Riding the Rails

Adam Trueblood Commentary	Index
Riding the Rails Though I spent much of my youth in a US city that was paralyzed by traffic and blanketed by thick clouds of smog, I’ve also been fortunate enough to experience the more pleasant commuting life afforded by excellent rail and subway systems both within and between cities. Travel by rail, especially on longer journeys, often allows for relaxed, pleasant trips filled with reading, conversation, and contemplation, whereas a journey in an automobile tends to be solitary, tense, and more dangerous. The fact remains that our nation’s typical mode of transportation is the automobile, but I often wonder what it would take to transform our infrastructure to a style more like that found in Europe, where the automobile is present, but complemented by an excellent rail system heavily used by commuters and travelers. Though certain pockets of the United States, such as the Los Angeles – San Diego and Boston-New York- Washington D.C. corridors, are well-served by rail systems, for the most part travel by rail is slow, inefficient, and expensive, if possible at all. We face a disadvantage in having such a large country, but when taken as a whole, Western and Northern Europe’s land surface is not drastically smaller. The current rail infrastructure in place in the US is substantial, though this does not necessarily equate to efficient passenger service. The following chart shows the measure of rail kilometers per 100 square kilometers of land area for various nations: As can be seen from the chart, the US places just above Mexico when ranked on this measure. Based on population alone, the US has a large relative amount of rail lines in place, according to the measure rail kilometers per 10,000 individuals. Based on a blend of these two measures, the US comes out better than Mexico, roughly on par with Japan, but well-below Europe for rail lines in place relative to land surface and population. The quality of the service is another matter, as Amtrak is notoriously expensive and inefficient. Even on a fairly well-serviced route such as Chicago - New York, a trip by rail is more expensive than an economy flight, even before adding in the expense of a sleeping compartment. A good example of a corridor that would benefit greatly from a high speed rail line is San Francisco – Los Angeles, where a journey by automobile can take up to seven hours, but would be just 2 ½ hours by high speed rail. It is presently not possible to complete this journey solely by rail, as there is only a bus connection between Los Angeles and Bakersfield. When assessing the benefits of going to a more developed nationwide rail system, the convenience and quality of life factors rank very high, at least in my mind, yet there are also tremendous dollar costs that could be avoided if the nation were not so dependent upon the automobile. As would be expected, the US has far more automobiles than any other nation, and this presents cost burdens upon our society. The chart below details total number of automobiles and trucks by nation. If one makes certain assumptions about the cost of maintaining our stock of automobiles, the annual cost burden on our society becomes apparent. Assuming just 20 gallons gas consumption per month, and $1,500 for annual maintenance, insurance, registration, and taxes for each car, the annual burden on our society would be $408 billion. If one adds in the cost of buying the 17 million new vehicles that are sold each year, this burden rises to $578 billion (assuming an average new purchase price of $20,000 less $10,000 trade-in value of retired vehicle). There are other non-quantifiable costs, of course, such as the approximately 45,000 people that are killed in auto accidents each year and the environmental and health damage caused by air pollution. Though the cost of building a high speed rail network appears high at first glance, when one takes into account the cost savings from a reduced stock of automobiles the capital outlay appears manageable. The potential cost of a system is illustrated by the projected costs for the high speed rail line in California. It is estimated that for just Southern California, the high speed rail system would cost $37 billion. If one assumes that doubling this cost would provide an adequate north-south route for one section of the United States, and that four times this amount would provide enough to fund an east-west line traversing the entire country, then a general estimate for an entire US high speed rail system becomes possible. A national system with three vertical lines (one on each coast and one on the Chicago – New Orleans axis) bisected by one horizontal line, might cost roughly $370 billion. If through a combination of taxes, incentives, and education about the benefits of the rail service, the government were successful in reducing the automobile stock by one third, the entire national rail system would be paid for on a cost benefit basis in just two years. Funding the initial outlays, of course, would be a difficult political task, yet the nation as a whole would be far better off if resources were shifted from the automobile industry to a public system of high speed, efficient railways. Many proponents of the automobile culture emphasize the freedom afforded by personal vehicles. A national rail system would not eliminate automobiles, but would just shift our travel patterns so that as a culture we would not be so dependent on vehicles and highways. When one begins to imagine a world in which boarding a train in San Francisco after breakfast and arriving in Los Angeles by lunch is possible, or boarding a night train in New York and arriving in Los Angeles the following morning is a reality, the sacrifice of having fewer automobiles at our collective disposal seems a small one. June, 2004