Is high-speed rail cool? Sure. Will it provide stimulus? Some. Is it something that deficit hawks should reflexively oppose? No.

Pursuing a new national rail policy and investing in high-speed and higher-speed rail does not mean we are somehow anti-highway, anti-aviation, or fiscally irresponsible. The reality is that rail makes sense in some places and does not in others.

• The Need. James Corless is correct that many densely populated metropolitan regions today will continue to grow and have little room and/or political will to add new roads and airport runways. If not rail, what are the practical solutions for adding capacity in the future? Rail offers both the promise of new capacity and better utilizing the capacity we have.
• The Money. Reducing the national debt and putting in place a more sustainable fiscal policy is certainly required; as Patrick Natale and ASCE have documented, however, it will do the nation little good to tackle the debt and deficits only to leave subsequent generations with an infrastructure deficit that will inhibit economic growth and offer a lower quality of life. The fact is we need to be fiscally responsible and revitalize our infrastructure. The task is to find the best transportation solutions for the money.

Removing the heated rhetoric, then, the real issue is whether or not dedicated high-speed rail as well as shared track, higher-speed rail can and should play important roles in our transportation system of the future.

As today’s metropolitan regions continue to expand and consolidate into the so-called megaregions that Petra Todorovich discussed, having the option of interconnecting downtowns, business centers and airports through the use of previously unavailable passenger rail solutions does hold a great deal of promise. How much promise? One study “ACRP 31: Innovative Approaches to Addressing Aviation Capacity Issues in Coastal Megaregions” provides some tentative answers and is available on-line from the Transportation Research Board. It makes clear that our nation’s modally stove-piped planning and policymaking have inhibited not only system solutions, but have resulted in suboptimal modal policies for aviation, highways and transit as well. It has done this by ignoring the positive synergies available by better using roads, transit, rail and runways in integrated and intermodal ways. Going forward, it recommends that we refocus our planning and policies to be more multimodal and intermodal, enhancing our abilities to meet the needs of passengers, shippers and communities.

Today, I’m familiar with comprehensive planning taking place in the New York, San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California regions. In each of these regions analysts and planners are comprehensively and analytically examining the potential for rail to play a part in meeting passenger and shipper needs into the future. Just one example helps make the point. For airports such as LAX and SFO, which will likely face severe capacity constraints, high-speed rail offers the potential to off-load intrastate O&D traffic in favor of transcontinental and international flights. That tradeoff makes sense since it is unlikely that either airport will be expanded and even neighboring other commercial service airports likely will be capacity constrained themselves in a decade or two.

It has been refreshing to participate in some of these planning efforts; they stand in sharp contrast to the narrow thinking and 100% certainty by which many modal advocates have unfortunately approached the issue.

The best decisions will be made by those who consider all factors when deciding among alternatives. Emil Frankel cited one very good template. However they are done that should include weighing the benefits of mobility and economic competitiveness against the financial and other costs of constructing and operating infrastructure. What is very clear is that in order for the best decisions to be made, we need to get out of our modal biases and set our minds to meeting the needs of users, the greater communities, and the nation.

Politics and demagoguery keep trumping job creation. The latest episode has the newly elected chief executives of Ohio and Wisconsin sending jobs out of their states to score political points while so many of their constituents continue to suffer in a chronic state of joblessness.

With November’s jobless report showing about 1 in 10 Americans still out of work (that number grows significantly when you factor in the under-employed), it is baffling at best that two governors would be willing to shutter job-creating investments in their passenger rail systems. Yes, investments that are already paid for. Yes, investments that would have provided residents of these two states 30,000 good jobs. Bizarre for sure.

If you believe the pundits and politicians, the fall elections were about the faltering economy and the depressed job market. I’m not sure you can add jobs by subtraction. And to no one’s surprise, the $1.195 billion dollars rejected by Ohio and Wisconsin is being distributed to 13 other states that understand you add jobs by addition. How can anyone elected to lead in this tough and painful economic era openly say no to initiatives that put their constituents to work? We wonder if voters in Wisconsin and Ohio are already feeling buyers’ remorse.

Two bills introduced in Congress just prior to the Thanksgiving holiday (H.R. 6403 and H.R. 6408) would make the situation worse by redirecting high speed rail and other stimulus funds back to the U.S. Treasury. Instead of giving the high speed rail grants to other states where they can be put to work, certain Members of Congress want to cancel these high speed rail funds altogether and the jobs they create. This supposed ideological purity is reckless and destructive to the nearly 15 million Americans who remain unemployed.

Thankfully, the DOT redirected the high speed rail grants to states that are serious about creating jobs and embracing progress in our faltering transportation system. This means the people who need to pay their bills and put food on the table will do that work thanks to high speed rail development, but just not in Wisconsin or Ohio.

High speed rail is not only cool, but a responsible investment in our future global competitiveness and improved quality of life.

HSR is the most viable way to build new transportation capacity – cheaper and more feasible than highway or airport expansion. HSR can reduce congestion in air travel by eliminating need for many short-haul flights such as Chicago-St. Louis, Seattle-Portland, Charlotte-DC, DC-New York, among others. HSR is an efficient use of space and energy resources, running on electricity (including renewable) as opposed to foreign oil. American companies are falling behind, and American workers are less productive by being stuck on congested highways and airports. Furthermore, the jobs themselves created from HSR development are good, family-wage, domestic, un-outsource-able jobs, which could reignite American manufacturing in this country. Redundant transportation options (road, air, rail) are important for mobility in bad weather, which helps our country be resilient against terrorist attacks on one mode and helps evacuations from storms, catastrophes, etc.

HSR is needed today, but more importantly it is needed tomorrow. HSR lays the groundwork (literally) to accommodate future explosive population growth in mega regions. HSR provides clear benefits to the country, so Congress should fund it adequately. The absence of federal funding for rail and the long-standing, consistent federal funding for highways and airports skews States’ investment decisions towards rail. The government and the public need to be patient and understand this is a long-term infrastructure investment – the HSR program was born in the stimulus bill as part of the “reinvestment” side of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act. Benefits will grow over time. Wisconsin and Ohio are the exception, not the rule. Every other state is eagerly progressing with projects and folks were lining up to take WI and OH’s funding.

"High-Speed Rail" (HSR) has, unfortunately, become a highly contentious, partisan, and ideological issue, the discussion of which has sometimes distracted us from a broader and critical consideration of how and where we should invest scarce federal resource in the nation's transportation system. Those investments should be made with the purpose of achieving the greatest returns and benefits, in terms of clearly defined national goals.

Most people would agree that there are certain places and certain circumstances, in which investments in improved, frequent, regular, and reliable intercity passenger rail service (the real policy goal, since there are few locations, in which we will be able to achieve an American version of "bullet trains") will bring both short-term and long-term national economic, energy, and environmental benefits. Our goal, then, should be to enhance the capacity of the national government, that is, of Congress and the Executive Branch, in partnership, to make wise investment decisions. Sometimes and in some places that will mean investing in intercity passenger rail projects and programs. the questions are where and when.

In its June 2009 report, "Performance Driven: A New Vision for U.S. Transportation Policy," the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP) proposed that a mode-neutral competitive "connectivity" grant program be established. Under such a program, intercity passenger rail projects would be eligible for federal support on the basis of projected performance toward a suite of national goals. If, on a comparative basis, such projects demonstrated significantly greater benefits (economic and otherwise), they should receive federal investment. However, if there are competing projects or modes that show greater returns, then scarce federal capital resources should be directed to them. The bottom line is that there should be analyses of what we are getting for our money.

The best intercity passenger rail projects will be "win-win" investments, that is, they will both produce long-term national economic benefits and create jobs in the short- and intermediate-terms. Although it was a commuter, not an intercity passenger, rail project, the trans-Hudson River tunnel (Access to the Region's Core or ARC) project, recently terminated by Governor Christie of New Jersey, was such a win-win project. (This is not to argue that the financing structure, the allocation of the funding, and/or the engineering design of the ARC project was appropriate. Those are interesting questions, in their own rights, best left for another day. However, it does appear that both the short- and long-term economic benefits of this project were very considerable.)

In a time of scarce resources, projects and programs need to be evaluated and analyzed on a competitive and case-by-case basis, and investments should be made only in those intercity passenger rail projects that can meet both short- and long-term national goals.

I find it baffling that many of my Republican colleagues are turning against high-speed rail projects at a time when our country desperately needs to invest in rebuilding and renewing the foundation of our economic prosperity: our infrastructure.

There is broad agreement among economists that, dollar for dollar, money invested in transportation and infrastructure projects does more to create jobs than cutting taxes. While it may be politically convenient to point to the timeframe required for major infrastructure projects like high speed rail as “taking too long,” the promise of increased investment, an anchor for community development and additional transportation options are enough to spur economic growth – long before a rail line is finished. That’s why we are already seeing an upsurge in economic development in areas where high speed rail projects are planned.

High-speed rail isn’t just about the jobs that the construction and operation of new lines will create; it is about offering certainty to communities and investors, allowing them to plan ahead for the economic activity that will be created by new projects. Already, economists are estimating that the $8 billion the United States is investing in high speed rail will generate another $19 billion in new business around major cluster points in Florida, California and the Midwest.

Newly-elected governors who are shutting down high-speed rail projects in their states are shooting economic growth and job creation in the foot. The rail line now opposed by Governor-elect Scott Walker in Wisconsin, for instance, had been projected to create at least 4,500 new jobs; the Ohio line opposed by Governor-elect John Kasich would likely create at least 8,000 jobs. This is not a theoretical debate: this bizarre opposition to rebuilding and renewing our country’s infrastructure will cost us jobs and threaten our economic competitiveness.

If there is any silver lining to these poor decisions by some of our country’s newest elected officials, it is that other states may ultimately receive these unclaimed transportation funds. The Pacific Northwest, including my home state of Oregon where a planned renovation of Union Station in Portland is already encouraging investment in the surrounding neighborhood, will receive an additional $163 million thanks to Mr. Walker and Mr. Kasich, along with the jobs and growth that come with it. On behalf of our region, thank you!

Here is a comment from William S. Lind, Director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation (www.amconmag.com/cpt) and co-author, with the late Paul Weyrich, of Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation

“High-speed rail” has regrettably become a weapon in the hands of those who, like Governors-elect Walker and Kasich, oppose all passenger rail. In effect, they are saying to the public, “Unless it is real high-speed rail, we don’t want passenger rail at all.” The public, which has no idea how much true hi-speed rail costs, goes along with the argument.

What America needs is a much more extensive and intensive network of regular passenger trains. Every country that has built high-speed rail has that. Without such a system, high-speed rail is icing without a cake.

Advocates of a balanced transportation system need to make the case for passenger rail. It only needs to be fast enough to compete with automobile, not the airplane. But we need far more of it. Our focus should be incorporating the construction of a truly national passenger train into the next TEA bill. The fact that it would serve the whole country, not just a few corridors, makes it saleable to the Congress.

But the starting point needs to be DOT. Will the administration propose a TEA bill that includes building such a system? If not, why not? The answer, I fear, is that while the Obama administration says lots of nice things about transportation alternatives, the whole subject is low on their priorities list. Don’t blame conservatives in Congress for everything; the liberals in the White House are at least half the problem.

Aviation and roads offer services that are more convenient, cheaper and (door-to-door) generally faster. Road transport is particularly convenient at being able to reach closer to the origins and destinations of most trips.

There is much misinformation on the capacity of transport modes. Andy Kunz asserts that “a single high speed rail line can carry the equivalent of a 10-lane freeway”. But one freeway lane can carry over 1,800 fifty-seat buses an hour. Six hundred such buses could carry 30,000 seated passengers an hour while occupying only one third of the capacity of one lane. How many seated passengers an hour can be carried on a High-Speed rail line, which requires each train to travel on dedicated right-of-way with miles of empty space in front of it?

The US has a long “user pays” tradition for transport infrastructure. If high-speed rail is so necessary, why do not those who want it offer to pay for it? Why should the cost be borne by a federal government that has run out of other people’s money to spend?

Secretary LaHood and the Obama administration are right to move ahead with high-speed rail and prioritize funding for states with the strongest support. Many states were more than happy to receive the funding and opportunity that the incoming governors of Ohio and Wisconsin chose to brush aside. Illinoisans, for instance, are excited about their proposed line from Iowa City to Chicago. The newly available funds will expedite a project that boosts travel between population centers and revitalizes smaller towns along the way.

While Ohio and Wisconsin are moving away from rail investment, other states tell a different story. California Governor-elect Jerry Brown won a resounding victory as a strong rail advocate, two years after Californians approved a bond measure for the state’s tracks. The Republican governors-elect of Iowa and Florida are so far non-committal, but have indicated strong receptivity to moving forward. In Michigan, Tea Party-backed Congressman-elect Tim Walberg vowed to support his state’s project, and while incoming House transportation committee chair John Mica has been critical of some routes, he remains a rail supporter.

The argument that funding these projects gets in the way of a new transportation bill completely misses the point. Without new and viable options for long-distance travel, crumbling infrastructure and traffic gridlock will persist and worsen. One of the best ways to maintain our existing roads and highways, reduce congestion and grow the economy is to increase people’s options. Our existing transportation network made sense for the 1950s, but is woefully outdated for the 21st century.

In our bipartisan polling, 59 percent said “we need to improve public transportation, including trains and buses,” as a strategy for traffic congestion. The American people know our transportation system needs an overhaul, and we will continue to support high-speed rail for appropriate corridors as a crucial piece of the puzzle.

The recent opposition to high speed rail generally focuses on the potential long-term impact to state budgets. During these tough economic times, we need to appreciate the pressures on lawmakers to avoid building another transportation system that detractors claim may require operating subsidies for many years. The challenge is to explain how a limited state investment in high speed rail will yield an influx of federal and private sector investment and to identify creative financing options to attract private investment and limit the risk to taxpayers of continued subsidies for operating and maintenance costs.

The focus for the HSR community should be to persuade lawmakers that the benefits of these programs outweigh the costs, and that financing mechanisms can utilize private sector investments to adequately limit the risk to taxpayers of long-term operating and maintenance costs.

If we are successful in this, the U.S. will benefit from the real benefits of high speed rail supporters:

· An investment in high-speed rail is an economic stimulus. Hundreds of thousands of construction and other related jobs will be created in the near-term by funding high-speed rail. It is true that the systems being funded are not “shovel-ready” tomorrow since they will need to complete all the engineering and in some cases the environmental clearances. However we are talking a matter of months in the cases of Florida and California and some others. In fact, Florida has identified an early works program to start construction on some projects prior to the completion of the final design of the system. These efforts include necessary work to prepare for the ultimate construction of the high-speed rail. California and Florida are on track to begin heavy construction on their programs by 2012. Other states are on similar tracks.

· The High-Speed rail program is a long-term transportation bill. Investment in high-speed rail is a fifty to one-hundred year investment in America’s future. Investment from this program will reap value and benefits for at least a century. We need only look at the long-term pay-off that America reaped in its land transfer to the railroads at the turn of the century and our investment in a national highway system in the 1950’s to see the real potential for long-term benefit.

· High-Speed Rail is an attractive idea AND it’s cool! We need high-speed rail first because it’s an appropriate, reasonable and cost-effective transportation alternative to improve our mobility, clean our air, improve our quality of life and put America back to work. First and foremost it’s a proven and tested superior transportation solution in markets with high-travel densities were the only option are short-haul air trips and medium auto trips between destinations of 200 and 600 miles, this has been proven for the last 40 years in Asia and Europe. It’s a cleaner and more fuelefficient alternative to driving and air. It will improve our quality of life be reducing the over 40,000 highway fatalities per year on American roads and reduce the thousands of hours wasted in traffic jams and airport delays. It will create hundreds of thousands of construction and permanent jobs and will be the foundation for creating a new manufacturing base in America.

The benefits are clear and the debate shouldn’t be whether or not to invest in high-speed rail but how to communicate that the benefits far outweigh the costs – and to seek financing mechanisms that will limit the risk to taxpayers in the future.

High-speed rail moves transportation policy in a new direction, and that makes all the established transportation interests – the highway lobby, road builders, automobile advocates, even the transit community – a little bit nervous as we circle around a steadily shrinking pie. But many of these same interests have agreed that after largely completing the Interstate Highway System, it’s time for a new vision for transportation in America. High-speed rail is the embodiment of that new vision and one that members of the younger generation and can really get behind.

So – why high-speed rail, and why now?

• There’s never been a better time to invest in infrastructure megaprojects, with record low interest rates, double-digit construction unemployment, and competitive contractor bidding.
• We need capacity in our most congested metropolitan regions and megaregions that power the nation’s economy. Electrified high-speed rail can provide that capacity without relying on transportation fuels that are getting more expensive and difficult to extract from the earth.
• High-speed rail works best serving densely populated regions and central business districts served by transit. These are also the places that are more energy-efficient to heat, cool, and access on foot, bicycle, electric car, or transit. So, high-speed rail is a vote of confidence in places that will help get our nation off foreign oil and reduce climate change, when planned in coordination with regional transportation strategies.
• High-speed rail is what unlocks the economic potential of megaregions by fostering agglomeration economies over larger areas. Put simply, high-speed rail makes business travel easier and more attractive, giving rise to more face-to-face meetings, collaboration, productivity, and job creation.
• High-speed rail around the world has impeccable safety records, leading to fewer highway deaths.

This is a long-term vision – about 40 years – to serve a nation that is growing in the same period by more than 100 million people. And high-speed rail doesn’t work everywhere. We should focus our investments first in places with the ridership that will help realize the promised benefits, and build on those successes to expand the program over time.

While this is a long term vision, it requires urgency to act and take advantage of a fortuitous time to build. Let's get started!

The transportation community generally likes to find opportunities to stand together so that we can be stronger as a lobbying force. This idea -- "the big tent" some call it -- was effective as long as we could count on 30-40% increases in funding for transportation every few years. But there's got to be a line drawn when billions of dollars are distributed for mega-projects that cannot survive even the most basic financial analysis. I believe the Governors of Wisconsin & Ohio did the right thing when they determined that these projects were not financially sustainable for their States and asked (in vain) for flexibility to use those funds for more pressing transportation needs.

As much as we seek opportunities to stand together whenever it makes sense, transporatation advocates are going to face a serious effort to cut waste in 2011. Congress will have to make choices about priorities and how to make the most of the money it has available. We will all be called to justify the costs & benefits & find lower cost alternatives to our projects and programs.

High Speed Rail as a general concept has been justified by the theory that "people want it", "people get it" and/or "there's no reason why we can't have it if other countries do." That justification simply isn't enough in a new era of fiscal responsibility.

When it comes down to it, we have to look at the total cost (Secretary LaHood has mentioned $500 billion but no one has seen the analysis), who will use it (if Acela is a case study: people who are wealthy & business travelers), who will pay (the average taxpayer), how many people will use it (far less than 1% of the travelers), and what are the alternatives (intercity buses, airplanes, vans & cars).

GAO, CBO, the DOT Inspector General, and other researchers need to look at these costs and help inform the Congress whether this is money well spent or if it should be allowed to be used for projects that serve more people at lower costs. If HSR on specific corridors truly meets an honest cost-benefit analysis, then those corridors should be funded. I suspect, however, that Mr. Pantuso's low-cost, less-sexy alternative of intercity bus corridors would decimate any HSR line both financially and environmentally.

Until the benefit/cost & alternatives studies are completed, Congress should place a moratorium on DOT's distribution of "down payments" for projects that may never be built.

APTA recently conducted a travel survey and found that nearly two-thirds of adults (62 percent) said they would definitely or probably use high-speed rail service for leisure or business travel if it were an option. In most political circles, garnering nearly two-thirds support for a forward-thinking vision like high-speed rail would be considered a landslide. At this critical time, we must keep our focus on the goal to provide the transportation options demanded by the traveling public and in doing so prime the pumps of America’s economic engines.

While high-speed rail projects in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio will not move forward at this time, it is encouraging that states such as California, Washington, Illinois and New York have pursued the redirected funds and will put them to good use. In fact, 13 corridors are moving forward, while only two have been deferred. These projects will produce new passenger rail networks that benefit the economy, create and maintain construction and manufacturing jobs, spur domestic business growth, and stimulate economic development in neighborhoods around the new stations.

Redirecting funding away from vital transportation projects with far-reaching benefits may result in marginal savings in the short term, however, the jobs and economic activity generated by HSIPR investments yield far more positive impacts on the economy in the long run. Reducing the national deficit is important, however, taxes collected from high-speed rail infrastructure construction and related projects will generate desperately needed state, local and federal tax revenues – breathing life into struggling economies and paying down the deficit while creating good paying jobs that improve the nation’s infrastructure.

Continuing to invest in high-speed rail ensures a good return on the taxpayer dollar because it addresses the critical forward-looking mobility needs of Americans by adding much needed capacity to our already overburdened transportation network, in doing so we will create hundreds of thousands of new forward-looking, clean-energy jobs in America.

Failing to invest in high-speed rail (HSR) may win a few political points today, but in the long run, it will only make traveling tomorrow that much more difficult. Today’s roads and airports are already congested and fuel to power cars and airplanes is already expensive. Without increased rail investment, population growth and energy concerns will choke the life out of our economy.

ASCE’s Report Card for America’s Infrastructure graded our nation’s rail infrastructure a C- and estimated that it would take $63 billion over the next five years to bring it up to a good condition. While that cost may seem high, $63 billion is not out of the question when you see it as an investment in our economy. A true HSR network may take decades to complete, but it will keep people working that whole time.

HSR is no different from any other category of infrastructure, the costs to build, fix or maintain are so high that we always find excuses not to invest. But this constant deferral is having very real consequences. Roads and bridges are unsafe and congested, airports are falling apart and our passenger rail system is almost non-existent. Around the world, goods, services and passengers are flowing on multi-modal systems, but continued success depends on improvements and investments being made. How long will it take our leaders to realize that failing to invest in infrastructure not only hurts our potential for economic competiveness in the future, but that it is already making an impact today?

Congress has to start taking a longer-term view of our future—the kind of long-term thinking that brought us the National Highway System and the Transcontinental Railroad. Appropriators can reapportion a few billion dollars now to feel good about protecting our fiscal health, but all they’re doing is making our future worse.

High-speed rail is not a game. It’s not a political football. High-speed rail is an opportunity to create jobs now and move America toward a transportation system that’s as innovative and far-thinking as our country, at its best, has always been.

In Milwaukee, Spanish high-speed rail builder Talgo had already set up shop, hired 160 people, and was looking to hire hundreds more when Wisconsin Governor-elect Scott Walker’s short-sighted and cynical decision to refuse $810 million for high-speed rail led Secretary LaHood to reallocate the money. Now Talgo is getting ready to move on. Traditionally conservative Wisconsin towns that had been celebrating the jobs and opportunity the planned line would bring them are devastated. High-speed rail may be a game for Walker and Ohio’s Gov-elect John Kasich and other politicians who cynically slash budgets and refuse hundreds of millions of dollars to score political points. For the ordinary Americans—who struggle every day andoverwhelmingly want more transportation options—it’s anything but. That’s why TEN Wisconsin affiliate WISDOM is fighting to overturn the governor’s decision.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t hard questions about how and where to invest in high-speed rail. Because TEN’s membership is rooted in a broad, diverse base of middle-class and working-class people, our priority is equity—transportation investments that give all Americans fair access to jobs, education, health care, and opportunity. When it comes to high-speed rail, that means making sure that: 1) high-speed rail is affordable for ordinary people, 2) it is integrated with existing city transit systems to multiply transportation options rather than restricting them, and 3) construction projects include community benefit agreements that give local workers fair access to the jobs created—especially low-income workers, women, and people of color.

Some people may have the luxury of treating the fate of billions of dollars of infrastructure investments as a game. Our members don’t, and neither does anyone who is serious about getting America moving again.

In 2000, the Republican Party Platform included the following statement: "Republicans support a healthy intercity passenger rail system, and where economically viable, the development of a national high-speed passenger railroad system as an instrument of economic development, and enhanced mobility."

Individual politicians may seek to turn high-speed rail – or anything else – into a political football; but that doesn’t make it a partisan issue. Intercity rail is fundamentally about connecting our nation and enhancing our common prospertity for the future. It should not be a politically divisive issue.

When the nation’s transportation infrastructure is crumbling and badly needs funding, why spend billions to fund high-speed rail corridors across the country when intercity buses are available today to provide the same services much less expensively?

Buses are ready to go anywhere there is pavement, and can be redeployed at a moment’s notice. They require no new tracks be laid down, and receive virtually no federal subsidies while offering the safest form of surface transportation, as well as the greenest.

Recent developments in Wisconsin provide a perfect case study of why to say “no” to spending money on high-speed rail that would cost billions and take years to complete.

Wisconsin Gov.-elect Scott Walker attempted to reject using federal funds slated for spending money on high-speed rail in his state, recognizing that several intercity bus companies already provide intercity service from, for example, Madison to Milwaukee, Milwaukee to Chicago and Milwaukee to Minneapolis. They do so efficiently, on-time, on-schedule, and at a fraction of the cost of high-speed rail.

Although high-speed passenger rail makes sense in certain corridors, duplicating existing bus service in city pairs around the country makes little sense when good bus service exists, or when the number of passengers is not fully optimized to ensure self-funding.

Elected officials in other states are also seeing the wasteful investment of tax dollars represented by proposed high-speed rail. Ohio Gov.-elect John Kasich also has rejected federal money for high-speed rail. It makes more sense for Congress to take the money allocated for high-speed real and invest it instead on finally completing the long-awaited six-year Highway Bill reauthorization, which was supposed to be done in 2009!

The resurgence of bus travel is real, and the numbers speak for themselves. America's motorcoach industry moves 762 million people annually, more than the domestic airlines in some years. And motorcoaches move more people in two weeks than Amtrak does in an entire year! Bus companies are seeing huge growth in passengers because they offer great prices, superb customer service and amenities ranging from wifi, personal electronics plug-ins, on-time and on-schedule departures, and even 2-to-1 executive-style seating. Additionally, each full motorcoach takes up to 55 cars off of the highway, fighting gridlock, reducing emissions and cutting U.S. dependence on foreign energy.

There is no disputing the fact that buses are the safest, greenest, most affordable and most hassle-free way to travel from point A to point B. If high-speed rail is a “political football,” as National Journal writes, it’s time to punt.

High Speed Rail can make a valuable contribution to the nation's mobility, environment and energy conservation but only in corridors where it makes sense. An appropriate high speed rail project should be capable of speeeds in excess of 150MPH and should generate sufficient ridership and revenue to cover all O&M costs and at least a good part of capital costs. A project that requires anual operating subsidy has no merit. This is the position of a number of interest groups including ARTBA as expressed in its recently adopted high speed rail policy. Most of the projects being cancelled by Midwest Govermnors do not meet these criteria and never deserved funding by the FRA in the first place.But high speed rail investment in several national corridorstghat can meet the criteria spelled out, starting with the Northeast Corridor, should be advanced without delay.

High speed rail is the future of transportation in America, as it is around the world. Transportation is not a partisan issue, and it has never been a partisan issue in America. The Interstate highway bill was passed back in the 1950’s as a bipartisan initiative, and has continued to be funded under bipartisan leadership ever since. As Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said recently “there are no Republican bridges, and no Democratic roads”. Transportation is a public service that enables our economy to function, businesses to operate, and people to move around the nation. Good transportation is essential for the continued operation of this great nation.

The big problem now is that our two main forms of transportation – roads and airports – are both at the breaking point in terms of being overloaded, and falling apart, and in need of huge investment. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently put out a report that gave the nation’s infrastructure a near failing grade, and said it will cost trillions of dollars just to bring this infrastructure up to an acceptable condition. This does not even address the need to increase transportation capacity in America. We basically have a ‘hardening of our national arteries’ and they are nearly impossible to fix. To try to widen the nation’s highways will be impossible since there is no room in most cases to double the highways, or build many new airports. The costs to do both of these will be several trillion dollars.

The bottom line is that we will have to spend a lot of money on transportation going forward to meet the demands of America, and to continue our economic development. The question is how are we going to spend that money, and how are we going to get the most mobility for the nation per dollar spent. As we try to decide this, we can’t ignore the huge problem facing us as a nation. According to oil industry executives and senior geologists, global peak oil has arrived, and the supply of oil will be diminishing over the next decade. Our transportation system is 99% powered by oil, and as the oil supply gets ever tighter, the price per barrel skyrockets as we saw in the summer of 2008 when the price hit $147 per barrel. This was a major contributing factor in driving us into the recession we are currently still suffering from. This recession caused oil consumption to drop substantially, and drove down oil prices. But as I write this, oil has already risen back up to almost $90 per barrel, and it is expected to continue to rise in price, and may well surpass the $147 per barrel of 2008, and continue on upwards well over $200 per barrel.

Our transportation systems are overloaded, falling apart, and dependent on a very volatile fuel source that has a bleak future. Given this grim reality, we can no longer continue business as usual in transportation spending. We need a new direction in transportation, and high speed rail is that new direction. High speed rail operates on electricity, so it can be powered by renewable energy as we scale that up across the country. High speed rail is the only possible solution that can scale up to meet the growing demand of American mobility while greatly reducing our oil consumption, which means reducing our nation’s dependence on foreign oil. Building more roads and airports will INCREASE the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

High speed rail systems physically are very narrow infrastructure, and therefore can be implemented fairly easily into developed areas, where it will be physically impossible to fit in new roads or airports. A single high speed rail line can carry the equivalent of a 10-lane freeway, and can move huge numbers of people without delay and waste, no matter how busy they are.

So as we debate how to spend our transportation dollars, we have to try to get the most mobility per dollar spent, and high speed rail comes out far ahead of other forms of transportation. For example, the proposed California HSR project will connect the entire state together spanning some 800 miles with a new form of transportation that will deliver fast mobility connecting Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. This will deliver a very high capacity transportation system throughout the state, while also reducing congestion on the state’s roads and runways. So it delivers a new form of high-capacity transportation while improving our other two existing forms of transportation. Spending the same $40 billion on adding a lane to the entire state’s road system will do nothing to improve mobility, and will do nothing to reduce the state’s dangerous dependency on foreign oil. High speed rail is the most important thing we can do to save America and set us up for a future of great mobility and prosperity.