There’s no better example of excessive government spending than the $53 billion President Obama allocated for high-speed rail in his 2012 budget.
Shockingly, in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Crossroads GPS, a nonprofit advocacy group, the U.S. Department of Transportation admitted this week that it has performed no cost-benefit analysis — routine comparisons of costs of infrastructure projects versus their benefits — of constructing a high-speed rail system.
Federal Railroad Administration chief counsel William Fashouer wrote here, “the agency’s files do not contain any records related to cost-benefit analyses created by or on behalf of the Federal Railroad Administration related to the construction of a national high-speed and intercity passenger rail network.”
Cost-benefit analyses are vital to make sure federal government dollars are wisely spent.
Obama wants to spend $53 billion on a mode of transportation few Americans use, yet his administration has performed no studies on the feasibility either of the entire system or of individual components, such as California’s Corcoran-Borden or Florida’s Orlando-Tampa high-speed rail lines.
Obama’s goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail by 2037.
High-speed rail is not faster, cheaper or easier than building more freeways or expanding the overburdened air traffic control system, services that users are generally prepared to pay for. Few transportation experts believe that passengers will be prepared to pay for high-speed rail.
Even on the heavily traveled Washington-Boston corridor, rail receives government subsidies and loses nonbusiness customers to buses. A ticket on a regional Amtrak train from Washington to New York this morning costs $147 (price of the faster Acela: $186), compared with $25 for Bolt Bus — and the bus comes with free wireless.
Ticket prices for high-speed rail would be even more expensive, further limiting its customer base.
High-speed rail proponents have overstated its benefits. Transportation jobs can be created through expansion of highways, using private funding from tolls rather than taxpayer dollars. And high-speed rail is unlikely to relieve traffic jams, because they occur within cities, rather than outside them. High-speed rail is expensive, it reaches only small segments of the country, and it cannot substitute for most highways.
Building high-speed lines — capable of speeds of 150 to 200 miles per hour — on newly laid track, as well as incremental improvements in existing rail infrastructure, would cost between $250 billion and $500 billion, perhaps more. Obama’s $53 billion would be just the start.
The New York Times editors wrote on Wednesday, “France, China, Brazil, even Russia, understand that high-speed rail is central to future development. Not Washington.”
The Times must be desperate if it is looking to France and Russia as models for America. All these railroads benefit from substantial government subsidies, paid for by higher taxes that discourage economic activity.
Then, the Times cites New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s request for $570 million to replace the 100-year Portal Bridge across the Hackensack River as evidence that he is in favor of high-speed rail.
But rail maintenance and building high-speed rail are very different. The deterioration of America’s regular rail network is an argument against putting in a whole new high-speed rail system. Even regular rail is expensive to maintain.
Because trains cannot be quickly stopped, they need miles of empty space in front of them, but highways can carry moer than 2,000 cars, or 1,000 buses, per lane per hour.
The lack of cost-benefit analysis shows that the federal government cannot be trusted to spend general revenues effectively on transportation. Republicans reduced 2011 high-speed rail funding by $2.9 billion from 2010 levels — they should finish the job, and strike high-speed rail completely from the 2012 budget.
Examiner Columnist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
