart with questions like: Why do environmental reviews kill transit projects but allow road expansions?
Ryan, you are so right. But I must suggest that you check the safety record of Brightline in Florida. While the concept is great, but the fatality rate is not to be believed.
Agreed. It should be noted Brightline has slightly different aims in mind from Amtrak. Brightline FL is owned by a company funded by SoftBank and derives most of its business case from real estate near stations along a right of way that hasn’t had many curve upgrades or grade separations, the key to understanding the fatality rate. Diesel locomotives drove its speed boosts but can only go 125 mph; electrification (fairly doable given Boston-New Haven cost $3.5 million/mile) would raise it a lot. Meanwhile, Brightline W has the wind at its back in the form of Interstate 15 (though curve radii are still quite tight in some places), but the stations are fairly far outside the city centers of LA and LV, understandably so due to land costs but not convenient for business travelers.
As for what the rest of the world can tell us, if one wants to optimize for cheaper tickets, the Continental European best practice is to have a strong state planning agency, open access for multiple operators, and a long-term focus on public service. Eurostar’s not a good model here. If one wants to optimize for faster construction, China has different eminent domain laws, a small, tight-knit circle of domestic suppliers and strong standardization. If one wants a system of multi-company ‘walled gardens’ providing high-frequency, but high-maintenance service for business travelers, Japan has it.
Brightline actually works, unlike Amtrak. Maybe we should make them the default rail company, with Amtrak as their assistant. I love Japanese and European trains, and it’s long past time the US built some.
If they deliver on Brightline West, then I think they'll have a commanding lead in the marketplace. The worst we could do is to make them another political creature.
Perfectly-timed. I just drove from El Paso to Austin this morning and thought, “if we could have a private high-speed rail way and grant a 50sq mi charter city somewhere near Ft Stockton (Muskville, Zuckerberg, Bezostown), Texas could easily house another 5 million Californians and New Yorkers… (and ‘illegal’ immigrants).” We don’t even really need 200mph. Give us an avg of 100 mph!
I would also love if Amtrak could facilitate having competing providers on the Northeast Corridor, a line where trains run often enough that multiple competing providers could still individually offer robust frequencies.
I find Spain to be an inspiring example, where competition on high-speed services seems to have led to reduced fares and increased passenger numbers: https://www.railjournal.com/analysis-cat/spanish-high-speed-competition-drives-passenger-numbers-up-by-a-third/
The problem is jurisdiction friction, the corridor has more commuter railroads running on different, overlapping sections than a European counterpart would. Plus freight trains at night. Plus Amtrak doesn’t own the whole NEC, Boston’s agency and Connecticuts’s transport department own some sections and run their trains slower than optimal. It’s an organizational fix, perhaps best complemented by Amtrak spinning off its infrastructure manager as a separate company--but there are too many entrenched local interests in the way
After the crash and debt problems in Southern California Europe in 2008 (PIIGS) the EU gave grants to these countries. Spain spent the money on new highways and on a new high speed rail system centered on Madrid. The trains are fantastic, fast (200 KPH) and cheap. The scenery is just like Texas. They mostly run on elevated berms, fenced to keep out animals. The built all this on time, on budget in less than 10 years. And they have the passenger load to sustain in profitably. Spain is roughly the size of Texas.
The biggest difference I see is that the cities that are the nodes are all cities that are walkable where only a minority own cars. So when you arrive, no car is needed. In Texas, once you get TO Dallas, San Antonio, Austin or Houston -- well you need a car. If these routes had links to DFW, AUS, IAH then I think you'd see people adopting trains.
I understand that Spain has also been building subways cheaply. We should be hiring whoever is building their trains to do it here!
I’d love to see a Brightline or similar company set up HSR in Texas. But IMO the Dallas <-> Houston leg has to have a stop in College Station to make sense. Put the “station” back in College Station :)
Don't get your hopes up with Don & Leon. They both have had multiple business failures, and seem to care only about doing things the wrong way.
+1 to optimism! Yes, let us let them try, and wish them every success.