Amtrak's Acela High Speed Train photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons
The U.S. youth climate movement has rightfully been dissecting Obama’s State of the Union speech and its aftermath – the good, the bad, the really? – and taking action of our own.
But this week, Obama did more than just talk, he acted, putting a big down payment on a high speed rail network that will cut pollution, save energy, and provide good jobs in the clean energy economy.
On Thursday, President Obama and U.S. Transportation Secretary (and former Illinois Republican congressman) Ray LaHood announced $8 billion in economic recovery money dedicated to building high speed rail and otherwise improving rail transportation across much of the country.
That’s good for cutting climate change and improving air quality, since rail transportation is more energy efficient and overall less polluting than cars or planes. That’s assuming people actually use it, though, and long travel times compared to flying have hurt Amtrak’s public acceptance, even as it’s fastest routes grew their ridership (page 6).
It’s good for creating American manufacturing and other blue collar jobs, too. The administration estimates it will add and protect tens of thousands by the time the money is fully spent.
It’s also a big change from the last administration. In 2007, when the independent, congressionally mandated National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission released its final report on funding and improving our road and rails, recommending $7-$9 billion per year in passenger rail investments (sound like a familiar number?), then-Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters was one of only three commissioners to object (page 65) to passenger rail funding, and President Bush showed little interest in the issue.
Yeah great,
But is Obama shifting money away from freeway and airport expansion? If you keep spending billions making the problem worse, spending more billions trying to fix it is not going to cut it. It is like driving with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake – it just creates even more pollution than just having your foot on the gas.
We need a global movement against freeway and airport expansions, and for electric transit and passenger rail. see GatewaySucks.org for one example of a local group.
In terms of pollution, that’s not true. Investments in high speed rail provide a viable option for travelers away from planes and cars (especially planes) more than they will generate additional travel-related pollution (though they will do this a little). This creates less demand for flying and less need to invest in (and repair) highways. Even if it doesn’t cut the total growth in plane and car use, it should at least slow its growth compared to a no-high-speed-rail alternative. Your analogy would only work if all of the rail travel were adding to, instead of replacing, the expected plane and car travel. We don’t observe this with the existing passenger rail network (Acela Express competes with shuttle flights between Boston-NYC and NYC-DC), nor with other transportation options (transit, commuter rail, and driving compete for getting to work).
That doesn’t say anything about your other point of what we should do with the existing subsidies for highways and airports, but I’ll leave that discussion to the other comments.