High Speed Rail Affirmative 1ac – Energy Module (1/4)
AFF answers: Author Indicts
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AFF answers: Author Indicts(look at their evidence, if you see reason.com in the cite, read this card) Their evidence is by the reason foundation – they’re hacks, don’t trust them Kunz, 3/10/2011 (Andy – president and CEO of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, U.S. High-Speed Rail: Time to Hop Aboard or Be Left Behind, Environment 360, p. http://e360.yale.edu/feature/us_high-speed_rail_time_to_hop_aboard_or_be_left_behind/2378/ In making his decision, Scott says he relied heavily on a January report by the libertarian Reason Foundation, which is funded by major conservative organizations, oil companies, and companies involved in highway construction. The Reason Foundation report was riddled with inaccuracies, exaggerations, and distortions, such as a claim that the construction of the Orlando-Tampa line could cost Florida taxpayers $3 billion in capital cost overruns. That figure was arrived at by comparing the project in Florida to California, which faces far tougher right-of-way and land-use issues. The Tampa-Orlando line already has a long-established right of way on the Interstate 4 median, making it much cheaper to build. In addition, the eight international rail consortia seeking to construct the Florida line have guaranteed that they will cover operation, maintenance, and subsidy costs for 30 years. After rejecting the federal funds, Scott’s office issued a statement that he “is now focused on moving forward with infrastructure projects that create long-term jobs and turn Florida’s economy around.” Criticisms of HSR are non-credible non-sense levied by Tea Party hacks. Eric C. Peterson, January 2012 [Consultant for American Public Transportation Association, Peterson has held significant leadership roles on Capitol Hill, with national and regional transportation associations, and within the U.S. Department of Transportation where he was the first Deputy Administrator of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration. He currently serves as a Research Associate for the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University. “An Inventory of the Criticisms of High Speed Rail with Suggested Responses and Counterpoints,” http://www.apta.com/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/HSR-Defense.pdf] Unfortunately, for a number of reasons that will be delineated in the pages and chapters that follow this introduction, the United States has not benefited from intercity passenger rail, and especially high-speed passenger rail, the way other nations have. Thanks to the vision of recent Presidents, however, America now stands on the cusp of reinvigorating its intercity passenger rail service, and, where appropriate, introducing high- speed passenger rail in corridors where density and potential ridership suggest long-term sustainability. But this vision, and the efforts to make the vision a reality, have not been without their critics, albeit as readers will come to understand, the effectiveness of these critics has been and remains more a matter of their tenacity, not their numbers or the credibility of their arguments. Even more striking is that while these critics present themselves as conservative and libertarian, they do not represent the majority view of either the far right, or the majority of Americans overall. This paper identifies, categorizes, and sets the record straight on each of the criticisms this group of self-proclaimed opponents of intercity passenger and high-speed rail have leveled. In fact these critics are so brazen in their efforts that they published an account of their strategy and bragged of its success (Innovation Briefs, April 12, 2011): While much of this has been in the national news, what most journalists and commentators have overlooked is the decisive role a handful of pro-market think tanks and Tea Party activists played in putting these projects in the morgue. Beginning in early 2009, when Congress agreed to fund Obama’s new HSR plan with $8 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, analysts at Cato, Reason, and Heritage, working both individually and collectively (through the American Dream Coalition), began to produce work that was critical of the proposals. Cato and Heritage (note: I work at the latter) published several overview papers on the subject, Heritage hosted a total of four seminars, and the Reason Foundation arranged for detailed studies of the California and Florida proposals. Ken Orski, publisher of Innovation Briefs, hammered away with weekly skeptical articles that were widely circulated through the transportation- policy community and media. Solvency 1NC (1/2)HSR empirically doesn’t get enough ridership Utt 10(Ronald, Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, “America’s Coming High-Speed Rail Financial Disaster,” March 19, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/03/america-s-coming-high-speed-rail-financial-disaster) To put the European commitment to passenger rail in perspective, rail ridership (high speed, conventional intercity, and metropolitan commuter rail) in these six countries accounted for just 7.9 percent of all surface transportation modes on a per passenger, per billion kilometer basis. This suggests that these countries received a poor return on their money given that more than 90 percent of passengers in these countries chose other travel modes-- mostly auto--despite the subsidies. In Europe as a whole (EU-27), rail accounted for only 6.1 percent of passenger travel in 2007, including travel by air and sea. Buses accounted for 8.3 percent of the market, and air travel accounted for 8.8 percent. Despite Europe's huge investment in passenger rail, its market share declined from 6.6 percent in 1995 to 6.1 percent in 2007. Over that same period, commercial air increased its share from 6.3 percent to 8.8 percent. By providing faster service and competitive prices, it took passengers away from rail, buses, and autos. This last point is of some importance because one goal of the HSR scheme is to shift travel from largely unsubsidized commercial aviation to heavily subsidized trains. Yet the same scheme in Europe seems to have failed over the past dozen years, despite massive government subsidies. Nonetheless, as problematic as the general European experience with passenger rail has been, some individual countries have experienced even worse results. Eminent domain and environmental lawsuits gut solvency – fiat doesn’t solve Longman 11(Phillip, senior fellow at Washington Monthly and New America foundation, “The Case for Not-Quite-So-High-Speed Rail,” Aug, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/julyaugust_2011/features/the_case_for_notquite_sohighsp030492.php?page=2) But as great as it would be to have passenger service as fast and elegant as the TGV in the United States, there are many reasons not to put our first dollars into such an ambitious project. First off, building a truly high-speed rail system in today’s America would be so expensive, disruptive, contentious, and politically risky that it just might not be possible. It would require, for example, securing brand-new rights-of-way, because trains traveling at more than around 125 mph can’t share tracks with slower freight or passenger trains. This in turn would require using eminent domain to secure millions of acres of real estate, and these days, in the U.S., that would involve endless litigation, environmental review, and the innumerable other processes that always stand to derail any large-scale infrastructure project. Plans to build a high-speed rail in California between San Diego and the Bay Area are now foundering for precisely this reason. Big showcase high-speed projects in Texas and Florida flopped in the 1990s for the same reason, plus another: the shifting currents of polarized American politics. AFF ridership projections overstated - empirically disproven Cox and Vranich ‘8 (Wendell Cox Principal of Demographia (St. Louis. Mo.), a public policy firm; and Joseph Vranich Consultnt @ National Journal. The California High Speed Rail Proposal: A Due Diligence Report http://reason.org/files/1b544eba6f1d5f9e8012a8c36676ea7e.pdf) Because HSR ridership is likely to be only a fraction of CHSRA projections, the long-term economic impact of the system (beyond the construction jobs) is expected to be slight, at best. This is consistent with the world infrastructure research, which finds that: It is common for proponents of major infrastructure projects to claim that such projects will result in substantial regional and/or national development effects. Empirical evidence shows that these claims are not well founded.522 Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.59 Mb. Share with your friends:
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