If highways are completely funded by the gas tax, why is the Highway Trust Fund broke? $15 billion has been transferred from the General Fund to the Highway Trust Fund in the last two years alone.

If you look at historical data on road spending you’ll see that over the last century between 20% and 70% of the total funds spent on automobile based transportation have come from property and income taxes.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/summary95/section4.html

“One of the biggest myths that I continuely see is that highways and interstates are subsidized. What the pro-rail folks often do, incorrectly, is lump the local roads with the highways and cry, “See! Roads are subsidized too!”

And why wouldn’t you lump the local roads with the highways? Interstates and highways would be completely useless without local roads to drive on once you get to the bottom of the offramp.

So local drivers (most of us most of the time) ‘subsidize’ highway drivers (some of us some of the time).

Please substantiate this claim with links to actual data.

There are many points that can by made about these facts, but the one relevant here is this:

Intercity passenger rail transportation was historically decimated by competition from cars and highways – partially because of the distortions of the above noted subsidy. While rail travelers paid the the full costs of the intercity trip in their ticket prices (including the cost of the rail), car drivers did not (or rather, they had already paid for the costs associated with building the highway out of the gas taxes they had paid on local trips). So any discussion of the economics of intercity rail travel (including HSR) has to take into account the implicit cross-subsidy that intercity auto traffic has.

AND HE EXPLICITLY DEFENDS IT BY COMPARISON TO PROJECTS THAT ARE AT OR BELOW THE LEVEL OF EMERGING HSR CORRIDORS AND THEREFORE FACE NOTHING LIKE EXPRESS HSR COSTS.”

Again … huh? He clearly states it is a hypothetical route so as to “avoid giving the impression that this back-of-the-envelope calculation represents a complete evaluation of any actual proposed route.”

He uses numbers from other existing or proposed routes in order to find numbers to use in his calculations for his hypothethical route. Nothing disingenious here.

The way to refute his argument is to take the same process and apply it to an existing proposal to see if it make economic sense. I think that in most, not all, cases it won’t. In most cases … again, not all cases … you will get more bang for the buck by upgrading existing tracks to handle 90-100 mph trains.

Huh? Let me see if I can straighten out and understand your argument. … “But not completely funded by gas taxes on gasoline used on the interstate system.” … This is a non sequitur argument since the interstate system didn’t exist and therefore could not be funded by “gas taxes on gasoline used on the interstate system.” Aside from that, gasoline used is fungible, therefore one cannot just tax the “gasoline used on the interstate system.” Thus, every gallon sold has a federal tax at a minimum and usually a state tax. There may be a local tax (not in my area). The money from the federal tax did indeed fund the construction of the interstate system.

It is also incorrect to lump the funds for local streets in with funds for state highways and federal interstates. Different buckets. In my case, local streets are paid for by property taxes. Federal funds aren’t used unless it is part of a transit project so then federal gas taxes are used for mass transit and not roads.

“… free parking is often simply expropriated from property owners with minimum parking requirements …” Are you talking about businesses? The only spaces forced onto businesses are those for handicap parking. A business usually wants lots of parking!

“A substantial share of all policing costs are car related – auto theft, criminal driving …”

As a former cop, I can say this is totally false. Unless it was a slow night, I did less than one traffic stop per hour. And you want to know why we did most of our traffic stops? Because it was the easist way to get the required entry on our log every hour. BTW, most of our arrests came from discovering an outstanding warrant on the driver.

“And that is before getting to the external costs of oil dependency and CO2 emissions …”

Since I am a hardcore AGW skeptic, CO2 emissions are not a factor. As for oil dependency, hybrids, PHEVs, and EVs will do more to end our dependency on foreign oil than trains or transit ever will.

But not completely funded by gas taxes on gasoline used on the interstate system. Gas taxes paid for local driving cross-subsidizes Interstate, National, State, County and Township highway spending, and then state and local income and sales taxes fund the local roads for those cars to drive on.

And that is just capital costs … free parking is often simply expropriated from property owners with minimum parking requirements, for a subsidy even larger than the subsidy to road maintenance. A substantial share of all policing costs are car related – auto theft, criminal driving – a share of emergency room capacity across the country is required to cope with auto accidents.

And that is before getting to the external costs of oil dependency and CO2 emissions, none of which are reflected in the taxes on driving, since the gas taxes are not even sufficient to cover the roadworks portion of the capital costs of the motor transport system.

AND HE EXPLICITLY DEFENDS IT BY COMPARISON TO PROJECTS THAT ARE AT OR BELOW THE LEVEL OF EMERGING HSR CORRIDORS AND THEREFORE FACE NOTHING LIKE EXPRESS HSR COSTS.

THAT is the disingenious step. THAT is where it stops being misleading by OMISSION and steps over the line into being misleading by COMMISSION.

“I have recently begun to see it referred to as HPR in order to distinguish it from “true HSR” which require new, grade-separated tracks as you mentioned.”

Clearly those are efforts to foster confusion about the present policy. “True HSR” is a term used to smear the 110mph and 125mph tiers by distracting attention from the question of whether they provide cost-efficient transport choices to whether they set speed records.

“HPR” is a term previously used to refer to Emerging HSR and Regional HSR, before the Department of Transport clarified the confusion, and that would now be used primarily to confuse the issue and make people think that the current policy does not, in fact, provide support for these approached to provide the US with higher speed passenger rail service than it has today.

Fundamentally, Ed Glaeser’s series is a critique of a hypothetical corridor that, if the hypotheses were correct, would never get funded as Express HSR, to be used to showing that “Express HSR costs too much”. That is, of course, either dishonest or uninformed, depending on whether Ed Glaeser is well aware that the current policy would only fund an Emerging HSR corridor at those levels of ridership.

And that oversimplification, “Express HSR costs too much” is exactly how we see that Ed Glaeser’s analysis is intended to be used, as, for instance, in the last entry in Ed Morris’ companion HSR attack series.

Regarding “prefering” one over the other, it is as silly to prefer Emerging HSR over Express HSR as it is to prefer Light Rail over Buses. The best one is the capital efficient solution to address the transport task at hand.

For example, in the California case, the transport markets that are outside the core 100 mile to 300 mile transport markets of Emerging and Regional HSR and inside the core 200 mile to 500 mile transport markets of Express HSR includes the LA Basin to the Bay. And the capital cost of Emerging HSR corridors would not, in fact, be 1/5 as much, because there is still the problem of providing efficient alignments between both the Bay and the LA Basin and the Central Valley. With Express HSR costing perhaps twice as much, and with four times the ridership potential or more, and given the high cost of the alternative means of providing that inter-regional transport capacity, there is a very strong case for Express HSR.

Similarly, with Ed Glaeser’s hypothetical alignment, it seems to be in an alternate version of Texas where there is no alternate alignment connecting Houston to College Station, Fort Hood and Temple while sharing half the capital cost of the corridor with a San Antonio / Austin to Dallas alignment – in an analysis that hinges on high capital costs and low ridership, he ignores the present effort that cuts the capital cost and boosts the ridership.

But if the T-Bone alignment also falls short of the mark, that doesn’t prove anything in general about “HSR being too expensive”, it just proves that its not place for the most expensive tier of HSR.

He expressedly picked a hypothetical corridor. He even so stated. Nothing disingenious here.

Current speed limits on most tracks are 79 mph even the trains are themselves are capable of going faster. This is a limitation due mainly to sigalling and grade crossings. I used to simply refer to 90-110 as “fast” but I have recently begun to see it referred to as HPR in order to distinguish it from “true HSR” which require new, grade-separated tracks as you mentioned.

HSR is much more expensive than HPR. Thus the beginning of new terms whether it is “fast”, HPR, or “emerging HSR”, there needs to be another term in order to avoid the confusion of the associated costs.

I’ll go back and read all of his articles to see if he too has fallen prey to the confusion.

Regardless, I am aware of the difference in costs … which is why I favor HPR over HSR.

Your argument requires redefining the meaning of “HSR” in the actual policy that these pieces are attacking.

There is no 90-100mph tier. Upgraded level crossings allow the conventional mainline speed limit to be upgraded to 110mph. That is the Emerging HSR tier. Further upgrades and grade separations and signal upgrades (which limits the sharing of the track by existing heavy freight rail, and so normally requires building new track in existing ROW) allows the conventional mainline speed limit to be upgraded to the Regional HSR limit at 125mph. Above 125mph requires all in-cab signaling, superelevations incompatible with slower speed traffice and all grade separation, which allows the top tier Express HSR that can take full advantage of the latest bullet train technology of up to 220mph in present day service.

Glaeser justified his selection of Dallas/Houston by reference to the tran-Missouri line and the Dallas/OK both in various stages of planning … but completely ignores that fact that neither of these are Express HSR corridors.

And that is why his analysis is fundamentally dishonest. Either the potential ridership of Dallas/Houston is substantially higher than 1.5m, or else it would not have any serious hope of gaining funding as an Express HSR corridor and would have to be developed as an Emerging HSR or Regional HSR corridor.

Given that the same kind of central cost estimate from his GAO source gives $8m/mile for an Emerging HSR corridor versus the $40m/mile for Express HSR, he is either massively inflating the capital cost of the project or massive understating the benefit. Its either a corridor with a potential ridership of far more than 1.5m, or else its a corridor that would be built at roughly 1/5 the cost.

NAFTA was supposed have moved us to more EU like situation but 9-11 killed that as far as people movement.

European trains have been crossing borders with passport/custom checks for decades and it is no big deal.

The Eurostar service which I often use between London-Paris, London-Brussels is far easier and convenient than the airlines were (almost no planes fly these routes anymore) and proves that international high speed services can work – even with immigration and custom checks.

A New York – Buffalo – Toronto service should certainly be feasible and most likely a long term profitable project.

Randy – “What about the potential for high-speed rail to revitalize struggling regions? Glaeser notes that there are good historical examples of infrastructure investment boosting regional economic fortunes, but, he says, these may not apply to the case of high-speed rail. Why not?”

This is pretty simple. In the 1850s, the only competition that rail had was riverboats and stage coaches. Rail was clearly superior to these modes in most cases. Nowadays there are paved roads, interstates, cars, air travel … Even if HSR doubled or even tripled the number of people in the US using rail, it would still be insignificant in comparison to other modes of travel.

Randy – “… had the United States developed the Eisenhower high-speed rail network rather than the Eisenhower interstate highway system, our urban geography would be significantly different today.”

Wow, this statement shows a complete lack of knowledge of history. First of all, there were already trains running at 130 mph back in the heyday of passenger rail but that didn’t prevent people from switching to air travel and personal cars.

Second, a national highway system already existed prior to the interstate system, so it isn’t like we weren’t already connected.

Third, the interstate system was conceived and justified as a way for mass evacuation of cities during a time when there was a real possibility of a nuclear war being waged. Rail could not then nor now handle that amount of people.

Fourth, the interstate system was completely funded by gas taxes. One of the biggest myths that I continuely see is that highways and interstates are subsidized. What the pro-rail folks often do, incorrectly, is lump the local roads with the highways and cry, “See! Roads are subsidized too!”

Not only that, but money from the gas tax is siphoned off to subsidize transit. So one of the first reactions will be, “If the roads need a subsidy then let’s start by returning the money given to transit to the road fund.”

Now, as for whether the gas tax covers the highways, I checked one of the more liberal states in the Union … Massachusetts. Here is a quote from their website about the MA Highway Fund: The Fund pays all transportation-related expenses, including debt service on bonds issued for transportation purposes. The fund finances highway maintenance and safety services and the state’s share of federally sponsored highway projects as required. http://transportation.blog.state.ma.us/blog/2009/02/current-gas-tax-where-does-it-go.html

Hmmm, the Fund pays ALL transportation-related expenses …

I know that TN has raided the Road Fund in the past to balance the state’s general budget. Earlier this year (’09), there were committee meetings to discuss how to spend the money in the Fund … nothing about a Fund shortage.

Randy – “I believe that increasing metropolitan congestion, rising energy costs, changing demographics, and new transit investments will generate a shift in housing and transportation preferences in coming decades. I think it’s wise to accommodate this shift by building high-speed rail.”

Technology is rapidly developing, some of it is already available, for intelligent vehicles and intelligent highways that could make a significant impact on congestion. Until then, simple things like coordinating traffic signals can make life a lot easier.

I suspect by the time that any HSR line is built that hybrids and electric vehicles will dominate the auto scene and thus eliminating the perceived benefit of rail on energy usage.

Finally, most people like having a house with a yard and not living in “high density” projects like rats. Oddly enough, it was the streetcar that began kicked off suburbia. Trying to shoehorn people back into the city and “high density” will fail miserably.

HSR is an expensive boondoggle. If you want to go fast then build a maglev. Otherwise, you can get more bang for the buck by HPR (High Performance Rail … 90-100 mph) by upgrading current tracks. Let’s focus on building a national rail network rather than expensive HSR.

Remember that any argument against rail will always ignore network benefits. The initiating costs of a new rail line will always be the highest compared to their payoffs. As more of the system gets built, the places you can go with it increase exponentially, along with the number of people connected by it.

The problem is that you have ideologically driven experts who hide behind a science like economics to justify there biased world view. Our economic crisis was directly caused by free market ideologues opposed to any regulation or oversight – yet I’m sure many of them were highly educated,Ivy-league academics who also happened to be “senior fellows” somewhere as well.

Look, I really want high speed rail to work and it seems completely justified in terms of economic benefits. However, if there were a persuasive non-ideological case to contradict that assumption then I’d back off. Can I be a “senior fellow” too? It doesn’t seem that hard.

If you want to debate minutiae (which your criticisms fall into), you should contact him directly, and who knows, he might actually respond to you. But trying to get him to explain every assumption he makes in a NYT blog is not reasonable.

Within the scope of a given system of supporting institutions, there are urban cores of sufficient density to support a substantial share of local public transport based on local origins and destinations. Beyond the margin of that core are areas in a low-share trap where the coverage and service frequency to maintain a higher mode share cost too much for the patronage it attracts.

A HSR station out in the extra-marginal fringe will increase the destinations available to every local transport route connecting to that HSR station. The HSR station supported by new local transport routes to take advantage of the new destinations available via the HSR station is therefore not like a new suburban cul-de-sac, to be evaluated as the center of a small bedroom community of HSR commuters … it offers the opportunity to increase frequency and coverage of local transport between multiple TOD development opportunity sites all connected to the HSR station.

And when you dig into it, the time distribution of the marginal increase in ridership given by an outer suburban HSR to local transport in that area is even better in terms of marginal revenue and marginal costs, as the morning peak demand for HSR commuting leads the local peak while the evening peak demand for HSR commuting trails the evening peak, spreading the footprint of high occupancy trips in the day, while the HSR also offers the prospect of additional off-peak patronage.

For an outer suburban transit authority with one hour peaks and half hour shoulders and a 14 hour, 7am to 9pm service day, that is two hours of peak demand, two hours of shoulder, and ten hours of off-peak at low frequencies and load factor. An outer suburban HSR station could easily push that up to two hour peaks and hour long shoulders, for four hours of peak demand, four hours of shoulder, and of course higher load factors for off-peak services synchronized to through HSR stops.

It may even be possible for an area with shift work to expand the service day to start before first shift and end after the end of second shift, with additional support from early train departures and late train arrivals.

All of these are incremental response to the changing balance of travel costs and benefits with or without an HSR station in an outer suburban area.

Yet Ed Glaeser, who I cannot believe for a second would subscribe to the proposition “people will be impervious to changes in the costs and benefits that face them when they make a transport choice” does, in fact, render his fictitious version of the Houston metro area and the Dallas / Fort Worth metroplex impervious, by the simple expedient of ignoring the marginal trade-offs in his analysis.