It’s not often that I find myself agreeing with the policies being advanced by the Obama administration. However, the President’s proposal to spend some $8 billion of the transportation stimulus funds on the development of ten new high-speed passenger rail corridors is an idea that I fully support!
This is a wise investment in developing our transportation infrastructure. While the allotted federal funds pale in comparison to the costs of finishing the proposed corridors, the emergence of high-speed rail service in the United States would spur new economic growth and efficiencies, ease congestion on our roads, and reduce pollution. More significantly, Delaware is, in my view, uniquely well-positioned to reap significant economic benefits from the development of high-speed passenger corridors.
Obviously, high-speed passenger rail is not a new idea; indeed, many of our global industrialized competitor/peers, such as Japan and France, already have well developed high-speed rail networks. As the Economist observed several months ago, “France, Japan, Spain, Germany, all have trains that zoom through the countryside at speeds up to 217mph (350kph). America has one ‘high-speed’ rail corridor, from Washington to Boston, on which trains average about 80mph.”
We have lagged behind the rest of the industrialized world in this regard, and this is bad for our own growth and prosperity. As Richard Florida has argued in The Atlantic Monthly:
It’s time to start thinking of our transit and infrastructure projects less in political terms and more as a set of strategic investments that are fundamental to the speed and scope of our economic recovery and to the new, more expansive economic geography required for long-run growth and prosperity.
Moreover, the development of the proposed rail corridors also promises to be good for the environment. For example, “a 2006 study by the Center for Clean Air Policy and the Center for Neighborhood Technology concluded that building a high-speed rail system across the U.S. would result in 29 million fewer car trips and 500,000 fewer plane flights each year, saving 6 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions — the equivalent of removing a million cars from the road annually.” Aside from reducing pollution and easing congestion on our clogged highways, the proposal will further foster our own energy independence- something that is, in my view, a vital strategic goal.
Spurring economic recovery, increasing efficiency, and reducing pollution are all excellent reasons, standing alone, to support the development of high-speed rail corridors. However, I think Delaware has more parochial (but no less legitimate) reasons to support this initiative.
First, there is the impact affordable, upgraded, high-speed rail service on the Northeast Corridor (the Amtrak rail line running from Washington, DC, north to New York City and Boston) will have on New Castle County. For example, as one author has noted, given the proposed train speeds on the routes:
Philadelphia becomes a veritable suburb of NY, its commute time shrinking from nearly two hours to slightly more than a half hour. Washington-NYC and Boston-NYC become hour-and-a-half trips.
Clearly, Wilmington, and the rest of New Castle County, stand to benefit significantly from such advances. Although the Northeast Corridor is not, at present, a high-speed rail “designated corridor,” that fact is due merely to the prior completion of various upgrade progams, such as the removal of grade crossings. In addition, Rep. Castle has joined a number of other Representatives in calling for both “equity” in the distribution of high speed-rail grants and for “designated corridor” status for the Northeast Corridor; given the economic and electoral importance of the cities involved, it’s hard to imagine that high-speed rail grant funds would be withheld from projects in our area.
Second, as the News Journal recently reported, many global manufacturers are lining up to capitalize on the development of the new high-speed rail corridors here in the United States. I think Delaware is uniquely well-positioned to become the national center for the new high-speed rail industry.
Consider… Delaware is already home to two of Amtrak’s most significant shop complexes, in Wilmington and Bear, respectively. Also, thanks to GM and Chrysler, we currently have a glut of vacant manufacturing space. The former Newark Chrysler plant, in particular, would make an excellent location for a manufacturing facility for new high-speed rail locomotives and/or passenger cars because it has direct rail access to Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
The notion of converting vacant auto factories into new rail manufacturing facilities is not as far-fetched as it may seem at first glance. For example, Bruce Selcraig has argued, again in The Atlantic Monthly, that Detroit should become the hub of the new high-speed rail manufacturing industry:
The city that was once part of FDR’s “Arsenal of Democracy,” for its part in retooling auto plants to make World War II tanks and bombers, has easily a dozen empty auto plants that could be making train engines and train cars.
In Flint, Michigan, United Auto Workers Local 651 President Art Reyes says Plant Six at the Delphi Flint East site, which once made air filters and has been idle since September 2008, offers 500,000 square feet, 45-foot ceilings, 26-inch-thick concrete floors, fiber-optic wiring, and, conveniently, a rail line.
“I have a workforce of 900 that’s been downsized from 9,000,” says Reyes, “but every one of them is computer-literate and ready for cutting-edge, green-technology stuff, whether it’s wind turbines, next-generation auto batteries, or rail. We’re hungry for work.”
With all due respect to Mr. Selcraig, I think Delaware would be a better location for the development of such a new industry- we too have the vacant manufacturing space, and, like Detroit, we have a workforce “hungry for work.” Unlike Detroit, however, we are also centrally located on the busiest existing passenger rail line in North America and home to two major Amtrak shop complexes. The Newark location also offers close proximity to the University of Delaware, and it’s easy to imagine a number of potential synergies developing between the emergent high-speed rail industry and research and development ventures at the University and/or other local firms.
The development of high-speed passenger rail is an initiative worth supporting. It’s a real investment in updating our transportation infrastructure that will have significant economic and environmental benefits. Here in Delaware, at a minimum, it will improve the quality of life for many of our citizens by reducing commuting times to neighboring cities and speeding business travel and the flow of other goods and services. With some foresight on the part of our elected officials and business leaders, it might also lead to Delaware becoming the home of a major industry. We are as well-positioned as any location in the country to benefit from the potential new jobs that will spring up in the emergent high-speed rail industry- let’s seize the opportunity.
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