November 22, 2010

Transportation Monitoring and Control

Derailed: Why High-Speed Trains Haven't Caught On in the U.S.

November 11, 2010

FOX Business - In a country fueled by transportation services and laden with corporate travelers, the United States continues to trail its global neighbors -- by a large margin -- in a seemingly simple, necessary infrastructure: high-speed trains.

However, the massive costs associated with building a proper rail system may be just part of the reason for the slow arrival to the rapidly populating speed-rail party.

Recently, Switzerland completed drilling a tunnel some 6,500 feet below the Swiss Alps, for what will be the world’s longest underground high-speed train, for an estimated cost of $20 billion. China, meanwhile, unveiled a plan to build the world’s fastest train from Beijing to Shanghai for $32.5 billion.

Of course, these breakthroughs came within days of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s decision to scrap the "Access to the Region’s Core Tunnel"[see story below], a two-decade, $8.7 billion effort to double train capacity between New Jersey and Manhattan via a Hudson River tunnel.

Christie’s decision was based on potential cost overruns that he believes would have further impeded the state’s debt and already too-heavily-burdened taxpayers.

But in a country with a $14.3 trillion gross domestic product, the largest on the planet, is it really the financial burden that keeps the U.S. teetering on the fence and subsequently behind the world’s leading railroad nations?
“It’s really ridiculous that we, one of the leading nations in the world, have ignored this,” said Andy Kunz, CEO of the US High Speed Rail Association [USHSR]. “We have been spending the money on transportation ... the problem is at some point 70 years ago we as a nation decided rail wasn’t for us.”
The U.S. has spent 10-times more on transportation than any other country, Kunz says, but that money mostly went to feeding highways and runways, whereas other nations concentrated on building up their rail systems.

From Germany to the Eurotunnel -- a rail that whisks passengers under the Channel from London to Paris -- to Spain and Southern Italy, all of Europe’s trains are now connecting, forming a massive unit of high-speed rails catapulting passengers across the continent quickly, cheaply, and much more environmentally friendly than we are doing here.

Even China, though a little late to the game, joined on in recent years, announcing just last week its plan to build an 820-mile high-speed railway from Beijing to Shanghai, scheduled to open in 2012. The Asian giant already has the world’s longest high-speed rail network and plans to double the length to 10,000 miles by 2020.

Getting Derailed

It hasn’t always been this way. Before Europe and Asia took charge of the rails, it was the U.S., in the early twentieth century, that grabbed hold of the market of freight trains and passenger rails.
“In the 1920s we had the greatest rail system in the world,” trains that reached every American city, Kunz says. “It was an unbelievable system.”
Soon after, the interstate highway system emerged and planes grabbed the attention of travelers, essentially transitioning America from “a nation of rail riders to a nation of car riders,” diverting it from railroad investment, he said.

It may also be the very way America was built years ago that led to the intense highway boom of the latter part of the twentieth century. In Europe, compact, dense cities reign over sprawled out suburbs.
“We are different in our living patterns and transportation patterns,” Kunz said, adding he believes “suburban, continuous outward growth has pretty much come to an end” with the recent economic downturn.
It wasn’t until the most recent economic crash, when oil hit a high of $145 a barrel, that Americans finally started questioning the country’s basic infrastructure.
“Our country was going nuts because it was built on cheap oil,” Kunz said. “That works if oil is $10 a barrel, but it went all the way to $150, and our country was in shambles.”
High-speed rails, the ones that can hit speeds of 220 miles per hour, are run on electricity, not oil, a positive for the environment and for American’s historically oil heavy wallets.

According to data from the California High-Speed Rail Authority, the entity charged with the state’s massive 800-mile rail project, the Golden Coast’s train is expected to save one-third of the energy per passenger of airplanes and one-fifth the energy per passenger of automobiles, while eliminating as much as 12 billion pounds of greenhouse gases per year and reducing the state’s demand for oil by 12.7 million barrels annually.
Reuters

California taxpayers passed Proposition 1A in November 2008, allowing the state to sell $9.95 billion in bonds to help pay for the $45 billion project. The California sentiment echoes that in Switzerland, where taxpayers agreed in a series of referendums to contribute a total of $1,300 each for the tunnel project.
“People have overwhelmingly decided that traffic is unbearable in our major metropolitan areas, it’s just not an efficient use of time,” said Rachel Wall, press secretary of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
The project, which will whisk riders at 220 mph from San Francisco to Los Angeles in about two-and-a-half hours, is supposed to create 100,000 construction jobs in each of the five to seven years of development, and a total of 450,000 permanent jobs.
“There will be a major impact on local and the state’s economy once this project gets started,” Wall said.
Despite a majority of voter approval, opponents of the project say it is a waste of money, since much of the state's congestion issues involve local traffic as opposed to travel between California’s major metropolitan cities.

However, proponents of the general idea of passenger rails say the trains, which may be feasible options for 500- to 600-mile corridors around the US -- those that are uneconomical for planes and a little too inconvenient for cars -- may become a necessary means of transportation to help unload highways and runways amid climbing population rates.
“I don’t think we should take money from roads and airports but I think this definitely needs to be a priority,” Eric Spiegel, chief executive of Siemens (SI: 116.90 ,0.00 ,0.00%), a global powerhouse in electrical engineering, recently told FOX Business. “I mean, it’s time for the U.S. to move, to get up to the 21st century, in terms of our rail transportation.” (Siemens, of course, would be expected to be a big beneficiary of such a development.)
Are Americans Willing to Catch Up?

Despite Americans' slow adoption, a recent poll by the American Public Transportation Association shows 62% of some 25,000 U.S. adults surveyed said they would “definitely or probably” use high-speed rail for leisure or business travel if a system were to emerge. Another 27% said they weren’t sure while 11% said they “probably or definitely would not” use it.

The Obama administration said in January it plans to dole out $8 billion in stimulus funds to construct high-speed passenger rails across the country, upping that number by another $2.4 billion just last week.

Wisconsin made use of that pledge last weekend when Gov. Jim Doyle signed a deal with the federal government to spend $810 million for a high-speed passenger-rail line between Milwaukee and Madison, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, the California rail project is rapidly approaching its estimated 2012 start date, and the association has pledged to use to its advantage the achievements of America's global neighbors.

Partnering with a variety of entities around the world to share expert knowledge on high-speed train planning, construction and operations, the entity vows that California is not building its system alone, “but with the benefit” of those around the world who have for decades been gaining experience in high-speed rail.

U.S. to New Jersey: You Owe Us $270M

November 9, 2010

Fox News - The Obama administration wants prompt repayment of more than $270 million in federal grant money dedicated to New Jersey for a rail tunnel to Manhattan that became a political flashpoint when the state withdrew from the project.

In a letter sent on Monday to New Jersey Transit Executive Director James Weinstein, the Federal Transit Administration [FTA] said the state "must immediately repay all the federal assistance" spent so far on the project canceled by Gov. Chris Christie due to costs.

This includes $271 million, plus interest and penalties, that already had been sent to the state. In addition, FTA is canceling nearly $80 million in funds that were scheduled to be delivered.

The Obama administration had promised a total of $3 billion in financing for the commuter rail project, which would have become the nation's largest public works undertaking. The state and the New York and New Jersey Port Authority were also going to put up funds.

The tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan became a charged symbol during the just-completed congressional elections of Democratic efforts to stimulate the economy and Republican aims to cut spending.

Christie said in October that New Jersey could not proceed with the $8.7 billion project due to billions in projected cost overruns that would be borne by the state.

New Jersey Transit is reviewing the request and assessing its options, according to a statement that noted the agency "does not agree" that Washington made a clear-cut case in its letter.
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