FEATURE STORY — March/April 2010

 

Is There A High-Speed Train In Your Future?

UIC’s Joe DiJohn and other experts weigh in on whether the public’s perception of high-speed rail will match what’s being proposed by the Obama Administration

By Steve Hendershot
Source for graphs and charts: “Vision for High-Speed Rail in America,” U.S. Dept. of Transportation

High-speed TGV trains await departure at a station in Paris. Photo: Chris Kapolka//Getty Images

It’s traditional for Americans vacationing in Spain to feel envious, but for Frank Busalacchi’s kids it wasn’t the coastline, the culture or the ancient cities. It was the trains. The family cruised from Madrid to Barcelona on a new high-speed AVE train, covering in two and a half hours a journey that once required six.
“Once you ride these super-high-speed trains, you’re addicted. You’re gone,” says Busalacchi, who has traveled on ultra-high-speed trains in Japan and Europe and serves as secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and chair of the States for Passenger Rail Coalition, a group that includes transportation authorities from 31 states.

High-speed trains are fast, comfortable and futuristic. Plus, if Americans began traveling by high-speed rail (HSR), it would unclog our highways and airports, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and lessen our negative impact on the environment. The U.S. Department of Trans­portation estimates that the nation’s current transportation systems consume 70 percent of the country’s oil demand and contribute 28 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The agency also projects that an HSR network of 100-mile to 600-mile intercity corridors could result in an annual reduction of 6 billion pounds of CO2.

Investment in HSR would also spur creation of high-skilled construction and operating jobs, and help revitalize the industries that produce rail control systems and passenger locomotives and cars. “It would be an excellent opportunity to encourage U.S. car and locomotive builders to develop U.S.-based manufacturing facilities,” says Joe DiJohn, director of UIC’s Metropolitan Transportation Support Ini­tiative, which is part of the University’s Urban Transportation Center.

Furthermore, as USDOT notes in “Vis­ion for High-Speed Rail in America,” HSR would foster “smart growth” rather than urban sprawl because higher density development is more associated along rail lines than highways and airports. 

In addition, says DiJohn, “Bringing two major cities together closer in time like Chicago and St. Louis…would spur economic development for both of those urban areas.”

SLIGHTLY FASTER OR REALLY FASTER?
The potential of such benefits has led the Obama administration to commit $8 billion in the stimulus package to HSR, an amount that Vice President Joe Biden calls a “down payment” on a new rail infrastructure.

This infrastructure—which would rely on a partnership with state governments and private companies—centers on a national network of HSR corridors. So far, the Obama administration has identified 10 potential HSR projects: the California Corridor, Pacific Northwest Corridor, South Central Corridor, Gulf Coast Corridor, Chicago Hub Network, Florida Corridor, Southeast Corridor, Keystone Corridor, Empire Corridor and Northern New England Corridor.

The program calls for three types of rail systems, based on the distance and traffic demands of each corridor:

• HSR Express—top speeds of 150 mph or more on completely grade-separated, dedicated right-of-way.  Serves major population centers 200 miles to 600 miles apart and is designed to reduce air and highway congestion.
• HSR Regional—top speeds of 110 mph to 150 mph on grade-separated and a combination of dedicated and shared track. Serves major and moderate population centers 100 miles to 500 miles apart and is designed to reduce highway congestion and, to a lesser extent, air travel.
• Emerging HSR—top speeds of 90 mph to 110 mph on shared track, with ad­vanced grade crossing protection and separation. Serves developing corridors of 100 miles to 500 miles, with a “strong potential for future HSR Express and HSR Regional service.” Designed to develop passenger rail markets and provide some relief to highway and air congestion.

The White House has solicited state-level proposals—Illinois is part of an eight-state Midwest consortium, the Chicago Hub Net­work, that’s bidding for a portion of the funding. According to DiJohn, more than $53 billion in applications have been re­ceived. (Illinois separately committed $850 million in state funding for rail this past summer, including $400 million for HSR.)

This comprehensive Midwest proposal includes several regional lines, two of which are located in Illinois. “An Emerging HSR system would run on the Union Pacific line between Chicago and St. Louis” and an “HSR Express system would run along the Canadian National right-of-way between Chicago and Springfield via Urbana-Champaign,” says DiJohn. “It would serve all three U of I campuses.” (As of press time, the Obama administration had approved funding for the Illinois Emerging HSR Chicago-to-St. Louis proposal and planning funds for HSR Express.)

But the Obama HSR plan is not without controversy, in part because of its reliance on Emerging HSR. “If we pump billions into [Emerging HSR lines and it’s not successful] because it doesn’t save enough travel time, then I think it’s less likely that a true high-speed rail system will ever be built,” says DiJohn. “People will look at [110 mph service] and say, ‘We tried high-speed rail and it failed.’”

The proposed Chicago-to-St. Louis corridor is a perfect case in point. Building an Emerging HSR system costs roughly $4 million per mile; HSR Express is $40 million to $50 million per mile. By comparison, the Federal Highway Administration calculated the weighted rural and urban cost-per-mile of an interstate highway to be $20.6 million in 1996 ($28.9 million in 2009 dollars). Therefore, the estimated cost to construct a 261-mile Emerging HSR Chicago-St. Louis line would be $1.04 billion; an HSR Express line $10.4 billion to $13.1 billion.

A comparison of travel times between the two approaches is no less illuminating. With the slower Emerging HSR, the trip would take about four hours—a little faster than driving, and faster than the 51/2 hours currently needed to make the trip by train; by HSR Express, the travel time drops to less than two hours. HSR Express is clearly faster than driving, and it outperforms air travel once you factor in time spent at the airport and traveling from the airport to city center.

Why does HSR Express cost so much more than Emerging HSR? For starters, the latter shares existing track with freight lines, whereas the former requires new, dedicated tracks. Emerging HSR requires expenditures for improved switching and construction of bypass tracks, so that passenger trains and freight lines don’t interfere with one another. For example, current Amtrak trains are often delayed by freight trains.

Emerging HSR also requires replacing wood ties with concrete ones, and installing improved signaling and grade-crossing protection, such as a quadrant system (in 2008, a total of 2,754 grade-crossing accidents resulted in 335 deaths). “With a quadrant system, the gates close on all lanes to prevent vehicles from going around the gates,” explains DiJohn.

To avoid grade-crossing accidents, HSR Express relies on a series of bypass bridges, which significantly drives up the cost of construction. Safety is vastly improved, however. Japan’s Shinkansen HSR trains haven’t had a single derailment or collision since they began operating in 1964.

Amtrak's highly successful Acela Express, which serves Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., is the nation's sole HSR line. Photo: Amtrak

IS EMERGING HSR WORTH IT?
So, why build Emerging HSR systems like the proposed Chicago-St. Louis line? For Busalacchi, the reasons are economic. “Where do you get that money at a time when the states are strapped?” he asks. Modest, incremental improvements to passenger travel, Busalacchi argues, would be substantial enough to siphon off a significant number of air and auto passengers. DiJohn adds, “If we put all our marbles on 220 mph, we might end up with very little HSR getting built.” 

In addition, DiJohn compares the Emerging HSR strategy to that of Megabus, which has carved out a successful niche in a decaying market—inter-city bus travel—by offering reliable express service between major cities. The company saves time by avoiding stops in small towns, not by traveling twice as fast as Greyhound. “They have attracted a new group of riders—young, educated, wealthy riders—to buses,” says DiJohn. “If we began running more convenient express trains at higher speeds, rail could attract a different user, too.”

The lower-cost Emerging HSR might also whet the public appetite for HSR Express. The success of America’s lone high-speed rail line arguably supports that theory. In the Northeast, Amtrak’s Acela line runs at higher speeds and carried 3.3 million passengers in 2008.

“I don’t think you need to go 220 mph in order to compete [with regional airlines],” DiJohn says. “The flight itself may average 500 mph, but once you add two hours of waiting at the airport, and 90 minutes on each end of the trip to get to and from the central city, you can compete.”

But Rick Harnish, executive director of the Chicago-based Midwest High Speed Rail Association, isn’t buying into that argument for Emerging HSR. His 2,000-member organization has been a strong proponent for HSR trains such as those found in Europe. “If we’re ever going to get to 220 mph, we need to make the commitment now,” says Harnish. “The thought that we’re going to build the [110 mph infrastructure] and it will lead to the other is fatally flawed.

“The challenge of high-speed rail is reaching a political tipping point, and that really only happens when you get travel times down under two hours between major cities,” he continues. “I have noticed a high level of disappointment when people hear that we’re doing high-speed rail but then hear that means a four-hour trip. There’s a strong desire to go much faster.”

WILL HSR SUCCEED IN THE U.S.?
Regardless of the selected system, there are those who fear HSR won’t work in the United States. They worry that the trains will struggle to attract riders, and point out that few passenger rail lines make enough money in fare receipts to recover operating costs, let alone the capital costs required to build an HSR line.

“High-speed rail is very much a niche travel market. It’s not going to revolutionize travel in the United States and it won’t be a broad-based transit option,” says Sam Staley, director of urban and land-use policy at the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based libertarian think-tank. “The rhetoric is completely out of line with the practical impact of building it out.”

It’s difficult to project market share for HSR because a passenger rail system that could compete with regional airlines and reduce drive times would significantly change U.S. transportation dynamics. Cultural and geographic differences also make comparisons with HSR lines in other countries unreliable.

But even putting aside the economics of fare revenues, substantial ridership is critical to an evaluation of HSR’s success. If Americans shrug off high-speed trains and continue driving, then HSR will be both a waste of money and a public-policy failure because the theoretical environmental and congestion-easing benefits won’t be realized. 

“The best standard is going to be whether there’s enough ridership to cover operating costs,” says Staley. It’s not just that an HSR line needs to be profitable for profit’s sake, Staley adds, but that the number of tickets sold is a good measure of HSR’s impact on consumers. “If you can’t get people to pay, the odds of social value are small.”

The prospects are much greater that HSR Express could substantially impact U.S. travel patterns and meet Staley’s test of exceeding operating costs. (It’s also worth noting that few international HSR lines meet Staley’s test.)

But because of the scope and unpredictability, DiJohn argues, “It’s a public policy issue, not an economic one. We didn’t focus on the cost-benefit analysis when we decided to build the interstate highway system or invest in air traffic control. This is a similar situation.”