Arthur's Blog: China Forges Ahead with High-Speed Rail; The US Remains Stymied by Ideologues

If you have access to the few major newspapers that gave extensive coverage to the latest Chinese achievement in high-speed rail, then you will already have learned many of the details. The Chinese have just opened the longest high-speed rail route ever, permitting trains to travel 1,200 miles from Beijing to Guangzhou in eight hours. That's the equivalent distance of Boston, Massachusetts, to Key West, Florida.

Imagine being able to make the trip from the northeast to south Florida in eight train hours, instead of the seven and eight hours needed to check in to a northeastern airport a couple of hours in advance of departure (in addition to spending an hour going to a distant airport), then fly to Miami, and spend another two-hours-or-so retrieving your luggage and taking a bus or taxi into the center of town.

By building these new high-speed tracks parallel to existing tracks, China also has eased the traffic load on the tracks now used for freight and traditional passenger trains, enabling freight to be delivered far more efficiently (and also easing the burden of car and truck traffic on highway routes). By building this new high-speed route (one of several now in construction), China also put 100,000 men and women to work on each of those new lines, a stimulus that did much to offset what otherwise would have been a sharp economic decline. And by shifting to energy-efficient rail transportation, China has greatly reduced the emission of carbon that every prestigious scientist has blamed for harmful climate change, in addition to easing pollution in Chinese cities (by reducing car and truck traffic on the highways of that nation).

Now I know all the arguments that have thus far blocked most projects of high-speed rail in the United States. We -- who will soon be a nation of 400,000,000 people (greater than the current population of western Europe) -- just don't have the population density needed to support high-speed rail, say the critics. We are a country of individualists, and we would rather stew in traffic jams along highways currently approaching their capacity limits, than subject ourselves to such collectivist experiences as a train involves. Building high-speed rail will also require tax increases of the sort that we have vowed to oppose.

How long will we permit these Luddite arguments to block needed investments in our nation's infrastructure? How long will we mortgage our future to satisfy fans of Ayn Rand? As we crowd into airports, and get stranded by storms, and require more than two hours to travel 50 miles on overburdened highways (as I recently did), how long will we permit habitual nay-sayers to block economic advances that every respected observer supports? How long will we permit China to outpace ourselves in economic development?

In drawing up a list of New Year's Resolutions in Travel, I recently came close to omiitting a pledge to use every opportunity to advocate for high-speed rail, all in a misguided effort to be less controversial. I've now resisted that urge. And somehow I feel that a majority of quiet Americans share my viewpoints.