The best work on why the US doesn’t have HSR is
New Departures by the political scientist Anthony Perl, which, coincidentally enough, I just finished reading last night. Long story short: rail’s basically a policy orphan in the United States and Canada. This is due in large part to the fact that our railways were private enterprises and our roads and airports public, and that rail was seen as a stagnant, declining mode. Furthermore, while Japan, France and Germany were able to renew their rail sectors by investing in new high-speed infrastructure, in the US we thought we could get away with running faster trains (namely
Metroliners) on existing infrastructure. Even if, on paper, the Metroliners were as good as or better than the old 0-Series Shinkansen sets, in practice they were severely hampered by the age of the infrastructure. Furthermore, infrastructure modernization—especially in Japan and France—went hand-in-hand with organizational modernization, which never happened here—our rail policy and operational culture carries a lot more baggage from the early twentieth century. It’s a fascinating book (if somewhat dry at times) and I highly recommend it.
Anyway, a lot of skepticism is to be expected—it’s still a comparatively new mode for the country, and shifting resources to HSR and just brining it into the political dialogue is a major break from the past (Perl’s book was written in 2002, when there was hardly any support for new intercity rail investments to speak of, especially compared to today), and it’s understandable that there’d be pushback. And one of the most pro-HSR members of the Republican caucus, Mica, is only reliable on wanting NEC improvements—but again, he’s a conservative and doesn’t want to strike out any new ground, so this is to be expected. And it’s a hell of a lot better than much of his caucus. Although much of the HSR antipathy is rooted in Boehner’s “hell no!” logic, the pushback’s probably something more than that.
I’d also say that at the local level things get less clear—North Carolina has been supporting their rail services for a while, back when they were at the redder end of purple. And Missouri—which I’d describe as purple trending red—has just put in this application. Combined with the support for extending light and commuter rail to suburban Dallas and Salt Lake City, I’d say that the relationship between political party and transportation policy breaks down to some degree at the local level. And from what I remember of one of those radical bills (can’t remember which, only saw it mentioned offhand somewhere) Amtrak’s existing operating subsidy wouldn’t be cut, since no one wants to be responsible for ending the train to Yazoo City or wherever.
Even though it doesn’t matter here—this is SSP, after all, and people come here to relax and kvetch—I’d say that in terms of broader advocacy equating Democrats as wonderful and pro-HSR and Republicans as awful and pro-HSR would be a bad stance—identifying policy initiatives too closely with parties makes the general public suspicious of them and dampens the eagerness of state and local politicians, making ground-level support for rail more difficult. I’d say Robert Cruickshank of the
California High Speed Rail Blog sometimes crosses this line, which is his right—it’s his blog, after all, even if he is involved with actual HSR advocacy—but is something which doesn’t make for good strategy in my opinion.
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