High Speed Rail Could Kill Some Airlines

One recurring theme of the Obama administration is the idea that the US should build a high speed rail network.

From a short term perspective, it could be a good thing. Building such a network would help revive the construction sector and do all sorts of other kinds of Keynes-approved economic stimulative activities. The catch is that after it has been built, it would need to actually be useful. While other potential transportation projects like roads and bridges have only periodic large maintenance costs, railways have daily costs in the people who conduct the trains and work at railway stations (and train maintenance, and a number of other things).

The problem with a high speed rail network connecting the major cities of the country is that it has limited usefulness as a replacement for cars. American cities as we know them today were built with cars in mind. Some of the major metropolises have good enough public transportation to get around reasonably, but the number of cities with truly useful public transit is small. Medium and small cities often have no public transit at all, and if they do, it's a bus system with questionable punctuality. In other words, cars are still a necessity there.

A lot of people would have to rent cars to get around after getting off of the train. If that use case sounds familiar, it's because it rhymes with something else we already do. A lot of people rent cars to get around after getting off of a plane.

Rather than take cars off of roads, a high speed rail network would likely take people out of airplanes. It's already about impossible to make money on air travel; imagine how difficult it would be if a lot of people suddenly started taking the train instead.

Obviously, areas of Europe and Asia have high speed rail and airlines too, so it's not impossible to have both. However those areas also developed differently than the post-WWII US did. The core assumption of the last 70 or so years in American urban development is that just about everyone has a car.

If the high speed trains are a part of a larger initiative to restructure American cities, they can be useful. Otherwise they'll either go underused, costing the government lots of money annually, or, if successful, initiate another wave of airline bankruptcies. Either way, I don't expect them to take too many cars off the roads.