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We Americans often think we have a well developed public infrastructure until we visit almost any other developed nation in the world, from Korea to France, to even China, they all have 'expected' rail systems.

Why is America so far behind in a developed transit and public infrastructure?

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First, I think it's easy to ignore the fact that the US Interstate System is a monumental public infrastructure achievement. You can learn this the way I did: cross over from rural Montana to Alberta. Even the bleakest, most desolate part of the US has roads better than the TCH, and you don't get to the TCH for several hours from the southern border of Alberta.

Second, for its core purpose --- not moving people from home to vacation, but for moving products between manufacturing centers, ports, and consumers --- the US has a powerful and reasonably effective rail infrastructure. Read Buffett's shareholder note after buying Burlington Northern.

Third, if (say) 80-90% of public transit is commuter transit, keep in mind that most US major metros have tolerably effective public transit, and many (NYC, Chicago, DC, &c) have extremely good public transit.

While you think about that remember also that the real estate bubble and artificially low commuter costs (cheap gas, &c) distorted public transit in our metro areas by encouraging the development of exurb suburbs that can't cost-effectively be addressed by rail. It's possible that within the next 20 years, they won't be cost-effective for cars either, and that problem will self-correct as housing values in exurbs plummet and families move back into the public transit rings around the cities.

Put differently, because maybe that point seems banal ("suburbs bad!"), consider that in complaining about transit, we may effectively be complaining that it is hard to link a city with what should be a corn field in the middle of nowhere. Well, yeah?

Then read everything everyone else writes about long distance high speed rail.

I'd love to have it. People made fun of STL->CHI high speed rail, hoping instead for coast-to-coast or Chicago->Detroit->Cleveland->NYC, but STL->CHI would link two major metros and allow companies to expand between the cities; for instance, it would allow us to hire out of STL and serve STL companies as house accounts.

But the flip side of high-speed rail is that it's simply not cost-competitive over the distances we're dealing with, especially once you factor the cost of deploying it, which is spectacular. Just look at the problems California had with secure rights of way.

It's easy for Europe to have effective rail, because Europe is comparatively tiny; the distance from Berlin to Rome is just a little more than twice the distance the Acela runs; Acela's got nowhere to go north of Boston, and extending it to Atlanta would make Acela longer than Berlin-Rome.

I agree with your insights.

>>But the flip side of high-speed rail is that it's simply not cost-competitive over the distances we're dealing with, especially once you factor the cost of deploying it, which is spectacular. Just look at the problems California had with secure rights of way.

The longer we wait, the more expensive it will become. I say we should act now and swift. Instead of bailing out failing financial systems, we should have solely put that money to our infrastructure. That would have put deserving people to real work. Imagine how much harder it will become in another 20 years, and this is the future of America we are talking about.

Also, I believe cities ordinances should start outlawing the development of the traditional suburb. It should not be legal for these developers to build suburbs with out having a library, hospital, and school in walking distance. Having grown up in a suburb, and traveled the world a bit, I want nothing to do with suburbs. The reason why many in our government likes suburbs is because it encourages consumerism. Some have even argued that the reason why we solely have an almost auto based public transit system is because of auto lobbyist in congress during the 20th century. Although of course there have been many other social economic factors as well, such as 'white flight', as you touched upon.

City ordinances can't outlaw the development of suburbs.

Counties can, but it'd be suicidal, because the people it would push out of the county are the wealthiest and most important part of the tax base.

Cities can tax suburbs by imposing commuter costs, but that tactic is in tension with the city's need to keep businesses, which will move out of the city if it penalizes the workforce.

I think parking is generally too cheap, and tolls are generally to low. But apart from that, I think the "white flight" stag hunt will eventually be counteracted by a "suburban decay" stag hunt that'll contract populations back into the cities.

The only thing I can see that would prevent that would be cost-effective personal transportation (say, hydrogen fuel cell), which would be a vindication of the suburbs.

Be careful when comparing population density between Montana and Canada. Out of all the Canadian provinces and territories, only Ontario, Nova Scotia, PEI and New Brunswick have higher density than Montana. Alberta /is/ next highest on the list, but has around a full person less per km than Montana. Next-door Saskatchewan has barely more than a person per km.

If you already marvel at there being an interstate into Alberta, marvel even more at the Transcanada Highway :D.

Because we haven't made it a priority. We've spent our resources fighting abroad and cutting taxes at home, leaving little money left over to repair our current infrastructure, let alone fund any ambitious public works projects.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that the nation faces a $2.2 trillion infrastructure backlog. One of every eight bridges is "structurally deficient," and 85 percent of public transit systems are struggling to carry the growing number of riders. As ASCE President Blaine D. Leonard puts it, "We are still driving on Eisenhower's roads and sending our kids to Roosevelt's schools."

http://www.governing.com/columns/potomac-chronicle/The-Loomi...

We also have one half of our two-party democracy steadfastly against public transit. Despite the fact that trains and rail were a central theme in their cultural touchstone, Atlas Shrugged.

Why did President George W. Bush try to zero out Amtrak funding in 2005? Why is the conservative Republican Study Committee suggesting that we do so now? Why does George Will think "the real reason for progressives' passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans' individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism"?

"You need to distinguish between Republicans and conservatives and libertarians when you look at this," says William Lind, the director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation. "It's the libertarians who push this crap."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...

The GOP wants to zero out Amtrak because it isn't cost-effective; it would have been bankrupt but for tens of billions of subsidies.

I like the Acela, a lot, and I disagree philosophically with the GOP's take on public infrastructure, but I think it's a bad idea to pretend that they don't have a valid point regarding Amtrak.

Would Amtrak be cost effective if Congress didn't force it to run lots of unprofitable routes that it was desperately trying to shed? This is a fun game! Congress forces Amtrak to lose money and then lambastes it for not being profitable.

Who are you arguing with? Me? I like the Acela, and wish we had one running STL->Chi->Memphis. I could care less about the availability of a 2-day sleeper car route from Chicago to the west coast.

I'm not arguing with anyone. I just don't think Congressman "have a valid point regarding Amtrak" when they complain about a problem they're largely responsible for. Don't you agree? Or do you think they do "have a valid point regarding Amtrak"?

I think they have a valid point regarding Amtrak.

I think they have a valid point even if you narrow the whole thing down to the Acela. I do not have a hard time believing that the Northeast Rail Corridor is less cost-effective than air.

I'm pretty sure they have a valid point when you consider Amtrak nationwide.

I do not think that their point is dispositive. The Acela can be inefficient and still worth retaining and (as I've argued elsewhere here) extended.

But I object to the notion that they have no valid argument at all.

>The GOP wants to zero out Amtrak because it isn't cost-effective; it would have been bankrupt but for tens of billions of subsidies.

Do you think that toll roads wouldn't go bankrupt, if not for the gas tax subsidy that they receive? It's a false equivalence because one subsidy is directly authorized by congress and is a political football that each side uses for fundraising, while the other (the gas tax) can't be used as a political football because voters would revolt.

Also, The jury is still out on your basic assertation that Amtrak is not cost effective.

David C. of the blog GreaterGreaterWashington published a classic in this genre late last month. "When indirect subsidies are considered, Amtrak's total subsidy comes out to a little less than 44¢ ppm," he argues. "Motoring's subsidy rises up to almost 45¢ ppm."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/11/road-v-rail

At least the people paying gas tax are the people using the roads. I never use Amtrak, yet I still pay for it.

This is another poor basis for public tax policy - the classic "I don't use it so I don't want to pay for it."

First - part of living in a society is paying for things that others use that you may not, but which improves society for all.

Second - I live in Philadelphia and rarely use roads, and yet my tax dollars to the government of Pennsylvania are used, in combination with gas tax proceeds, to repair roads that others drive on, and that I don't directly benefit from. That's the price of living in a society, and I support it.

You're answering a resource allocation argument with a moral argument. Non sequitur. If you reject the premise that we should allocate resources to the modes of transport that move the most people at the least expense including external costs, you're opting out of the whole debate.

Also, unlike most of Amtrak, you benefit directly from Penn's roads even when you don't use them yourself; for instance, virtually everything you eat is brought to you over them.

I would argue that is an indirect beneift - the fact that my food arrives fresh and to my grocer. When I said direct benefit, I meant more along the lines of driving my car on those roads, which I do rarely. Still, excellent point.

Assume we didn't have the road system we have now, and that an entire food delivery system was organized around local sources (yay!). What would the result be?

Lots of root vegetables and drastically higher food prices.

First, you're making an argument I didn't make. I didn't say, "the GOP thinks Amtrak is bad because it is subsidized more than roads" (though clearly some do think that, like the Cato libertarians). I said "the GOP thinks Amtrak is bad because it operates on the brink of insolvency mitigated by direct cash subsidies".

Secondly, go read the actual source cited by that Economist blog post. It's another blog post:

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/12208/funding-amtra...

The cost breakdown in this blog post is ad hoc, and the biggest "wins" for Amtrak come from parking and "resource consumption".

Parking is taxed, not directly subsidized. The blog post dips into studies that (rightly) excoriate free parking, and scales the external cost of free parking across all parking, thus conflating the total cost of driving with the subsidized cost of driving.

For "resource consumption", the blogger found a study that attributed the entire cost of our military presence in the gulf to oil prices, simply averaging the military budget across oil prices per barrel.

This just isn't credible.

I am not anti-Amtrak, but I am anti-oversimplified-arguments and anti-demonizing-viewpoints. A counterpoint from Cato, which I also do not buy outright:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp107.pdf

Secondly, go read the actual source cited by that Economist blog post. It's another blog post:

Yes - I'm quite aware of the original source, I went and found the Economist piece after finding the GreaterGreatWashington post, because I felt it added more interesting reading and discussion.

For "resource consumption", the blogger found a study that attributed the entire cost of our military presence in the gulf to oil prices, simply averaging the military budget across oil prices per barrel.

We are there as part of the Carter Doctrine, which states that our security depends on access to cheap oil. This is not just dug up by a pro-Amtrak blog post to make a point. This is a stated national policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Doctrine

I am not anti-Amtrak, but I am anti-oversimplified-arguments and anti-demonizing-viewpoints. A counterpoint from Cato, which I also do not buy outright

Agreed. My hat goes off to you for the Cato link, even though they drive me up the wall.

Bonus link "Help Passenger Rail by Privatizing Amtrak - Cato Institute" - http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa419.pdf

My take right now is that even if you accept the idea that we should cost whole Iraq war in terms of price-per-mile (which I think is crazy but will stipulate), the parking cost he's cited is simply erroneous, and when you lose it, his blog post says that rail is more expensive than car.

I live on the west coast. Amtrak is so lame here it takes 12 hours to take the train from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and there's only one each day. It's an amusement park ride for train buffs instead of a way to travel.

Why am I paying for Amtrak? Outside a very small area on the east coast, it's useless. Either expand it into a true national rail system or get rid of it.

The growth of the suburbs in the middle of the last century and the subsequent flight from the inner city. These two factors contributed to the death of railway transit systems in all but a few of the large and medium-sized cities. From that point one, most of the transportation investment is in expanding highways from the suburbs to the city and maybe bus services as well.

It is only in the last 10-15 years that serious efforts are being made to rebuild the inner system rail ways system. In the face of public apathy (and sometimes outright opposition) as well as interests depended heavily in highway transportation, it is been slow going.

It's really a myth that public transit is cheaper, more convenient, and more efficient than people driving their own cars when and where they want to go. Public transit appears to be cheaper only because of massive government subsidies. If passengers had to pay fares commensurate with the true cost of the service, it would not be competitive.

There are many factors at play, other than just generalizing 'public transit'. In many American cities you may be correct. But have you ever been to Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, etc? Do you really think driving would be more practical and cost effective in those cities?

One of America's greatest problems is the lack of any development into great city infrastructure. Our American society lacks the idea of planning for the future since post WWII, and only focuses on the 'now'. Where are the great cities in America? NYC, Boston, DC, maybe San Fran, rather a few for a country as large as ours, with a population of 300 million.

We need to start thinking about our infrastructure more. And thinking of the future, with integrated design through out our public systems.

It's hard to take seriously an argument that the only great US cities are NYC, Boston, DC, and SF. NYC is the most populous city in the US, and the spread between it and the next most populous city on your list includes the twelve next largest cities in the US.

Seattle, one of our greatest cities, is all the way down at #23, meaning you have to disqualify almost 20 other bigger cities to add it-and-only-it to that list. Sure, I'm no fan of Houston, and that list includes Detroit, but dismissing Austin? San Diego? Philly?

Come on.

And Chicago! Come on, Thomas, how could you forget Chicago?

The fact that he left out the greatest city in the US doesn't improve his credibility either. ;)

I'm not saying those are the only great cities in America. But I'm considering it on an international scale, considering good public transit, and city planning. (I've never been to, or read much, about Seattle, so I can't comment on that, and same with Detroit, but both are relatively small cities on an international scale in terms of population, and/or general political/cultural influence)

I'm talking about well designed cities. San Diego is awesome, but it's kind of an urban sprawl, not well planned. But any infrastructure would be great in that climate, right? Cool laid back culture in San Diego, but how would the city's deign, aesthetic, beauty, and public infrastructure hold up on an international level? Maybe really well, but it could be so much better. (And don't get me wrong, I love SD, and their beaches)

Austin is really cool, but again, is also a classic example of a good city gone wrong with suburbs. Many American developers, and American's just don't understand the purpose of a grid system. In Austin there is 'downtown', but where are the people living there. Downtown in Austin seems to merely represent the 'soul' of the city, while the majority of the 'residents' live in poorly planned suburbs with 1.5 Walmarts, and 3 starbucks for every 5 miles you drive in your SUV. So Austin is not a great city in my book, because of it's poor surrounding suburb infrastructure, and 'fo' downtown. Austin downtown acts more of an amusement park, than an actual great city.

But that does not mean Austin is not 'great', it's just not a 'great city' on an international scale, in terms of public infrastructure and the such. But relative to other American cities, it's cool, but it's be strangled by the surrounding suburbs.

I live in Atlanta, actual Atlanta, not a suburb. And it's an example of a city infrastructure gone horribly wrong. Little public design going on in Atlanta, which is a shame, because there is so much potential, like many American cities. I think Georgia needs to rethink how we tax, residential tax makes no sense to me. Living in another area from where you work, is a strange concept. I think we should take away the tax incentives for living in the suburbs, as I find them morally wrong in the first place.

If passengers had to pay fares commensurate with the true cost of the service, it would not be competitive.

The same can be said about driving. I read a few months ago that all 50 states now receive more in highway funding than they pay out in user fees/taxes.

Actually, its a myth that its a myth that public transport is cheaper (see http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08111140802369820)

Once the massive externalities of private motor and road subsidies are accounted for, private motor is much more expensive per km/mi travelled than public transport (and obviously orders of magnitude more than bike)

In Sydney, AU for example driving costs $0.86/passengerKm while trains are only $0.48 (http://melbourneurbanist.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/glazebr...)

If motorists had to pay the true cost of the service, everyone would be riding bikes.

II think it's actually pretty easy to understand just by comparing the US to a country with a useful passenger rail system. I'll use Germany because I've spent some time there and taken a few trips by train.

Two things are required for a regional or national train service to be useful enough that it can be self-sustaining: population density and local public transportation. Local public transportation also requires population density to be effective; someone considering taking a train to Tallahassee FL might decide to drive instead after looking up the bus schedules online. Busses run about once an hour during the hours people normally commute to day jobs and do not go to many useful locations, like the airport.

Germany has a population of about 80 million people. Germany is smaller than Montana. The US as a whole has 26 times the land area but less than 4 times the population.

There are useful train services in population-dense areas of the US such as the SF bay area and the NYC/northern New Jersey region. The population density of these areas is such that it's often easier to travel by train, subway and bus than by car.

The same is not true of Billings, MT, the largest city in a state bigger than Germany. The population of Billings is about 100,000, and the closest city in the state with a population over 10,000 is Bozeman, about 150 miles away. The population of the whole state is about the same as the city I live in, Jacksonville FL, and that city can barely sustain a barely useful bus system.

If the US is to have a decent nationwide public transportation system, it needs about a billion more people. I'm not sure we actually want that.

Some of it has to do with the sheer size and low population density of most of the United States. Oregon (a medium-sized western state) is larger than the UK. Texas is larger than France. Alaska is larger than all of Western Europe. You mention South Korea. It's slightly larger than Indiana, but has close to 49 million people, while Indiana has only about 6.5 million. Overall, the population density of the United States is 1/7 that of Germany and 1/15 that of South Korea.

Canada is in a similar situation, only more so. Lots of land, not many people living on it. Just as in the U.S., you find public transit in large, dense cities like Toronto, not so much in the smaller and more rural areas. Same with Russia -- good subways in Moscow, etc. by all reports, but you aren't going to find subways or buses in the middle of Siberia.

America doesn't have a well developed public transportation infrastructure because of the auto lobby. You can't build a train without annoying GM and ford.

Agreed, do we have any documentation on this? (I know the lobby industry conveniently has little documentation in general, but I'd love to see any papers written on the subject)

GM bought and destroyed almost all sustainable transportation in America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...

That Wikipedia article doesn't make that claim, and normalized by GDP actually contradicts it by pointing out that 5 of the top 10 of those cities actually have well-developed rail (I'd add DC and Atlanta to that list, bringing us up to 7 --- in other words, leaving out only LA, Houston, and Dallas).

I disagree about Atlanta. Atlanta does not have a well-developed rail. I should know - I live there. :)

The top 10 cities in the US by GDP:

* NYC

* LA

* Chicago

* DC

* Houston

* Dallas

* Philly

* SF

* Boston

* Atlanta

Most of these cities have effective public transit. LA is the notable exception (and the one the "auto lobby" narrative seems to pick out).

LA has more public transit than most people think; 1.4 million boardings per day ain't nothing to sneeze at.

http://www.metro.net/news/pages/ridership-statistics/

And notably, in the last 15 years, they got a fairly effective rail back up up and running (the MTA rails) as well as Metrolink.

I am surprised that Atlanta is on the list. In terms of public transit, it is not only abysmal, it seems that the current GA legislature is going out of their way to kill it.

Density. And the perception of funding public transportation in the same realm as alternative energy, global warming, etc.

In most of the US, building densely is illegal. We have massive public subsidies and implicit taxes to support car ownership (in the form of mandatory parking requirements and absurdly underpriced municipal parking just for starters). Public transportation cost effectiveness is highly dependent on density which we've outlawed.

Would love to read a paper on this. If its not already written maybe we can build a google doc with a list if related resources so that one of u could write a paper.

Ed Glaeser at Harvard has written extensively about this, including in his recent book. Ryan Avent also covers this on his blog and I think in his book The Gated City as well.

Thanks! I'll check out those resources.

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