» Initial project would link Birmingham to the capital in 49 minutes, but future connections would extend north to Leeds and Manchester.

The fear that only one section of the United Kingdom’s Midlands would receive new high-speed rail service has been laid to rest. Hoping to draw unity around a single compromise alignment, UK Secretary of State for Transport Andrew Adonis has drawn out a twenty-year plan that would connect London with Manchester and Leeds via Birmingham. It’s a 335-mile Y-shaped network that would cost £30 billion to construct and dramatically advance the speed of rail travel in Great Britain — even as it more than doubles transport capacity.

If it expects to meet future travel demand, the UK has basically no choice but to invest in the new high-speed corridor, designated HS2. Despite spending £13 billion on a huge reconstruction of the West Coast Main Line between London and Glasgow, trains running to Birmingham and Manchester remain packed at rush hour — and the line will be fully at capacity by 2020. The corridor carries 75 million passengers a year.

It was always expected that the second British high-speed link — the first, carrying Eurostar trains from the continent, made it to London’s St. Pancras terminal in 2007 — would allow customers a faster journey between London and Birmingham, the country’s two largest metropolitan areas. With political will backing such a project from both sides of the aisle, the real question was how trains would make that connection, and where they would go as they headed further north.

The government has now been studying how the program could be implemented for months.

With last week’s publication of a series of reports on the project by the UK Government, we now have a pretty good idea. According to plans, construction will begin in 2017, with the first segment open by 2026. That is, if the ruling Labour party remains in government; much could change if the conservatives currently in opposition win the national elections planned for later this year.

The Labour project is well thought-through, with an emphasis on improving transportation conditions for one of Europe’s biggest corridor markets, which today serves 45,000 long-distance journeys a day. A series of studies by the government have demonstrated that in order to increase capacity along the rail route, the country has two choices: invest in yet another reconstruction of the existing line — a project that would yield only minor improvements in speed and only minimal capacity expansion — or create a brand new, dedicated passenger corridor. The latter project, is turns out, is not only cheaper, but will also allow the British access to much faster trains, a potential economic boon. It is estimated to increase intercity rail ridership along the corridor to 165,000 daily.

The first phase of the project would be a connection between London and just north of Birmingham designed to cut travel times between to two major cities to 49 minutes, down from 1h20 today. This portion of the new line would be ready to serve up to 18 trains an hour operating at up to 250 mph, providing a three-fold capacity jump with 1,100-seat 400-meter trainsets. Total costs of this first section would reach between £15.8 and 17.4 billion mostly because of the necessary one-billion-pound reconstruction of London Euston station where trains would terminate and a major new tunnel under the heart of the capital. Center city Birmingham would not be on the primary route but instead see a terminus spur from the project, allowing trains to continue express from London to the north.

Trains would be designed from the outset to be able to continue north along the existing West Coast Main Line to serve Manchester and Scotland directly.

If approval is given by the government in later years, the line would be extended northwest to Manchester and northeast to Leeds along dedicated tracks, though exact alignments for those corridors have yet to be determined. The government has avoided antagonizing the electorate on either side of the Pennines by planning to serve both, though it has not committed to improving the rail link between Manchester and Leeds. Provisions for further new projects north into northern England and Scotland have yet to be made. This means that they’re unlikely to be built for decades.

Even so, Glasgow and Edinburgh will be put within 3h30 of London thanks to the fact that high-speed trains will continue on conventional tracks past the high-speed lines’ ends in Manchester and Leeds. That will be fast enough to seriously shrink the air market between those cities.

The Labour government’s strategy in addressing a connection to Heathrow Airport is to build a station just west of London where high-speed trains would meet Crossrail regional rail, Heathrow Express, and Great Western Main Line trains. This station — at which all trains would stop — would allow customers a one-transfer connection to the airport (in ten minutes) and easy access via Crossrail to major destinations throughout London not particularly close to the terminus at Euston, including the major business district at Canary Wharf (in twenty minutes). Because 80% of HS2 customers are expected to have London destinations, this new interchange will serve an important role in reducing congestion at Euston and its Underground station and take advantage of Crossrail’s 24 train-an-hour capacity.

It also avoids the mistake of serving Heathrow Airport’s very limited likely rail traffic. That said, nor does the government’s project include provisions for a bypass line around London — a potentially valuable addition to the country’s rail system.

The Labour government has suggested it will be willing to commit £2 billion a year to the construction of the line, which is why the country isn’t planning a full-out assault on Scotland as soon as possible. Construction will have to wait until the £16 billion Crossrail scheme is completed to avoid raiding too much of London’s treasury.

Yet this will further delay the United Kingdom’s investment in fast trains, especially in comparison with its mainland peers, which are constructing high-speed rail links at an ever-quickening pace. But the slow speed of completion may simply be a reflection of the U.K.’s tendency to pay far too much for the upgrade of its rail network: HS1 between the Channel tunnel and London cost three to four times as much per route-mile as equivalent projects on the continent. This may be a reflection of high labor costs or the use of private entities to manage projects, but either way it means that the country is simply not able to connect its major cities by fast rail as quickly as its neighbors.

Nonetheless, the choice of the Y-shaped alignment is an important step forward — even if people won’t be able to take advantage of the new lines for sixteen years.

» The 2000s may have seen the most investment in North American transit ever, with new light rail and metro lines opening from New Jersey to California.

I reviewed the biggest transit projects completed in the United States and Canada between 2000 and 2009 on the Infrastructurist a few days ago, but I thought it would be useful to provide a bit more information about how I compiled the data and give readers a glance at all of the major transit projects I can identify.

I determined the comparative costs of the project by factoring in inflation (both of the U.S. and Canadian dollars, separately). All project costs are noted in 2009 U.S. dollars. I did not include projects which began construction during the 2000s but which are planned to finish after 2009. I also did not include airport or private people movers in the top ten; if I had, New York’s AirTrain JFK line that opened in 2003 would have been number three, at a price of $2.23 billion in 2009 dollars.

The success of the most expensive projects in attracting their foreseen number of riders has been something of a mixed bag, with some projects, like San Juan’s Metro, falling far below expectations, and others, like Phoenix’s Metro Rail, doing quite well so far.

In terms of cost per mile, perhaps the most relevant way to compare various transit projects, eight out of the ten most expensive were metro rail, with an exception for the Boston Silver Line busway, at $315 million/mile, and the Newark light rail extension at $223 million/mile. New York’s IND 63rd Street connector, at the equivalent of $2.6 billion per mile, was by far the most expensive — though that cost is roughly in line with that of the Second Avenue Subway currently under construction.

During the 2000s, the top ten places (and their suburbs) for overall transit investments were:

1. Los Angeles – $4.15 b
2. Seattle – $3.84 b
3. Vancouver – $2.86 b
4. San Juan – $2.63 b
5. San Francisco – $2.43 b
6. Northern New Jersey – $2.20 b
7. Washington – $1.92 b
8. Phoenix – $1.88 b
9. New York City – $1.36 b
10. Philadelphia – $1.31 b

Los Angeles hopes to spend $14 billion on transit by 2020; if it does so, it will surely be in the lead once again for urban transit spending in the United States during the 2010s, followed closely by New York City, Denver, Houston, and Dallas. Each has a panoply of expensive new transit corridors on tap.

» This guest post by Alon Levy is the third in a three-part series on a potential New York Regional Rail Network. Check out the First and Second Pieces.

In a two-part series on The Transport Politic, I previously argued that to improve Greater New York’s commuter rail service, the agencies controlling it should orient their capital plan to emphasize good service on existing lines instead of spending on outbound extensions, with a special focus on through-routing. Such a system would remodel New York’s commuter rail along the lines of the Paris RER or a German S-Bahn.

In the six months since my articles were published, I have continued to refine some of the points in the proposal. Some of those refinements come from tweaks proposed in the comment threads; others come from reading more about good commuter rail operations in France and Germany, as well as about the state of tracks in New York, for which Rich Green’s maps are an invaluable resource.

The basic premise of the plan remains the same, and almost the entire map of the proposal and most of the details I gave in the previous posts could stay the same. I believe a few of the route choices should be tweaked, but beyond this, most of the changes would be in station layout and in operations and scheduling.

All proposed improvements here have a unified theme, which is that New York regional rail should look more like the RER or an S-Bahn. The previous two posts emphasized through-routing and service to city neighborhoods; this coda will stress seamless operations, highlighting transferring and schedule convenience.

Transfers

The best transfer is one that is timed and cross-platform. Timing reduces waiting time, and cross-platform configurations simplify walking from one train to another. The transit planning literature recognizes this fact: ridership projections for future New York City subway lines assign a time penalty to transfers, recognizing the fact that walking from one platform to another is inconvenient for commuters beyond the extra time cost; those projections, however, do not assign any transfer penalty to cross-platform transfers beyond the waiting time for the connecting train, which transfer timing reduces to zero.

The proposed Fulton Street station, where Yellow, Orange, and Blue lines will meet, should be converted to cross-platform operation. In the  initial proposal, the tracks are laid in a cross shape. The north-south tracks (Blue Line) could stay the same, but the east-west tracks (Yellow and Orange Lines) could be tweaked: the tunnel from Flatbush to Manhattan would be moved further south to give the tracks time to curve north, and then the tracks would curve west to the Village as in the first plan.

In addition, if possible, the underground Hoboken station for trains to Fulton should be at the same level as PATH, with cross-platform transfers. This is little different from the practice in Paris, which configured the central transfer station, Châtelet-Les Halles, to allow cross-platform transfers from the north-south RER B to the east-west RER A.

The other transfers in the proposal—Secaucus, Tonelle, Jamaica, and Sunnyside—either are already cross-platform or cannot be converted. Those that are cross-platform should always be configured with two platforms, four station tracks, and possibly two bypass tracks; as much as possible, each route should stop reliably at the same platform, and schedules should be coordinated for timed transfers. This would allow cross-platform transfers between the LIRR-Morristown and Northeast Corridor trains at Sunnyside and Secaucus, relieving Penn Station.

At Secaucus and Tonnelle, the cruciform two-level transfers between the trains to Penn Station and those to Hoboken cannot be converted to cross-platform, but can simplified by tearing down or not building faregates. But they could still be timed if trains wait for one another for a minute at each station, a process that can be performed off-peak without straining capacity; this is done on the Berlin U-Bahn for wrong-way transfers between the U6 and U7 at Mehringdamm.

Finally, three additional infill stops should be considered, two in New Jersey and one in Brooklyn. The West Shore Line (part of the Orange Line) should have a new stop at 51st Street, near the Tonnelle Avenue stop of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail. The Morristown Line  (Purple Line) should have an infill stop at Orange Street in Newark, intersecting the original Newark subway, which has no direct connection to Newark Broad Street Station. And the new Flatbush-Fulton tunnel (Yellow and Orange Lines) would pass under the Jay Street and Court Street-Borough Hall subway stops, permitting a new Borough Hall station to be constructed; this stop would offer transfers to both Court Street and Jay Street stations.

Route Changes

The above-described change in the Fulton Street station layout suggests a second route for the Hoboken-Fulton segment (Yellow and Orange Lines) through Manhattan. Instead of going north under Hudson or Greenwich Street and stopping at Houston Street, it could go north on the same route as the Staten Island-Harlem connection (Blue Line), on separate tracks, and curve west north of Houston, stopping below the existing West 4th Street subway stop.

This option reduces the amount of necessary construction in Lower Manhattan, as well as the total route-length of tunnel to be built, which correspondingly lowers costs. It also serves the Village in a more central location. Unfortunately, West 4th is a three-level station, so crossing under it would require diving deep underground, substantially increasing costs. In Tokyo, one of the reasons for substantial subway cost escalation in recent years is that to cross existing lines, new lines have to burrow deep underground, as this new tunnel would have to. I believe this option would be worth it if the cost were the same or lower than that of the route proposed in the original plan.

At the same time, I am no longer convinced by some of the outbound extensions I had previously proposed. It may not be cost-effective to run improved regional trains on their respective commuter lines’ full length. The original plan already cut out some low-ridership branches and line segments; however, there may be room for more cuts, for examples west of Raritan on the Raritan Valley Line, east of Ronkonkoma and Babylon on the LIRR, and west of Dover on the Morristown Line.

On the other hand, there should be more double-tracking of single-track bottlenecks, such as the single-track bridge over the Hackensack over the Erie Main Line, which is otherwise fully double-tracked.

At least according to the comments on my posts, the most controversial idea I suggested was the tunnel from Staten Island to Manhattan. This tunnel would be expensive, at $7.4 billion, using the estimated costs for a Brooklyn-Jersey City freight tunnel as a baseline. The main benefit of the Staten Island tunnel is not cost per rider, but commute shortening. Residents of Staten Island are in a near-tie with those of Queens for the longest average commutes in the United States. However, Staten Island’s situation is worse: unlike in Queens, where neighborhood retail is often within walking distance, on Staten Island most people need a car to run errands, so shopping trips take much longer.

In either case, it might be useful if expensive to extend the proposed Staten Island lines west to meet New Jersey Transit. The existing Staten Island Railway would have to be extensively modified, complete with a new railway bridge, an elevated line in Perth Amboy, and a raised Tottenville station on the bridge’s approach; this would connect the line with the Perth Amboy commuter rail station, where there could be a cross-platform transfer. At a much lower cost, the North Shore Line could be extended west on an existing freight rail bridge, follow the Morristown and Erie and Conrail lines to cross the Northeast Corridor at an infill station north of Linden and then join the Raritan Valley Line at Cranford.

Penn Station Pedestrian Flow

While through-routing is enough to eliminate the capacity problems resulting from Penn Station’s limited track space, there remains the serious issue of pedestrian capacity. One of the arguments I have heard proponents of the under construction Access to the Region’s Core project use is that the platforms at Penn are narrow and have narrow stairways to the concourses, so a new station is necessary (and will be built according to current plans for the ARC tunnel).

There are multiple solutions to the circulation of pedestrians at Penn Station besides the new connections and stations proposed in my plan. First, Penn Station does not use its existing tracks as efficiently as it could. The LIRR recently remodeled its platforms and the lower concourse so that each of its platforms has four or five staircases leading up to waiting areas. NJT has done no such thing, and each of its platforms only has two such staircases. Remodeling the NJT tracks would be expensive, as it was for the LIRR, but building a new station would be much more pricey.

In addition, today’s station has 11 island platforms, each flanked by two tracks, with only one track adjacent to two platforms. Paving over half the tracks so that each track is adjacent to two platforms would not only widen the platforms and allow the installation of wider staircases and elevators, but also double the number of usable doors on the train. This would leave Penn with 11 or 12 tracks, of which only nine would connect to both the North River Tunnels under the Hudson and East River tunnels.

For reference, with four tracks to the east and six to the west (four to New Jersey, two through an upgraded Empire Connection), Penn would not need more than six to eight through-tracks; it would run out of access tunnel capacity before it would run out of station track capacity. This solution would be more radical than remodeling existing platforms but might be cheaper for a given capacity.

Finally, the concourses should be stripped of back offices immediately, and space-consuming concessions should be eliminated as traffic increases. George Haikalis of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility notes that only 54% of the lower concourse is used for passenger circulation purposes; the rest is consumed by Amtrak back offices and concessions. This goes against standard practice worldwide. As train stations get too busy, sometimes even existing retail gets kicked out, as was necessary at Shanghai Metro’s busiest station, People’s Square.

Scheduling

Compare the following two off-peak train schedules for Monday, January 4th. Both schedules only list departure times.

I selected these two schedules at random, based on trips I had taken recently. The TER schedule is clockface: trains leave at regular intervals, at the same time every hour. It is easy to remember. The Metro-North schedule has some clockface patterns as well, but they are less regular and break down on the shoulders of rush hour.

By making timetables easier to remember, clockface scheduling makes travel easier for passengers, increasing ridership. While the clockface example above is of half-hourly service, there is no lower limit to frequency: in New York, some buses already run clockface, even if they operate every five minutes.

Best industry practice is in Germany, where the S-Bahn not only maintains clockface scheduling, but also rationalizes the additional rush hour service. The regularity is such that in Stuttgart, there is no need for a  comprehensive timetable; instead, a system map indicates at how many minutes after the hour each line arrives at each station. Each line has two departure times, spaced exactly half an hour apart, with additional peak hour trains at the quarter-hour marks. Berlin, whose services are more complex, does have a timetable, but each of its lines maintains clockface scheduling with intervals of five, ten, or twenty minutes; further, the schedule shows that on the Stadtbahn, the S3 and S5 arrive at the shared stops simultaneously, allowing cross-platform transfers.

Even today, New York has the track capacity to maintain clockface schedules with regular intervals on each line. The local/express train alternation is not a problem for two-track railroads with passing sidings, let alone four-track railroads such as the Northeast Corridor and the inner portions of the LIRR and Harlem Line mainlines. Once a new pair of tracks under the Hudson River is in place, clockface scheduling will become even easier.

Service Patterns

On New York’s commuter rail systems, as on the RER, not all trains stop at all stations. This does not worsen service as long as express trains are run on a limited-stop basis like express subway trains and if schedules are regular. As on the subway, regional rail express trains should enable people to make diagonal travel, going from suburb to suburb without passing through Manhattan, switching instead at an outlying transfer point such as Jamaica. While transit’s greatest advantage over cars is over straight trips that end in or pass through Manhattan, it can also serve useful purpose for a substantial number of diagonal trips. The current train service pattern squanders this opportunity: for example, the New Haven Line trains skip all stations in the Bronx, making it difficult to travel to stations on the Harlem Line.

A better way of treating diagonal trips would be to require all or most trains to stop at stations located such before splits, as far as track arrangement permits. The LIRR does this at Hicksville; other important junction stations include Woodlawn, Floral Park, Rahway, Valley Stream, Summit, and Newark Broad. At those stations, as far as possible the schedule should time outbound and inbound trains to facilitate diagonal transfers: where platform arrangements permit cross-platform transfers, for example at Valley Stream, the trains should arrive at the same time, and where they do not, for example at Woodlawn, the outbound train should arrive one minute after the inbound train.

No system mainline should have less than two trains per hour at any hour of operation; ideally, the minimum frequency should be three trains per hour. Branches and low-ridership outlying segments should have no less than one train per hour. When there is too much branching to run hourly trains to all branches without running them empty on the common trunk lines, the branches could be served with shuttles with timed transfers off-peak.

In the urban areas, frequency should be higher, starting at six trains per hour. This could cause problems on the Northeast Corridor, the LIRR lines feeding into East Side Access, and the lines feeding into the Hudson Line, which begin to branch out in inner-urban neighborhoods. On the lines feeding into East Side Access, timed transfers at Sunnyside could be enough. But on the Hudson Line’s two branches and the Northeast Corridor, off-peak service should include short-turning trains serving just those branches: for example, the Northeast Corridor could be served by local trains running from New Rochelle to Newark or Penn Station.

None of this applies to peak hour, when there is enough demand to permit one-seat rides to Manhattan from every branch. The system should still avoid mixing lines, for example running Montauk Branch trains to Penn Station instead of Fulton, but on the Northeast Corridor, Hudson Line, and LIRR Main Line, direct trains should serve both inner-urban branches from all outlying corridors.

Fare Collection

My original proposal called for faregates, on the models of Paris and Japan. However, it may be better to use a  German- and Swiss-style proof of payment system, in which stations would be barrier-free and passengers would have to present tickets at fare inspections to be conducted at random. Such a system could even extend to bus service, and would go a long way to reducing operating costs. The MTA’s recent Making Every Dollar Count report says that out of every dollar the agency obtains in revenue, it needs to spend fifteen cents on fare collection.

The tradeoff between faregates and proof of payment is an issue of ridership. At the passenger density of the RER or Tokyo’s commuter rail system, or for that matter the New York City Subway, fare inspections are infeasible. But at lower passenger density, fare inspectors cost less than station agents. The busiest lines in New York straddle the boundary between RER and S-Bahn ridership. But either faregates or proof of payment would cost much less than having multiple conductors per train collecting tickets.

» China intends to extend its high-speed rail system towards south Asia and Europe with the goal of two-day journey times between London and Beijing.

If China weren’t already halfway through the construction of the world’s largest high-speed rail network, it would be difficult to take this proposal seriously. But the most populated country on earth has shown no deficit of skill recently in undertaking massive public works projects, and its ambitions — and willingness to finance them — show no sign of slowing.

So the news that China is planning a series of transcontinental high-speed rail lines designed to connect London to Beijing in just two days that broke yesterday in the South China Morning Post should be taken at face value. The proposal, which is mapped out above according to preliminary information about proposed alignments, would likely be the largest infrastructure project — ever. Taking the growing Chinese rail network as the starting point, new 200 mph lines would extend south towards Singapore, north and west into Siberia, and west through India, Kazakhstan, and Turkey, with the eventual goal of linking into the growing European fast train system.

Exact routes are not yet determined, but the general goal of the plan is to increase the region’s mobility through fast rail networks and to join together the mostly disconnected Asian and European systems.

Government officials in China plan to use this project to expand the country’s base of natural resources. Negotiations are already underway with 17 countries, premised on the idea that China would spend its own money building the rail links in exchange for resources it currently lacks. According to Wang Mengshu, a consultant working on the project, “We would actually prefer the other countries to pay in natural resources rather than make their own capital investment.”

China has already agreed to finance a rail link into Myanmar in exchange for the rights to that country’s lithium reserves. Russia and China have announced plans to build a new trans-Siberian link. Iran, Pakistan, and India are each negotiating with China to build domestic rail lines that would link into the overall transcontinental system.

It’s a sort of neo-imperialism desired by the countries to be colonized. Will they regret the selling off of their natural resources in exchange for better transportation offerings? Is this reasonable foreign investment on the part of China, or is it an attempt to take control of the economies of poor countries?

The strategy can’t be more clear: China wants to establish itself as the center of Asian trade, the hub of the world’s largest market. By developing the economies of Cental Asian and Eastern European countries that have missed out on the enormous growth currently being experienced by China, the region will experience increasing trade and development, a result that will in turn aid in expanding the Chinese economy. It would allow China to solidify its position as the dominant player in the Asian economy, with the goal of eliminating any hopes of increasing American or European influence there.

Though China’s economy continues to grow at an unbelievable pace, its slow-growth demographics resulting from the one-child policy mean that it must focus its efforts abroad if it wants to continue expansion into the future.

Despite China’s history of following through with its big rail plans, building a 17-country network is quite different than upgrading just its own lines. Some major problems, like track gauge differences and differing visa requirements, stand in the way of ever completing the project. If they get their way, however, Chinese officials want to complete the project in ten years. It’s an outrageous — and exciting — objective.

» The European Investment Bank and Build America Bonds could serve as a model, but that strategy moves the burden of infrastructure spending to the next generation.

If you haven’t been following lately, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for members of Congress to get anything done. In terms of transportation, this fact is no laughing matter, because the nation’s ground transport systems is running on hot air — deficit spending — for lack of agreement about how to pull together financing for the next planned six-year transportation bill, now a year late.

What was once considered unthinkable — a reliance on the income tax-sourced General Fund to ensure continued cash flow to states for the purposes of highway and transit construction — has become something of the status quo. But the lack of a committed, long-term source of funds for the program has produced a situation in which an expansion of overall spending on transportation, something that many consider an urgent priority, is very difficult to undertake.

Rather than acting as a consensus-builder, the Obama Administration has systematically undermined potentially the most politically reasonable approach: raising the gas tax, an action that hasn’t been pursued since 1993. Just this week, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood ruled out a gas tax hike even though alternatives, like a vehicle-miles-traveled tax, would take years to implement. So a continued reliance on the General Fund seems likely — and it has some significant merits, mostly relating to the fact that it derives funds from the progressive income tax rather than regressive user fees.

Nonetheless, everyone involved in the process seems to want more funds for transportation — just not from the deficit-laden treasury. That’s why the Administration has been harping again and again on an idea it’s been fantasizing about since before Mr. Obama even won the Presidency: a national infrastructure bank.

According to its proponents, such a bank would provide a new funding source to the nation’s essential infrastructure projects, allowing cities, states, and even regions as a whole to build new rail lines or electricity grids. Theoretically, this independently-run institution would finance only meritorious projects and it would do so by leveraging the government’s guaranteed and virtually infinite bonding capabilities. In turn, voilà: the U.S. gets a renewed physical plant, and taxpayers are asked to foot less of the bill.

The usefulness of this concept is relatively easy to understand when put in context. Take the example of Los Angeles: under the leadership of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the local Metro transportation agency wants to speed up spending on 12 major transit projects — from a planned thirty years to just ten. But sales tax revenue to pay for those projects will take decades to come in, meaning that the proposal is dead in the water. That is, unless the federal government steps in, lending Los Angeles the equivalent of two-thirds of total tax revenue, using as collateral twenty years of taxes that the region will eventually pay back to Washington. The end result: L.A. gets a big new transit network much more quickly than planned, all at the same price as initially assumed.

A national infrastructure bank could provide these loans, unlike the current executive departments that have no mandate to do so. So there’s a gap to fill.

But as nice as the infrastructure bank may sound, its own financing mechanisms have yet to be clearly defined, even though the way it would lend out is relatively easy to understand.

In his fiscal year 2011 budget, President Obama suggested appropriating $4 billion to establish the new infrastructure bank, with the assumption that the new agency would distribute grants to qualified projects and have its coffers refilled every year or so depending on need. Of course, what’s envisioned there is no bank at all, since it wouldn’t be generating revenue in return for its investments: it would be draining Washington’s coffers even more, with no clear explanation for why it is necessary. What’s the point of establishing another federal agency to dole out grants for infrastructure, when the Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Energy already do that all the time?

This non-bank idea, in other words, is a non-starter.

But what about an infrastructure bank that distributed loans at low interest rates and then expected to get its money back over time? What Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro has been proposing for years is something modeled on the European Investment Bank (EIB). The EIB was founded in 1958 and provides low-interest loans at up to 50% of cost to qualified projects in a variety of sectors in Europe and North Africa. Recent projects funded by the EIB’s transport division include an extension of the Bilbao Metro in Spain, a tramway network in Lodz, Poland, and the high-speed rail line between Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey.

Despite its vast size and lending obligations — it is larger than the World Bank — the EIB is independent, does not rely on infusions of funds from any European governments, and has a stellar credit rating.

The principal of encouraging states and local governments to take out low-interest loans was championed by the stimulus act of early 2009, which included a provision for Build America Bonds. Governments have now issued $78 billion in these bonds, now representing 20% of the municipal debt market, mostly because the BAB program is such a good deal for public authorities that want to take out debt for new construction projects. Unlike the proposed infrastructure bank, however, the BAB program does not distribute funds based on merit, nor does it rely on a government bank — the federal government artificially produces low interest rates by subsidizing private loans.

But the EIB and BAB models, as interesting as they are, do not actually increase the amount of money being spent on transportation in the long-term — they simply transfer more of the current spending load into debt. Is that a good idea when governments are already so squeezed by limited budgets? How can we be sure that we’ll be in an adequate financial situation to pay back these debts in the future? Spending now through loans inherently means less spending in the future: If Los Angeles compresses thirty years of transit spending into ten, what happens during the other twenty? Nothing at all, unless another separate revenue source is established.

So none of the the infrastructure bank proposals put forth thus far will actually aid in reversing the current lack of adequate financing for transportation.

But there’s an alternative that would meld the idea of a bank and a grant-lending institution, leveraging the power of the federal government to invest and then using the profits to spend on necessary projects.

Imagine the federal government began offering a bank savings account package to young people and seniors with a very favorable rate of return, run through private banks in exchange for, say, their participation in the FDIC bank insurance system. Then say the government “collected” all of those funds together in a public bank and used the money to invest as it wished in the private sector. If well managed, this system could make enough money through its investments not only to give its depositors high interest rates, but also a large profit that would go not to shareholders but instead towards the construction of new social housing and infrastructure.

It turns out that this is not that far-off of an idea: it’s exactly how France’s Caisse des Dépôts works. The independent agency, originally formed in 1816, finances much of the country’s affordable housing and urban redevelopment schemes; more recently, it has contributed to the construction of new high-speed rail lines. For the most part, these expenditures are in grant form, meaning that the Caisse is increasing France’s overall spending on infrastructure without increasing the nation’s debt load. That makes it significantly more effective in moving forward with new spending than would be the infrastructure banks proposed for the U.S.

The Caisse can raise funds easily partially because it runs a huge percentage of the nation’s bank deposits, but also because it invests directly in (and helps run) a number of major French enterprises, a type of state involvement in the economy that is a hallmark of French policy but is unlikely to play a major role in traditionally hands-off American political decision-making. On the other hand, since the Caisse is autonomous — it makes its investment decisions without, say, the involvement of the National Assembly — it acts somewhat more like a non-profit than an arm of the national government. It does not rely on any kind of subsidy to maintain its operations.

Even without a savings account scheme, a similar bank in the U.S. could leverage existing government funds, such as those reserved for Social Security, to invest in the market and earn interest for the public sector. If properly managed, those dividends could be sent back to local and state governments in the form of grants for infrastructure. It’s hard to see the downsides of that idea.

Update, 9 March: I should point out that the investment-bank system I’m advocating would work much as public pension funds already do, investing and then using the returns to fund payments to subscribers. The use of this system for pensions produces some major problems, of course: if the market goes down, people stop getting their pensions, and that’s a huge problem. On the other hand, if this system were used for infrastructure creation, it wouldn’t need to be as stable and continuous year-to-year, meaning the use of market investment wouldn’t be as problematic.

Image above: European Investment Bank Headquarters in Luxembourg, from Flickr user Cédric Puisney

» A station at Heathrow looks more promising when envisioned as a connection between the United Kingdom’s northern and southern rail networks.

In my Friday article on the brewing controversy over whether to link Heathrow Airport to the United Kingdom’s proposed HS2 high-speed rail network, I dismissed the idea rather quickly, arguing that the airport station proposed by the Conservative Party would multiply construction costs and increase travel times. Because Heathrow is not directly on the way between London and Birmingham, including a station at the airport on the first segment of the HS2 route would be a wasteful choice. The Labour Party’s inclination to have airport users transfer to another line to get to terminals is probably the right approach.

Yet, after reading a report on the Heathrow connection by high-speed rail advocacy group Greengauge 21 (thanks to commenter John W), I’d like to modify my position on the issue.

By integrating Heathrow Airport into a bypass route around London, it would become an essential element of the nation’s high-speed network by allowing commuters to make cross-country connections without entering the capital. This link could provide fast train access to much of southwestern England and southern Wales, two regions which thus far have been excluded from consideration for new service.

The Greengauge 21 project promotes its concept in opposition to the three primary options that have typically been proposed for a Heathrow connection: a spur line terminating at the airport, which would suffer from low frequencies (as suggested in Greengauge 21’s first plan in 2007); a required transfer from a station elsewhere that would reduce rail use at the airport significantly (as suggested by Labour); and a remote hub along the London-Birmingham route that would extend journey times and costs (as suggested by the Conservatives).

Greengauge 21 argues that there is no reason to reroute the London-Birmingham route, since that would limit the ridership to be gained from the fastest-possible journeys between London and the north. But by constructing that first stage of the HS2 route with plans for turnouts towards the airport from the beginning, the U.K. could be setting the stage for direct airport access and future fast train service along the South Western Main Line and the Great Western Main Line. The former corridor could handle high-speed trains today, while the latter is planned for electrification over the next decade.

This proposal would create a £3.2 billion London bypass modeled on France’s LGV Interconnexion Est, which runs to the east of Paris, serving Charles de Gaulle Airport on the way. Interestingly, SNCF, the French rail company, proposed a similar line around Chicago via O’Hare Airport in its proposal for a Midwest high-speed rail system several months back.

The French model is worthy of serious consideration as the British implement their own rail improvements. Until the Interconnexion was completed in 1994, customers hoping to take high-speed trains between regional cities were required to transfer in Paris, often even having to get between stations on opposite sides of the city. This lowered ridership significantly, as the time advantage of high-speed trains are lost when major transfers are necessary. But the Interconnexion allowed trains to travel directly from the southeast and southwest to the east and north, allowing people in Lille, for instance, to get to Lyon without changing trains: there are now ten direct trains between those cities everyday.

The fact that the Interconnexion includes a station at Charles de Gaulle Airport (and Disneyland Paris, for that matter) is secondary to the line’s role as a connection between regions. The fact that the airport station is able to attract 3.4 million TGV users a year, no small number (it would be Amtrak’s fourth most-used station), is an added advantage. Virtually none of those riders are coming from the Paris region.

Heathrow could play a similar essential connecting role between the HS2 corridor and the southwestern sections of the United Kingdom, allowing people in cities along the high-speed line like Birmingham and Manchester direct service to Cardiff, Bristol, and Portsmouth, which may not get a new dedicated high-speed line but could at least see high-speed trains. The airport becomes a through-station, with most trains passing through in the middle of a longer cross-country trip. Greengauge 21 argues that this strategy could attract 15 million passengers a year to Heathrow’s high-speed station by 2055.

The primary goal of the HS2 project should be first to connect London to Glasgow and Edinborough city centers in about two hours. This project would provoke a major mode shift towards rail across the country. The construction of a link to Heathrow wouldn’t reduce the airport’s congestion much since only about 10% of passenger movements at Heathrow could be realistically moved to rail and only six British cities currently have directly flights to the airport anyway.

Yet taking advantage of the airport to build a new bypass around London would play a more important role in reducing road travel on routes not involving London, with a movement away from flying as only a secondary, complementary effect. If constructing that bypass becomes a priority in the future, routing it through the airport could be the right approach — and British rail planners should be designing HS2 now to be ready for it.

Image above: Greengauge 21’s Heathrow Opportunity Plan, from Greengauge 21

» The British government is set to produce a high-speed plan that does not include a direct connection to Heathrow Airport. Is that a problem?

It’s one of the standard arguments made by promoters of high-speed rail: by investing in multimodal hubs at airports, trains can reduce congestion in the air by encouraging people flying short journeys to switch to rail, even while expanding access to long-distance routes only feasible by airplane. The argument is lapped up by politicians and business groups, both of whom use air travel far more frequently than the average population. The two most advanced plans for American fast train services will include direct connections to airports: in Florida at Orlando and in California at San Francisco, San Diego, Ontario, and Palmdale.

Yet the British government is planning to release a report next week that will advocate bypassing Heathrow Airport, the world’s second largest, on the way between London and Birmingham. To be completed by 2025, this corridor would be the first segment of what will eventually be a north-south high-speed mainline between the English Channel and Scotland. The full £60 billion High-Speed 2 project, it seems, will prioritize center-city connections over air links.

Is that an acceptable position?

The question of whether to route HS2 through the airport has become a prime source of political argument in the United Kingdom, which is likely to vote in national elections in the next few months. The Conservatives, currently in opposition, have been pushing a fast rail link for more than a year, claiming that it would help reduce congestion at Heathrow. Until recently, the ruling Labour Party had been less committed to the project but over the past few months it has invested considerable sums in initial planning for the line, hoping that it will be a popular policy and improve its political chances.

Now that the north-south link has support on both sides of the political spectrum (as well as a promise of financial help), 220 mph trains running from London Euston Station to Birmingham, Manchester, and Edinburgh in just over two hours seem inevitable within the next few decades.

But one major point of contention has been over the future of Heathrow. The airport is over-congested with only two runways despite its high traffic (Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, the world’s busiest airport, has five runways), so its owner BAA has asked for the right to construct a third runway, a position endorsed by Labour but opposed by the Tories, who want most future domestic travel to be by rail. Labour leaders, led by Secretary of State for Transport Andrew Adonis, have suggested that both the third runway and the high-speed system be built.

The peculiar extension of this controversy is that Tories are now pushing for a high-speed hub near Heathrow that would allow commuters from the north to make easy connections to international flights. Labour leaders, however, will pronounce in next week’s report that there is no business case for a hub at the airport and suggest that train riders hoping to get to flights would be able to connect quickly enough to the Crossrail commuter rail line currently under construction.

The Tories have announced that they will not support the government’s plan for the high-speed train’s route and reserve the right to alter plans if they are to win the election. Polls, which showed massive leads for the conservatives just months ago, now show a tight race for control of Parliament.

It’s not clear whether the Tory or Labour strategy would be more effective in reducing the number of passengers choosing to fly between domestic destinations in the United Kingdom. BAA has announced its support for a direct link to the airport because it assumes it would actually increase traffic, the exact opposite of the argument made by the Tories, who think that an easy connection would encourage people to take the train.

On the other hand, BAA officials might be worried that Birmingham Airport, also planned for a stop on the initial HS2 link, could benefit from a redistribute international air traffic in the country.

But the most important question is whether it’s worth aligning a high-speed route specifically to provide a station at an airport, even if it slows  city-to-city services. It’s a move that has been made previously by France with its TGV links to Paris and Lyon airports (pictured above), and by Germany, whose Stuttgart 21 project will provide direct ICE trains to that city’s airport.

Opened in 1994, Lyon’s airport link has been relatively successful with 400,000 annual passengers, but that’s minor compared to a typical city station, such as the suburban Avignon TGV station, which attracts 2.2 million a year — more than every American Amtrak station except for those in New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and Chicago. There’s a reasonable explanation for the low ridership at Lyon: customers using the same TGV line also have a connection to Paris-CDG, a much larger airport with more flights. The two TGV stations in central Lyon are also more convenient to most residents of the region via public transportation than the airport stop.

Should countries like Britain considering high-speed rail invest limited funds in airport stops?

One thing that’s worth considering is that airport fast rail links are not really designed for passengers who live in the nearest large cities. Newark Airport, which has almost twice as many annual users as BWI Airport in Maryland, nonetheless has 1/6th of its Amtrak ridership, at only 110,000 a year. That’s because the vast majority of people coming from New York City and other nearby destinations used NJ Transit commuter rail. The higher Amtrak user counts at BWI are likely a result of relatively poor MARC commuter rail service. People don’t use (or, rather, pay for) fast intercity rail from the center city to the airport just a few miles away when they have alternatives.

London Heathrow offers metro and commuter rail services today and will get Crossrail regional rail operations within the decade.

Most airport users come from the surrounding region. On the other hand, high-speed rail will for the most part only serve connecting passengers coming from medium-sized cities within a 200 to 300-mile radius but which lack direct public transportation access to the airport — a relatively limited market, especially since there are other, growing airports further afield, and London Heathrow has no room for more traffic.

Most people in Birmingham would like to use their local airport to get to continental Europe, and there’s no reason why such services should be monopolized by London. The primary purpose of HS2, meanwhile, will be to allow inhabitants of Birmingham and other cities direct access into London, not via London. It’s hard to see how airport/high-speed rail connections address those facts.

Heathrow may be a different case, as it is by far the U.K.’s largest airport. Perhaps a rail station there would be considerably more successful in attracting customers, making it worthy of investment. If airlines were better at integrating train tickets into their reservation systems, people arriving at Heathrow from abroad would be able to switch easily to trains heading north to Birmingham or Manchester. But that would only be possible if HS2 is designed with airlines in mind and in agreement with those air carriers, not necessarily possible considering their clear conflict of interest.

These issues apply to any proposed airport connection for a high-speed rail system.

Ultimately, though, this discussion may be irrelevant to the U.K. Even the Tory plan wouldn’t provide direct terminal access to Heathrow; customers would still have to transfer to another train or bus to get to gates. Since that’s true, it’s hard to identify a major problem with the Labour plan, which would be cheaper to build, faster to ride, and also provide a one-transfer link to the airport.

Image above: TGV Station at Lyon-St. Exupéry, from Flickr User Bicycle Bob

» The project represents a marked advance for a city that’s been reluctant to invest in fully separated lanes for its buses.

When American transit planners begin working on a new transit capital project, they’re often required to undertake what’s called an alternative analysis, a study whose purpose is to identify the appropriate route and technology for a specific corridor. It’s an open secret among people in the industry that while these reports often provide useful information about where exactly to place a new line, the choice of vehicle mode is almost always predetermined.

This leads to a sometimes bizarre situation in which, for instance, a city planning a one-mile extension of its rapid transit lines “considers” whether high-speed rail or local buses might work in the same corridor — even though everyone knows that if the money ever shows up, the rapid transit line will be the only thing built. The process, in other words, is often a charade.

Such was the case recently for New York City, whose Department of Transportation is intent on improving the public transportation offerings in Midtown Manhattan, the nation’s largest business district. Despite the fact that the DOT has been on an all-out crusade to improve bus service, has no money for more subways, and has demonstrated little interest in light rail or streetcars, it evaluated all four in its recent study for the 34th Street corridor. It threw in an elevated automated people mover for consideration as well in case anyone cared.

Unsurprisingly, the report advocated the construction of a bus transitway along the route.

None of this is to suggest that improving bus operations in Midtown is a bad idea. Rather, it’s sometimes worth considering the hoops through which transit agencies must jump in order to bring their visions to fruition.

But the alternatives analysis did allow New York City’s DOT to demonstrate why it considers a dedicated transitway for bus service to be the ideal technology candidate for the two-mile 34th street corridor, running river to river. The mode allows the use of existing vehicles and the through-routing of express buses from elsewhere in the city — something not possible had streetcars or light rail been chosen. It would also be relatively cheap to implement, at between $30 and 125 million, versus $250 million and up for light rail or several billion for a full-scale subway line.

The transitway would allow commuters to get across the city 35% faster than possible today, cutting transit times to 20 minutes, just slightly longer than would be feasible with a light rail line.

For this heavily foot-trafficked street, New York City is proposing something nice: wider sidewalks, a pedestrian plaza between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and increased public facilities with new station canopies.

It’s a significantly improved plan over the previously revealed project for First and Second Avenues, which will separate each direction of bus service onto two separate streets and do little to curb the intrusion of other vehicles into the busway. With a clear separation between cars and buses this time, the city is likely to actually improve service levels.

One thing the transitway is not, however, is bus rapid transit, despite the DOT’s continued use of the word to describe what it wants to build on 34th Street. With 13 stations end to end — roughly every 800 feet — buses will average a miserable six miles per hour, hardly faster than a person can walk the route.

Some may argue that a light rail line would be more appropriate — perhaps as part of a tramway loop including 42nd Street — but similar proposals for that technology would feature equally abysmal transit times because of the high number of stops deemed necessary. Rail would face the additional stumbling block caused by the fact that overhead catenary has been illegal in Manhattan since the devastating 1888 blizzard, which shut down the city’s elevated transportation system.

There are also plenty of congested corridors around the city that arguably need better transit far sooner than Midtown Manhattan, which is replete with subway lines.

But the DOT’s efforts are about more than moving buses through the city more quickly: it’s apparent that the 34th Street plan is as much aimed to improve the streetscape for pedestrians, who until recently have been put in last place by New York City decision-making. With the possible exception of 125th Street, there are few corridors in Manhattan that are more used by walkers, since 34th is a shopper’s paradise.

If that’s what it is, though, New York should be clear in its intentions: this isn’t really bus rapid transit, it’s a way to improve the function of the street for everyone.

Image above: Map of proposed 34th Street bus transit services, from New York City DOT

» Talgo will establish train manufacturing plant in Milwaukee. But state Republicans suggest they’ll oppose rail expansion if it gets in the way of highway spending.

Despite being a marginal player in the world high-speed rail market, Spanish train manufacturer Talgo is hoping to make a big push for orders in  North America. Thanks to a deal it signed with Wisconsin last year, it’s well on its way: The company has agreed to locate a new U.S. plant in Milwaukee, with plans to deliver 125 mph trains to the state for service to Madison by 2013.

If state Republicans gain power, however, the state’s rail efforts could be short-lived.

Under the leadership of outgoing Democratic Governor Jim Doyle, the Badger State has been one of the country’s leaders in developing improved rail service. The Governor announced last March that he would move forward with a plan to expand services between Chicago and Milwaukee,and reopen the passenger link to Madison. Future services could be offered to Green Bay. Later in 2009, Mr. Doyle signed a deal with Talgo to buy two 14-car trains for train operations, in exchange for that company’s commitment to locate a new plant within the state.

Wisconsin’s investment was rewarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation in January, which announced $810 million for the Madison-Milwaukee line, enough to have 79 mph trains operating along the 85-mile line within three years. The corridor would be upgraded to 110 mph by 2015.

Talgo announced this week that it would build its plant in a former automotive facility in Milwaukee, eventually creating about 75 jobs there. The State of Oregon revealed today that it would buy two additional 125 mph 13-car trains for its Eugene-Vancouver services, bringing total Talgo orders to about $85 million from the Wisconsin plant, a significant first step for the ambitious Spanish concern. As of now, the plant will build only Series VIII trainsets, which are fully compliant with Federal Railroad Administration rules and operate using diesel propulsion. This train is not what would be considered a truly high-speed train in other countries.

Yet as an initial response to a desire for increasing rail services, the deal seems like a good one for Wisconsin. Not only will it get new trains, but it will also get manufacturing jobs, which it has been losing for decades.

With Democratic majorities in both the State Assembly and Senate, lawmakers approved the deal with the federal government last month along partisan lines. The GOP suggested that Wisconsin shouldn’t be saddled with the operating costs of the new corridor, which would start at around $7.5 million a year. This line of reasoning is similar to that expressed by Ohio Republicans, who similarly claim to be willing to reject federal funds for improved rail service if the state is asked to subsidize operations costs.

Republican gubernatorial candidate front-runner Scott Walker is taking a hard line against the Milwaukee-Madison project, claiming that he would shut down the corridor “if it takes money away from new-and-improved roads.” Another candidate, Mark Neumann, is also critical of the program, arguing that tax cuts would be a better use of public funds and that “if high speed rail were economically sound it would already have been built by the private sector.”

Democratic candidate Tom Barrett, the Mayor of Milwaukee, is a big supporter of the project as he claims it would serve as an economic stimulus for the troubled state. He also has made the quite legitimate claim that Wisconsin will have already spent $57 million on preliminary construction activity by the time the next governor is sworn in — it doesn’t make much since to pull out once so much money has already been invested.

Both Republicans are currently leading Mr. Barrett in polls in advance of the November election.

One could argue about the specific merits of the Milwaukee-Madison service, but the considerable success of Amtrak’s Hiawatha Service between Chicago and Milwaukee — it has the third highest ridership per mile of U.S. intercity rail routes after the Northeast Regional and Capitol Corridor lines — suggests that Wisconsin’s population is well prepared for improved rail operations.

Just as in Ohio, Republican objections in Wisconsin are difficult to take seriously, because they’re incoherent. Why is it problematic for the government to sponsor rail construction when highways aren’t built by the private sector either? Why should roads always be prioritized in state spending, when trains are used by thousands of people each day too? More importantly, why is it that the first serious investment in passenger rail service Wisconsin has seen in decades is immediately greeted with skepticism, while road spending continues apace in the state, at more than $2 billion a year?

Nonetheless, Wisconsin’s rail investments are likely to move forward — the public has demonstrated clear support for the mode over the years, and there have been plenty of Republicans in the state, including former Governor Tommy Thompson, who have been serious proponents of new train services. But the increasingly hysterical GOP fear of investing in transportation projects that aren’t automobile-oriented may come to pose a mounting obstacle, in Wisconsin and beyond.

Image above: Talgo Series VIII Train, from Talgo

» As Europe pushes competition in the railway sector, the role of the public enterprise slowly fades away.

The first threat came earlier this year, when French national railway operator SNCF signaled that it was considering cutting some TGV high-speed train routes between the nation’s regional capitals. Facing increasing track use fees and the economic recession, one in five TGV services now lose money, and SNCF seemed ready to stop operating direct services from Bordeaux, Nantes, and Lille to Strasbourg. Many people hoping to travel from destinations in the eastern part of the country to the west would have to transfer in Paris.

Still under the control of the French government, however, SNCF announced that no TGV services would be cut, and that the rail company would have to find ways to increase ridership or cut services elsewhere. For regional officials across the country, this was a relief, a sign that the nation’s rail transport would continue to serve as an engine for universal mobility, not simply for the movement of Parisians.

Yet with European regulations altering the role of the public railway across the continent, the decision the SNCF almost made no longer appears like an aberration — rather, it probably will be the future norm. That’s because European regulators, focused on increasing competition in areas of former public monopoly, have asked SNCF to abandon its public enterprise status by July 2010, or the French government will be penalized for handing out an illegal subsidy. With France’s formerly publicly owned gas, electricity, and aviation companies now private, the pseudo-privatization of SNCF would be just another example of the liberalization of trade in what can only be described as a now market-obsessed Europe.

With none of the public and political pressure to maintain high-speed service between regional capitals, SNCF seems likely to move away from any operations that aren’t money-making once it separates fully from the public envelope. The result will be a general decline in service along less-used routes — a depressing outcome for a system that has developed so well over the past few decades.

Because of decrees by the Brussels-based European Union, France no longer has the ability to make independent decisions about how to operate its railways but instead must follow free-competition rules supposedly designed to improve the efficiencies of the railway market and reduce fares for customers. This represents major a change, especially in France.

The rail network was once operated under public monopolies across Europe, with national operators controlling each individual market and international routes the subject of intense negotiation and agreements between countries. This system had a number of benefits, notably in France, where SNCF was conceived as a service providing more than simply transportation, but also societal equalization, befitting its designation as a public enterprise. The company has reduced fares for children, young adults, seniors, and large families — as a matter of social concern. The operator offers high-speed tickets at cheap prices compared to comparable services in Germany, Spain, or Italy — a policy that has resulted in highly frequented TGV trains and a general equality in train service for people of all income classes. There are no slow, poor-person trains on routes where TGVs are offered.

The lack of competition also allowed SNCF to transfer profits from its TGVs to subsidize Corail routes, which provide national intercity services on routes that don’t yet offer high-speed trains.

But the success of the SNCF in running the French railway network has not been adequately appreciated by European officials (or by conservative French President Nicolas Sarkozy), who have made a conscious decision to emulate the British rail system, which has been open to competition since 1994. That network, in which track ownership (sometimes public, sometime private) is separated from private train operations, has extensive failings. An effort to use public-private partnerships to construct the United Kingdom’s first high-speed line resulted in a bankruptcy in which the state had to bailout the creditors and take the losses. The recession pulled several private operators out of business, leaving the state to take command of several money-losing routes.

It’s hard to see the British example as anything other than a racket designed to transfer profits into the private sector and force the public sphere to absorb losses. And yet European officials are adamant that the continent’s more successful rail systems follow in its example.

France made the first step in that direction in early 1997 with the creation of the public Réseau Ferré de France, which took control of the nation’s rail network from SNCF, leaving the company involved in operations alone, paying RFF for the rights to use tracks and opening the way for competition from other companies. This allowed SNCF to make large profits, since it was no longer required to take on debt for the construction of expensive new rail lines. But the creation of RFF immediately established a conflict of interest between operator and track owner: one is intent on paying back the costs of high-speed lines, whereas the other has pursued a socially equitable policy in the distribution of transportation resources.

As a result, RFF has been increasing track use fees significantly over the past few years. As a bureaucrat at SNCF put it: “We’re stuck: we’re asked to make money. But the tolls paid to RFF to run TGV services keep going up. At the same time, we’re asked to keep running trains, even when they lose money.” Between 2005 and 2013, RFF will increase SNCF track fees from €1 billion to €2.2 billion, enough to destroy the operator’s profit and eventually push it into bankruptcy unless the government comes to its aid — unlikely considering European regulations. RFF, meanwhile, made a profit in 2009.

At the same time, SNCF faces increasing competition from private and foreign operators that plan to make a play for the lucrative French market beginning as early as this year. They are expected to be able to offer competitive services because their employees lack the employment protections and good pay SNCF workers have earned after years of negotiations and strikes. That said, these competitors will have significant start-up costs, including the not-exactly-cheap purchase of new high-speed trains.

The French government has made a commitment to aid the company whose days as a public protectorate seem short-lived. Money-losing Corail trains, which cost SNCF €150 million a year, are to be contracted out to SNCF by the state, similar to the way the TER regional rail operations are now run by each of France’s 22 regions. This will make the company’s only non-governmental services the TGV lines.

Because of the RFF’s high track fees, a newly profit-motivated SNCF is likely to abandon corridors that are marginal, including those region-to-region routes that almost saw the axe this year; most TGV services seem likely to be relegated to routes with destinations in Paris, Lyon, or Marseille, the country’s three biggest cities. This in spite of the fact that many peripheral regions expected to see declining services contributed directly to the construction of new high-speed lines. But now that RFF and SNCF have completely opposing motivations, it doesn’t matter, since track construction ownership is separated from operations. Regions can no longer assume service expansion to be the expected result of investing in new routes.

In addition, SNCF seems unlikely to continue offering the deep discounts to the young and old it can currently provide, since it will now be focused on providing more expensive profit-building business trips between the country’s biggest cities, routes that will face increasing competition from other operators in the future. If those benefits are to be extended, they will have to be subsidized by the state.

In many ways, these new European regulations put into question the French model of social equity in rail services; the manner in which competition is being pursued will fundamentally transform the role and goals of the SNCF. It’s difficult to conceive of a way in which this will produce general improvements in service for the country’s population.

Image above: Paris’ Gare de Lyon, from Flickr User Nojhan, under a CC 2.0 License