The Common Problem . . .
Is that people do not look at the history of a problem before trying to solve it in the here and now.
We had urban sprawl before the automobile. Mass transit is not an alternative to the automobile; they work effectively in very different environments. Public transportation in the U.S. was, in point of fact, created in response to urban sprawl in places like New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, where the city and its infrastructure spread to surrounding communities because individual transport no longer worked well there. Adding mass transit to the equation didn’t change the nature of urban growth. Successful cities grow. Very successful cities grow to the point that downtown real estate becomes worth its surface area in gold leaf. The cities with the highest levels of mass transit access are sprawling out so much they have run into each other. New York and Boston have grown toward each other until urban planners refer to their combined economic footprint as the Northeast Conurbation. Seattle and Tacoma are so intertwined that their shared airport is just known as SeaTac, and their growth has pierced an international border to include Vancouver in the cultural commonality. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex has the same feature of shared transport nodes, and is so united that it has one set of initials to identify its multiple municipalities. The Bay Area of San Francisco, Oakland, and outlying communities. What’s the most iconic image? The bridge connecting two population centers together. Anyplace you have sufficient population density to support mass transit/passenger rail, what it will accomplish is to move population density from the urban core to the outer portions of the transit network. Large, vibrant cities grow and spread. It is unrealistic and illogical to demand more developed urban infrastructure, then turn around and complain about the inherent consequences of urbanization.
Many people seem to think that city-to-city High Speed Rail (HSR) is just a larger, faster version of light rail. However, there are very different use patterns between a subway or bus system that hundreds of thousands of people use multiple times per day, and intercity travel with each leg of the trip separated by a few days. The easiest pathway to make the economic argument for passenger rail is from Pittsburgh to Denver. The right-of-way already exists, it’s all I-70. That highway, like most of the Interstate system, was built to enhance or supplement existing roads. The parts which would be hardest to acquire today have been public roadways for 200 years! Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Kansas City are all on the direct pathway, and a 200-mile spur from Indianapolis connects Chicago. That’s going to be the easiest and most profitable transcontinental route, and Denver can use I-25 or a short extension to I-15 as a North-South split. Pittsburgh is very close to the existing Acela route, one of the few Amtrak trains to actually turn a profit. If there is ever to be high-speed rail travel in this country, the first east-west connection is going to be in close proximity to I-70. If it can be profitable to run passenger trains across the Kansas wheatfields, HSR can be done. If not, then it won’t work. There’s your make-or-break point.
The U.S. has done large-scale passenger rail before. In the space of a century, we went from laying rail faster than any other nation in the western hemisphere through having the largest rail network on earth to the collapse of passenger rail in the 1960s. The rise of U.S. “car culture” was in the 20s and 30s. The Golden Era of U.S. passenger rail started around the same time, and continued for another generation. If you want to blame a transport option, try the Boeing 707. Glorious vistas of the heartland, and time to enjoy them because someone else is on the controls? Check and check. The jet gives the same pleasures of travel, and puts you at your destination in about 1/4 the time. Existing railways and rail equipment are dedicated to nationwide freight transport using slower, heavier rolling stock. Any high-speed passenger rail system is going to require a dedicated right-of-way connecting multiple major cities.
The Uncommon Solution . . .
There is an obvious test case to analyze for HSR. The I-70 corridor has more advantages than any other proposal: existing right-of-way, most of the route has low population density and economic density to object to expansion, and it connects many of the most-visited cities in the country.
The Common Problem 