If Elon Musk can succeed in his robotaxi plan it will be a great boost to intercity high speed rail. One of the big issues with taking rail between cities is the lack of reasonable surface transport opportunities within the cities. If Musk can truly solve this than millions more will want to use high speed rail and ditch the airlines.
It's not just Musk, in fact he's a latecomer. There are several other firms piloting autonomous vehicles in Calif. But your point resonates because there's no union-cost drivers and those ventures will bear the risks of failure or benefits of profit, leaving the taxpayers out of the subsidy game. In the Bay Area, subsidies EXCEED the operating costs for the 8 major transit agencies: https://shiftbayarea.substack.com/p/the-true-cost-of-transit
Tesla is not a latecomer. Their product has been in active development since the launch of the company and they have more cars available for service than all global competitors combined.
CultivatingMan below makes a good point about the need for surface transport options at one's destination. The time, cost, and hassle added by the need to be able to move around at one's destination reduce the value proposition of rail (versus driving oneself). I'm simply not sure passenger rail at scale is compatible with the American way of life - which means the Left will need to force it upon us (see, e.g., EVs).
But I am more pessimistic than the author because folks like Fortress expect the taxpayers to foot much of the cost, while private equity will reap the (theoretical) profits. The Feds kicked $3 of the first $12 billion into Brightline West (LA to Vegas). The state surely as well, including probably all sorts of tax abatements and other goodies to the politically well-connected Fortress. Add local giveaways to compete for stops, etc., and it totals billions upon billions flowing from taxpayers to the billionaires at Fortress. It's like how taxpayers subsidize billionaire team owners' stadium deals, but on steroids.
The municipal and other bond games that are surely being played, are probably another source for PE to profit even if the project ultimately fails. They are already deferring bond payments! Let's hope pension funds and other entities acting on behalf of captive beneficiaries aren't left holding the bag after buying into PE's rose-colored projections.
Finally, the $12.4 billion projected cost for building LA to LV rail in California is almost certainly fiction. And as it goes way over budget, Federal and State taxpayers will be hit up again to keep Fortress from bailing. In a government influence contest between Fortress and the general public, the public doesn't stand a chance.
Certainly infrastructure in water, sewer, stormwater is merited. But not necessarily in transportation (except roads). Right now traditional transit is a hugely parasitic system, sucking blood money out of taxpayers: https://shiftbayarea.substack.com/p/the-true-cost-of-transit
If a project can be conceived which leaves taxpayer subsidies OUT of the equation, and pencil out through replenishment of the first generation of capital assets (perhaps 60 years), then by all means have at it. But aside from dense metropolises like NYC, Tokyo, etc. I haven't seen that working.
In your ideal world, should people be forced to move to areas of innovation (like the bay area) but without any sort of means of actually alleviating traffic? It is nonsensical. You say it sucks "blood money" but act as if it doesn't provide a public service? Very bizarre.
In my ideal world most people would work from home (started my first virtual company in 2001 and we had people on 4 continents and in 23 states by 2003). And for those who must commute in person, the work hubs would be distributed like around Rte 128 in Boston, so work is closer to homes. Also, everyone wouldn't be commuting to the same places at the same times if they MUST commute. Work days and times would be staggered. Transit would be modular, agile and affordable and probably autonomous (see also Vancouver Sky Train cerca 1989). The "blood" comment was not fully fleshed out (so to speak). What I mean is that the current transit bureaucracies are parasitic, and have not done what any normal business would do: make themselves more cost efficient. They have failed to study how to reduce costs, and there are too many stories to list here (will be another article), and they continue to ask for more money while providing insufficient benefit. In NYC, and Tokyo, and I'm sure other places, rail makes sense. In the Bay Area, it has just become a jobs program providing a little transit.
Privatized passenger rail is pipe dream of libertarians and neoconservatives. It’s never turned any real profit that’s the reason a company like Amtrak exists. Brightline is another example of this failed concept.
Profitable High Speed rail does exist in other countries, but of course it's a mix of public/private enterprise. Highways are always unprofitable, but we universally agree they are necessary so we allow them. If we are saying that profitability is not the main concern then it comes down to desire for investment or how we envision how we get around. Too often do fellow people on the right who complain about traffic in their town, but have zero real ways to combat it. Self driving cars do not solve traffic if you are putting one or two people in a car and they have to get around. There are basic ways of fixing these things, but people are so idealogically opposed to rail or non driving on an almost religious level it is very odd.
Exactly as Mike says - the risk here is to foot the bill for PE extraction. They benefit from real estate around the Florida line while defaulting on the bonds. These things need to be really tight of public private partnership were to succeed.
If they run the train as a loss leader and the real value is in development, why isn't that a great thing? It's just a business model decision, as long as trains run and investors get ROI, who cares?
No issues with that indeed. Just the article says the train company is at risk of defaulting on its bonds. No issues with that either as the bond investors took risk for which they were paid in higher yield. But replace these bonds with a public grant, and we have a publicly subsidised train loss leader supporting a profitable private real estate fund.
I would support the government giving a 99 year lease, or something like that, to a privatize the rail line between Boston and Washington, DC so that faster, and frankly, more reliable, rail service from Boston to NYC to Philly and DC could be achieved. It's silly to have so many flights going between these destinations with the air travel space at the major airports serving these cites already congested.
Keep in the back of your mind that as a percentage of total freight shipments, the USA transports more than double the freight by rail than does Europe.
Perhaps a better solution would be to adopt the best practices of all the other nations that evidently can get the job done at a fraction of the cost.
This also exposes one of the tragic flaws in American Compass’ worldview.
This idea that America First stops at the border, whereupon everything is supposed to be turned over to a new and improved socially responsible brand of capitalism.
Hence the destruction of NASA and NOAH and god knows whatever other collective achievement of the American people.
To call upon the American people to unite around cultural conservatism and prevent them from uniting around their economic and technological achievements displays the same prejudice against socialism that liberals displayed toward conservatives.
Why not just outlaw red from the primary colors and deny it ever existed.
Europe has population density that makes high speed rail economically possible. The US doesn't. Once while driving in Europe, I missed a turn in Belgium and ended up in the wrong country, Luxembourg. Things are that close together. Another time, airline employees in Portugal couldn't understand why I was upset when the flight to Chicago was canceled and they were flying me to New York instead. When I told them the cities were over 1,000 kilometers apart, they were astonished. Map scales for Europe are different that map scales for the US.
"But America’s initial rail development was powered by a private-led, government-supported approach. For example, the federal government gave grants of land to railroads to encourage the development of lines. Would a similar private-public approach work for high-speed rail?"
And we are still reaping the consequences... Start with Norfolk Southern in East Palestine, Ohio, and follow the timeline backwards from there...
The land grants were awarded almost exclusively to lines west of the Chicago—Gulf Coast line. And that land was utterly worthless economically until the railroads reached into it. Private capital built almost every mile of railroad in the country otherwise. Blaming private sector ownership on a relatively rare accident on an eastern freight line is misguided. NS certainly could have handled that particular accident differently, but the government has had its own issues with accidents and environmental disasters.
Europe and Japan were able to rebuild cities to emphasize rail after World War II, and have relatively small distances. China is building new stations on the edge of cities and new downtown districts around them. The US cannot do either. In places like Connecticut, the right of way is narrow, curved and someone else's and cannot be expanded without immense expense. High speed rail will never be anything but a rarity in the US.
High speed rail in CA would work, just not along the chosen routes. In LA, it should run along the I10 corridor to San Bernardino and in SF/Oak along the 580 corridor. The goal should be to connect major urban areas with places that have ample opportunity to build housing where land doesn't cost a fortune. Instead, the State wants to compete with Southwest.
My point was follow the timeline backwards. A lot of 19th century railroads East of the Mississippi were speculative ventures that were dependent on small settlements hoping to lure the railroad to their town instead of that town. It wasn't just the Federal government that gave land grants.
Mr Renn, this is a pipe dream and fortunately so. There are two reasons why the US has no real high-speed rail: 1. Size, this is a continental size country and high-speed rail between major cities is really just too expensive to build let alone maintain to the VERY high standards safety demands. 2. Inefficiency, the most cost-effective way to move people over 500 miles is by air, under 500 miles is by bus. Rail only works within big cities, not between them.
Besides, you can't seem to see the forest for the trees on this. North America has one of the best freight rail systems in the world [privately owned and paying taxes] and passenger lines use their tracks [at their speed limits]. The foreign high-speed rail services you so envy require massive subsidies to operate [except, usually Tokyo-Kobe and occasionally Paris-Lyon]. European freight rail is often in shambles and subsidized as well.
Why should car owners who already pay most of the maintenance for the roads that busses use [via gas tax] be forced to kick in to help pay for train riders too? No mass transit riders in the US, as far as I know, pay the full economic cost of their rides. High-speed rail would be no different.
The easiest way to improve passenger rail in the US would be to enforce the agreement made that freight railroads would give priority to passenger trains. Delaying a freight train by 10 minutes matters little but freight railroads delaying more than half of all passenger trains by hours is a problem. And that is with delays being built into the passenger rail schedule!
More reliable schedules for passenger rail would help a lot, plus it would allow for quicker trips since the schedule would allow for fewer delays.
If Elon Musk can succeed in his robotaxi plan it will be a great boost to intercity high speed rail. One of the big issues with taking rail between cities is the lack of reasonable surface transport opportunities within the cities. If Musk can truly solve this than millions more will want to use high speed rail and ditch the airlines.
It's not just Musk, in fact he's a latecomer. There are several other firms piloting autonomous vehicles in Calif. But your point resonates because there's no union-cost drivers and those ventures will bear the risks of failure or benefits of profit, leaving the taxpayers out of the subsidy game. In the Bay Area, subsidies EXCEED the operating costs for the 8 major transit agencies: https://shiftbayarea.substack.com/p/the-true-cost-of-transit
Tesla is not a latecomer. Their product has been in active development since the launch of the company and they have more cars available for service than all global competitors combined.
I stand corrected, they have been working on self-driving for a while, with the deaths to show for it.
CultivatingMan below makes a good point about the need for surface transport options at one's destination. The time, cost, and hassle added by the need to be able to move around at one's destination reduce the value proposition of rail (versus driving oneself). I'm simply not sure passenger rail at scale is compatible with the American way of life - which means the Left will need to force it upon us (see, e.g., EVs).
But I am more pessimistic than the author because folks like Fortress expect the taxpayers to foot much of the cost, while private equity will reap the (theoretical) profits. The Feds kicked $3 of the first $12 billion into Brightline West (LA to Vegas). The state surely as well, including probably all sorts of tax abatements and other goodies to the politically well-connected Fortress. Add local giveaways to compete for stops, etc., and it totals billions upon billions flowing from taxpayers to the billionaires at Fortress. It's like how taxpayers subsidize billionaire team owners' stadium deals, but on steroids.
The municipal and other bond games that are surely being played, are probably another source for PE to profit even if the project ultimately fails. They are already deferring bond payments! Let's hope pension funds and other entities acting on behalf of captive beneficiaries aren't left holding the bag after buying into PE's rose-colored projections.
Finally, the $12.4 billion projected cost for building LA to LV rail in California is almost certainly fiction. And as it goes way over budget, Federal and State taxpayers will be hit up again to keep Fortress from bailing. In a government influence contest between Fortress and the general public, the public doesn't stand a chance.
We need more investment in physical infrastructure especially passenger rail.
Dismaying to see billions dedicated to crypto and metaverse boondoggles that could go into improving the physical world we live in.
Certainly infrastructure in water, sewer, stormwater is merited. But not necessarily in transportation (except roads). Right now traditional transit is a hugely parasitic system, sucking blood money out of taxpayers: https://shiftbayarea.substack.com/p/the-true-cost-of-transit
If a project can be conceived which leaves taxpayer subsidies OUT of the equation, and pencil out through replenishment of the first generation of capital assets (perhaps 60 years), then by all means have at it. But aside from dense metropolises like NYC, Tokyo, etc. I haven't seen that working.
In your ideal world, should people be forced to move to areas of innovation (like the bay area) but without any sort of means of actually alleviating traffic? It is nonsensical. You say it sucks "blood money" but act as if it doesn't provide a public service? Very bizarre.
In my ideal world most people would work from home (started my first virtual company in 2001 and we had people on 4 continents and in 23 states by 2003). And for those who must commute in person, the work hubs would be distributed like around Rte 128 in Boston, so work is closer to homes. Also, everyone wouldn't be commuting to the same places at the same times if they MUST commute. Work days and times would be staggered. Transit would be modular, agile and affordable and probably autonomous (see also Vancouver Sky Train cerca 1989). The "blood" comment was not fully fleshed out (so to speak). What I mean is that the current transit bureaucracies are parasitic, and have not done what any normal business would do: make themselves more cost efficient. They have failed to study how to reduce costs, and there are too many stories to list here (will be another article), and they continue to ask for more money while providing insufficient benefit. In NYC, and Tokyo, and I'm sure other places, rail makes sense. In the Bay Area, it has just become a jobs program providing a little transit.
Privatized passenger rail is pipe dream of libertarians and neoconservatives. It’s never turned any real profit that’s the reason a company like Amtrak exists. Brightline is another example of this failed concept.
Profitable High Speed rail does exist in other countries, but of course it's a mix of public/private enterprise. Highways are always unprofitable, but we universally agree they are necessary so we allow them. If we are saying that profitability is not the main concern then it comes down to desire for investment or how we envision how we get around. Too often do fellow people on the right who complain about traffic in their town, but have zero real ways to combat it. Self driving cars do not solve traffic if you are putting one or two people in a car and they have to get around. There are basic ways of fixing these things, but people are so idealogically opposed to rail or non driving on an almost religious level it is very odd.
The president of L&N said that you couldn't make a g.d. cent with passenger rail, and that was a century ago.
I'm fine with Privatized passenger rail, as long as the risk and profits belong to private entity. Then the failure doesn't cost me/us.
Doesn't seem very failed to me, looks like it's growing.
There is no profit to be had so no one will ever take the risk
Exactly as Mike says - the risk here is to foot the bill for PE extraction. They benefit from real estate around the Florida line while defaulting on the bonds. These things need to be really tight of public private partnership were to succeed.
If they run the train as a loss leader and the real value is in development, why isn't that a great thing? It's just a business model decision, as long as trains run and investors get ROI, who cares?
No issues with that indeed. Just the article says the train company is at risk of defaulting on its bonds. No issues with that either as the bond investors took risk for which they were paid in higher yield. But replace these bonds with a public grant, and we have a publicly subsidised train loss leader supporting a profitable private real estate fund.
I would support the government giving a 99 year lease, or something like that, to a privatize the rail line between Boston and Washington, DC so that faster, and frankly, more reliable, rail service from Boston to NYC to Philly and DC could be achieved. It's silly to have so many flights going between these destinations with the air travel space at the major airports serving these cites already congested.
Keep in the back of your mind that as a percentage of total freight shipments, the USA transports more than double the freight by rail than does Europe.
Great idea but Going nowhere in states like NY that have ridiculous prevailing wage levels.
The most expensive one mile of rail is not an accident. NY Times not brave enough to tell us the obvious.
Perhaps a better solution would be to adopt the best practices of all the other nations that evidently can get the job done at a fraction of the cost.
This also exposes one of the tragic flaws in American Compass’ worldview.
This idea that America First stops at the border, whereupon everything is supposed to be turned over to a new and improved socially responsible brand of capitalism.
Hence the destruction of NASA and NOAH and god knows whatever other collective achievement of the American people.
To call upon the American people to unite around cultural conservatism and prevent them from uniting around their economic and technological achievements displays the same prejudice against socialism that liberals displayed toward conservatives.
Why not just outlaw red from the primary colors and deny it ever existed.
Europe has population density that makes high speed rail economically possible. The US doesn't. Once while driving in Europe, I missed a turn in Belgium and ended up in the wrong country, Luxembourg. Things are that close together. Another time, airline employees in Portugal couldn't understand why I was upset when the flight to Chicago was canceled and they were flying me to New York instead. When I told them the cities were over 1,000 kilometers apart, they were astonished. Map scales for Europe are different that map scales for the US.
What a factual statement this is, but...
"But America’s initial rail development was powered by a private-led, government-supported approach. For example, the federal government gave grants of land to railroads to encourage the development of lines. Would a similar private-public approach work for high-speed rail?"
And we are still reaping the consequences... Start with Norfolk Southern in East Palestine, Ohio, and follow the timeline backwards from there...
The land grants were awarded almost exclusively to lines west of the Chicago—Gulf Coast line. And that land was utterly worthless economically until the railroads reached into it. Private capital built almost every mile of railroad in the country otherwise. Blaming private sector ownership on a relatively rare accident on an eastern freight line is misguided. NS certainly could have handled that particular accident differently, but the government has had its own issues with accidents and environmental disasters.
Europe and Japan were able to rebuild cities to emphasize rail after World War II, and have relatively small distances. China is building new stations on the edge of cities and new downtown districts around them. The US cannot do either. In places like Connecticut, the right of way is narrow, curved and someone else's and cannot be expanded without immense expense. High speed rail will never be anything but a rarity in the US.
High speed rail in CA would work, just not along the chosen routes. In LA, it should run along the I10 corridor to San Bernardino and in SF/Oak along the 580 corridor. The goal should be to connect major urban areas with places that have ample opportunity to build housing where land doesn't cost a fortune. Instead, the State wants to compete with Southwest.
If a private enterprise wants to enter the transportation market with high speed rail, great! I hope they succeed.
If that enterprise wants $1 of taxpayer money, however, I oppose it. Let the market function.
My point was follow the timeline backwards. A lot of 19th century railroads East of the Mississippi were speculative ventures that were dependent on small settlements hoping to lure the railroad to their town instead of that town. It wasn't just the Federal government that gave land grants.
Mr Renn, this is a pipe dream and fortunately so. There are two reasons why the US has no real high-speed rail: 1. Size, this is a continental size country and high-speed rail between major cities is really just too expensive to build let alone maintain to the VERY high standards safety demands. 2. Inefficiency, the most cost-effective way to move people over 500 miles is by air, under 500 miles is by bus. Rail only works within big cities, not between them.
Besides, you can't seem to see the forest for the trees on this. North America has one of the best freight rail systems in the world [privately owned and paying taxes] and passenger lines use their tracks [at their speed limits]. The foreign high-speed rail services you so envy require massive subsidies to operate [except, usually Tokyo-Kobe and occasionally Paris-Lyon]. European freight rail is often in shambles and subsidized as well.
Why should car owners who already pay most of the maintenance for the roads that busses use [via gas tax] be forced to kick in to help pay for train riders too? No mass transit riders in the US, as far as I know, pay the full economic cost of their rides. High-speed rail would be no different.
The easiest way to improve passenger rail in the US would be to enforce the agreement made that freight railroads would give priority to passenger trains. Delaying a freight train by 10 minutes matters little but freight railroads delaying more than half of all passenger trains by hours is a problem. And that is with delays being built into the passenger rail schedule!
More reliable schedules for passenger rail would help a lot, plus it would allow for quicker trips since the schedule would allow for fewer delays.