The $68 billion project is already running behind schedule and won’t be completed until at least 2028. The Los Angeles Times reports that there are still significant political and financial hurdles ahead: The system isn’t fully funded yet, some parcels of land within the right-of-way haven’t been acquired, and a deal with freight railroads hasn’t been worked out yet. There’s a very real risk the rail line won’t be completed at all. Meanwhile, the world has only a few short decades to tackle blossoming carbon emissions in time to keep global warming under so-called safe levels, defined as a rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius. On the world’s current carbon emissions trajectory, we’ll use up our total carbon budget by 2042. Amtrak’s true high-speed rail line in the Northeast corridor, promising three-hour transits between Washington, D.C., and Boston (down from seven hours currently on the Acela), isn’t slated for completion until 2040. Time is not on our side. Given the incredible pressure that global warming is inflicting, we can’t waste precious resources on high-speed rail. It’s impractical to hope that truly high-speed rail—the kind that will compete with air travel—will arrive in time to do much good. Instead, limited public transportation funds should be prioritized for climate-friendly projects that will pay off more than high-speed rail in the same time frame. Some options for politicians: 1) Expand the use of upscale electric buses, 2) support self-driving vehicle technology, and 3) regulate airline emissions. Borrowing from Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the transportation system you have, not the transportation system you might want. In the U.S., that means we’re committed to highways and airports for the time being. In 2012, Americans traveled nearly 3 trillion passenger-miles by car, 580 billion by air, and more than 300 billion by bus. Passenger rail was barely even comparable—just 7 billion passenger-miles. That $68 billion California plans to spend on its high-speed rail system could buy 82,000 state-of-the-art electric buses, 55 times Greyhound’s entire nationwide fleet. And they could start operating immediately. Dedicated bus lanes and congestion pricing have done wonders for reducing commute-hell in many cities, like London. There are ways to make intercity bus travel more appealing, too, as evidenced by the expansion of carriers like Wi-Fi enabled MegaBus in recent years. Similar “curbside” buses are the fastest growing mode of intercity transport and are the most carbon-friendly way to travel medium to long distances in the United States.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 07:54:32 +0000
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