Wendell Cox' Republican Wedge Arguments Incite Against High Speed Rail per APTA

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This report is the summary of extensive research that examined the criticism that has been leveled
over the past three years at the national efforts to improve intercity passenger rail and introduce true
high-speed passenger rail in the United States.

In the course of this research it has been heartening to discover that there are really not that many critics, and those critics have not actually offered many unique arguments against the passenger rail initiative. What is disheartening, however, is that this small group of critics have organized themselves into a well-
oiled campaign that includes strategies to repeat the criticisms frequently, offer them as fresh criticisms each
time they are expressed, and make broad, sweeping claims that sound factual, but upon close examination
are usually without fact.

Most of these criticisms can be found in one form or another in a paper published by the Reason Foundation
and authored by Wendell Cox and Joseph Vranich titled, “The California High-Speed Rail Proposal: A
Due Diligence Report.” The “Due Diligence Report” was prepared especially to defeat the 2008 California
Proposition 1Aâ€"a bond referendum to finance the California high-speed rail project.

The key message of “A Due Diligence Report” was that the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s plans
had little or no potential to be implemented in their proposed form and that the project was highly risky
for state taxpayers and private investors. Cox and Vranich based these conclusions on a misreading of a
rather exhaustive study done by Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius and Werner Rottengatter, “Mega-Projects
and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition,” published by Cambridge University Press in 2003.

The intent of “Mega-Projects” was to inform decision-makers of the challenges that face project managers
and decision-makers as they propose, pursue and execute large infrastructure projects. Cox and Vranich construed “Mega-Projects” as a condemnation of large infrastructure projects, pointing to the California
project as the very type of project “to be condemned.”

Fortunately, California voters saw right through this ploy and approved Proposition 1A, and with the
exception of a few populist politicians who seem to campaign against virtually all types of government
spending, the criticisms of Cox, Vranich and their colleagues have had little impact except to consume
hundreds of inches of newspaper columns across the country, and provide fodder for conservative radio
talk show hosts looking to incite their listeners.

Readers may recall that about 10 years ago the American Public Transportation Association launched an
initiative to dispel the “myths about public transportation.”
That effort resulted in a series of monographs by Paul M. Weyrich and William S. Lind. The litany of criticisms indentified by Weyrich and Lind are not dissimilar from those being leveled at intercity and
high-speed rail today.

In this report, the criticisms have been categorized into basically eight groupings:

 Charges of elitism, social engineering, and untruthful attacks;

 The unaffordability of high-speed rail;  The lack of political and popular support for high-speed rail;
iv
An Inventory of the Criticisms of High-Speed Rail With Suggested Responses and Counterpoints
 The notion that rail corridors were being proposed and built to “nowhere;”

 Whether and why intercity and high-speed rail should receive a taxpayer subsidy;

 That intercity and high-speed passenger rail is old technology that is not transformational;

 That even though high-speed rail has enjoyed success in Europe and Japan, it’s a transportation
technology that won’t work in the U.S.; and,

 That proponents of passenger and high-speed rail have overstated the benefits.

Then, within each grouping is a recital of specific charges and a rebuttal or explanation of the actual facts
about the charge.
Over the past three administrations (Clinton, Bush, and Obama) efforts have been mounted to encourage
the reinvigoration of an important passenger transportation mode that served as the vital link uniting
the east with the west of a young nation, and later served as the vital transportation mode for American
soldiers during times of war.

Following World War II passenger rail became the orphan child of a transportation system increasingly
transformed by the automobile and commercial aviation. But as the unintended consequences of over
dependence of those modes became more evident and more severe, interest has returned to building a
reliable and efficient intercity passenger rail system and laying the ground work for a world class network
of high-speed rail.

Perhaps the most trying of these challenges is the unwillingness and/or inability to marshal the leadership
and innovative capabilities to address the faltering state of the nation’s infrastructure, especially its
transportation infrastructure.

Beyond the basic arguments that “no one rides passenger trains,” and therefore any effort to reinvigorate
passenger rail service in the United States is a waste of money, critics now attempt to couch their opposition
based on the “financial crisis” facing government at all levels, especially at the federal level. The critics
charge it is a transportation service we simply can’t afford until the nation’s fiscal house in order.

Through this project it is hoped that advocates for passenger rail, and especially high-speed passenger
rail, are enlightened and provided with the tools to engage both the critics as well as those who may be
sympathetic to the critics’ arguments.

If America is to once again have the world’s leading passenger transportation system and build a high-
speed passenger rail network for the 21st century, it will be up to passenger rail advocates to seize the
leadership, offer the vision, and make the sacrifices to make it a reality, and respond aggressively to critics
and their inaccuracies.

http://www.apta.com/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/HSR-Defense.pdf