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Spain’s High-Speed Rail Offers Guideposts for U.S.
Victoria Burnett, New York Times
LLEIDA, Spain — When President Obama announced in April his $13 billion plan to propel the United States into the age of high-speed rail, he tipped his hat to the trains that zip between the cities of the Old Continent at up to 217 miles an hour.
Spain, an enthusiastic latecomer to high-speed rail, on Friday will complete a six-day tour of European transit systems that it presented to the American transportation secretary, Ray H. LaHood. Officials say the Spanish experience could hold lessons in what works and what does not.
Spain opened its first Alta Velocidad Española, or AVE, high-speed train route in 1992, between Madrid and Seville. The network has grown to nearly 2,000 kilometers and stretches from Malaga on the south coast to Barcelona, which is north and east.
Supporters say the AVE has begun to transform the country, binding remote and sometimes restive regions to Madrid and leading traditionally homebound Spaniards to move around for work or leisure.
“Spaniards have rediscovered the train,” said Iñaki Barrón de Angoiti, director of high-speed rail at the International Union of Railways in Paris. “The AVE has changed the way people live, the way they do business. Spaniards don’t move around a lot, but the AVE is even changing that.”
… Such benefits, however, come with a huge price tag. By 2020, Spain plans to spend close to 100 billion euros on infrastructure and billions more on trains. That figure could give pause to places like California, a potential high-speed corridor whose area and population are about four-fifths the size of Spain’s.
“High-speed rail is good for society and it’s good for the environment, but it’s not a profitable business,” said Mr. Barrón of the International Union of Railways. He reckons that only two routes in the world — between Tokyo and Osaka, and between Paris and Lyon, France — have broken even.
(29 May 2009)
Interview: Nancy Kete on the Future of the American Transportation System
Sarah Kuck, WorldChanging
Nancy Kete, a program director at the World Resources Institute, knows that in order to create the bright green cities of tomorrow, we must reimagine how we move about and in between them today. For decades, heavy reliance on the automobile has shaped cities globally, but arguably most dramatically in the United States. To reverse this trend and its harmful side effects, we need a new vision of transportation that will work both for those already entrenched within this system and for those who are seeking to replicate it.
… Kete, who is a senior fellow and program director at EMBARQ, recently spoke out about the Obama administration’s plan to dedicate billions of stimulus dollars to constructing high speed rail. Kete warns that high speed rail is not a silver bullet solution, and urges the administration to proceed with caution, careful planning and a holistic solution that reflects regional needs. I recently spoke with Kete to discuss this and other issues surrounding the future of transportation in the United States.
… SK: A few weeks ago, you commented on the Obama administration’s plan for High Speed Rail. What do you think the future of high-speed rail should look like in the United States?
NK: The answer is, it depends. One of the issues is that our cities are farther apart than in Europe or Japan, where the high-speed rail has worked really well.
So we have to be careful as we use the stimulus money for high speed rail to put it on corridors where there are enough passengers to justify all that embedded carbon. It will be very carbon intensive to build the rail and the trains. If they go often and they’re full, then it’s good. But a train running empty between Chicago and Minneapolis would be a worse outcome than a car in a carpool lane with a couple people driving.
But that said, air travel itself is very carbon intensive. We need to carefully pick the corridors that are shortest ones or the ones that are likely to have the highest demand. There are some less carbon intensive ways to connect our cities. You can do that with high speed bus, but if you really want to use high speed rail to connect people faster even than bus could, you would want to concentrate on cities that are reasonably close together to make sure you are going to have the demand for it. And you are going to have to make driving alone or driving more expensive, make it reflect the environmental and infrastructure costs of supporting the driving economy.
SK: What advice would you give the Obama administration?
NK: Do some really careful demand estimations for each corridor, and start with the corridors where there is a certain density, and a high demand for something other than driving and flying. Prove out the concept with truly high speed rail, and then as people see the benefit of it, the demand for it in other places might increase.
(2 June 2009)
Bike Messenger
David Byrne, New York Times
Pedaling Revolution:
How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities
By Jeff Mapes
228 pp. Oregon State University Press. Paper, $19.95
Full disclosure: I’ve ridden a bike around New York as my principal means of transport for 30 years, so I’m inclined to sympathize with the idea that a cycling revolution is upon us, and that it’s a good thing. Like Jeff Mapes, the author of “Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities,” I’ve watched the streets fill over the years with more and varied bike riders. It’s no longer just me, some food delivery guys and a posse of reckless messengers. Far from it.
That said, the revolution isn’t here just yet. Hedge fund managers and General Motors executives aren’t riding to work (though don’t laugh, they will), and this book is not likely to reach beyond the already converted, which includes me, other cycling advocates, and people in the city-planning and transportation universe. But the book is useful — for those of us who occasionally find ourselves on the defensive, Mapes provides names, dates, facts and figures. He details how cities from Amsterdam to Paris to New York to Davis, Calif., have developed policies encouraging cycling in recent decades, and how other towns are just beginning to make way for bikes. He lays out in an easily digestible way a fair amount of material on trip patterns, traffic safety and air pollution.
(28 May 2009)
South east queensland’s transport system in the peak oil and climate change era
video, various presenters
On 19 May Engineers Australia hosted a seminar on South East Queensland’s Transport System in the Peak Oil and Climate Change Era. The speakers included:
– Professor Peter Newman, Curtin University
– Stuart McCarthy, ASPO-Australia
– Arthur Stamatoudis, Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads
– Barry Broe, Brisbane City Council
– Tony Ramsden, Queensland Rail
– Tristan Peach, Community Action for Sustainable Transport
Video of the event can be viewed here (http://eaq.mediavisionz.com.au/090519-p28a/fHI.htm) and here (http://eaq.mediavisionz.com.au/090519-p28b/fHI.htm).
(19 May 2009)
