How Florida beat California to high speed rail

and the Iron Horse the Earth Shaker the fire breather which tramples down the hills which outruns the laggard winds which leaps over the rivers which grinds the rocks to powder and breaks down the gates of the mountain he too shall build an Empire and an epic putnam's magazine 1853 in the 19th century trains moved America the locomotives symbolized modernity and man's domination of nature it connected the east and west coast and helped settle the frontier and by 1916 rail accounted for 98 of inner city travel everything changed air travel and the personal automobile offering Travelers the convenience of point-to-point Mobility led to the decline of Passenger rail use but trains were still useful for hauling free the remaining passenger rail companies were going bankrupt so in 1970 Richard Nixon signed a bill that led to the creation of Amtrak a new publicly owned privately run company that was supposed to operate at a profit 14 years after Amtrak was created the Reagan Administration wanted to eliminate Federal subsidies Amtrak was created as I understand it as a two-year test to see if we could have a for-profit corporation and I'd say that the record of Amtrak 11 billion dollars later we're looking now at 8 billion for the next decade Congressional Democrats prevailed and the federal government continued providing subsidies the cost is getting substantially better and there's a consensus across the country even in the administration that the the federal assistance to um Amtrak has been going down there's more that's coming out of the fare box 1980s but then climbed right back up in the 1990s yet by the time Amtrak Joe was elected president the system was in financial trouble so Biden passed a trillion dollar infrastructure bill with 66 billion dollars earmarked for rail yet train enthusiasts want Washington to send billions more often sharing fantasy maps of a U.S high-speed Network that would rival Europe's but did we give up too quickly on private passenger rail can it still be commercially viable without massive subsidies in the Sunshine State one company is betting that it can under very specific conditions people have been talking about introducing passenger trains in Florida for a long time probably 20 years or more Mike renninger is the CEO of brightline trains the company is starting service between Miami and Orlando a trip that will take under three hours each way compared to riding Amtrak which takes 5 hours and 40 minutes in One Direction and 7 hours and 48 minutes in the other this is the first privately funded Inner City passenger rail system in this case Tree in more than a century Ben Deport is a senior vice president at brightline it's totally different than anything that you're familiar with whether it's with train travel or public bus travel unlike Amtrak service brightline's Florida train won't receive government subsidies and reininger is betting that he can turn a profit passenger rail he says makes commercial sense under specific conditions such as in this case by connecting two popular cities that are about 250 miles apart because 250 to 350 miles is too far to drive and too short to fly and when you introduce a train into distances that length you can approximate the time of flying significantly improve the time of driving and you can offer it at a price point that makes it an economic proposition the passengers we spoke to in the Miami station who traveled from Boca Raton said that the hour and 15 minute ride beats getting stuck in traffic it's just more convenient versus driving I mean traffic in Florida has become so bad trades faster it's comfortable you're passive you can read emails read a book let's do a podcast it's much much easier the Miami station is modern and sleek and the train is clean quiet and smooth with flexible seating arrangements brightline is also the southeast fastest train reaching speeds of 125 miles an hour between Miami and Orlando though significantly slower than High-Speed Rail in many parts of the world it beats the Region's Amtrak which tops out at 80 miles an hour in Florida so when brightline came to be we modernized the existing track we double tracked it in certain areas we improved 156 grade Crossings improved or enhanced 56 Bridges brightline save money by upgrading existing infrastructure and paying for permission to build new tracks adjacent to existing highways and traffic corridors the company also invested in real estate along the Route anticipating that the existence of its service will boost property values they took a clue from the Hong Kong mass transit Railway which from its start developed as a combination of real estate and transportation you know the train feeds the real estate the real estate helps the train Robert Poole is the director of Transportation policy at reason Foundation which publishes reason TV and reason magazine they're buying some adjacent land that was low use and adding real estate there too so it's a very it's a different business model Amtrak has never done anything like that so why can't the U.S have a network of high-speed trains similar to the ones crisscrossing Europe for one thing European rail depends heavily on taxpayer subsidies in the whole world we only know of two High-Speed Rail lines that claim to have covered their full cost the cost of building it and the ongoing cost from the fare box revenues that's the first tgv line in France from Paris to Lyon and the first one in Japan the tokaido line from Tokyo to Osaka the bottom line thing is massive subsidies both subsidies to build it and subsidies to operate the U.S hasn't developed High-Speed Rail in part because of its geography the most populous U.S cities are far more spread out than those in Europe and China so it's easier to fly for shorter distances cars and buses are more flexible and much cheaper to operate what America has is tremendous road infrastructure tremendous Freight rail infrastructure in the 50s large-scale Financial commitments were made to developing both of those assist and on the back of a brand new interstate highway system and fantastic American-made cars and cheap gas America became a place where we moved Freight by train and people by cars there has been one ambitious effort to build High-Speed Rail in the U.S in California but that project turned into something so foolish that it's almost a crime according to Quentin L Copp the former state senator who was crucial in rallying support for a 10 billion dollar Bond measure to build High-Speed Rail in the state he became a fierce opponent of the project when it ran out of money and the agency in charge he says broke its promises to voters the 520 mile Railway which has received more than 20 billion dollars in state and federal subsidies but after 15 years of construction they've only laid track for 170 Mile Stretch in the Central Valley Brian Kelly who took over as the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority in 2018 says that the project was initially mismanaged they got into construction at a sequence and they got into construction before the authority was ready as a result of that if you're trying to get into construction you've got a contractor mobilized to build but you're behind on right-of-way you haven't moved all the utilities then you're going to run into delays and costs the cost of the project has ballooned from 33 billion dollars to about 128 billion can you give us some reasons for why that number nearly quadrupled since the beginning of the project and I mean what is a 33 billion dollar cost estimate in 2008 which was 15 years ago was before any work was done none of the environmental work was done none of the design work was done it was an estimate based on paper according to the New York Times as of last year although the rail Authority was spending 1.8 million dollars daily the project wasn't even on track to be done by the end of the century Kelly suggests that wasn't enough to get construction going we need to spend about between 80 and 100 million a month you know more than 3 million a day but that's the pace we need to be on to get done on schedule as Governor Brown used to say you enjoy Martini on the train and you get there in about three hours it's a much better way to move so do Californians want to do that my answer is yes I hope their answer is yes the project climbed in price in part because its planners decided not to use existing traffic corridors or rails opting for a longer route with many more stops politicization that led to this really flawed plan that's costing way way more than if they followed I-5 and didn't have to do as much massive tunneling and the real estate acquisition in the endless litigations having defied hundreds and hundreds of farms in half and fight with them over condemning their land that has delayed things dramatically brightline is also building in California developing its own 218 Mile Rail Line running from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga which is on the outskirts of Los Angeles the company is betting that Travelers will opt to leave their cars at home and avoid airport hassle we acquired property in Victor Valley we acquired property in Las Vegas we have rights of way from the California and Nevada Departments of Transportation so we were able to do it without eminent domain reiniger says California's High-Speed Rail Project has to clear far more regulatory hurdles than brightline they have different environmental regulations that they're subject to and their system profile is just very different than the entrepreneurial private sector approach but unlike its Florida Line brightline West is not going to be a test of whether rail can be commercially viable because the company is banking on about three billion dollars in federal subsidies through Joe Biden's infrastructure investment and jobs act pool is skeptical it becomes far less of a business venture and much more of a we can do Grand things because we don't have to worry about what it costs and that's that's a gross oversimplification but there's a different kind of mentality made in America by Americans union labor true high-speed 200 miles an hour fully electric renewable use of power now if you check the box on every benefit that you can possibly bring to bear following on its success in Florida reiniger says brightline is looking for commercially viable rail corridors all over the country we're looking all around the country at 250 to 300 mile separated cities Portland Seattle is one that looks attractive to us Texas has you know has a number of them Dallas Houston Dallas San Antonio San Antonio Houston shall not he strengthen leagues Crush trees and Conquer enemies shall he not run from Ocean to Ocean and iron Mercury the Swift Herald of the state beautiful but bearing Terror swallowing the ground with fierceness and rage ah well it is a long way to the Epic of the Iron Horse in the 21st century autonomous vehicles are more likely to swallow the ground with fierceness and rage and to be capable of building an empire in an epic but brightline does represent a true test of whether there are narrow cases in which Travelers actually still value passenger rail enough to pay for it with their own money [Music] thank you

Channel: ReasonTV

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Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2023