The Rhetoric of Rail

There’s often more fiction than fact in the articles on rail these days, and there’s almost NO real analysis in much of what passes for commentary. I posted the text below as a comment on the NewWest blog. It was actually long enough that it should be its own post. Here’s some thoughts I have about what we’ve been reading in the press lately about rail transit, specifically the possible reintroduction of the Amtrak Pioneer Line:

1) We need to be clear on the policy objective before we dismiss proposed solutions.

2) We need to be clear on the time horizon of the possible implementation of this policy.

3) We don’t know the “real” prices of most other transportation options.

4) We don’t have any comparative statistics against which to view the costs of the Amtrak Pioneer line.

There are any number of policy objectives that reopening the Pioneer line could accomplish: providing an alternative to air travel in the region; mitigating against future reductions in air service; mitigating against rising fuel costs; environmental protection; economic development; national competitiveness.

Senator Crapo says his objective with this policy is this: “A number of years ago (1997), Amtrak cut the Pioneer Route, which went through southern Idaho. That left many rural Americans in Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming without convenient access to the nation’s passenger rail system.” So, this proposal does what he is looking for, but yes, at what price. That brings me to point #2.

The good Senator, from what I gather, would like to see one of the Pioneer options happen sooner rather than later. That probably isn’t likely, in my estimation. Again referring to that America2050 rail report, no one really expects the Pioneer line to come back online for quite some time. I think it is reasonable for most people to agree that sometime in the next 40 years, it makes sense to get this line going again. That’s my position.

We should also be fortunate that we *know* the real costs of reopening the line. What does an airline ticket *really* cost? Who knows? $9 billion in taxes support TSA, and $14.6 the FAA. Add that to the cost of your plane ticket to SLC or anywhere else, and that is just the tip of the iceberg of hidden costs for just that one form of travel.

And so there is a $260 per passenger subsidy in some economic models for the Pioneer. Is that a lot? Who knows? What does it cost to run passenger or HSR in the Northeast? Japan? Europe? Would this represent a bigger per-capita subsidy (subsidy = public investment) than do our roads, and airlines? These are all questions that we need to answer.

I do want to throw out there too that at least there is SOME collection of non-public revenues for this system. What non-public revenue does I-84 collect? Zero. In fact, I-84 improvements are being paid for with Grant Anticipation Revenue Bonds which means your kids are paying for I-84 improvements.

Anyway - introductory economics tells us that at some cost and certain conditions, this policy proposal makes sense. I do not know if that is *now* or not; I still have questions. But, as I said, I think it is reasonable to be planning for the redeployment of this line sometime before the middle of the century. But as policy and bureaucracy moves so slowly, this is probably the time that we have to start talking about it if we want to make this happen at all.

David v. Goliath III: Blanchard v. Glaeser “No one lives in the West”

The road less travelled

According to his bio, “Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, where he also serves as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He studies the economics of cities, and has written scores of urban issues, including the growth of cities, segregation, crime, and housing markets. He has been particularly interested in the role that geographic proximity can play in creating knowledge and innovation. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992 and has been at Harvard since then.” An obviously brilliant and esteemed urban economist, you’ll see why I find his article “Put Transit Where the People Are” so bizarre. From the article:

MASS TRANSIT needs mass to work: enough people must live and work near train stations and bus stops. Densely populated Eastern Massachusetts should therefore be a prime location for public transportation. . . Despite the difficulties trains face in urban Boston, the Obama administration is pushing a new transportation agenda that promises high-speed rail in unlikely spots like Alabama and Oklahoma.

Dr. Glaeser continues:

So far the Obama administration’s transportation spending has gone overwhelmingly to highways in states with plenty of roads relative to people. Per capita federal transportation spending in the 10 densest states, which include Massachusetts, is less than half of spending in the 10 least-dense states. This policy follows an established formula, but it makes little sense. Congestion problems are most severe in the dense areas that get less funding.

Ok - that sounds plausible. Cities that are more dense should get more funding. But here he comes again with his misreading of the west:

Now the administration wants Americans to envision high-speed rail lines in the wide-open spaces of Texas.

Ok. So I think we get it. He is convinced that there is no one in the west, and that there isn’t sufficient density in the west to build rail. That’s his first argument. So let’s dissect that.

Unless legendary urban historian Carl Abbott is wrong, here is the reality: the west is plenty dense. In his latest book, How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America, Abbott writes:

“Densities of western cities are surprisingly high. It remains surprising to many people that Los Angeles is more densely populated than Detroit, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh. There were forty-nine metro areas in the United States with one million or more people in 2000. Ten of the twelve most densely populated were western - Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, and Salt Lake City.” Pg 229-230.

So we’ve busted Harvard/East Coast myth number one. But then there’s Glaeser’s contention that cars and planes are preferred over public transportation choices out west:

There is a reason why 48 percent of Amtrak’s passengers travel on only two routes: the Northeast Corridor and the Los Angeles-San Diego line. For travelers in the less-dense areas between the coasts, cars beat trains for modest distances and planes win over long hauls.

Glaeser of course leaves out the fact that many Amtrak lines in the west aren’t in operation any longer (could this be a reason the other lines get all the traffic?). A particular noteworthy example is the Pioneer Line that formerly ran from Seattle, through Portland, Boise, Salt Lake, Denver, Omaha, and Chicago. So the issue of the availability of western rail lines aside, Carl Abbott once again can enlighten us on the transportation preferences issue:

“Sacramento, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix built more limited rail systems after 1990, although some of them continue to expand (as in Denver and Phoenix). One consequence is that four cities of the western U.S. ranked in the nation’s top ten for percentage of journey-to-work trips made by public transit, with San Francisco/Oakland comparable to Washington D.C., Honolulu comparable to Philadelphia, and Seattle and Portland comparable to Pittsburgh.” pg 225

So I think we’ve scuttled that argument. Funny, though, Glaeser wasn’t the only Harvard guy recently to write such an article. Robert Samuelson wrote one very similar not long after, decrying the proposed building of a rail corridor from Houston to New Orleans where no one lives (Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States, and the “Texas Triangle” of Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio accounts for 7% of U.S. GDP). But recall that only a minuscule percentage of Harvard grads ever take jobs out west, so perhaps these fellas have never been out here amongst the cowboys, Indians, and sagebrush.

There are so many issues one could cover here. Glaeser admits that more spending won’t relieve congestion in the Eastern corridors, yet calls for more spending in those corridors. Samuelson also claims that there is no economic gain to be had from building rail which is completely unbelievable because U.S. history since the 1850’s cannot even be understood without contemplating the development of the railroad.

But just so all you Harvard guys are clear: yes - there are folks out west. Really. To close with a last fact from Carl Abbott:

“In the 2000 census of the United States, western metropolitan areas took eight of the top twenty slots. These eight super-cities - Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay metropolis, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Seattle, Phoenix, San Antonio and Denver - all had more than two million residents.” pg 9

And that, my dear Harvard friends, is like your own motto says, “veritas.”

What an engaged government looks like: Case study - Rail in California and Nevada

With the lack of participation by Idaho’s state level elected officials in many of the conversations that the community is having about transportation, planning, growth, sustainability, transit, etc., an article and a few photos from the western press really drove home the importance of an engaged legislature.

Last month, the Urban Land Institute and Boise State University convened a half-day conference on transit in the Boise Valley. One legislator attended.

The issue being discussed was how to get the rail line, which runs from the City of Nampa to the Micron plant in East Boise, operational for regional passenger service. We’re talking about one tiny little move toward rail transit - and we can’t seem to assemble any political leadership in the room.

There was no representation there from the Governor’s office. Neither the legislature nor the Governor have shown any interest in local option or other funding mechanisms to help the region get some kind of rail transit happening. Meanwhile, our federal officials are heading in the opposite direction and trying to get Amtrak to restore service to the Boise Depot. Our political leaders are all over the map.

So what’s going on in other parts of the country? Everyone else is experiencing the same confusion/apathy, right? Not exactly. Here, in images is what is happening in California:

The proposed high-speed rail network in California

Proposed high-speed rail line from Anaheim to Las Vegas

In case that is unclear, what is happening in California is that the state - through a combination of federal, state, local, and private money - is building a $45 billion, high speed rail network to connect the state. Because California is so organized, they are likely to get the lion’s share of the $8 billion that President Obama made available for regional rail projects.

This in turn spawned the proposal by Nevada to build a high-speed rail connection from Las Vegas to Anaheim. So while the all these grand plans are going on, we’re still sitting around here asking questions like “who’s gonna ride the thing?” Well, they asked that in Nevada too, and the poll below shows that 69% of people said they would ride the Vegas high-speed line if it were built.

A recent poll from the Las Vegas Sun-Times

The California system would link San Francisco with Los Angeles with train service in under three hours. How is it that a project spanning 800 miles and dozens of local governments and special districts, can get off the ground but Idaho can’t even get train service happening from Boise to Micron? Vice President Joe Biden sums it up:

“The reason why California is looked at so closely — it’s been a priority of your governor, it’s been a priority of your Legislature, they’ve talked about it, a lot of planning has been done,” Biden said.