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Trains vs. planes
Trains and partisanship
Mar 5th 2011, 20:49 by N.B. | WASHINGTON, DC
PAUL KRUGMAN, sometime spokesman for the American left, defends high-speed rail:
I think about the trains/planes comparison something like this: planes go much faster, and will continue to go faster even if we get high-speed rail; but there are some costs associated with a plane trip that can be avoided or minimized on a rail trip, and those costs are the same whether it’s a transcontinental flight or a hop halfway up or down the Northeast Corridor. You have to get to the airport at one end, and get from it at the other, which is a bigger issue, usually, than getting to and from train stations that are already in the city center. You have to wait on security lines. You have to spend more time boarding.
Gulliver agrees with all this. But many of Mr Krugman's commenters (and the commenters on this site) don't. "'High-speed rail' is a upper-middle class toy," one warns. "Trains are more expensive the planes, and nobody will ride them as long as planes exist because they are slower and more expensive" another hollers. Other commenters respond with evidence of useful, efficient high-speed rail systems in other countries, or warn of the spectre of higher jet fuel prices. Mr Krugman responds to his commenters:
Some of the comments on my various pro-train posts have been along the lines of “Oh yeah, try taking the train to Los Angeles.” But that, of course, misses the point.
Matt Yglesias disagrees. The fact that you can't take the train to Los Angeles from New York is exactly the point, he argues. The title of his post says it all: "You Can’t Take The Train to Los Angeles, So The Runway Shouldn’t Be Full of Planes To Boston." Improving high-speed rail on the America's east coast would be a great way to improve the quality and quantity of flights to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It's a good argument, and one that has inspired several follow-ups from my colleague M.S. at Democracy in America. But I'm just as interested in why this argument is so contentious as I am in the actual argument itself. What has turned high-speed rail, of all things, into a topic that drives debate among America's top pundits? The American Prospect's Jamelle Bouie may have an answer:
[T]oday at Grist, Sarah Goodyear points out conservative pundit George Will's reversal on high-speed rail. Ten years ago—in the wake of 9/11—he proposed high-speed rail as a safer alternative to short-distance air travel. These days, he sees high-speed rail as a progressive plot to destroy our freedom-loving habits of mind.
This isn't to play "gotcha," as much as it is to note a simple fact about our world: We're all partisans, whether we admit it or not....
...This isn't a bad thing. Yes, partisanship can be taken too far and veer into ideological blindness, but, in general, it is a useful way of organizing our thoughts on policies and politics. Indeed, it's how most voters process political information. Political commentary would be much more bearable if pundits were willing to accept the partisan origins of their biases and skepticism, instead of playing a game where we pretend to be open-minded observers. Most are anything but.
Mr Bouie might be overstating the influence of partisanship a bit, and it's hard for people to know exactly what is driving others' opinions—or even one's own. Still, partisanship is certainly a useful frame through which to view both the most ardent opponents and the most passionate defenders of HSR. There is political science research that shows that a president weighing in on one side of a given debate (as Barack Obama has with high-speed rail) dramatically increases political polarization on that issue. Of course, if Mr Bouie's theory is correct, we should be able to point to some lefty supporters of HSR whose support seems to be driven primarily by partisanship—or even a few who, like Mr Will, have switched positions on the issue. Anyone have a nomination? Let us know in the comments.
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I'm a Republican, but I think high-speed rail is a great idea. Trade relies on the quick and cheap movement of people, knowledge, and capital. High-speed rail in the northeast is an easy solution to that. There are literally hundreds of flights a day between cities in the northeast and it uses up too much passenger time and too many airport time slots.
I say full speed ahead on the northeast high-speed rail.
Friend Gulliver, methinks thou (and Mr Bouie) doth protest too much.
Why is it so important to construct elaborate, contorted theories instead of just saying the obvious: most of the American right has locked itself into a mindset of knee-jerk opposition to whatever is or even seems like a Democrat (or liberal, or "French") idea.
Romneycare. Tradeable pollution permits. Unions (see Ronald Reagan's comments on unions and compare).
Republicans' adamant opposition to trains, even when the federal government is offering large sums of money to states with high unemployment, fits into this pattern seamlessly. I can't see what's wrong with this as an explanation.
(Aside from the fact that it doesn't seem "fair and balanced," but last I checked The Economist was not a Rupert Murdoch publication.)
hey CJ, what if I gave you 5000 dollars to purchase an f-16, but if you took it you were legally obligated to maintain it for the next 30 years.
and then when you said no I screamed that you were some moron for not taking a "free" 5000 dollars. then I started producing elaborate supremacist theories about how inferior you were.
man that'd be sweet.
what the right will say against HSR when the "Atlas Shrugged" movie hits the cinemas?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W07bFa4TzM
Good post, Gulliver.
Could it be American exceptionalism at play here? Something along the lines of "America did not invent it, or does not have leadership on it, therefore it must be inherently bad/socialist/French/secular/whatever slur is en vogue with Fox News at the moment" could perhaps explain the reluctance to diversify the transport offering a bit.
As for the "try catching a train between NY and LA"-type stuff, it has been debunked enough to greet people who spout such nonsense with a heartfelt "you ignorant, partisan d1ckhead" comment.
I guess we will have to wait until JFK, LAX, ORD, ATL, PHL or SFO reach full capacity, and the friendly discussions about new airports that will accompany the inexorable progression toward total air transport gridlock, to see whether or not it would have been smart to free up capacity by reducing very-short-haul flights...
See you in 2018.
wow kouroi, your understanding of ayn rand must be shallower than a kiddy pool in the middle of the desert. I'm pretty sure if you would have given that insult to the village idiot he woulda turned you down and waited for better material.
So much political sturm und drang over stupid things.
Whether we get high speed rail, or don't get high speed rail, I don't care.
I would be satisfied with just plain old vanilla rail so I can go to Chicago or New York without having to go through the idiocy that is airport security.
I don't care if its slower, it's much more comfortable, and you can work or read the whole way, if you want.
Just get all this homeland security nonsense out of my face.
With proposals out of Washington talking about spending money on HSR and super fast trains the crux of what kind of people movers do we need has yet to be addressed. I'm troubled by the assumption that faster versions of the heavy trains of old and the tracks that support them are the only option before us.
We need to totally rethink what is needed. The technology is available to design something completely different that will cost far less to build and be more flexible to operate. The weight and size of the train is a major factor. Anyone with an engineering background will testify that the weight of a train drives the huge cost of laying a roadbed and track for its support.
Imagine a super-light small remotely controlled train that could adjust its wheels in and out using existing tracks as well as newer lighter narrower tracks. Sitting lower and being much narrower by wrapping the lip of the rails a sophisticated suspension would allow them to safely travel existing tracks far faster then currently possible.
The most exciting thought is that this would allow for the possibility of running new tracks between and along, over and under the interstate highway system. This is feasible only if they are light and smaller then existing trains. The cost would be far less then laying the heavy tracks that freight trains require and that we currently envision as our only option.
My favorite retort to the right's sudden aversion to HSR is when Governor Gregoire of Washington recently said her state would be happy to take the funding for HSR which Gov. Scott of Florida had sent back to DC.
She said, to paraphrase: "We're gonna need it. We need to get people out of cars and off our crowded freeways. If anybody else wants to send their money back, we'll take that too."
Or something to that effect.
Like, duh.
Faedrus,
As the great Tip O'Neill once said, "All politics is local."
Here in a state with 1,200 miles of coastline and 14 ports, the governor this week reallocated $77 million in state transportation funds to upgrade one of those ports.
As you point out, he also rejected $2.4 billion in federal money for a high-speed rail line (that was expected to create at least 24,000 jobs). Does what Gregoire said matter?
In this state, though, obviously the port improvement is a better investment today than the unproven benefit of HSR (from Tampa to Orlando) tomorrow.
Personally, I couldn't care less what Krugman said in his "The Conscience of a Liberal" blog post on March 2nd, 2011.
Viewed from across the Pacific, I can see about 5 factors that turned the US HSR debate into a farce:
1. Wrong routes: Routes should be where the passenger demands are greatest, and NOT where route acquisition is the easiest.
2. Wrong speed: HSR is not quite fast enough for many of the high-demand routes within the US. US shoould really look for something 350mph or faster, which today means either a MagLev or an Aerotrain. (The latter is probably uniquely suited for US)
3. Urban Sprawl: Unlike more compact European or Japanese cities, most US cities are so sprawled that for many people the journey time to central Station is nearly the same as the one to their local Airport.
4. Dysfunctional and disinterested operator: In all successful HSR projects, the rail operators themselves (SNCF, DB, JNR -> JR, Eurostar etc.) took the driving seat. This is simply not happening with Amtrak.
5. Total lack of public experience: Majority of US voters have had NO experience on high-speed rail, so voters on both sides rely on partisan hearsays rather than first-hand experience regarding HSR.