With so much hoopla surrounding the recent Republican backlash against HSR and the lingering questions about whether Florida Governor Rick Scott will accept federal money for HSR (despite a recent visit by the Japanese Foreign Minister who advocated stongly on behalf of Japanese rail comanies) I found this discussion about the possibile origins of the backlash said it all:
I’d attribute part of the commentary to a real technocratic frustration with the sorry state of American transportation infrastructure, the sorry state of America’s transportation planning and funding mechanisms, and the sorry state of the Congress that should be trying to fix the problems. But the bulk of the passion can probably be chalked up to the fact that high-speed rail has become a culture war issue. And that’s unfortunate. It also feeds back into the frustration among technocrats, who see the debate over HSR as providing another telling example of an important issue, the merits of which are wholly obscured by identity politics.
from the Online Economic Editor for the Economist, Ryan Avent on his blog The Bellows
3 Responses to On HSR: Telling it Like it Is
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We need metrorail expansion in Miami, not HSR. It’s simply too far ahead of it’s time. If all of the large florida cities being linked by HSR had usable local rapid transit systems in place, HSR MIGHT be worth doing in Florida. South Florida is the only area of the state that MIGHT even qualify in our lifetimes; so for now, the best thing the republicans could do is redirect the HSR money to Heavy and light rail transit projects. But then again, with the US Government being broke, and with that 14 TRILLION deficit and all, maybe the state and local governements better not count on the feds for transit funding much longer…but that’s another issue……
Gotta disagree with you TD, This is not an eitheir/or situation. For a truly balanced multimodal sysem we need both inter- and intra- city rail. Just because heavy rail funding is anemic, doesnt mean that the HSR funding is less necessary.
Beside those initial points, that money will not be spent on anything other than another HSR rail project in another state – taking those jobs and economic beneifts out of florida. This is not a case of local transit losing to HSR, but of what the State of Florida has to gain by building an effective rail network – both at the local and state level.
Gotta agree with TD. What’s the point of HSR if the fare is more expensive than gas (just look at Acela’s fares), and you may have to drive to a station, paying daily parking, and you still have to rent a car at the other end? Inter-city Greyhound service, or something like New Jersey Transit’s state-wide system, would be sufficient until we develop the local transit infrastructure.
However, I do not think that local transportation infrastructure should be heavy rail, which may make sense in Miami Beach.and downtown Miami, but nowhere else in FL.