Taking taxpayers for a ride california

Proposed state high-speed rail system would cost too much to do too little

There has been considerable discussion about the proposed California High Speed Rail project. California taxpayers are being subjected to grandiose claims about reduced traffic congestion and cost-effective alternatives to flying and driving.

The HSR system, which would connect Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento and areas in between, would require as a down payment a $10 billion bond issue that voters may consider as soon as November. The California High Speed Rail Authority says the system could cost much more – $37 billion. Reality is more like $75 billion.

Luckily, the Assembly last month passed a bill that would delay the bond election until 2008. That bill is now in the Senate Appropriations Committee, where there is no clear indication whether it will come to a vote anytime soon. However, there is evidence the Assembly's caution is justified, and the Senate should follow its lead.

First, the HSR system is likely to cost much more than advertised. Cost projections for large transportation projects are notoriously inaccurate. Boston's two-decade "Big Dig" racked up three times its projected cost, even after accounting for inflation. Across the country, transit megaprojects have escalated in cost after approval; these are not isolated cases.

What's more, it appears these overruns are not accidental. Research by Bengt Flyvbjerg of the University of Aarlborg (Denmark) published in the Journal of the American Planning Association demonstrates these projects routinely surpass estimated costs due to "strategic misrepresentation." Planners and proponents underestimate costs in hopes of obtaining project approvals that would otherwise be impossible.

As a Los Angeles County transportation commissioner, I witnessed costs escalate for the Blue Line light rail from Los Angeles to Long Beach eventually exceeding three times original projections (inflation-adjusted). At no point did anyone seriously question the increases, because the taxpayers had already committed to the project. There was simply no incentive to keep costs down. Why should we expect the HSR project to be any different?

Flyvbjerg and others also have found that ridership estimates tend to be overstated. The Los Angeles Red Line subway even today carries less than one-half the ridership that was projected when we approved it.

Ridership is important because the California high-speed rail system is advertised as not needing its operations subsidized by taxpayers. But this claim is likely based on an overestimation of the ridership and an underestimation of the operating costs. Amtrak's high-speed Acela service between Washington, D.C., and New York City carries little more than one-tenth the passengers that proponents promise for the California system, despite serving a larger market. So it is likely taxpayers will need to keep their checkbooks open indefinitely to subsidize HSR operation.

All this would be irrelevant if we needed such a system. The California HSR has been touted as a strategy for reducing highway congestion. In fact, projections indicate that traffic congestion along the rail corridors will still increase 26 percent by 2020, even with the high-speed trains. Without them the increase by 2020 would be 31 percent.

Claims of reduced air traffic congestion are similarly flawed. Most air travel between the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California already avoids the busy San Francisco International and Los Angeles International airports, and their share of travel is declining. Planners delude themselves into believing HSR will take away half of air traffic volume. But last year Amtrak said its New York-to-Washington high-speed service lost ridership to stronger airline competition. Planners assume airlines will stand idly by as their customers jump on the train. In fact, airlines will compete, and compete hard.

Much has been made of HSR's purported cost-effectiveness, with claims that highway improvements would cost more than twice as much as the rail project. But the highway alternative would produce four times the congestion relief, making it twice as cost-effective, even without the inevitable cost escalations for high-speed rail.

Thus, for California, the question is not whether high-speed rail would be nice – it would be. The fundamental question is whether it is worth the tens of billions it could cost. At this point, there is every reason to believe this project would be, quite simply, a waste of money.

oped article by Wendell Cox http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/atoz/article_1179373.php