Is It Time For America’s Next Mega-Project: High-Speed Rail
High-speed transportation is a form of rail that runs significantly faster than traditional trains. While there is no universal speed standard, lines are often built to handle speeds above 150 mph. There is currently only one high-speed rail line in America, Amtrak’s Acela Express. These trains run through the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington, DC, and can reach speeds of up to 165 miles per hour. When running between those cities, however, trains slow down to an average of 70 miles per hour. The implementation of high-speed rail systems would bring improvements to the economy, the environment, and Americans’ quality of life. More specifically, two potential economic benefits are increased productivity and economic growth, which will come about through decreasing congestion and getting climate refugees to safety.
High-speed rail, also known as HSR, delivers fast and efficient transportation, allowing riders to spend less time in transit. An average American commute time is around 250 hours each year, adding up to more than ten days spent in transit. However, the combination of HSR’s fast boarding times, lack of security delays, and the ability to do work while commuting would increase productivity significantly. This lost time from commuting is an area in which the US faces $140 billion in expenses each year.
The population of the US is projected to grow by another 100 million people in the next 40 years. The United States cannot build enough highway capacity or airport runways to meet commuter demand. Time spent in traffic will only increase and the US expenses for time lost will grow more expensive. High speed trains would increase mobility by reducing city-to-city travel times by 45%, or 589 minutes on average nationally. Thus, HSR would not only benefit Americans now, but will minimize hours of traffic and boost the quality of transportation in the long run.
If HSR was more heavily implemented, it would allow climate refugees to safely and efficiently evacuate. There have been ten mass evacuations due to climate disasters in America since 2005, and evacuations will only get more frequent as the climate worsens. The current process involves hours of sitting in traffic on the interstate. A six-lane freeway operates at its nominal capacity of 2,000 vehicles per hour per lane, moving a maximum of 12,000 vehicles per hour, meaning it would take 10 hours to evacuate 120,000 people. On the other hand, HSR can transport as many passengers as a 10-lane highway plus two airports. This means that HSR would cut down on evacuation times significantly. Many people cannot evacuate during hurricanes due to structural issues, which can include surging gas prices or a lack of access to transportation. In fact, according to a 2018 survey conducted by Chapman University, 14% of people who do not evacuate cite a lack of transportation as the cause. In New Orleans, emergency planners estimated that at least 100,000 people did not have access to personal transportation before Hurricane Katrina hit. The evacuation options for an elderly or disabled individual are incredibly limited. In Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and Harvey, about half the people who died were of old age. A high-speed rail system has a unique ability to save these lives and make evacuations much more convenient since it is less vulnerable than aviation to most severe weather events and is the only mode of transportation that can operate right before extreme weather.
Counter-argument:
In theory, high-speed rail (HSR) seems like a convenient form of transportation to get from city to city, since it runs significantly faster than traditional rail. However, will enough people be willing to give up the comfort of their car to justify the billions of dollars in investment that threaten to put the United States in outrageous debt? As of 2021, only 5 percent of workers commute to work by bus or train nationwide. Without enough riders, high-speed rail (HSR) is not profitable due to building and maintenance costs, making it highly unlikely for the rail to be built timely or economically.
The cost of HSR is an especially significant issue because the U.S. deficit is at an all-time high, which threatens economic vitality. Deficit spending directly results in rapid near-term inflation. If the government were to invest in HSR, unemployment rates would skyrocket and create circumstances that do not support raising Americans out of poverty. In the long term, persistent deficit spending can mean the crowding out of private investment, which can in turn stunt long-term growth. This means increasingly large portions of the federal budget are directed toward interest payments on debt, which can crowd out other policy priorities; this also leads to an unsustainable level of debt, which can cause a fiscal crisis. A fiscal crisis then leads to an increase in poverty and unemployment.
Furthermore, the construction of the HSR system would utilize eminent domain, the government's ability to seize private land for public use. Historically, large infrastructure bills have cut through communities of color due to the ease at which they can be displaced. This trend can also be seen specifically in HSR systems, as the California high-speed rail system runs right through multiple Latino, low-income city centers. In a recent letter to the California High-Speed Rail Authority, Congressman David Valadao (R-Hanford) called on the authority to address problems caused by its tracks running through the center of Wasco, a city with a predominantly Latino and low-income population. If HSR were to receive investment, eminent domain for “public purpose” would be necessary to have a truly nationwide system of transportation, and the people that would be displaced and would suffer as victims of economic sabotage are low-income people of color.
