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In an article entitled Fourth Time Unlucky, The Economist wonders why Brazil, with "a long list of more worthwhile infrastructure projects", does not dismiss high speed rail "out of hand."

After three unsuccessful attempts to attract international bidders to build its Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo and Campinas line for a bargain basement price, the nation has decided that taxpayers will foot some (probably all) of the bill.

The Economist continues:

"Everywhere, new-build rail projects are horribly likely to come in way over budget and to be used much less than expected. A 2009 paper by Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, ominously entitled "Survival of the Unfittest: Why the worst infrastructure gets built—and what we can do about it."

As Flyvbjerg and others have noted, promoters, whether private or public, often seem to have a simple goal: to get the line under construction. That positions the projects for taxpayer bailouts when they run into problems.

With bidders able to call upon other people's money (taxpayer's money) this time, it seems likely there will be takers. And, based upon the experience with major infrastructure projects around the world, that will be just the start of the taking.

If elsewhere provides any guidance, the winning bidder can be confident that, down the road, the captive customer (the taxpayers) will pay any cost overruns. At the same time, the routine could be repeated in which a government kicks and screams, claiming it had no warning.

They did. In this day and age, a link to the Economist's warning is forever. A wise government will obtain the unlimited guarantees any company involved in the winning joint venture. Only then will Brazil's taxpayers be protected.

The Central Japan Railway (Note 1), which operates one of only two high-speed rail segments (Tokyo Station to Osaka Station) in the world that has been fully profitable (including the cost of building), proposes to build a line from Dallas to Houston, with top speeds of 205 miles per hour. This is slightly faster than the fastest speeds now operated. This line is radically different from others proposed around the nation and most that have been proposed around the world. The promoters intend to build and operate the route from commercial revenues.

There is the understandable concern that eventually, the promoters will approach the state or the federal government for support. Not so, say Texas Central High Speed Railway officials. According to President Robert Eckels, not only is there no plan for subsidies, but "investors would likely walk away from a project that couldn’t stand on its own." He also told the Texas Tribune “If we start taking the federal money, it takes twice as long, costs twice as much,” Eckels said. “My guess is we’d end up pulling the plug on it.”

Eckels is a former Harris County Judge (Houston), a position the equivalent of a county commission or county board of supervisors chair in other parts of the nation. Eckels developed a reputation for fiscal responsibility during his tenure at the county courthouse.

The Texas project is in considerable contrast the California High Speed Rail project, which if built, is likely to require a 100 percent capital subsidy and perhaps subsidies for operations. It is also different from the Tampa to Orlando high speed rail project, which would have required a 100 percent capital subsidy and was cancelled by Florida Governor Rick Scott. The Texas project can also be contrasted with the Vegas to Victorville, California XpressWest high speed rail line that would require at least a $5.5 billion federal loan and a subsidized interest rate. Our recent Reason Foundation report predicted that XpressWest would not be able to repay its federal loan from commercial revenues and could impose a loss on federal taxpayers of up to 10 times the Solyndra loan guarantee loss (see The Washington Post, "Solyndra Scandal Timeline").

From the horrific record of private investment in startup high speed rail lines and the huge losses that have been typical, I am certainly skeptical. The Taiwan high speed rail private investors have lost two-thirds of their capital investment and debts are guaranteed by the government. The Channel Tunnel rail line to St. Pancras station has been bailed out by British taxpayers. However, if any company can make money at high speed rail in the United States, it would be the Central Japan Railway.

So far the Texas Central High Speed Railway seems to be doing it right. Like the other intercity modes, the airlines system and the intercity highway system (Note 2), this project would be paid for by people who use it.

Without government subsidies or loans, the Texas Central High Speed Railway will certainly have an incentive to get the sums right. If they are not, it sounds like the plug will be pulled. If they are, high speed rail could be on the right track in the United States for the first time. More power to them.

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Note 1: Central Japan Railway, and other companies purchased the assets of the Japanese National Railway in the late 1980s. The nationalized railway had run up a debt of nearly $300 billion, which was eventually transferred to taxpayers.

Note 2: There is a small subsidy to the airline system from the Federal Aviation Administration. Intercity highways have been financed by users until contributions from the federal general fund in recent years. However these contributions have been far less than diversions over the past 30 years from highway user fees, principally to mass transit a major transfer of highway trust fund interest to the general fund and now ongoing interest transfers.

Photograph: Central Japan Railway corporate headquarters at Nagoya Station (by author)

Congratulations to America. According to the US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were reduced 526 million tons from 2005 to 2011. This is no small amount. It is about the same as all the CO2 emissions in either Canada or the United Kingdom. Only five other nations emit more than that.

The bigger news is that this was accomplished without any of the intrusive behavioral modification proposed by planners, such as by California's anti-detached housing restrictions, Plan Maryland, or the state of Washington's mandatory driving reduction program.

Of course, part of the national reduction was due to the economic difficulties since 2005. However, even with 1.8 percent gross domestic product growth in 2011, EIA shows that CO2 emissions fell 2.4 percent in 2011.

The magnitude of the decline over six years is impressive. Actual GHG/CO2 emissions were reduced more annually between 2005 and 2011 than smart growth proponents claim for their strategies after 45 years of draconian policy intrusions.Modeled smart growth forecasts in Moving Cooler's middle scenario (by Cambridge Systematics and the Urban Land Institute) show the annual GHG/CO2 emission reduction in 2050, calculated from 2005, to be less than the emissions reduction in the average year between 2005 and 2011.

This is despite what would be four decades of trying to force people to live where they don't want, in housing they don't prefer, while trying to drive them out of the cars that required to sustain economic growth in modern metropolitan areas.

Moving Cooler's forced densification and anti-automobile strategies were so radical that the Transportation Research Board authors of Driving and the Built Environment, could not agree that a similar approach was feasible, because it would be prevented by public resistance to the personal and political intrusions (Note 1). They would also be hideously expensive, as the Moving Cooler authors ignored the much higher costs of housing associated with smart growth's behavioral strategies.

This comparison demonstrates the conclusion of a recent Cambridge University (United Kingdom) led study (see "Questioning the Messianic Conception of Smart Growth", which stated:

In many cases, the potential socioeconomic consequences of less housing choice, crowding, and congestion may outweigh its very modest CO2 reduction benefits.

Government policies have had little to do with the reductions, except to the extent that they precipitated the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression (such as by encouraging loose lending standards and the smart growth housing policies that drove house prices up so much that the housing bust became inevitable).

Market forces have made a substantial contribution to the reduction. There was a substantial shift to the use of natural gas from coal, a conversion that is really only starting. There was also a modest improvement in automobile fuel efficiency (though much more is to come).

In 2007, the McKinsey Corporation and The Conference Board published a study (co-sponsored by the Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council), which said that sufficient GHG emissions reductions (Note 2) could be achieved without driving less or living in more dense housing. Our more recent Reason Foundation report showed that the potential for GHG emission reduction from more fuel efficient cars and carbon neutral housing far outweighed any potential for reductions from smart growth's behavior modification.

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Note 1: Transport consultant Alan E. Pisarski evaluated Moving Cooler in an article entitled ULI Moving Cooler Report: Greenhouse Gases, Exaggerations and Misdirections.

Note 2: Most of GHG emissions are CO2.

Jim Russell pointed me at an interesting article about densification vs. de-densification over at the Urbanization Project at NYU Stern. It contains this very interesting map of the change in census tract densities in Manhattan over the century between 1910 and 2010:

Walking Related Commutes

Streetsblog, in an article covering the annual NYC DOT scorecard, included this graphic of the percentage of commutes that include walking as a core component (e.g, transit) in various parts of New York:

This post originally appeared at The Urbanophile.