Mod note: Incorrect quoting corrected. All members, please use caution when using partial quoting.
goodnightjohnwayne wrote:It shouldn't come as a surprise that China has advanced so quickly with HSR, since China has also advanced very quickly with conventional railways, and factory workers travel home to rural China often have to wait days at a time at train stations due to a lack of conventional capacity. It's also worth noting that China also has a lot of highway infrastructure building and actually subsidizes gasoline to increase automobile sales. China's basically pursuing every transportation option simultaneously.
Two things to add:
1. Nearly all of China's politicians are businessmen, scientists, or engineers, whereas most US politicians are lawyers with some businessmen, and only like two or three engineers.
2. Take the US federal government spending on defense and infrastructure, flip the percentages, and that's China's priorities. Instead of spending $2b each on planes that have never been used in combat, they build an entire grade-separated subway line in one of their cities. Shanghai opened their first subway line in 1995, and in only 15 years already passed NYC and London with 12 lines, 269 stations, and 261 miles of track, with about another dozen lines currently under construction or planning.
The US spends about $700b every year on defense programs. With better oversight of programs, more careful deliberation of what projects to pursue, and elimination of a lot of the unnecessary programs, the savings there could more than pay for building Amtrak's proposal for the NEC as well as CAHSR and a Chicago-centric network by 2040. Even if you could manage a 2% reduction in defense spending, you'd now have $14b annually to allocate to HSR development: $4.7 to NEC, $4b to CAHSR and Chicago each, and $1.3b for other projects. Even a 1% reduction in defense spending could support the full Amtrak NEC HSR plan and CAHSR.
And if Amtrak were to form separate sub-companies*, such as Amtrak California, Amtrak Northeast, Amtrak Chicago to run each of the new HSR networks independently under the umbrella name of Amtrak, the profits of these services could then be used only in these regions. These three regions could definitely become profitable with sufficient HSR service, at least profitable enough to subsidize lower-traffic or commuter operations in their service area. For example, better NEC service might subsidize trains like the Vermonter, Downeaster, or (possible return of the) Cape Codder to act as feeder lines to draw more riders onto their core corridor lines.
With different sub-companies running each of Amtrak's core markets, the regular Amtrak would run the remaining cross-country service. Most of these trains are the ones that require several hundred dollars in subsidies per rider. Then a reasonable discourse could be had about Amtrak; as it would make it easier to demonstrate profitable markets and unprofitable markets. This would (hopefully) make it easier for Amtrak to shed their unprofitable routes and focus on creating HSR service in core markets where they can at worse break even, and at best profit.
At the same time, Amtrak needs to look into creating new and viable funding sources to support the service, especially ones that include joint public-private support. Perhaps a tax-increment districts can be set up around the HSR stations, where the difference in taxes from property values (within a set radius) before and after the introduction of the HSR service can be used to fund the construction of that station. For example, if the value of a property was valued at $X before HSR service, but after HSR service was valued at $(X+Y), then the taxes from the increase of $Y would be allocated towards the construction bond repayment.
Another option is to greatly relax zoning requirements around HSR stations if new developments in that area fund HSR service. For example, if a company wants to build a new satellite branch of their offices near one of the suburban HSR stations to take advantage of cheaper real estate prices, if they (partially) fund the costs of the local station they can be relieved of maximum building heights and minimum parking requirements. OR, zoning requirements could be preemptively relaxed in HSR station-development-zones with significantly higher max building heights, maximum parking (instead of minimum parking) requirements, and tax incentives to locate there. By using either of these methods, development will concentrate around HSR stations, thus making it easier for people to avoid the "last mile problem" of using high-speed rail or public transit.
The only known thing right now is that if Amtrak retains the status quo, it will always require government subsidies. The only way Amtrak could fix itself is to focus on improving speed, capacity, reliability, and ridership in core markets and shed operations elsewhere. Who knows, if these Amtrak sub-companies can demonstrate profitability status, maybe they could even be (semi)privatized again, much like the joint public-private nature of nearly all foreign HSR companies?
Yes, this Amtrak plan is a long shot, but instead of negative pessimism, we should be breaking down this project into manageable sub-projects and asking ourselves what would it take to realize each of these goals?
* Perhaps to highlight the differences between these sub-companies and the original Amtrak, the name Amtrak could be dropped altogether in favor of a new name. Maybe even something like Acela Rail Corporation, so you'd have Acela Rail Northeast, Acela Rail California, Acela Rail Midwest, etc. This is just one idea; renaming and branding the Amtrak sub-companies is something for people smarter than me in marketing and branding to do.
