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No solvency: HSR must be faster than other modes of transportation to be successful
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- No Solvency: HSR Empirically Fails: China proves
- No Solvency-Problems exist with HSR
No solvency: HSR must be faster than other modes of transportation to be successfulHSR will only work if it can replace auto and air travel in “short haul” situationsLane 2012(Bradley W. MPA Program, The University of Texas at El Paso, “On the utility and challenges of high-speed rail in the United States” Journal of Transport Geography 22 (2012) 282–284 www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo) 6. Concluding thoughts Despite the public criticisms and potentially large cost of developing high-speed rail in the US, there are undoubtedly benefits of such an investment. These are related to congestion relief, environ- mental impact mitigation, increasing competition in the intercity travel market, and better utilizing the time of intercity travelers. These benefits are so significant that most other developed coun- tries in the world as well as burgeoning China have and continue to invest in high-speed rail development. However, more than just initial criticisms of financial viability, there are additional questions that suggest our national debate on high-speed rail has not completely thought the matter through. Major long-term issues with respect to right-of-way acquisition, service provision, and stop access will need to be addressed. Ulti- mately the key to attracting consumers of short-haul air and inter- city car travel is the speed of travel. The train must be faster than the automobile and fast enough to compete with air travel; too slow, and the cost premium for train travel becomes one that con- sumers will not pay. No Solvency: HSR Empirically Fails: China provesHSR fails, multiple cases confirm it’s a wasteful investmentThe Washington Post 2011 (February 17, 2011 Thursday “A Railroad to Ruin”, SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A16 http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/?) PRESIDENT OBAMA'S fiscal 2012 budget includes $8 billion for high-speed rail next year and $53 billion over six years. In the president's view, the United States needs to spend big on high-speed rail so that we can catch up with Europe, Japan - and you-know-who. "China is building faster trains and newer airports," the president warned in his State of the Union address. But of all the reasons to build high-speed rail in the United States, keeping up with the international Joneses may be one of the worst. In fact, experience abroad has repeatedly raised questions about the cost-effectiveness of high-speed rail. China would seem to be an especially dubious role model, given the problems its high-speed rail system has been going through of late. Beijing just fired its railway minister amid corruption allegations; this is the sort of thing that can happen when a government suddenly starts throwing $100 billion at a gargantuan public works project, as China did with rail in 2008. Sleek as they may be, China's new fast trains are too expensive for ordinary workers to ride, so they are not achieving their ostensible goal of moving passengers from the roads to the rails. Last year, the Chinese Academy of Sciences asked the government to reconsider its high-speed rail plans because of the system's huge debts. Of course, if the Chinese do finish their system, it is likely to require operating subsidies for many years - possibly forever. A recent World Bank report on high-speed rail systems around the world noted that ridership forecasts rarely materialize and warned that "governments contemplating the benefits of a new high-speed railway, whether procured by public or private or combined public-private project structures, should also contemplate the near-certainty of copious and continuing budget support for the debt." That's certainly what happened in Japan, where only a single bullet-train line, between Japan and Osaka, breaks even; it's what happened in France, where only the Paris-Lyon line is in the black. Taiwan tried a privately financed system, but it ended up losing so much money that the government had to bail it out in 2009. When it comes to high-speed rail, Europe, Japan and Taiwan have two natural advantages over every region of the United States, with the possible exception of the Northeast Corridor - high gas taxes and high population density. If high-speed rail turned into a money pit under relatively favorable circumstances, imagine the subsidies it would require here. Every dollar spent to subsidize high-speed rail is a dollar that cannot be spent modernizing highways, expanding the freight rail system or creating private-sector jobs. The Obama administration insists we dare not lag the rest of the world in high-speed rail. Actually, this is a race everyone loses. No Solvency-Problems exist with HSRCurrent plans are flawed; only the California train would be high speed; must have the cooperation of local and state agencies to be successfulJohnson 2012(Brian Edward Auburn University at Montgomery, Department of Sociology, American intercity passenger rail must be truly high-speed and transit-oriented Journal of Transport Geography 22 (2012) 295–296 www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo) The High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) Program succeeds in proposing a truly high-speed rail route in California that will offer travelers significantly faster trips than driving on a route that is too short to conveniently fly instead. Unfortunately, the proposed routes in the Northeast, Midwest, and Northwest will continue to chug along at medium-speeds and attract few new riders from among those who currently travel those areas via highway or air. The plan does indeed succeed in calling for TOD around high-speed rail stations. The HSIPR Program must, however, encourage local planning jurisdictions to broadly liberalize land use controls to allow for compact development rather than writing new zoning codes to require the intensive land uses developers desire anyway. Trains must truly be fast, with stations surrounded by dense development, for America’s high-speed rail plan to realize its full potential. The High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) Program (Fed- eral Railroad Administration, 2011b) has brought the poor state of America’s passenger train service into the political and public consciousness, and for that the plan should be commended. Unfortunately, the plan suffers from a lack of ambition in proposing a barely-upgraded system that in many places will continue to feature sluggish trains unable to match the speed and/or convenience of travel by air or highway. ‘‘High-speed rail,’’ according to the US Congress, ‘‘means inter- city passenger rail service that is reasonably expected to reach speeds of at least 110 miles per hour’’ (110th Congress, 2008). This definition focuses on largely irrelevant top speeds, not on average speeds and subsequent total trip times. The HSIPR Program similarly touts improvements in increased top speeds (Federal Railroad Administration, 2011c, 2011d, 2011e), but says little about increasing average speeds. For example, in the Northeast, the HSIPR Pro- gram proposes to upgrade the Acela Express, currently America’s fastest train, to allow ‘‘for segments capable of 160 mph service’’ (Federal Railroad Administration, 2011e). The Acela Express cur- rently reaches a top speed of 150 mph (Federal Railroad Adminis- tration, 2009), but has an average speed of merely 70mph (Amtrak, 2011c, 2011d). Even if the HSIPR Program reported the proposed increase in this train’s average speed, which it does not, increasing the top speed by 10 mph does not seem to be a substan- tial improvement. In the Midwest, the route from Chicago to Detroit is slated to be upgraded (Federal Railroad Administration, 2011d) to raise that train’s average speed from approximately 61mph (Amtrak, 2011e) to a still-sluggish 68 mph (Federal Railroad Administration, 2011d). In the Northwest, the HSIPR Program vaguely proposes ‘‘reduced travel times’’ (Federal Railroad Administration, 2011c), but gives no specifics on how much the 50 mph average speed will be increased on trains traveling between Seattle and Portland (Amtrak, 2011a). In the Northeast, Midwest, and Northwest, improved ‘‘high- speed’’ rail trips will, at best, approximately replicate the speeds at which interstate highway drivers already travel. These trains must be made significantly faster than interstate highway speeds to per- suade more drivers to endure the inconveniences of planning jour- neys around train schedules, organizing travel between starting points and stations, paying for tickets and station parking, slowing down and stopping at intervening stations, dealing with other pas- sengers, and journeying between end stations and actual final destinations. The only route in the HSIPR Program that can be realistically termed ‘‘high-speed’’ rail is the California portion. The proposal calls for a San Francisco to Los Angeles train to feature an average of 140 mph (Federal Railroad Administration, 2011c), a momentous improvement on the current 33 mph average between Oakland and Los Angeles (Amtrak, 2011b). The vital point is that this train will travel at average speeds markedly faster than interstate highway driving. This train will conveniently serve trips too long to drive, but too short to fly. California’s high-speed rail will uniquely com- pliment the existing highway and airport systems, rather than com- pete with them. Truly excellent high-speed rail routes need both California’s planned fast trains and the pedestrian approachability of nearly every existing Acela Express station in the Northeast. Thankfully, the HSIPR Program does call for transit-oriented development (TOD) around stations (Office of Railroad Policy and Development, 2011) by stating that ‘‘through compact development and en- hanced transit, walkways and bikeways, TOD can increase access, or the ease of connection between places at the scale of the station area’’ (Office of Railroad Policy and Development, 2011). The convenience of rail is due, in part, to its compact nature and the pedestrian approachability of train stations (Federal Railroad Administration, 2011a). Through efforts to ‘‘establish, reroute, and add public transit lines directly to the high-speed and intercity passenger rail stations,’’ these stations can be accessible to non- drivers, which ‘‘maximizes the convenience of train travel’’ (Office of Railroad Policy and Development, 2011). In order to encourage pedestrian access to high-speed rail stations, the HSIPR Program rightly advocates eliminating required parking minimums from lo- cal land use controls and removing subsidies for curb and off-street parking (Office of Railroad Policy and Development, 2011). The HSIPR Program needs to go further and call for liberalization of lo- cal land use controls, rather than bloating the zoning codebook with new TOD rules. In doing so, the program will encourage com- pact, pedestrian and train station-oriented development by simply allowing developers to build tall, build mixed use, and build with- out setback minima and footprint maxima (Levine and Inam, 2004; Levine, 2005; Johnson, 2011). Developers merely need freedom to build TOD through liberalization of local land use controls, not planning mandates to do so (Levine, 2005; Johnson, 2011). In sum, the HSIPR Program succeeds in proposing a truly high- speed rail route in California that will offer travelers significantly faster trips than driving on a route that is too short to conveniently fly instead. Unfortunately, the proposed routes in the Northeast, Midwest, and Northwest will continue to chug along at medium- speeds and attract few new riders from among those who currently travel those areas via highway or air. The plan does indeed succeed in calling for TOD around high-speed rail stations. The HSIPR Pro- gram must, however, encourage local planning jurisdictions to broadly liberalize land use controls to allow for compact develop- ment rather than writing new zoning codes to require the intensive land uses developers desire anyway. Trains must truly be fast, with stations surrounded by compact development, for America’s high- speed rail plan to realize its full potential. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 0.9 Mb. 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