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What Is the Future of Pricey Bullet Train Projects in a World of Driverless Cars?
The Wall Street Journal reports that the “U.S. government has approved the first federal funds for an ambitious plan to tap Japanese technology for a high-speed train project that could carry passengers between New York and Washington, D.C. at more than 300 miles an hour.”
Indeed, politicians have lots of big transportation ideas, like a $10 billion business terminal in New York or that ever-more-expensive California bullet train. But when dreaming up these super-pricey projects, are politicians taking into account autonomous vehicle technology? What should transportation policy be given the following scenario, sketched out by Princeton’s Steven Strauss?
Fleet ownership of AVs could reduce the number of cars on the road by 60% to 90% due to more efficient usage and, consequently, reduce car sales by an equivalent percentage. Many of the 1 million jobs in U.S. auto manufacturing will probably disappear.
More than 2.5 million driving jobs (there are 1.7 million truck drivers, 650,000 bus drivers and 230,000 taxi drivers — about 2% of the U.S. workforce) will also be eliminated or transformed. In terms of the resulting human disruption, remember that all of these workers are part of families and communities; the loss of their jobs will produce a ripple effect.
On a positive note, AVs will make our roads safer and bring major savings in healthcare and auto repair. About 33,000 people die each year in auto accidents. In 80% of the cases, the cause is alcohol consumption, driving in excess of the speed limit or a distracted driver. Computers should have none of these problems. Highway accidents have direct costs of about $240 billion a year and more than $800 billion a year if quality-of-life issues are included. AVs have the potential to eliminate most of these deaths and costs.
Relatedly, the automobile insurance industry (which now has revenue of about $200 billion) will shrink dramatically. Fewer accidents will mean fewer claims and lower premiums. The benefit to the economy from these savings could be $400 billion to $1 trillion a year, and should be reflected in lower transportation costs.
More good news is that land currently tied up for parking can be repurposed for other uses. Again, assuming expanded fleet ownership and less individual ownership, AVs won’t need to park in city centers. Of course, changes in land use won’t benefit everyone equally. AVs could facilitate a significant shift to housing away from city centers, thereby reducing central urban property values and increasing values in outlying areas. For example, New York has several neighborhoods not accessible to mass transit, but AVs may open these areas to development.
AV minibuses, providing home to office direct service, may completely replace traditional buses. And there’s little doubt that AVs will radically change the economic calculations and assumptions that make high-speed rail projects seem worthwhile (i.e. the speed and cost of travel by conventional car).
US transportation infrastructure may need an upgrade — building a new Hudson River tunnel seems a good idea — but don’t confuse that with building a nationwide high-speed rail system. Unless of course you are merely viewing this as the mother-of-all pork barrel projects. Along the same lines, David Levinson’s new book, “The End of Traffic and The Future of Transport,” would seem to be a critical read for policymakers.
Published in Economics
300 mph through the most congested areas in America, intersecting hundreds of roads along the way. What could go wrong?
The singular advantage of a passenger train over other modes of travel is that you can stretch out, relax and/or get some work done while you’re underway. A high-speed train offers the above plus travel times comparable to flying, with a much more pleasant and convenient station experience (thanks, TSA). Driverless cars would provide as great a convenience advantage over trains as trains currently hold over flying. The only advantage high-speed trains have left is speed.
Is that enough? If your trip is pleasant and convenient enough, do you even care if it takes a few hours longer? I know I’d rather spend a whole workday on the road, working remotely from a comfortable little desk while I watch the countryside zip by, rather than spend half that day fighting through airports. High speed trains only make sense in a driverless car world if people would rather spend half a day on a train (and get a cab to and from the station, and manage without transport at their destination) rather than spend a whole day on the road, working or relaxing in their private compartment. I know how I’d bet.
The train speed benefit would be mitigated by the time it takes the passenger from point of origin to get to the station, and to the point of destination at the far end, and the fact that the train would only go at scheduled times. In contrast, the autonomous vehicle could go when the traveller wants, and go directly from origin to destination, so the net time in transit may come out similar.
Trains are great and great ways to commute. Perhaps if we privatized them cleverly we’d see them on these high density routes. But if government does it? Just graft and corruption and it won’t work as planned. We don’t need to speculate about driverless cars to know that it’s a bad idea for the Feds to do it.
One requirement of high-speed rail is the absence of grade crossings. HSR almost always requires new, dedicated track with different geometry than existing rail, along with new crossings that involve bridges and overpasses. It’s one of the things that makes it so expensive, particularly when you add in all the land acquisition costs, which are very high in congested areas.
Although only a tangential point in the written piece, this notion that the potential significant reduction in the overall fleet will result in a massive loss of auto manufacturing jobs is sloppy thinking. If individual vehicles are being driven more, they will wear out more frequently and annual auto sales may not decrease all rhat much.
Driverless trains. Driverless cars. Driverless government. What’s next?
Lets be honest the real problem is people don’t want to fly any more because the government has screwed it up so much and locals don’t want airport expansion to make major hubs quicker. Make flying easier, and improve the gate to takeoff and gate to landing times. Basically if you can cut a flying down to an hour or two of non-flying time spent on airport property, along with AVs and who needs high speed rail.
The only version that might be economic is very short haul to reduce the spectacular cost per mile. Central high density city to central high density city might produce enough traffic.
Of course, even without the largely imaginary driverless car we already have something that makes HSR even more of an absurdity than it is.
Uber ride to the airport. It’s driverless because you’re not driving. It’s always on tap you don’t need to consult a schedule. And it’s a whole lot cheaper.
Wow, and we didn’t need to do anything to get it but pick up our smart phone and download an app. Not even a congressman involved. Nice!
Regards,
Jim
How much space do you need to get a train of say 10 cars up to 300 miles an hour? How much space does it take to slow down the same speed. How many stops does it make during that time? Nothing else can operate on said track. Where are the stations located in relation to population centers?
Track is a very land intensive proposition. Requiring a certain amount of maintenance. How many deer are we going to allow to cross these tracks?
There is a reason air travel replaced trains. And the fact is that 300 mphs trains are going to get to the end destination at the same time as my plane. And my plane does not require massive land use, is not going to have any people jumping in front of it, and is massively cheaper infrastructure wise than your high speed train. Which is why they are massively subsidized in Europe to make them approach cheap for customers.
Why would this be the case? Are people going to need fewer cars? The congestion thing may very well be true, but that just means the cars that exist aren’t going to be in the same place at the same time so much.
Heck, without need for licensing, richer folks could get small av’s for each of their children. And if richer people do it, then the upper-middle class will go into debt for it, and thus the middle class might get an extra car or two too, etc.
By far the most expensive part of a taxi or Uber or Lyft ride is the driver. Eliminating the cost of the driver for a “taxi” allows the taxi operator to reduce the cost of a taxi ride to the point that it may be cheaper for me to summon a taxi ride on demand than to own and maintain a car.