Written by Holly Teeters
If there’s one thing the war in Ukraine has revealed to regular citizens across the globe, it is that dependence on oil is entirely too expensive. As of early April 2022, the average price per gallon of gasoline in the United States is $4.51, generating outcry from many around the country. While that price is certainly nothing to scoff at, gas prices (in US dollars) are $8.11 in the United Kingdom, $9.15 in Norway, and an astounding $10.89 in Hong Kong (“Gasoline Prices,” 2022). Environmentalists and economists alike have increasingly pushed for investing in transportation that hinges less on global oil markets, like intercity passenger rail, but powerful market forces and political polarization have nulled these efforts. How successful can rail be in a world that politicizes any attempt to wean ourselves off oil?
High speed, light, metro, and intercity rail are commonplace abroad. China, Japan, and Western Europe all have significant rail infrastructure. In 2019, China’s high speed rail (HSR) ridership surpassed 2 billion (“Total Volume of Passengers,” 2019). In Spain, HSR between Madrid and Barcelona attracts passengers away from airplanes, even with comparable ticket prices; the ease of getting on a train outweighs the extra hour it takes to reach their destination (Rosenthal, 2010). By comparison, the US’s first bullet train attempt between San Francisco and Los Angeles has been halted due to geographical, political, and funding difficulties. Why can’t the US speed up?
The American public eye largely doesn’t view rail as a viable alternative to other methods of transportation. There’s no demand for rail in the less densely populated middle of the continent, and the highway system is deeply ingrained in the function of American markets and everyday life. As it currently stands, shifting away from automotive and oil dependence is functionally unrealistic.
Unfortunately, our existing transportation system has glaring drawbacks. Urban centers all over the world are burdened with automobile congestion, pollution, and accidents. Adding another highway lane has never fixed the rush-hour traffic Americans know all too well. What they may not know, however, is that this hyper dependence on oil was entirely intentional. When Henry Ford bought up and dismantled the city trolley system, he secured the highway system and Ford Motors as a mainstay of America’s transportation system. To this day the most popular car in America is the Ford F-150, a model that has the average American spending over $2,000 per year on gasoline (Smith et al., 2021). Over a 40-year career with a 25.7-minute commute to work, the average American spends 80 thousand dollars on gas and wastes over 38 thousand of those dollars idling in traffic (Dorger, 2019; “Traffic Jammed”, n.d.) . The automotive industry is certainly not profitable for the average American consumer, and yet rail as an alternative remains heavily criticized.
Given our deeply ingrained gas and automotive market, it is not surprising that American politics have created insurmountable barriers to funding rail transport. In 2021 alone, the automotive industry spent over 70 million dollars on lobbying efforts, a modern-day testament to the powerful market Ford created 100 years ago. Similarly, the airline industry spent just under 24 million on lobbying in the same year, as HSR is most logical connecting cities with popular flight routes (“Automotive,” 2021). With such powerful forces influencing policy, it would take an enormous effort to garner support for expansive rail projects, such as HSR.
Citizens and policymakers may be able to rally behind one undeniable reward of investing in rail: the long-term environmental benefit. France’s HSR line, the “LGV Mediterranée,” allowed the country to avoid 238,000 tons of emissions by attracting previous airplane and car users, and only emits 11 g of CO2 per passenger km. This is incredibly energy efficient; along that same stretch in France, cars emit 152 g of CO2 per passenger km, and airplanes emit 164 g (Baron et al., 2011). Reflecting back on how much money and gasoline is lost idling in traffic, investing more into R&D for rail appears obligatory.
Fortunately, the recent Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has supplied the Federal Railroad Administration with 102 billion dollars in total rail funding (“Bipartisan Infrastructure Law”, 2022). How is the funding best spent to achieve both equity and environmental goals? The northeast corridor, connecting Boston to D.C. by Amtrack, hopes to see the investment of these funds decrease total travel time by around one hour (Zukowski, 2021). While this is a great feat, it likely won’t decrease travel emissions between cities on the scale of the LVG in France.
In terms of emission reduction within cities, some argue that expanding existing intercity lines in higher-income areas would reduce total CO2 emissions more than investing in lower-income areas (Rodier et al., 2015). This is because a greater proportion of people in high-income neighborhoods drive regularly, so attracting high-income ridership would result in a greater reduction of CO2 emissions per person. Low-income neighborhoods already have a high rate of public transit usage – improving rail services in these areas would have a lower marginal benefit on ridership and carbon reduction. Despite this, many high earners may opt to continue driving, so this logic doesn’t translate so effectively in reality. More importantly, because low-income communities rely more on public transit to access career and educational opportunities, policymakers should prioritize making rail lines more efficient for those that use them most.
Some are concerned with rail expansion raising housing prices and the potential for gentrification. Improved passenger rail in low-income neighborhoods may provide incentives for landlords to raise the cost of housing because affordable and efficient urban transportation is in high demand. This concern, however, has not been substantiated by economic studies – existing social dynamics and the built environment are more likely to be indicators of housing affordability than transit-oriented development (Padiero, 2019).
A final argument against investing in rail is that it is unprofitable, but despite this common rhetoric, the economic effect of rail is largely understudied. Recent studies of popular HSR lines have found inconclusive effects on economic growth for connected cities. A study of the Madrid-Barcelona Corridor showed significant evidence of increased economic output and labor productivity in provinces connected by the line, yet it is difficult to confirm whether this was new economic growth or simply the relocation of existing firms into the connected cities (Carbo et al., 2018). Furthermore, research on a study of the Shinkansen Network in Japan showed that the famous HSR line did not increase the employment rate or labor force numbers, but did increase equal access to education for the younger generation (Rungskunroch, 2021).
Given the significant emission reductions, improved access to education and social mobility, and high demand for effective rail transportation, it is in the United States’ interest to thoughtfully execute a rail expansion in major cities. While new HSR lines would dramatically decrease travel emissions, they may not be politically viable in the immediate future. Thus, the US should focus on expanding and improving existing rail with speed, emission reductions, and socioeconomic effects in mind. The war in Ukraine has dramatically revealed the weakness of oil-dependent transportation. We need to look into the future, bite the bullet, and invest in rail.
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