Anderson Cooper HSR Report

[Train Rider]

Thesis: The marketing and promises does not match up to the reality.

 

[chrsjrcj]

Yes, I remember when this God awful report aired. Lets encourage people to walk on railroad tracks, because no passenger trains are scheduled until the evening and there is no such thing as unscheduled runs!

I see this is a follow up. Still seems like a whole bunch of unnecessary hullabaloo.

Florida:

Rejected- $2 bn HSR project from Tampa to Orlando. 90 miles.

Approved- $2 bn road expansion project in Orlando. 24 miles.

Why doesn't CNN report on that?

 

[Train Rider]

Yes, I remember when this God awful report aired. Lets encourage people to walk on railroad tracks, because no passenger trains are scheduled until the evening and there is no such thing as unscheduled runs!

I see this is a follow up. Still seems like a whole bunch of unnecessary hullabaloo.

Florida:

Rejected- $2 bn HSR project from Tampa to Orlando. 90 miles.

Approved- $2 bn road expansion project in Orlando. 24 miles.

Why doesn't CNN report on that?

I think the pro-HSR side would be better served by accepting legitimate criticism and refuting errors factually, rather than spoiled, snarky dismissiveness.

 

[jis]

The HSR hypoe was unfortunate, and the chicken are now coming home to roost. Much as I dislike it, but this was inevitable as the night follows the day.

 

[Train Rider]

The HSR hypoe was unfortunate, and the chicken are now coming home to roost. Much as I dislike it, but this was inevitable as the night follows the day.

I can see where clearing tangles in a rail line to facilitate improved coordination between passenger and freight trains, renovating or double-tracking specific sections of track and adding additional train service are all good and defensible uses of federal transportation money.

The unfortunate aspect of the false marketing and the resulting daft, tonedeaf defense by LaHood is that the chances of additional funds are exceedingly nil, which is too bad because the small-bore improvements that increase efficiency are bipartisan and under the radar of the fevered politics generated by HSR.

An ill-conceived or poorly executed train project is perhaps worse than no train project.

 

[Anderson]

And that has always been my concern about lots of projects: If we get a couple of bad ones, it'll ruin things for the good projects.

Honestly, attention needs to be focused on success stories like the Virginia trains, and the potential those services have with modest, staged improvements. This is especially true with places with legendary congestion issues (CA, VA, FL, etc.), where the rail market is going to exist even if gas goes back to $1/gallon (which I very much don't expect).

 

[jis]

It is critical that practical projects that can be successfully be completed on time and within budget and demonstrably show improvement in transportation quality meeting pressing needs is what is needed.

Unfortunately rail enthusiasts often have a tendency to over promise and under deliver and go off on random off the wall projects of questionable value. I agree with the sentiments expressed by Anderson above wholeheartedly.

 

[Cho Cho Charlie]

Florida:Rejected- $2 bn HSR project from Tampa to Orlando. 90 miles.

That a total joke that purposed HSR was turning out to be. Should have been called HC-LSR (high cost-low speed rail). Glad some sane people cancelled it before too much tax payer money was wasted on it.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Florida:

Rejected- $2 bn HSR project from Tampa to Orlando. 90 miles.

That a total joke that purposed HSR was turning out to be. Should have been called HC-LSR (high cost-low speed rail). Glad some sane people cancelled it before too much tax payer money was wasted on it.

What I like about your position is that you express equal concern about wasting taxes on rail and roads.

Oh, wait...

 

[jis]

If you thought Anderson Cooper's reporting on the Cascade Service was biased and aimed at discrediting passenger rail efforts feel free to use this form to give your feedback to CNN.

 

[Ryan]

Fantastic idea, thanks for sharing the link.

 

[Anderson]

Sent the following:
Anderson Cooper's "investigation" of high-speed rail (and in particular the Seattle-Portland line) was one of the most contextless pieces I have seen from any of the networks; frankly, it felt like a jumbled mush of talking points from the Heritage Foundation. In particular, I found several things to be standouts in this regard:

(1) The piece sought to stress of limited time improvements (something that was repeated in an almost outraged tone by the announcer) without making any attempt to mention either increased on-time performance or added frequencies. Those were mentioned by one of the interviewees, but the framing made that response come across as either defensive or obfuscatory.
(2) The lack of any mention of what a single high-speed rail line would cost. Orlando-Tampa, for example, was projected to cost around $2 billion while over $3 billion has been put into CA's Central Valley to get around 140 miles of HSR, and both occupy far better terrain. The cost of a Seattle-Portland line would be far more expensive, as would any expanded system of high-speed trains.
(3) A failure to note that President Obama's plan was to invest around $60 billion over eight years and that he only got 1/5 of that, or (again) to put the plan into the context of the cost of any large-scale infrastructure project. Moreover, a good deal of the money the administration got had to go to (legally required) engineering and environmental impact work for projects such as SEHSR or the planned HSR line in Illinois (which also intends to go 220 MPH between Chicago and St. Louis). It's hard to hold someone 'accountable' for failing to implement a plan that never got all of the funding proposed in the first place.
(4) A failure to highlight the fact that the Florida HSR project, which was "real" HSR (the segment chosen was going to top out over 160 MPH, and the overall project at 186 MPH) and was funded almost completely under the HSR grants, was torpedoed by the Gov. Rick Scott (who returned a /massive/ amount of money for that project right before a state report came out supporting it). Again, it's hard to hold 'accountable' a federal plan that a state pulls out of after being granted money (something almost without precedent on this scale) and then doesn't produce results.
(5) Finally, a failure to note the necessity of some of the incremental projects. To take the interstate highway system analogy a bit further, there are relatively few interstates that went places nobody drove (interstates frequently duplicating existing US routes or state highways). Simply "dropping" a high-speed rail project into an area with little current service would be risky on the one hand, while putting a line in with no existing feeder commuter, transit, or local train lines (such as CA has in both the LA and San Francisco/Sacramento area, or the NEC has almost everywhere) makes less sense than building up those services and current 'conventional' services.

In general, the story placed high-speed rail in the most unfavorable light that seems possible in the context of the project chosen, and that project seems to have been chosen to provide that unfavorable light. The piece essentially projects President Obama's plan as a $12 billion one-shot "magic wand" when the promises initially made at the time clearly indicated that it would be a longer-term initiative involving multiple years of support and stages of work. Even the vaunted CA project has always been indicated as taking at least a decade and proceeding in stages.

 

[jis]

What CNN Is Missing About High-Speed Rail