issue: Transportation & Infrastructure

Slow Train Coming

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Everybody knows that, as with health care, the U.S. rail system lags well behind that of other developed countries. But did you know that our current trains are also slower than the trains we had in the 1940s?

After accounting for speed-restricted curves, snail-like crawls through junctions, stops for opposing trains, and other obstacles thrown in their path, Amtrak trains average no better than 50 m.p.h. between terminals—and much less if unscheduled delays are counted. The result is that train service is slower today than it was in the 1940s, when “streamliners” touted for their speed—such as the Super Chief, 20th Century Limited, Denver Zephyr, and Hiawatha—routinely topped 90 to 100 m.p.h. between station stops. [emphasis added]

Not only can our trains not compete with the rest of the world’s – they can’t even compete with those from 70 years ago!

Make no mistake: the global comparisons are pretty grim as well. In Japan and Europe, high-speed trains have been a part of the transit landscape for decades. China is on pace to build 8,000 miles of high-speed railways by 2020. Meanwhile, as Mark Reutter points out in an article for the Wilson Center, Amtrak’s “high speed” line, the Acela Express along the Northeast Corridor, doesn’t even qualify as high-speed by international standards, averaging only 67 mph between Boston and New York and 77 mph south of New York. By contrast, the train between Madrid and Barcelona averages 146 miles mph along the 386-mile route.

For far too long, rail has been the neglected child of our transportation policy. In the last 50 years, the federal government has invested $1.3 trillion in highways, $473 billion in aviation, and a paltry $53 billion in passenger rail.

This year, the Obama administration announced that it will allocate $8 billion in grants to states from the stimulus package toward building a high-speed rail system. Though much more needs to be done – federal, state, and private actors all have a stake in this – the investment is a good first step. Here’s hoping it jumpstarts a rail renaissance that will finally get us moving again – first back to the 1940s, then into the 21st century and beyond.

Build This: A Real Infrastructure Policy for America

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Imagine boarding a sleek new bullet train and rocketing from Washington, D.C. to Richmond, VA in under an hour. Imagine creating thousands of durable new blue-collar jobs to build and maintain railways, construct and fine-tune railcars, and help design the electrical grid that would support high-speed rail. Imagine a new architecture for concentrating development around sophisticated new urban centers — and a hungry new customer for clean energy.

Imagining high-speed rail in the U.S. has often just been the province of dreams. The idea has been bedeviled by various lobbying groups hostile to sustainable transportation, beset by internecine warfare between different states and federal agencies, and bereft of a long-term infrastructure policy. As one grizzled and skeptical railway executive told me at a conference held last week by the new U.S. High Speed Rail Association at the H.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C., “I attended my first high-speed rail conference thirty years ago.”

But these dreams are about to leave the ether and descend to earth, in the form of concrete, steel, and electrical lines, as the U.S., thanks to the Obama administration, prepares to invest $8 billion in actually building high-speed rail. On the heels of the administration’s announcement of $3.4 billion in grants to drive the creation of a “smart grid” in the country, the time is right to think about an infrastructure policy not just for next year but the next generation.

The U.S. High Speed Rail Association is a broad coalition of domestic and international partners working to drive American investment in high-speed rail. There’s good reason to think it’s an idea whose time has finally come, after eight years of the George W. Bush administration, during which federal funding for rail was essentially scaled to zero. The challenge will be to ensure that the initial $8 billion is not frittered away in a series of pork-barrel pilot projects, but instead becomes the first investment in the long-term infrastructure strategy the U.S. has been sorely lacking.

The organization estimates that a fully functioning, 17,000-mile, national high-speed rail system would cost at least $600 billion over 30 years. In his panel presentation, Gov. Ed Rendell (D) of Pennsylvania, a long-time advocate of high-speed rail, urged participants to take the long view on such an infrastructure investment. “We need a capital budget run through an infrastructure bank,” Rendell urged. “It’s the only way to do this.” Rendell emphasized that thousands of “tough, blue-collar work” would be created by high-speed rail, citing an estimate by a Pennsylvania steel plant that makes rail ties that its work force would triple if high-speed rail were to become reality.

John Krueger, a staff attorney with the U.S. Public Interest Group who advocates for new federal budget priorities on transportation, argued that grassroots public opinion will ultimately change our infrastructure policies. “Why high-speed rail?” he asked the conference. “It’s what the people want….The opposite of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) is PIMBY—Please In My Backyard.” Over 220 states and localities have submitted applications for the $8 billion the Obama administration has allocated to high-speed rail. And in the budget request for 2010, the House of Representatives approved an additional $4 billion of high-speed rail funding, surpassing an initial administration request of only $1 billion.

Presenting on the second day of the conference, Norm Anderson, who heads the consulting group CG/LA Infrastructure, emphasized a series of gaps in the nation’s long-term infrastructure strategy. He highlighted the urgent need for a clear focus on the competitiveness and job creation dimensions of high-speed rail. With competitive nations such as China aggressively investing in high-speed rail, we risk losing our edge in technology, concentrated urban development, low-carbon transportation, and a stable employment base for thousands. Anderson also emphasized the need for a strong funding mechanism — the national infrastructure bank also advocated by Gov. Rendell — and a federal entity that would “own and understand” infrastructure, opening it to both competition and public-private partnerships.

Inspired by events such as the U.S. High Speed Rail Association conference and the Obama administration’s $8 billion commitment, the Progressive Policy Institute’s new E3 Initiative in the coming months will be developing and driving policy proposals on infrastructure and other areas central to rebuilding the nation’s economy around clean technology. It’s an exciting time — and we need to ensure that the excitement does not fade into a passing fancy, but rather leads to real steps that revitalize the U.S.’s economic dynamism.

This item is cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

“Performance Parking” in DC’s Backyard

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Variable pricing — charging different prices at different times — usually gets referenced in public policy debates as congestion pricing or cordon pricing: a fee to drive in a certain area during rush hour. As is often the case in urban planning, Singapore has been on the cutting edge of this, first trying it out in 1975. But the highest profile example has been the London City (downtown financial district) congestion pricing system, running since 2003.

While variable pricing is most often thought of as a way to provide incentives for cars driving, it can also be used for cars that are parked, too. Like lunch, there’s no such thing as “free parking.” Curbside parking that we don’t pay for costs us in other ways, whether from increased congestion from losing a lane on the street, to the time wasted circling looking for a spot in a downtown area. Performance pricing on parking meters is one way to make sure that parking availability on crowded city streets is subject to market demand. This can increase budget revenues for municipalities while keeping you from circling the block for hours looking for a spot.

In my hometown of Arlington, VA, the county is giving “performance parking” a shot, with the idea of aiming to keep parking spots on streets 85% full (PDF). Parking meters and parking ticket machines will be programmed to respond to observed parking rates so that it costs more to park in an area when it’s busier. The immediate thought is that this would benefit only those looking to park in the Wilson Boulevard business corridor during the week. But I can’t help but think that it’ll help with parking in the Clarendon area as well, where weekend nights find cars slowly rolling around looking for spots. People are stuck in their cars looking for a spot to open up, rather than in one of the nearby clubs that local bands play. Performance parking is a way to solve that problem.

Variable pricing is aimed at reducing congestion and increasing local revenues, but a better chance to hear rock and roll in Northern Virginia might be the upshot.