New Geography

Tag: highways

  • China Freeways: Continuing Expansion

    Beijing’s xinhuanet.com reported on December 30 that 11,000 kilometers (7,000 miles) of new freeways (motorways) were built in 2012. This is equivalent to more than 150 percent of the freeway mileage in California.

    Based on figures reported at the end of 2011, the additional 11,000 kilometers would increase China’s national freeway system (the National Trunk Highway System) to approximately 96,000 kilometers (60,000 miles). This is approximately 20,000 kilometers (12,000 miles) longer than the US interstate highway system, as reported in 2010. As a result, China’s national freeway system is the longest in the world.

    Both China and the United States have additional freeway segments that are not a part of the national systems. In 2010, the United States had approximately 99,000 kilometers (62,000 miles) of freeways, including the interstate system. Data is not readily available for a number of urban and provincial level freeways in China that are not a part of the National Trunk Highway System.

    It seems likely that the US continues to lead, though by only a small margin, in total freeway mileage. However, China is continuing to expand its system at a rapid rate. This is evident in the map below, which uses purple and green to indicate uncompleted freeways, while blue and red indicate open segments. Long stretches remain to be completed to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, and beyond to the border of Kazakhstan in the Pamir Mountains, as well as two long routes to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. A number of additional routes are also planned in the densely populated eastern third of the nation.


    Map by WikiCommons user Pafun

    Also see:
    China’s Expanding Roadways (February 2012)
    China Expressway System to Exceed US Interstates (January 2011)

  • Could a Las Vegas Train Produce Losses 10 Times More Than Solyndra? (Report Announcement)

    The Reason Foundation has released our "Xpress West" (formerly "DesertXpress") analysis. This high speed rail train would run from Victorville (90 miles from downtown Los Angeles) to Las Vegas. Promoters predict high ridership and profits. They are seeking a subsidized federal loan of more than $5.5 billion, which is within the discretionary authority of the US Department of Transportation to fund.

    Our analysis concludes the following:

    1. There is serious question whether there is a market for Las Vegas travel that would require driving one-third of the way and transferring to the train. If there is no such market, as seems likely from the international experience, ridership could be as low as 97 percent below projections. The reality can be known only after the line is running.

    The balance of the report is based upon the assumption that there is a market for driving to Victorville and boarding a train to Las Vegas.

    2. The ridership and revenue projections (by URS Corporation) are based upon data that is more than 7 years old and predates the Great Financial Crisis. There have been significant downward demand trends in the travel market and Las Vegas tourist market since that time, especially in the share of the market from the Los Angeles Basin. It is inappropriate to use such old data in projecting system performance (Certainly no private company would rely on such old data in a due diligence analysis).

    3. Even after adjusting the obsolete data (which our report does), the ridership projections are implausibly high — at four times the Amtrak Acela ridership between Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.

    4. Over 24 years (the forecast period in the project document), we project that expenditures will exceed revenues by between $4 billion and $10 billion. This would mean that there would be insufficient revenues to pay the federal loan. This could result in a taxpayer loss approximately 10 times that of the Solyndra federal loan guarantee.

    5. The free use by the private Xpress West project of the Interstate 15 median could preclude cost effective expansion of this roadway. Even assuming the implausible Xpress West assumptions about the diversion of drivers to the train, the overwhelming majority of growth in the corridor would be on the highway, not on the train. This includes not only the heavy truck traffic, but also car traffic.

    Related: The Las Vegas Monorail

    Wendell Cox was also author of  "Analysis of the Proposed Las Vegas LLC Monorail," which indicated that ridership and revenue projections were extremely optimistic and that the project was likely to fail  financially. Subsequently the project filed bankruptcy and defaulted on bonds. The actual ridership on the Monorail was within the range predicted in "Analysis of the proposed Las Vegas LLC Monorail," and far below the level forecast by project consultant URS Greiner Woodward Clyde.

    Also see this letter from other consultants reviewing the project (Thomas A. Rubin, Jon Twichell Associates, Professor Bernard Malamud  and Wendell Cox).

    The Las Vegas Monorail case is described in the Reason Foundation report.

  • Transportation for Tomorrow: Driverless Cars

    Economist Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution outlines the surface transportation system of the future in a Wall Street Journal commentary, "Paving the Way for Diverless Cars." Winston notes "a much better technological solution is on the horizon" than high speed rail "as an effective way to reduce highway congestion" as the Obama administration in Washington and the Brown administration in Sacramento contend. Indeed, not even the voluminous planning documentation used to justify high speed rail provides evidence that the 21st century edition of an early 19th century technology can materially reduce traffic congestion.

    Already Google has conducted experiments with the automated car that have been so successful that they are now permitted in Nevada. Winston suggests that by automating cars, it will be necessary to separate automobile traffic from truck traffic, which will make it possible to provide additional traffic lanes within the existing road footprint. Non-automated cars and trucks would continue to operate in conventional, wider lanes on the same right-of-way. Another advantage would be that with the automated control, more cars could be accommodated in each lane. The need for highway expansion would be largely displaced by substantially improving capacity by upgrading highways with 21st century technology.

    Winston has been a critic of overly expensive urban rail systems and transit subsidies. Driverless cars were also the subject of a Wall Street Journal commentary by Randal O’Toole in 2010.

  • China’s Expanding Motorways

    In some ways, it has been an "annus horribilis" for transport in China (Note). There was the tragic high-speed rail accident in Wenzhou (Zhejiang), the fastest trains were slowed, construction was slowed or, in some cases stopped, and a top railway official was removed for misappropriation of at least a billion Yuan (more than $150 million).

    However, China’s freeway (motorway) system has achieved a milestone even Deng Xiaoping might have dreamed. In 2011, The Beijing Review reports that China’s intercity freeway system became the longest in the world, longer that of the United States, which had been the undisputed leader for at least 50 years.

    China added 11,000 kilometers (7,000 miles) of freeway (grade separated and dual carriage expressway) to its national interstate expressway system (National Trunk Highway System) in 2011. With a length of 85,000 kilometers (53,000 miles), China’s intercity freeway system exceeds that of the US interstate highway system by 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles). At the end of 2008, the US interstate highway system was 75,000 miles long.

    China has built 83,000 kilometers (52,000 miles) of interstate freeway in just 11 years. Much of the US interstate construction was completed over a period of 25 years, from 1956 to the early 1980s.

    It is unclear whether the total length of freeways in China is greater than that in the United States. In China, many urban freeways are not included in the National Trunk Highway System. There are also non-interstate freeways in the United States.  Complete data on these roadways is not available.

    —–

    Note: This characterization of a "horrible year" was made famous by Queen Elizabeth II in a major speech in 1992.

    See also: China Expressway System to Exceed US Interstates, January 21, 2011.

  • What Lies Ahead for Transportation in 2012?

    As befits this time of year, our thoughts turn to the events that await us in the days ahead. Putting aside the major imponderable — the outcome of the presidential and congressional elections that inevitably will impact the federal transportation program —what can the transportation community expect in 2012? Will Congress muster the will to enact a multi-year surface transportation reauthorization? Or will the legislation fall victim to election year paralysis? What other significant transportation-related developments lie ahead in the new year? Here are our speculations as we gaze into our somewhat clouded crystal ball.

    Will Congress enact a multi-year transportation bill?

    In 2011, the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee passed a bipartisan two-year surface transportation bill (MAP-21) and the Senate Commerce Committee approved the measure’s safety, freight and research components. But at the end of the year, the bill’s titles dealing with public transportation, intercity passenger rail and financing were still tied up in their respective committees (Banking, Commerce and Finance). What’s more, the Senate bill ended up $12 billion short of meeting the $109 billion mark set by the EPW Committee as necessary to maintain the current level of funding plus inflation.

    Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) has yet to publicly identify the offsets needed to cover the final $12 billion of the bill’s cost. Repeated assurances by EPW committee chairman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) that the necessary "pay fors" have been found, has met with widespread skepticism. "I’ll believe it when I see it" has been a typical reaction among congressional watchers. With the Republicans opposed to using "gimmicks" (Sen. Orrin Hatch’s words) to come up with the needed money, it’s not entirely clear that the bill, as approved on the Senate floor, will contain the full $109 billion in funding.

    On the House side, the fate of a multi-year bill remains equally clouded. In November, Speaker Boehner announced that he would soon unveil a combined transportation and energy bill, dubbed the "American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act" (HR 7). The bill would authorize expanded offshore gas and oil exploration and dedicate royalties from such exploration to "infrastructure repair and improvement" focused on roads and bridges.

    However, questions have been raised about this approach. Critics, including Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) EPW committee’s ranking member, judge the approach as problematical. They allege, along with many other critics, that the royalties the House is counting upon would fall billions of dollars short of filling the gap in the needed revenue (the gap is estimated at approximately $75-80 billion over five years). They further contend that the revenue stream from the royalties would not be available in time to fund the multi-year transportation program. What’s more, using oil royalties to pay for transportation would essentially destroy the principle of a trust fund supported by highway user fees. In sum, the House bill, if unveiled in its currently proposed form, will meet with a highly skeptical reception in the Senate.

    Assuming that both reauthorization bills in some form will gain approval in February, will the two Houses be able to reconcile their widely different versions by March 31 when the current program extension is set to expire? Or will the negotiations bog down in an impasse reminiscent of the current payroll tax stalemate? Given the importance that both sides attach to enacting transportation legislation and given the desire of both sides to avoid the blame of causing an impasse, we think the odds are in favor of reaching an accommodation — probably more along the lines of the Senate two-year bill than the still vague and unfunded House five-year version. If this simply kicks the can down the road a couple of years, that may be OK with Senate Republicans. As one senior Senate Republican confidently told us, by the bill’s expiration date the Senate will be in Republican hands and "the true long-term bill will be ours to shape."

    Will California lawmakers pull the plug on the high-speed train?

    In 2011 Congress effectively put an end to the Administration’s high-speed rail initiative by denying any funds to the program for a second year in a row. Does the same fate await the embattled $98 billion California high-speed rail project at the hands of the state legislature in 2012?

    At a December 15 congressional oversight hearing, witnesses cited a litany of reasons why the projects is a "disaster" (Rep. John Mica’s words). Among them: unrealistic assumptions concerning future funding; quixotic choice of location for the initial line section ("in a cow patch," as several lawmakers remarked); lack of evidence of any private investor interest in the project; eroding public support (nearly two-thirds of Californians would now oppose the project if given the chance, according to a recent poll); a "devastating" impact of the proposed line on local communities and farm land; unrealistic and out-of-date ridership forecasts; and lack of proper management oversight.

    More recently, the project came under additional criticism. The job estimates claimed by the project’s advocates ("over one million good-paying jobs" according to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi) have been challenged— and acknowledged by project officials— as grossly inflated. Four local governments in the Central Valley, including the City of Bakersfield, have formally voted to oppose the project, fearing harmful effect on their communities. And agricultural interests are gearing up for a major legal battle, according to the Los Angeles Times.

    But most unsettling for the project’s future is the inability of its sponsors to come up with the needed funding. To complete the "Initial Operating Segment" to San Jose (or the San Fernando Valley) would require an additional $24.7 billion. To finance this construction, the California Rail Authority’s business plan calls for $4.9 billion in Proposition 1A bonds and assumes $19.8 billion in federal contributions – $7.4 billion in federal grants and $12.4 billion in the so-called Qualified Tax Credit Bonds (QTCB). But the latter assumptions came in for sharp congressional criticism as so much wishful thinking, given the bipartisan congressional refusal to appropriate funds for high-speed rail two years in a row.

    Further challenges await the project early in 2012. A group of 12 congressmen led by House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has formally requested the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review the project’s viability and "questionable ridership and cost projections." Also expected early in January are a critique of the Authority’s business plan by the Independent Peer Review Group and a follow-up report by the State Auditor.

    Meanwhile, the governor and state legislature, are being asked by the Rail Authority to approve a $2.7 billion bond issue authorized by Proposition 1A to fund and begin construction  of the initial Central Valley section of the rail line from Fresno to Bakersfield. Will they be swayed by the findings of the three respected reviewing bodies and by the increasingly negative editorial and public opinion? Or will they continue to hold on to the seductive vision of bullet trains zooming from northern to southern California in two and a half hours — however distant and uncertain that vision may be? At this point, we believe the decision could go either way. However, sharply critical reports by the Peer Review Group and the General Accountability Office could tip the scale against funding the Central Valley project.

    Will tolling join the gas tax as a mainstream source of highway revenue?

    With the possibility of a near-term gas tax increase "less than zero," attention has turned to alternative means of raising transportation revenue. The most prominent option appears to be tolling— and 2012 may be the year when tolling becomes accepted as a mainstream source of highway revenue.

    Recent toll increases on the nation’s highways attest to their growing use (if not popularity) as revenue enhancers. In New Jersey, tolls are set to rise by 53% on the New Jersey Turnpike and by 50% on the Garden State Parkway. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey also has approved substantial toll increases on bridges linking the two states. These moves have provoked Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) to sponsor a "commuter protection act" that would transfer toll setting powers to the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. But the Senator’s initiative does not appear to have obtained much support in Congress. IBTTA, the toll industry association, has lodged strong objections, arguing that federalizing toll rate setting would encroach on the states’ jurisdiction and interfere with their ability to use tolls as a tool of infrastructure financing, and Congress appears to be listening.

    A recent Reason Foundation poll has found that people are more willing to pay tolls than increased fuel taxes (by a margin of 58 to 28 percent.) Moreover, the formation of a new "U.S. Tolling Coalition" suggests a growing interest in tolling on the part of the states. Under a pilot program that allows up to three Interstate highways to be reconstructed with tolls, Virginia will add tolls along the I-95 corridor and Missouri will toll its stretch of I-70. Arizona and North Carolina have applied for the remaining slot in the pilot program. Other states are embracing tolling to finance new capacity. Washington State, for example, has begun tolling the SR-520 floating bridge over Lake Washington to help pay for its replacement. Nor is the practice of tolling confined just to a few states. All told, 35 states already depend on toll revenue to some extent.  

    The Tolling Coalition wants to expand the pilot program and give the states the flexibility to toll any portions of their Interstate and other federal highways, "whether for new capacity, system preservation, or reconstruction." So far, neither the Senate nor the House have agreed to relax existing prohibitions, but they are prepared to retain the current pilot program.

    However, the need to reconstruct and modernize the existing Interstates which are reaching the end of their 50-year design life, combined with the necessity to expand capacity of the Interstate highway system to meet the needs of an expanding population, may soften congressional opposition to relaxing the current Interstate tolling restrictions. With the gas tax no longer able to meet the nation’s transportation investment needs, and with the concept of a VMT (vehicle-miles travel) fee still a distant vision, the year 2012 could mark a turning point in the acceptance of tolling as a serious highway revenue enhancer.

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    Note: the NewsBriefs can also be accessed at www.infrastructureUSA.org
    A listing of all recent NewsBriefs can be found at www.innobriefs.com

  • The Precarious State of the Highway Trust Fund

    On November 18, President Obama signed into law a bundle of appropriation bills for FY 2012  including appropriations  for the U.S. Department of Transportation. The measure had been passed earlier in the House by a vote of 298-121 and in  the Senate by a vote of 70-30. 

    The bill provides $39.14 billion in obligation limitation for the highway program, a reduction of almost $2 billion from FY 2011; however, an additional $1.66 billion is appropriated for highway-related "emergency relief." The transit program is funded at $10.31 billion (incl. $1.95 for New Starts), a $400 million increase from FY 2011, and Amtrak at $1.42 (incl. $466 million for operating expenses). The discretionary TIGER program is retained at $500 million, a slight decrease from FY 2011.

    Conspicuously absent in the new budget is any funding for high-speed rail and the Intercity Passenger Rail Service program — a fact cheered  by fiscal conservatives but mourned by boosters of high-speed rail and supporters of the California bullet train. The California High-Speed Rail Authority relies heavily on further federal funds to complete the project. According to its business plan, it expects $33-36 billion to come from the federal government. Failure by Congress to appropriate money for high-speed rail for a second year in a row makes the prospect of future federal support for the California rail project increasingly doubtful. 

    Also refused any funding in the FY 2012 congressional transportation appropriation are two other Administration priorities:  the Livable Communities Initiative ($10 million requested in the President’s budget); and the National Infrastructure Bank ($5 billion requested).  The conference committee action would seem to put an effective end to any further attempts to create the Bank, at least during the remainder of this session of Congress.      

    Solvency of the Highway Trust Fund in Jeopardy
    The congressional conferees have warned that the bill will deplete almost all resources from the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) by the end of fiscal year 2012.   "Without enactment of a new surface transportation authorization bill with large amounts of additional revenues this year," the report said, "the Highway Trust Fund will be unable to support a highway program in fiscal year 2013. The conferees strongly urge the committees of jurisdiction to enact surface transportation legislation that provides substantial long-term funding to continue the federal-aid highways program."

    As Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) pointed out in a commentary, the appropriations committee is willing to acknowledge the problem, but quickly passes the buck to the authorizers to come up with more cash for future years.  But the authorizers aren’t doing any better. The Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee passed a $109 billion reauthorization bill that would fund two years of transportation spending by essentially drawing the HTF balance down to zero (and still unable to identify the remaining  $12 billion in offsets). To House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) the implications of the Senate action are clear.  In a November 14 letter to Senate EPW Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA)  he warns that the Senate bill will "essentially bankrupt the Highway Trust Fund and make it impossible to provide any funding for fiscal year 2014."

    To its credit, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee recognized the precarious state of the Trust Fund and took steps to impose spending controls to prevent the Fund from falling into insolvency.  The Senate bill provides (in section 4001) for mandatory reductions in the obligation limitation should the Trust Fund  balances in the Highway Account, as estimated by the CBO, fall below a certain pre-determined level (for example, in the event gas tax revenues fail to match expectations). The designated triggers are $2 billion at the end of FY 2012 and $1 billion at the end of FY 2013. In other words, the Senate EPW committee has wisely provided for a mechanism to reduce highway expenditures below the authorized  $109 billion level in order to prevent the Trust Fund from going bankrupt.

    The House, for its part, is exploring a different way to fund a longer-term, five-year reauthorization. On November 17, Speaker Boehner announced he will unveil in December a combined transportation and energy bill, dubbed the "American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act,"  (HR 7). The bill  would authorize expanded offshore gas and oil exploration and dedicate royalties from such exploration to "infrastructure repair and improvement" focused on roads and bridges. 

    However, many questions have been raised about this approach. Several lawmakers —  notably, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), Ranking Member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Sen Barbara Boxer (D-CA) chairman of  of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee  and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) the committee’s ranking member—have criticized the aproach as problematical and potentially miring the bill in controversy. They allege that  the royalties the House is counting upon would fall billions of dollars short of filling the gap in needed revenue  (the gap is estimated at approximately $75-80 billion over five years). They further allege that the revenue stream from the royalties would not be available in time to fund the measure. 

    Other critics have pointed out that states in whose jurisdiction drilling may occur, will assert a claim to a lion portion of the royalties. Also, using oil royalties to pay for transportation would essentially destroy the principle of a trust fund supported by highway user fees.  For all the above reasons, the House proposal is likely to meet with a skeptical reception in the Senate.

    As the TCS memorandum aptly concluded,  in the end it’s a big game of "kick the can." The appropriators kick the can to the authorizers. The authorizers kick the can down the road a couple of years or rely on speculative and uncertain revenue that may or may not materialize. In the meantime, the fate of the Trust Fund continues to hang in a precarious balance, victim of Congressional indecision and new fiscal imperatives.    
     
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    Note: the NewsBriefs can also be accessed at www.infrastructureUSA.org

    A listing of all recent NewsBriefs can be found at www.innobriefs.com

  • The Transportation Politics of Envy: The United States & Europe

    The Department for Transport of the United Kingdom may be surprised to learn that the average round-trip commute in the nation is up to a quarter hour less than reflected in its reports. This revelation comes from an article in The Economist, ("Life in the Slow Lane") citing a survey indicating that the average commuter in the United Kingdom spends less than 40 minutes daily traveling to and from work in 2000. According to Regional Transport Statistics, published by the Department for Transport, the average commuter spent 50 minutes traveling to and from work in 2000. The UK government further indicates that the average commute time had risen to 56 minutes by 2009. The Economist relies on the much lower figure (and other similarly low estimates from other European nations) in fashioning an article criticizing transportation policy in the United States.

    Shorter US Commute Times: The Economist begins with the contention that the average work trip travel time in the United States is substantially greater than that of the number of European nations. The most reliable data says otherwise.

    The most comprehensive work trip data in Europe is maintained by Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Commission. The Eurostat data indicates that average commute times in Europe are somewhat more than in the United States in metropolitan areas of similar size (Figure 1), when compared to the comprehensive data from the US Census Bureau. For example, among metropolitan areas of more than 5 million population, the daily round-trip average commute is under 58 minutes in the United States, less than the 64 minutes in Europe. European commute times are longer in all population categories (Note).

    Overall, the average round-trip travel time in the US metropolitan areas over 500,000 population is 23.6 minutes and 25.3 minutes in the European metropolitan areas.

    Moreover, there are indications that the US trend is favorable, at least in comparison to the United Kingdom. Between 2000 and 2009, UK government data shows average round trip commute times to have increased six minutes, while US government data indicates a decline of nearly one minute (Figure 2).

    The US: Less Traffic Congestion:  The Economist then asserts that traffic congestion is worse in US metropolitan areas than in Europe. According to The Economist:

    …with few exceptions (London among them) American traffic congestion is worse than western Europe’s. Average delays in America’s largest cities exceed those in cities like Berlin and Copenhagen.

    The reality is the opposite, according to the INRIX Traffic Scorecard and a more correct rendering of the point above would have been:

    … with few exceptions (Los Angeles among them) western Europe’s traffic congestion is worse than America’s. Average delays in some of western Europe’s smallest cities exceed those in cities like Atlanta, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

    INRIX compared 2010 peak period traffic delays in metropolitan areas of the United States and Europe. As with commuting time, the average travel delay per driver was greater in Europe than in the United States in every population classification. While Los Angeles has the worst congestion the approximately 200 metropolitan areas (one-half in the US and one-half in Europe), the next 13 worst were in Europe (Honolulu ranks 15th) and 18 of the worst 20 were in Europe (Figure 3). The third worst ranking US metropolitan area was San Francisco, at 28th, while Washington was 29th. Only seven of the 50 most congested metropolitan areas were in the United States. Of course, anyone who has driven extensively in the metropolitan areas of the US and western Europe knows that congestion is generally far worse in Europe, a fact confirmed by the INRIX data.

    Indeed, traffic congestion in the smallest European metropolitan areas (under 500,000) was worse than in the largest US metropolitan areas, those with over 5 million (There were no US metropolitan areas with less than 500,000 population in the INRIX data, see Figure 4). Those automobile-oriented, highly suburbanized banes of urban planning, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston all ranked in the middle, between 90th and 110th. At least 75 European metropolitan areas had worse traffic congestion than all three.

    High-Speed Rail Envy: Finally, The Economist decries the lack of high-speed rail in the United States, noting that:

    The absence of true high-speed rail is a continuing embarrassment to the nation’s rail enthusiasts.

    It is hard to imagine a more pathetic standard for evaluating public policy than "satisfying rail enthusiasts."  It is well known that that governments from Washington to London, Athens and Lisbon are in serious financial difficulty. It is a time for limiting public expenditures to matters of genuine priority. That does not include high speed rail.

    The intercity road and airport systems are principally financed by users, in contrast to the operating subsidies and intense (100 percent) capital subsidies required by high-speed rail. This is evident in California with its now $65 billion first line that has more than doubled in real cost in a decade. It is also evident, closer to home for The Economist, where the controversial HS-2 high-speed rail proposal from London to Manchester and Leeds could easily double in cost (to £65 billion), based upon the best international research. Astoundingly, a doubling of cost would be a bargain for Britain’s taxpayers compared to two previous high-speed rail failures in the same corridor (See: The High Speed Rail Battle of Britain). The recurring environmental justifications ring hallow due to the high costs and the three generations or more it would require in California and the United Kingdom to eliminate the first gram of greenhouse gas.

    Transport policy could be improved in the United States, as well as in Europe. However, the starting point must be facts, not fancy, and certainly not envy.

    ——-

    Note: this analysis includes all data available for metropolitan areas in the United States (metropolitan statistical areas) and Europe (larger urban zones, the closest equivalent to US metropolitan areas). US data is complete, covering all 100 metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 population and is from the United States Census Bureau. European data is principally from Eurostat (94 larger urban zones and three from other sources). Paris data is from IAURIF (Institut d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la région Île-de-France). Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Leeds data is from the UK Department for Transport.  Data is not available for a number of metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 population in Europe.

  • China Expressway System to Exceed US Interstates

    This should be the year that China’s intercity expressway system exceeds the length of the US interstate highway system. China’s expressways are fully grade separated, freeway standard roadways, but unlike most interstate highways, have tolls.

    The China Ministry of Transport indicates that, as of the end of 2010, China had 46,000 miles (74,000 kilometers) of expressways. Currently, the expressways of China have a total length about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) less than that of the US interstate highway system. In the last year, 5,500 miles (9,000 kilometers) of new expressways were completed. If that construction rate continues, China’s expressway system would exceed the interstate system length late in the first quarter of 2011.

    By 2020, China expects to have 53,000 miles (85,000 kilometers) of expressways. This compares to the US total of approximately 57,000 miles (92,000 kilometers), including non-interstate freeways. However, the China expressway mileage does not include the expressways administered by provincial level governments, such as in Beijing (with its five expressway ring roads), the extensive system of Shanghai and the expressways of Hong Kong. No data is readily available for the lengths of these roads.

    Now it is possible to travel, uninterrupted (except for traffic jams in the vicinity of the largest urban areas), from north to south from near the Russian border, north of Harbin (in Heilongjiang or Manchuria) to near the resort island of Hainan, well south of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta and not far from the border with Viet Nam. This is a total distance of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers).

    East to west travel without signals is now possible from Shanghai to near the Myanmar (Burma) border, beyond Kunming, a distance of 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers). In the longer run, it will be possible to travel from the Russian border in Manchuria to the border of Kazakhstan in Xinjiang, a distance of 3,500 miles (5,700 kilometers).

    The expressway system is indicated in the map below. The blue the routes have been opened and the red routes are yet to be completed.