Sunday, July 27, 2008
Energy's high cost may force shift to rail
Dan Radmacher
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During the two weeks I spent in Japan back in 1997, I rode farther on passenger trains than in the entire rest of my life in America.
The trip to Japan, an exchange sponsored by the Japanese Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association, took me all over the island nation, from Tokyo to Kyoto to Hiroshima. Much of the travel was on shinkansen, Japan's high-speed trains.
In America, I've taken exactly two train trips: one a middle school class field trip from Kansas City to Jefferson City, Mo., and another trip across Missouri in my 20s when I rode from Kansas City to Southern Illinois after a family visit.
I thought about those long-ago train rides last week with all the talk about getting passenger train service back in Roanoke.
A train from Roanoke to Washington, D.C., or Richmond would be great, though Virginia House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, is probably right to doubt whether the demand currently exists to support such service. "I do think there will be a day when it's appropriate. I just don't think we're there yet," Griffith said.
If a passenger train ever does come through Roanoke again, it will be more like the trains I rode in Missouri than the ones I traveled on in Japan.
And that's a pity. The trains in Japan were fast and comfortable. The 250-mile trip from Tokyo to Kyoto took a little more than 212 hours -- less than it would have taken by plane if you factor in the long drive out to the Tokyo airport.
Regular American passenger service is like riding horseback by comparison. The trains are slower and noisier. Driving a car is generally far faster and more convenient.
But the experts studying the state's rail options wonder if even standard passenger train service is affordable for Roanoke. Returning passenger rail service in Roanoke will require more than $200 million in capital costs plus money to subsidize operational costs.
Regular passenger service seems to be a pipe dream, especially considering Virginia's failure to fund far more basic transportation needs, like road maintenance. Outside the Boston-New York-D.C. corridor, high-speed rail is only a concept to be studied in the United States. Pigs will fly long before we see high-speed rail coming through Roanoke.
I could be wrong, though. We could be in for such a massive transformational shift in our energy/transportation economy that a comprehensive high-speed rail system might appear as a feasible alternative to the current national infrastructure.
That current infrastructure is mostly defined by an interstate highway system designed to carry millions of automobiles and trucks driving trillions of miles (literally -- according to the Federal Highway Administration, Americans drove 3 trillion miles last year).
The infrastructure made some sense when energy was cheap -- though many rightly bemoan the sprawl that resulted. But gas is topping $4 a gallon. Some experts believe it will go much, much higher -- like $10 or $15 a gallon.
If that ever happens, Americans will have to give up their love affair with the automobile and get serious about mass transit. Public transportation won't be just for commuters going from suburbs to big cities. Passenger rail could end up being the only affordable option for long-distance travel.
Everyone's grumbling about the high cost of gasoline, but I'm not certain the potential long-term ramifications of really expensive energy have yet sunk in.
Those ramifications extend well beyond the immediate economic impact. Many aspects of the American lifestyle may be in for a radical and painful transformation.
There are many reasons rail travel hasn't caught on in America the way it has in other nations. The distances between cities are far vaster here, for one. But the key reason is that, as a nation, we chose the car over mass transit -- because gas was cheap and we could.
As state and federal officials ponder the future of rail service in Roanoke and across the nation, they need to be thinking about the choices expensive energy will force on us.
One of those may well be a massive shift from highways to railroads.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
