High Speed Rail Affirmative


HSE K2 Economy-Laundry List



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HSE K2 Economy-Laundry List

HSR key to the economy – competitiveness, job growth, tourism – it’s the backbone of the American economy


Thaniel 10 [Ron, June 28. Report on the United States Conference of Mayors “USCM Releases Groundbreaking Report Detailing Benefits of high-speed Rail on Cities” (http://www.usmayors.org/usmayornewspaper/documents/06_28_10/pg20_rail.asp)]

Four cities studied — L.A., Chicago, Orlando, and Albany (NY) — could significantly benefit from high-speed rail with as many as 150,000 new jobs and some $16 billion in new business revenues created in total. At the Business Plenary Session on June 14, The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a new report (www.usmayors.org/highspeedrail) positively assessing the economic impact of high-speed rail (HSR) passenger rail on cities. The report, entitled The Economic Impacts of high-speed Rail on Cities and Metropolitan Areas examined job creation, the effects of improved market access, greater connectivity, travel time savings, as well as increased income and business sales. Study findings show that HSR in the U.S. could significantly increase jobs and business sales if fully implemented as planned by 2035. Higher potential impacts were noted when travel times between cities were reduced to less than three hours. The report, prepared by the Economic Development Research Group and sponsored by Siemens, analyzed the potential economic impact of HSR in the four cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando, and Albany. The study also demonstrated that HSR service could help drive higher-density, mixed-use development projects surrounding the stations, ranging from current station additions in Chicago, to new hotel development in Orlando and Albany, as well as additional large scale developments adjacent to Union Station in Los Angeles. Such local development could help create approximately 30,000 new jobs across these four cities alone. "Transportation is the backbone of America's economy," explained The United States Conference of Mayors CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran. "Our country cannot successfully compete in the global economy if we fail to invest adequately in our domestic transportation infrastructure, particularly in cities and their metropolitan areas — which underpin so much of our country's economic input." "With the release of this study, the Conference is ratcheting-up our long-term lobbying efforts for a high-speed intercity rail program equal to the investment our nation made a half-century ago building the Interstate Highway System," said Conference of Mayors President Burnsville Mayor Elizabeth B. Kautz. "This effort should start with dedicated funding in the pending authorization of the surface transportation law," she continued. Total new business and job growth projections include: * In Los Angeles, up to $7.6 billion per year in new business, including $4.3 billion per year in Gross Regional Product (GRP) growth and up to 55,000 jobs. * In Chicago, up to $6.1 billion per year in new business, including up to $3.6 billion per year in GRP growth and up to 42,000 jobs. * In Orlando, up to $2.9 billion per year in new business, including up to $1.7 billion per year in GRP growth and up to 27,500 jobs. * In Albany, up to $2.5 billion per year in new business, including up to $1.4 billion per year in GRP growth and up to 21,000 jobs. Additionally, HSR's projected larger flow of passengers will lead to increased tourism and business travel, generating additional spending at local hotels, restaurants and retail stores. Projections show that by 2035, HSR can annually add roughly $255 million in the Orlando area; $147 million in the Los Angeles area; more than $100 million in the Albany'saratoga area; and $42 million in the Chicago area.

Benefits to both Business and the Environment

HSR K2 Economy-Labor Markets

HSR increases productivity and efficiency of labor Markets-this is the BACKBONE of the American economy


Roger Vickerman and Andreu Ulied 2006 [“Indirect and wider economic impacts of High-Speed Rail” Vickerman: Centre for European, regional and transport economics @ university of Kent, Canterbury. Ulied: Mcrit. (http://www.mcrit.com/doc_home/Impacts_HSR.pdf)]

Wider economic benefits can be viewed in two ways. On the one hand they involve an increase in total welfare which is greater than the measured increase in consumers’ surplus to users through time savings, reductions in accident rates etc. On the other hand these benefits can be seen as the increase in GDP which occurs as a result of the changes in economic activity which derive from the transport change. These represent different ways of measuring benefits and typically give different numerical results. For example, time savings accruing in the course of commuting or leisure travel are welfare gains to the user, but do not have a direct effect on GDP unlike time savings in the course of work. However, where such time savings lead to an overall gain in productivity because people can access more productive jobs more easily, this will be recorded as a change in GDP. For the economy as a whole the overall impact will be broadly similar, but the ratio of total benefits to user benefits will differ. There could also be important differences in the impact on individual regions such that the welfare gain accrues in one place but the GDP benefits accrue in another. If improved transport infrastructure leads to greater concentration of employment this could have different relative impacts on central and more peripheral regions. Wider benefits are those which typically cannot be recouped from users through charging and they arise in a number of ways, through impacts on the labour market, through direct impacts on productivity and competition in product markets and through changes in patterns of agglomeration. In each of these cases the main reasons for wider benefits occurring is due to the absence of perfect competition. As Jara-Diaz (1986) has shown, where there is perfect competition in transport using markets then user benefits will be an accurate and sufficient measure of total benefits from transport improvements. We stress the importance of the labour market, because it has frequently been ignored in studies of wider benefits. Labour market effects in imperfectly competitive labour markets arise in three possible ways: changing participation rates, increased working hours and moves to more productive jobs (Department for Transport, 2005). Improved transport can enable access to jobs which would not otherwise have been possible. If this enables workers from employment deficient regions to access jobs in labour-deficient regions there will be gains to the workers, to employers and to the public sector which gains tax revenue and faces lower social security payments. Similarly if easier commuting encourages existing workers to work longer hours there will be potential gains to all three groups, although it might seem more likely that in practice workers would takes the gains in increased leisure rather than increased work. Possibly of greatest importance, however, is the impact on productivity which arises thorough workers being able to move more easily from less productive to more productive jobs. HSR has the important effect of creating a potential step-change in the size of labour markets, not just for daily commuting, but also for reinforcing the possibility of long-distance weekly commuting where the constraints.


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