Krugman and Samuelson on High Speed Rail
Apparently, Robert Samuelson doesn't like high-speed rail (HSR), and Paul Krugman thinks Samuelson is wrong. Leaving aside Krugman's unwarranted use of words like "dense" and "stupid," my own opinion is somewhere in between:
* Krugman is right in that HSR proposals aren't saying we should link up the whole country, just the heavily populated metros to each other, so Samuelson's stats about America's overall population density aren't the right ones to use.
* But Samuelson is right to say HSR is easier to do in Europe and Japan because these are relatively small countries, unlike the vastness of America. (It's one of the reasons the Brits in the British American Project organization I'm part of are so much more well-connected with each other than us Americans; if you were to pick just Americans living in the Northeast Corridor, we'd be just as connected.)
I've voiced my skepticism about HSR in a previous post so won't rehash too much here. Outside the Northeast Corridor, maybe it makes sense if you're a businessperson and you're doing a lot of downtown-to-downtown travel, or maybe you're a business or leisure traveler thinking that a 1-hour plane ride isn't as convenient as a 6-hour train ride. Apart from those two populations, I just don't see enough volume to make HSR possible without massive subsidies way above what Amtrak is currently getting. But I'll admit I don't know the whole story here and it could turn out that I'm the one who's "dense" and "stupid."
PS Ed Glaeser is skeptical, too.
Comments
That's why it makes sense to start rail investments in the places that have retained some of their historic density, and maybe work the way out from there. Siting some national density statistics against HSR is like saying that health care is not a viable business because 80% of Americans are not sick right now.
Both trains and cars create their own market share as they are implemented, so it's also not fair to expect a one-for-one return for the investment in the short term. We certainly didn't, and still don't, hold highways to that same standard.
...Still, I think when we talk about the density around HSR stations we need to think carefully about what we mean. I hope serious planners don't just mean average persons per square millimeter in walking vicinity of the station. We have to keep the scale of travel in mind. This is not light rail TOD, we're talking regional scales and whole cities. The "density" is density of economic enterprise...We're talking about the productivity of whole cities that ensues from creating well-connected urban centers at regional interstate distances. It is absolutely ludicrous to be talking about housing density at these scales. ...It is just dumb of Glaeser to be bringing up the topic at all.
A sidebar comment (speaking as someone working on our airport's noise mitigation land use strategy)...our airports (at least here in Charlotte) can barely keep up with pace of demand for air travel. Even in our time of recession, its a tremendous sacrifice for our airport to even allow a runway to be repaved overnight. It's not like rail is going to displace air travel, believe me...esp. 30 years down the road...
But I think your point about regional/economic density is exactly why I'm a little sour on the pro-HSR argument, since a lot of advocates, in selling HSR, have tried to conjure up conveniences that pre-suppose an amount of intra-city transit infrastructure that just isn't there yet. Recall our Commuter in Chief's grand vision: "Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination."
That "last mile" is easier said than done in a lot of the places HSR is envisioned. We're talking about massive infrastructural enhancements as well as fundamental attitudinal shifts in order to reap the promised environmental and mobility benefits of HSR.
But maybe I'm being too cynical; in this "chicken and egg" dilemma we have here - inter-city rail needs intra-city rail in order to fully succeed - cities and regions have so far proven they're willing to tax themselves more to set up the infrastructure. Over time, smart government interventions and stark environmental realities may just yet lead to regions healthily densifying - clustering near transportation infrastructure and emptying out currently spread out areas.
I know that's what you're working towards. Thanks for doing what you're doing, and for sharing.