Please Run Some Rail Out Of Our Towns

At a presidential town hall last week in Tampa, Florida, Vice President Biden talked about rail spending from the Recovery Act:

... Having made over 7,900 round trips, literally, on Amtrak, 250 miles a day, I am very familiar with rail. (Laughter.) And today you have no idea how pleased I am to talk about the announcement that we made yesterday awarding -- in total, nationwide -- nearly $8 billion from the Recovery Act, funding to move us in the direction of developing a high-speed rail service in 13 travel corridors covering 31 states all across this country. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, these investments -- these investments have several goals: first, to improve existing rail lines to make train service faster, more reliable; two, to pull cars off the road, reducing congestion, cutting pollution, and increasing productivity; and three, to begin to develop new corridors for high-speed trains that will go from 169 to 230 miles an hour. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, like a corridor, right here from Tampa to Orlando -- (applause) -- so you'll be able to get on a train here to Orlando in less than an hour, without battling traffic and congestion, arrive at your destination. Ladies and gentlemen, this single investment is not going to solve all our transportation issues overnight. Instead, with more than $55 billion of proposals from 50 states all across the country, we're providing $8 billion in seed money. And today's awards provide only initial funding for the rail system. Like Tampa and Orlando route, more funding is going to come in the future as progress is made.

We have committed to another $5 billion in funding over the next five years. It's a down payment on a truly national program that's going to reshape the way we travel. ...

Biden explained further that the Tampa-Orlando plans were in the greatest state of readiness of all the plans submitted by the states, and that some of the Recovery Act funds would be going to help other states better develop their planning process. In terms of cost savings, Biden added that putting in a highway in the shovel-ready, proposed Florida rail corridor would cost $22 million per lane, per mile, while the rail lines will cost less than $2 million per mile.

Sounds like a good investment.

It could even be argued, and conservatives Paul Weyrich and William S. Lind have argued it in the book "Moving Minds", that rail is a very conservative investment, one that reverses decades of disproportional government support for private car infrastructure, while supporting dense, profitable development:

... It is important to note that rail promotes urban growth and development in a way that buses, for example, cannot. Once the infrastructure is created for electric rail, businesses can count on it being there. Conversely, a business could locate near a bus stop, only to see the route change. Buses, as such, do not spur development. ...

In addition to the growth of other businesses, the business of planning, constructing, maintaining and operating high speed rail lines will create job opportunities for high school graduates, skilled trade workers and engineers, alike.

Sounds even better.

Though since Biden brought it up, we are indeed far behind in infrastructure spending. The American Society of Civil Engineers' Infrastructure Report Card for 2009 gives the US a grade of 'D' on transit. That's better than the 'D-' for roads and four separate categories of our water infrastructure, but still rates as a backwater part of a crumbling civil infrastructure. As ASCE President Blaine D. Leonard said in a statement responding to Obama's State of the Union speech, "We are still driving on Eisenhower's roads and sending our kids to Roosevelt's schools."

ASCE estimates the country's total infrastructure deficit to require $2.2 trillion over five years in order to bring everything up to modern safety and quality standards. On transit, ASCE projects a shortfall of $190.1 billion, well over three times the cost of the proposals submitted to the federal government for Recovery Act funding, according to Biden. Considering that existing public transit was estimated in 2007 to save the US $10 billion per year in traffic delay costs, it makes the $1 billion dedicated to high speed rail in Obama's 2011 budget seem like a small investment, though some of the $4 billion in financing through a transportation infrastructure development bank proposed in the budget might conceivably also go to light and high speed rail projects.

And as discussed previously, not only does money spent on rail go farther than money spent on highways, it creates about twice as many jobs.

All of which is to say that it's disappointing that the president's budget didn't instead include the $50 billion in high speed rail funding proposed last year by Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN), chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which could provide full funding for the projects submitted by the states under the Recovery Act, when the $8 billion in stimulus funds for rail are counted. So on this one, as enthusiastic as Biden and Obama seemed to be about Florida's proposed rail line, with Obama having even promised to come ride it, I'd hope that Congress takes initiative to go above and beyond the president's budget proposal and allocate at least enough funds to build all $55 billion in state rail projects as soon as possible.

The states need the jobs, and there will be plenty of people who've lost their cars, been unable to repair their cars, or just can't afford to fill up their tanks anymore in this recession, and need reliable transit to get to work. In short, upgrading our national public transit should be an essential component of a real jobs bill.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future