High-speed rail subsidies for the purpose of decreasing emissions are a waste of taxpayer money. Private money isn’t being wasted—these high-speed trains couldn’t roll if they were limited to private funding sources, which are attendant to the bottom line.
Washington politicians serve billions of dollars in pork to rail interests, including foreign railway manufacturers. These real estate interests balloon in value from new train stations, casinos that get new business from subsidized travel, and fat-cat unions that cut nonunionized workers out of sweetheart jobs.
The special interests and corrupt politicians who serve them ride the waves of public hysteria, looking for the next opportunity to cash in with subsidies to their supporters and constituencies. The American government is treated as a feeding trough on credit for “me and my friends” rather than as a vehicle for advancing the country and our ideals of democracy, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Regardless of whether one thinks climate change merits the contortions that government imposes on citizens, high-speed rail interests are abusing the concept to justify billions of taxpayer dollars that will soon line their pockets. They care less for the environment than for how fake environmentalism can be leveraged to balloon their profit margins.
Those offsets are usually cheap—from 50 cents to $5 per one-way trip—depending on the mode of transport. They go to nonprofits that plant trees, for example, that, in sum, bring the carbon footprint of air and motor travel to zero.
The long history of inefficient passenger rail projects is rarely acknowledged by proponents of the latest big infrastructure money to be spent by the federal government. The lack of riders on all that new steel, aluminum, and concrete won’t decrease but increase emissions after all the carbon dioxide from manufacturing processes is tallied.
Natural habitats and ecosystems will be permanently destroyed in the process of building the massive concrete and steel elevated tracks on which high-speed trains travel. Every ton of cement and steel produces 0.93 and 1.85 tons of carbon dioxide, respectively.
Neither is the fact acknowledged that big climate spending by the United States to decrease its own emissions has almost no effect on the world’s biggest emitters, including most prominently China.
China’s mature high-speed rail industry will benefit from more high-speed rail demand on a global level. As global companies supply new U.S. demand, they will help ignite the high-speed rail craze globally, which will be served by China’s companies. That profit will help Beijing fund its military, which is gearing up for war with Taiwan, the United States, and our allies.
Instead of producing a navy capable of deterring China from an environmentally disastrous war, we are producing rail cars that will move the few passengers who can afford them a few minutes more quickly to the gambling dens of Las Vegas from Los Angeles.
A bigger waste of taxpayer money is hard to imagine. The ludicrous nature of federal rail subsidies in the context of unsustainable federal debt and increasing international insecurity should be clear to all.
For those who do believe in the urgency of climate change and government action to fix the problem, consider the far cheaper alternative, which relies entirely on the free market: existing forms of transport with a carbon offset.
The fastest carbon-free travel is by plane. A 1-hour, 25-minute flight at the same time between the same cities is only $54 plus an offset of $2.70.
Compare this to the more expensive and slower option of train travel. The regional train takes 3 hours, 29 minutes, and costs $82. The Acela high-speed train is $121 and just 31 minutes faster. The offset for a train is more than that for the bus, at 61 cents.
New high-speed rail will never compete with the bus for price or the plane for speed. The so-called green benefits of train travel are negligible and can be zeroed out with cheap offsets purchased in combination with existing bus and air options. New high-speed train offsets would be even higher than 61 cents, considering they are for new construction with all its emissions.
It makes no sense for an economic, environmental, or time-conscious traveler to throw good money after bad by building more rail infrastructure. It makes sense only from a special interest perspective.
Thus, American voters should insist that their elected representatives stop their specious environmentalism and waste of taxpayer money for new train subsidies. They achieve only further contortions of the free market and deeper holes in federal debt.
