Channeling fellow Chicagoan Daniel Burnham, President Obama called for the nation to “make no little plans” last week when he called for a new network of high-speed rail lines that would connect the country’s major population centers from coast to coast. Such a project would be funded by the economic stimulus package that the president signed into law in February, $8 billion of which has been allocated for high-speed rail.
While Continental Europe and Japan have embraced this kind of high-speed mass transit, the United States has largely lagged behind. Federal investment in inter-city rail transit has amounted to only a few billion dollars per year, as compared to a bit less than $60 billion per year for highway funding. Currently, there is only one high-speed rail corridor in the country: Amtrak’s Acela line, which runs from Washington, D.C., to Boston. Its trains (according to the New York Times) are capable of racing along at a Continental 150 miles per hour, but are usually restricted to just over half this speed because of track conditions and other rail traffic.
In this new network, a hub of lines will extend out from Chicago, as far west as Kansas City and as far east as Cleveland. On the West Coast, a line will link San Diego to San Francisco, and tracks will run from Portland, Ore., to Vancouver, B.C. Austin will be linked to Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and a line will run across the Southeast from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta, further south to Jacksonville, Fla. The Federal Railroad Administration’s Web site has diagrams and route maps here.
Of all the building and construction funding derived from the economic stimulus package and from the AIA’s Rebuild and Renew advocacy plan, high-speed rail is probably one of the most big-picture and patience-testing agendas. It won’t have the immediate neighborhood impact of increased funding for affordable housing or energy efficiency retrofits for schools, but its long-term payoff is serious and incontrovertible. Better high-speed rail networks will increase the development of sustainably dense, mass transit-designed neighborhoods at an urban scale that exists across entire states. The success of the plan will rest on the government’s public relations campaign to convince people who don’t live near city centers that high-speed rail is a worthy investment.
The transition from mass train travel to individual automobile ownership was seen as a wild triumph of American ingenuity and a definitive move forward for our nation when it was completed in the middle of the 20th century. I feel that we are loath to even consider backsliding away from any perceived triumph, no longer how rooted in obsolete economic and industrial contexts it might be. Since then, many Americans have seen interstate rail travel as an anachronism kept alive by a government subsidy, even though the carbon consuming qualities of cars are coming into focus more painfully every day. If the Obama Administration, the Department of Transportation, and perhaps a few clever architects can make the case that a step back to rail travel is really a move forward, they’ll have carved out a space for economic and industrial revisionism that will go a long ways towards making our economy conform to the requirements of the contemporary sustainability movement.
Comments (4)
I agree with Dale on this one for the most part. After all, we have better choices, what's wrong with building integrated photo-voltaic power plants on the rooftops of American homes? We could reduce the fossil fuel consumed by about 30%.
The AIA initiative to reduce the Carbon Footprint of the American city is a great idea, whats wrong with that idea is that most of the new construction is designed by non-architects, so the bulk of the new buildings are designed by the least qualified and the least design intelligence. Stupid laws in most States are at the root of the problem and they do need to be changed. That is more urgent than a high speed train system. Both create jobs for architects.
We do need to worry about unemployment and fading compensation from the nations employers, both capital and consumer markets are starved for cash, the bulk of the money comes from employee paychecks, shortchange that and it all comes apart eventually.
The American economy is not the same as the European economy so the comparison is not a good fit even though the argument rings true.
Posted by Terry L. Walker, AIA | April 24, 2009 10:26 PM
Posted on April 24, 2009 22:26
1) Even if successfully conceived, this will take decades to develop considering the issues to overcome, not least of which will be environmental roadblocks. Thus, it is pure deception to put this under the banner of a "stimulus".
2) The author states that this is to be "funded by the stimulus package". Nonsense. Spending bills don't pay for anything. It will be "funded" by current and future taxpayers through increased taxes, increased debt or devaluation of the dollar. Or a combination...
3) Given our national landscape, high speed rail is not a way to decrease traffic congestion to even a moderate degree, but does afford an alternative to mid-range distance air travel. That is positive, but it can be achieved without the expensive "high speed" if issues like Mr. Benjamin highlights above are dealt with. Those need to be confronted regardless. And citing Acela just demonstrates that even with massive government subsidies over a long period of time, the one high speed link they have to show for it doesn't work. Who is going to manage the new program? Perhaps they should prove their concept with Amtrak first. Better yet, do it without my money unless I choose to buy a ticket.
4) We need to stop worrying about "lagging behind Europe": They have for decades suffered from higher unemployment than the US, lower growth, less freedom, a chronic inability to confront extremist ideologies and terrorism, and bloated government spending just to name a few. While we are unfortunately catching up on the government bloat, do we really want to catch up on the rest?
If you want to tie high speed rail to economic improvement, you'll need a better poster child than sclerotic Europe to make the case.
Posted by Dale | April 24, 2009 6:15 PM
Posted on April 24, 2009 18:15
Pork by any name is still pork. What a joke!
Posted by Michael Adams | April 24, 2009 5:13 PM
Posted on April 24, 2009 17:13
The initiative to fund high speed rail is certainly welcome, but I wonder if there is not more that should be done with the fundamental laws that govern how Amtrak can provide rail service and under what rules of interaction. This is especially true in relation to the freight rail carriers as Amtrak owns very little of their own track, is therefore dependent on the good will of the freight carriers, in addition to restrictions placed on Amtrak about their use of the track. How will the act deal with these issues?
Posted by David Benjamin | April 24, 2009 3:37 PM
Posted on April 24, 2009 15:37