Will high-speed rail take Missouri for a ride?
by Jack Cashill
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"The car and the airplane are getting some heated competition," reads the lede of a recent Star article, one whose wide-eyed author gives the impression of having been born in the past few weeks. |
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The reporter details what is known of our ambitious president’s $13 billion-and-counting plan to build a coast-to-coast network of high-speed rail lines, including a route between Kansas City and St. Louis.
“This is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future,” President Obama reassures us. Of course not, and the reporter does his best to confirm that the pie is here, hot and ready to be sliced.
To make his case, he calls on three expert witnesses. One of which, Brian Weiler of MODOT, is already queuing up for the state’s slice so at least we understand his enthusiasm. He and his colleagues apparently do not pay federal taxes.
The second expert is Ross Capon, the chief executive of the National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP). In that “capon” means “castrated male chicken,” it seems an altogether perfect name for a guy who has spent the past 34 years lobbying in Washington, D.C.
“For the first time since I came to Washington in 1975, you have a president that understands why we need modern trains and is willing to put money where his mouth is,” says Capon, abusing a cliché that makes sense only if his money precedes his mouth.
From what I can tell, NARP has no larger goal than to get other people to pay for its members’ transportation needs. That much said, NARP is savvy enough to conceal its eccentricities under a “Green Mobility Now” banner. In fact, it sells T-shirts bearing that slogan for the price of $21.69.
The third source for the article is Howard Learner, executive director at the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC).
A long-time Obama eco-advisor and global warming alarm-ist, Learner cut his teeth as legal counsel for the Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI). You will not be shocked to learn the BPI was funded by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a pet project of the young Obama and terrorist emeritus, Bill Ayers.
On its website, the ELPC places the story of Obama’s announced light rail plan under the rubric “ELPC Wins.” None of this, however, moves the Star to identify Learner as something other than an objective expert.
“President Obama has a vision of rebuilding and revitalizing the American passenger rail system for the 21st century, and that’s exciting,” Learner says.
The Star reporter apparently could not find a single dissenting voice to critique a boondoggle so outsized it will make our Union Station investment look like a 1998 equity buy-in at Google.
No matter, the rail revolution lives! “The problem is it’s been happening elsewhere, not here,” says the president.
The first “elsewhere” the KC Star reporter cites is Japan, which has 10 times as many people per square mile as Missouri and half as many cars per capita. In other words, Japan can put 20 people at every train stop for every one person Missouri can. For Kansas, Japan can put up 52 riders for every Kansas rider.
That brings us to a corollary marketing question that neither the Star nor the Obama administration seems to have explored: Who would want to take a high speed train in Missouri and why?
Amtrak caters largely to those who cannot drive, and despite all the grousing about I-70, a driver can still get to St. Louis pretty dependably in four hours. Without a car, it is hard to understand how one could navigate a Sedalia or a Jefferson City even if they got there at 150 miles an hour. Even St. Louis is tricky without a car, especially if one’s business is in the county.
Then, of course, there is the issue of money. The Star notes that a 2004 study put the cost of upgrading the Missouri route at nearly $1 billion. Let us say the cost reaches $1.5 billion by the time work begins and we finance it at an annual rate of 5 percent. That is $75 million a year in interest alone.
Let us say we can persuade 1,000 Missourians a day to travel cross-state in either direction, 365 days a year. That would be $205.47 each way, each passenger, just to pay the interest cost.
We have not paid the principal yet, bought the trains, hired the staff, advertised our new service or paid off the thousands whose quality of life would take a hit from the bullet train now whistling through their back yards. As to a funding mechanism, the only detail the reporter provides is America will be “opening the spigot.”
So why are we doing this? The ELPC cites four primary reasons, “cleaner air and less sprawl” and “convenience and mobility.” In both categories, the ELPC paints a green-hued picture of business travelers abandoning their cars and traveling “downtown to downtown,” meaning, in Missouri’s case, Kansas City to St. Louis.
This new transportation habit, the ELPC says, will save energy, reduce ozone emissions, ameliorate our smog problems, pull business back into the central city and reverse sprawl.
There is, however, a critical issue the rail planners choose not to share but the airlines have already learned: The need for business travel has been significantly reduced and by all indications that trend will continue.
The Internet launched a trend that is culminating in a real revolution, the telepresence revolution. Its technology includes, among other innovations, video conferencing, web conferencing, narrowcasting and web casting. It gets better every day without a dime of TARP funds.
Right now, with a high-end system, a half-dozen executives in a Kansas City office can communicate with a half-dozen counterparts in their St. Louis branch, eye to eye, with very nearly the fidelity of an actual face-to-face meeting. Better still, the purchasers of this technology pay their own way, and the sellers of this technology are prospering.
As to the environment, this technology is so green it makes rail look like the slow, sooty, grey, 19th century mechanical monster it actually is.
So why does the administration and ELPC pursue rail and ignore telepresence? Because at the top, the green movement has less to do with cleaning up the environment than it does with controlling it.
Like too many planners, including a few I know here in Kansas City, Howard Learner and friends will not be happy unless they can tell you what to drive, where to live, and, finally, how to think.
Oh, one more surprise. The ELPC’s authoritative map of the Midwest High Speed Rail Network is drawn in three colors. Red deisgnates high speed rail, green indicates new rail and yellow shows other existing services. Guess what? The St. Louis – Kansas City link is drawn in yellow. Someone please tell the Star. 
Jack Cashill is Ingram's Executive Editor and has been affiliated with the magazine for 28 years. He can be reached at jackcashill@yahoo.com. The views expressed in this column are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ingram's Magazine.