It’s time to leave congested highways in the rear-view mirror
If this holiday season is like last year’s, more than 100 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles to visit family and friends. More than 90 percent of these travelers, myself included, will use state and federal highways to reach their destination, leading to much-bemoaned traffic congestion.
I, along with around 40 percent of my fellow Bostonians, own a car. Like an increasingly large number of Boston car owners, I try to drive it as little as possible. My unintrusive 2008 Hyundai Elantra gets me from point A to point B, though it certainly won’t turn any heads the few times it’s out on the road.
I can generally rely on the T, Boston’s local transit system, for my day to day travel — service area gaps and delays notwithstanding. Even as I venture out of the city to see friends in neighboring Somerville or Cambridge, or take a weekend trip to Worcester 40 miles to the west to visit my family, I avoid driving through Boston, a city whose bad drivers and worse traffic congestion have gained national notoriety.
When I venture north though, I can’t avoid the cross-city parking lot known as I-93. I went to college in Manchester, NH, and will be traveling north to visit friends in New Hampshire and Maine during the holiday season. A round-trip from Boston to Manchester is around 100 miles, not much more than the distance of my $12 commuter rail ride from Boston to Worcester. However, I have few options to Manchester outside of driving my car the whole distance. While some intercity bus services connect these two cities, a round trip ticket costs around $30, compared to the $12 worth of gas I would use driving my car. Even when taking a bus, I would still be at the mercy of I-93 congestion, which can easily turn a 50- mile drive into a two-and-a-half hour ordeal.
The heavy congestion on I-93 is not unique. Many of America’s key interstate highways are plagued by stalled traffic and bottlenecks. The 405 in California, which connects Los Angeles to much of Orange County, the Cross Bronx Expressway, which carries traffic through the Bronx and into Manhattan, and the stretch of I-35 which cuts through the heart of Austin, Texas, are just a few examples of clogged highways which for many are the only viable route for intercity travel.
While sitting in seemingly-endless traffic on these roads is more than a little annoying, our over-reliance on single-person automobiles for long distance travel poses far more dire challenges. A single 50 mile trip in a typical automobile produces more than 50 pounds of carbon pollution. With millions of these intercity trips happening each day, it is no wonder why transportation is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Public safety is also a huge concern. Studies have shown a direct correlation between congestion and higher numbers of traffic crashes and fatalities.
The solution is an proven alternative. In many developed countries, including most of Europe, along with Japan and China, intercity trains are overtaking other forms of transportation as the primary means of long distance travel. The availability, efficiency, and affordability of high speed rail has the potential to radically alter how people move from city to city. For example, in France, a trip between Paris and Sens, which is comparable in distance to my frequent trips between Manchester and Boston, only takes one hour on high speed rail, for around $US 20. In the UK, a trip about the same length, between London and Welwyn Garden City, takes just 30 minutes and costs around $US 15. I could go on.
So what is holding the United States back? The easy answer is money. Yes, Europe and China are outspending the U.S. on investments in intercity rails. But this has more to do with governmental priorities than availability of funding. The United States and China have roughly the same amount of money available per capita to invest in intercity rail. But China outspends the U.S. 20 to 1. The key difference is that China, which currently operates the largest high speed rail system in the world, has prioritized investment in rail while the U.S. tends to focus on costly highway expansions. This has resulted in substantial gaps in our intercity railway system.
Every year, state and local authorities, along with the U.S. government, spend billions of dollars on highway expansion projects despite research which shows that in the long run, these projects don’t ease congestion or increase public safety. The best way to solve highway congestion is getting people off of highways, not making highways bigger, and it’s time for governments to start investing our tax dollars more effectively.
Federal lawmakers briefly experimented with a grant program dedicated to funding new intercity rail projects. In 2009, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Congress authorized the creation of the High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) grant program. The program awarded 158 grants totaling $10.6 billion for new intercity passenger rail lines. Unfortunately, due to shifting political priorities in the following Congress, the HSIPR program was essentially defunded by 2010.
The program, short-lived as it was, allowed new rail projects to move forward which may soon connect Chicago to Kalamazoo and Washington DC to Albans, in the northern corner of Vermont. But even as these new lines begin service, significant gaps remain.
Still, the U.S. Department of Transportation offers a massive pool of resources to cities and states to help them invest in intercity rail. That includes programs such as the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program and BUILD grants.
So this holiday season, as you sit in traffic on I-93, or whichever road serves as your city’s major artery, humming “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and thinking “there has to be a better way,” remind yourself that there is. While you’re at it, remind your lawmakers, too.
