Getting High-Speed Rail Wrong
Despite several flaws and uncharitable misrepresentations in his policy analysis, I actually agree with most of O&#x27;Toole&#x27;s conclusions.<p>I post a lot on here about rail, and I disagree with a lot of output from the Cato Institute, but the infrastructure cost of long-distance High Speed Rail in the US would be immense, and the geography of settlement and commuting patterns in the country are too car-oriented to take advantage of passenger-only HSR. Americans already do most travel by car and long-distance travel by air, so High Speed Rail would be a slower and costlier substitute for long-distance flights, and a maybe-faster but drastically less flexible alternative to &lt;300 mile travel.<p>It&#x27;s no accident France runs the TGV like an airline, because they work the same way: you get to your destination station, and now what? You need to hop on public transit or rent a car like you would at an airport. But in Europe, a big town is far more likely to have public transit of acceptable quality, frequency, and coverage to solve the last mile problem; all but the most transit-webbed US cities do not.<p>This article exposes some of the flaws and misrepresentations in his analysis, but then contributes its own flaws in turn. One example: in truth intercity buses are very widespread in Europe, and not only do they fill in gaps left by the rail system, but thanks to expressways on some routes they be as fast as &quot;moderate-speed trains&quot; too. Truly High Speed Rail only runs in a dozen corridors in Europe, and the rest of the passenger rail on the continent runs the gamut from decent to atrocious. Buses are flexible, because they can go where the roads already go.<p>One way to get around the last-mile problem is to ensure your destination is likely to be transit-webbed town, or your destination station is very close the location to which you actually want to go. This sounds a lot like commuter rail -- the speed depends on how much you want to spend on infrastructure. In the US, this would mean that lines radiate out from NYC, Boston, DC, Philly, Chicago, Atlanta, LA, SF, Miami, Seattle, Portland... but not any further than an hour or two of travel. The Northeast Corridor is a lucky exception because you have some of the most interconnected cities in the US all in a convenient line.<p>What&#x27;s most frustrating is that many of both the opponents and supporters of HSR in the US miss the point: the point is to both invest in and subsidize infrastructure and programs that are societally useful and unlock productivity and opportunities. The Cato Institute would prefer a world without subsidies, but that&#x27;s not appropriate for the sorts of high-cost functions that offer a major benefit to society. Pedestrian Observations would prefer more mobility and transit, but sometimes that transit actually looks like an airplane or bus or subsidized taxis, because it&#x27;s what makes most immediate use out of the current infrastructure in a way that balances opex with capex.