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I figure that it will be up to me (or other swedish-speaking ETers) to find that article by Kågesson. So I'll start there. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
OECD/ITF: JTRC Discussion Papers
Environmental aspects of inter-city passenger transport Per KAGESON, Nature Associates, Stockholm, Sweden Discussion Paper No 2009-28, December 2009
The 25% increase is nothing he shows, it is something he assumes in making the calculations, based on an Norwegian HSR-line.
And in conclusion, I'll cite Kågeson, p.25:
The conclusion of this paper is that investment in high speed rail is under most circumstances likely to reduce greenhouse gases from traffic compared to a situation when the line was not built. The reduction, though, is small and it may take decades for it to compensate for the emissions caused by construction. However, where capacity restraints and large transport volumes justify investment in high speed rail this will not cause overall emissions to rise. In cases where anticipated journey volumes are low it is not only difficult to justify the investment in economical terms, but it may also be hard to defend the project from an environmental point of view as it will take too long for traffic to offset the emissions caused by building the line. Under such circumstances it may be better to upgrade an existing line to accommodate for somewhat higher speeds as this would minimize emissions from construction and cut emissions from train traffic compared to high speed rail.
In cases where anticipated journey volumes are low it is not only difficult to justify the investment in economical terms, but it may also be hard to defend the project from an environmental point of view as it will take too long for traffic to offset the emissions caused by building the line. Under such circumstances it may be better to upgrade an existing line to accommodate for somewhat higher speeds as this would minimize emissions from construction and cut emissions from train traffic compared to high speed rail.
In order to become a fast, safe and affordable alternative to car travel, local and regional public transport is in desperate need of funding.
Yes! But it is not either/or but both/and. His views of economics might preclude doing either, but, so long as there is significant unemployment in the EU, with appropriate actions by governments and monetary authorities, the infrastructure can be built and so doing will benefit the economy during and after the construction without increasing inflation, though inflation could be caused by other factors, including increased resource costs. Unfortunately, public adherence to neo-liberal economic views will likely prevent such sane actions.
A tragic example is the terrible commuter-train accident in Belgium earlier this year. Belgium is investing millions of euro in HSR, and at the same time the safety standard of local trains has deteriorated to a point where lives are placed at risk.
So, has train travel become more dangerous in Belgium than car travel? And, again, it is not really an either/or choice unless Belgium is at full employment. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
And I have covered the CO2 question, the researcher in question recommends HSR where it makes sense population wise. Over a couple of decades you get more opportunity for travel for a lower CO2 cost.
So, can anyone tell us what has happened with old rail where HSR was installed? Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
For every investment in HSR there is also an alternative use of the money. In order to become a fast, safe and affordable alternative to car travel, local and regional public transport is in desperate need of funding.
This is clean BS, and the worst kind of zero-sum thinking. In the USA, local, regional and intercity public transport is in desperate need of funding. Public transport functions best if modes for different distances and capacities, which are in effect different levels of a hierarchic system, are linked up at hubs. The accessibility via the other levels increases the utility of each mode (you get more HSR passengers with a subway link to the station resp. you get more light rail passengers with a link to a HSR station). It doesn't make sense to pick out one level of public transport, even less to make them run for the same money.
What is debatable is the ratio of funds earmarked for the different modes. However, given the severe underfunding on all public transport fronts and the hundreds of billions given to road construction, it is silly to look for a re-division of funds already earmarked for public transport rather than a re-division between road and rail.
Gah. No, the safety system did not deteriorate, it was outdated and its upgrade was very sluggish. But that doesn't mean that there was no investment at all: new trains are purchased (and already have the new Belgian safety system -- including one of the collided trains!), and Brussels's and Antwerp's suburban rail system was expanded resp. its lines were upgraded and partly quadruple-tracked in parallel with high-speed line construction.
Of course, again, Belgium could do a lot more in terms of rail investment. (In particular, more new suburban trains.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Here in California I keep using the argument that "a rising tide lifts all boats" (yes, it's cribbed from Reagan, but it works) - that greater investment in HSR will fuel public support for connecting transportation services.
However, I've also found that people who make this argument, that we have limited funds available and should spend it elsewhere, are really just looking for excuses to oppose HSR. And the world will live as one
Suppose there is a specific amount of money available for transport. That money may then be budgeted to local and intercity transport. It would be irrational to do the initial allocation by technology, when both local and intercity transport have to be provided.
If the money available to intercity transport is limited ~ for example, if the Eurozone countries have made a political decision to impose an artificial shortage of money on themselves, even though they have substantial labor and equipment resources available, and HSR would save energy resources relative to alternatives ~ the capital cost for providing a given transport capacity via air, road and rail needs to be examined, as well as the capitalized cost of the operating subsidies required by air, road and conventional passenger rail.
Where HSR provides sufficient full economic benefit to justify its full economic cost, it will typically generate an operating surplus, so that is a capitalized benefit to offset the capital cost of building the line and buying the trains.
By contrast, for local transport, the most beneficial local transport may require substantial operating subsidies. So if there are not unlimited funds for ongoing operating subsidies, then dedicating the intercity capital funding to HSR frees up operating funds to provide operating subsidies to local transport.
Indeed, for areas where common carrier local transport is marginal, a multimodal connection with an HSR station provides an additional traffic anchor that increases farebox recovery ratios and increases the amount of local common carrier transport that can be provided with the same operating subsidy funding. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
With HSR, endpoint inhabitants in major cities will have a new alternative to travel fast and convenient from city to city. But the people in between are likely to end up with fewer train connections (high-speed trains make few stops), or no train station at all. Because of the need to make HSR-lines very straight, it is also likely that the in-between stations will be built away from city centres, surrounded by malls and shopping centres in connection to the new station. The effect of that is - as we all know - increased car dependence.
Here they touch on some real problems with some HSR projects, but assume that it can't be done another way.
Building HSR is extremely expensive and, as a consequence, so is their ticket price. Since the HSR service started running from Paris to Brussels, there is no regular train service left on the route. Ticket prices on the HSR-line are very expensive, and so the budget traveler ends up with two options: bus or car.
There are no direct trains, but there are lots of trains on partial sections. And it was the original system in France that showed how things can be done differently: on the first high-speed line, ticket price was the same as for trains on the parallel conventional line. Then higher peak hour and lower off-peak prices were introduced as a means to limit rush-hour crowding, and advance purchase is favoured... Paris-Brussels tickets range between 44 and 82.
The author also forgets to mention the increase in the number of Thalys passengers relative to the old number of train (and plane) passengers. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
BTW, forgot to give a comparison. Paris-le Mans, TGV: 17.00-51.60 (with 31.50 appearing the most common reduced price), TER: 29.00. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Those three cities alone are going to be utterly transformed by this project, and in very positive ways. Each city has a lot of potential to thrive - they just need something to encourage greater development in the city centers, and need better connections to the Bay Area and LA. I wonder what might provide that... And the world will live as one
However, the HSR system will be the demographic equivalent of putting Lenin on a sealed train bound for the Finland Station. It will make Fresno a desirable place to live for people currently priced out of LA or the Bay Area, producing over time a more Democratic electorate. This is what happened further north, when the Tracy area became home to folks priced out of the Bay Area who ousted a longtime Republican member of Congress in the 2006 election.
Fresno will be utterly transformed by HSR. If its right-wing residents understood the nature of that transformation they'd fight the train to the death. So far though, they have other things they're focused on...for now... And the world will live as one
at least 25 percent of the trips will be newly generated.
That's dwarfed by the energy efficiency and CO2 emission improvement for the trips replacing car and plane trips.
In the study Kågesson also concluded that one million yearly single trips on a typical 500 km line resulted in a reduction of about 9,000 tons of CO2-equivalents. That is about the same amount as the yearly personal emissions of 900 EU citizens. Considering that building the line causes millions of tons of CO2 emissions, 9,000 tons is negligible.
Considering that the line will be there for many decades at least, comparing annual CO2 savings from just one million trips with construction emissions is silly. And road building and airport building have CO2 emissions, too. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
However, you can't make air travel carbon-free, however you tax it. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Presently, economic growth prospects everywhere are constrained by space limitations (congestion), energy limitations, and environmental limitations. If we assume a no growth world, the Carbusters article and others who make the claim that HSR doesn't deliver enough energy reduction and other benefits which justify its cost can be (though not necessarily have to be) correct. Given other transportation options, and existing travel routes, a new, competing means of moving people may not provide enough efficiency or other benefits.
But we don't live in a static world. For better or for worse, we live in a growing world where the principal obstacle to growth is figuring out how to get more benefits from ever scarcer resources. And HSR does precisely that by allowing ever more people to travel rapidly over longer distances despite increasing constraints on energy, space, and the climate. Its another well-shaped piece to complete another round of the ongoing Tetris game of growth and urbanization.
It is true that HSR is unlikely to lead, by itself, to lower greenhouse gas emissions and other economic benefits because people are likely to just increase their overall travel instead of merely switching modes of it. But that is a good thing -- a benefit of HSR and not the drawback that its detractors try to claim. HSR allows economic growth to occur that otherwise would never be able to.
To understand this point I think it is helpful consider a business case study of early American railroads. Famously, all of the major railroads in the 19th century except one are said to have relied on substantial US government assistance for operation (and which went bankrupt nonetheless). The one railroad that didn't was the Great Northern Railroad, which today, after over a century of growth and acquisitions of weaker competitors, has grown into the Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railroad (BNSF), which itself recently became super-billionaire Warren Buffet's largest acquisition. It was founded in Saint Paul, Minnesota by a Canadian named James J. Hill, who subsequently also became, for a time, the richest man in the world like Mr. Buffet is today, personally underwriting much of Great Britain's efforts in World War I as well as changing US policy on the war from neutrality to alliance with Britain. (Although a Canadian citizen, J.J. Hill was politically very involved in US politics and served as chairman of the Democratic Party in Minnesota for most of his later life.)
Unlike the other railroad barons of the age, however, James J. Hill did not view his business as principally that of transportation. Rather, he viewed himself, and built his business, upon a model of real estate development. He bought strategic tracts of cheap, inaccessible prairie land (much of it recently surrendered by Native American Indians), as well as urban land in city centers that would benefit from increased farming, and then he built railroads to reach them, selling the land for a profit. It didn't really matter for the Hill railroad whether or not it paid for itself -- it sometimes did but often didn't -- because the real profits of the whole enterprise were the land valuation gains from economically developing the Great Plains. (That's where the name "Empire Builder" comes from for the Chicago-Seattle line that Hill built and is now run as an Amtrak service.)
Similarly, HSR allows for economic growth that would otherwise be constrained by real scarcity in space, energy, and environmental damage. Limiting analysis to mere transportation and efficiency outcomes like the Carbusters article does misses the primary benefit that new transportation options such as HSR provide -- economic growth.
But that's a good question. I'm not sure the math holds out for rail (or any other new mode of transportation) without economic growth.
Here's a proposition to ponder: Without economic growth, there is no need for any expansion of transportation infrastructure.
Even if this were not the case, the case for an upgrade to the infrastructure that results in lower resource use for the same service would depend on your planning horizon. If the service cost, including depreciation, is lower for the new mode than the old mode, then there exists a discount rate for which an upgrade is viable.
Finally, it is possible to have growth in terms of the quality of service rather than in terms of the number of ton- or passenger-kilometers travelled. Rail offers a number of advantages over airplanes and cars - they are more comfortable than either; unlike planes, you don't have to go through a gauntlet of goons to get on; and unlike cars you're not driving yourself, so you can use the time for more interesting pursuits.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
This is also true of lunch, and indeed everything. Everything has an opportunity cost.
It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
Unhappily, it tends to validate the scando-greenie article. The lesson is that the national networks will tend to favour the prestigious HSR lines, at the expense of the humdrum regional services, unless there is a counter-power pushing back. In the present case, the Greens voted down the SNCF's proposed regional schedule, which will oblige them to revise it and present a new version, if I have understood correctly (the Greens, including Kohlhaas, are in coalition with the Socialists in the regional government, but voted with the right on this measure to defeat it... the Front National voted with the socialists).
The Rhone Alpes regional government (the French regions have very little power, sadly) has been at the forefront of rejuvenating regional networks, and its model has now been adopted in most regions; It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
There is no technological choice that cannot be made less sustainable by ill-advised policy decisions. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
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