[Vision2020] High-Speed Rail is Key to Infrastructure Renewal

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Good Morning Visionaries:

My infrastructure file was so large that I didn't know where to begin, until my childhood passion (inspired by my father, who was a trainmaster on the UP during WWII) for trains helped me make the first cut in the material.  There is enough in the file for at least one or two more columns.

One of the sad ironies of infrastructure renewal is that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were raising huge amounts of private money for infrastructure before they both crashed.

The full version with the iconic image of bullet train/Mt.Fuji/cherry blossoms is attached. I not only saw Mt. Fuji from a bullet train but also from my hotel room during my last visit in December 2007.

I know some purist are going to say that no one except silly Americans call them bullet trains, but Shinkansen means "grand trunk line," which is not very sexy at all.

By the way newspaper editors and spell checkers refuse to recognize my great new word "free marketeers," whose antics now in the wake of capitalism on speed and greed are just as amusing as the Mouseketeers. How many of you got to be Mouseketeers on your local TV stations in the 1950s?  I did, but I somehow never got my ears!  I never got further than Webelo in Boy Scouts either.

Nick Gier

HIGH-SPEED RAIL IS KEY TO INFRASTRUCTURE RENEWAL

The U.S. will not be able to compete in the world economy without a substantial rebuilding of its infrastructure.  Our great success in the last century was due not only to individual initiative and innovation, but also to government investment in railways, roads, and waterways. 

In 2005 America’s civil engineers gave the nation’s infrastructure a “D” grade, and they estimated that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years for proper upgrades.  Only about one third of Obama’s $825 billion stimulus package will go to infrastructure with only $30 billion for roads and a mere $10 billion for mass transit and railways. 

Currently China invests 9 percent of its gross national product in infrastructure, European nations lay out 5 percent, but the U.S. gives only 2.4 percent. The last major project was the interstate highway system, initiated by President Eisenhower at a cost of $400 billion in today’s dollars. The federal gas tax, the main source of revenue for road building and maintenance, has not been raised since 1993, and the Highway Trust Fund is $4 billion in debt.

Europeans pay much more in fuel taxes: the Brits pay 50 cents per liter while we pay only 8 cents per liter. High European fuel taxes pay for good roads and superb public transportation, including some of the fastest trains in the world. Amtrak’s Acela train averages only 79 mph between New York and Washington, while the EuroStar between London and Paris averages 136 mph.

When I traveled to Japan for the first time to give some lectures in 1983, I could not wait to ride on a bullet train. As I stood on the platform at Tokyo’s main station, I was amazed to see these high-speed trains departing for every major city within minutes of each other.  In 1983 the bullet trains’ top speed was 130 mph, but when I went back in 2002 I was sometimes moving along at 186 mph.

Japan’s bullet trains first began operation in 1964, and after forty-five years of service, there have been no deaths, no major injuries, and only one derailment, which was caused by an earthquake in October 2004. In stark contrast, from 1997-2003 Amtrak accidents killed 96 and left 1,328 injured.

Drawing on Japanese and European technology, China is now building its own bullet trains. By 2012 new tracks between Beijing-Shanghai will carry passengers at 236 mph and consume only 12.7 KW per passenger, the most energy efficient public travel in the world.

California is leading the way with high-speed rail. Voters have approved tens of billions of dollars in bonds, $9 billion alone for a Los Angeles-San Francisco line that would reduce travel time to 2.5 hours.  

It is estimated that 160,000 construction jobs would be created with 450,000 permanent jobs by 2035.  Moving Californians out of their cars would save $12.7 million barrels of oil per year, and 12 billion fewer pounds of carbon dioxide would be released into the air.

President Obama’s long-range plan is for an infrastructure investment bank, whose capital would be raised on the basis of 3 private dollars to one federal dollar.  It is estimated that 47,500 jobs will be created for every $1 billion spent.

The most unfortunate fact, however, is that the turbines for our wind farms will have to be imported from Denmark and the bullet trains most likely will come from China.  The greatest manufacturing economy in world history has now taken second place to a nation that, only 50 years ago, was a poor peasant society.

It did not have to this way.  With better industrial planning, taboo among free markeeters, the U.S. could still be a world leading in making the things that the world needs.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.
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