Americans Favor High Speed Trains

HNTB, the consulting company CHSRA has hired to conduct the project-level EIR/EIS in the SF peninsula, has commissioned a national survey to get a set of baseline data about how US consumers perceive high speed rail now that oil prices have come back down.

Remarkably for a country with passenger service that is patchy and slow by international standards, more than half of Americans (54%) would choose modern high-speed trains over automobile (33%) and air travel (13%) if fares and travel time were about the same. [Respondents were] most excited by the possibility of more convenient travel (71%), less expensive fares (69%) and faster trains (55%) with the introduction of high-speed rail in their region.

There was a clear split between respondents who had had an opportunity to ride high speed rail trains before and those who had not. The experience gap was 28% for the fraction who would prefer to ride a train to next city and 13% for business travelers who expected to be more productive on a high speed train trip. It's not immediately clear if those expectations were influenced by the fact that WiFi on board is already available on Thalys and TGV Est in Europe.



An overwhelming majority of high-speed train travelers (82%) found it more enjoyable than plane travel. Among those who had not experienced HSR yet, the idea still appealed to 22%, while 69% responded they would still prefer to drive to the closest large city. About half of all respondents expected such trains would permit convenient travel to cities up to 400 miles away, in line with industry experts who consider 100-400 miles or 1-3 hours of travel to be the sweet spot.

The survey also showed that fewer than 3 in 10 felt they understood the environmental impact of high speed vs. traditional rail service. Of course, "environmental" can mean the impact on global warming to one person and the impact to their property to another. In this case, it appears the survey questions emphasized the dispersed benefits to the population at large, e.g. fuel efficiency and carbon footprint, rather than the changes felt most acutely by those living and/or working in close proximity to a high speed line.

The gist of the survey is that a majority of Americans perceive high speed rail as an option they would like to have. While the poll did not include the question, chances are that this same majority also approves of the strategic investment Congress has embarked on at the urging of the Obama administration. The survey also didn't ask if they considered the federal funds allocated so far - $9.5 billion - too much, about right or just a down payment.

The most recent annual "Infrastructure Report Card" compiled by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave barely passing grades for virtually every type of infrastructure. Rail actually got a C-, but Transit earned a D, like most other categies. Granted, ASCE does have a vested interest in drumming up business for its members and, its $2.2 trillion price tag reflects the cost of getting everything to an A or at least a B. It's a lot of money - about four times the annual Pentagon budget.

However, the HSR survey suggests that the US electorate is far more willing to invest in civilian infrastructure worth having than lawmakers may realize. For the moment at least, the experience of two costly foreign wars, $4+ gasoline plus the mortgage bubble bursting because no-one in Washington was minding the financial store has concentrated minds on the need for not just repairs but new alternatives to oil-centric transportation. That is why it was so important for President Obama to seize on HSR as one example of how the US can rise again from the ashes of the bonfire of its vanities in real estate. Observers around the nation and in other countries will be watching California as it does the heavy lifting of planning and constructing the first brand-new bullet train network in North America.