Eurostar
Jenny and I are currently on the Eurostar, traveling to London. I’ve hooked up my little USB GPS dongle-deal-thing I have and we’re currently going 187 mph.
Looking at European infrastructure with a critical eye–especially after having worked at Grantworks for a few years and having graduated UT–I have to say I’m extremely impressed with what I’ve seen. Without a doubt, Europe’s experience proves the viability of a rail-oriented strategy to curb congestion and sprawl. Booking a trip on the Eurostar was actually more difficult than I thought it would be: the service is so popular that even with an 18-coach train leaving Brussels for London every hour of every day, tickets still sell out more than a week in advance. Air travel has suffered greatly as a consequence: Air France, for example, no longer offers air service between Paris and Brussels, and KLM no longer flies between Amsterdam and Brussels.
High-speed trains have numerous benefits. First and foremost, using electricity instead of fossil fuels is highly beneficial for the environment. France, especially, has employed a carbon-neutral strategy because it produces the majority of its electricity with nuclear reactors. Naturally, there are severe drawbacks to relying on nuclear power—mainly the danger of placing a reactor in a densely populated country and the difficulty of properly disposing of nuclear waste—but, arguably, continued reliance on fossil-fuel-hungry air transport for medium-range distances is much worse for the environment.
Another benefit of relying on train transport is that it is relatively easy to increase passenger carrying capacity. Expanding a highway is an incredibly costly affair: first, the right of way must be secured, which in dense urban corridors is nearly always a nightmare. Construction costs are also liable to be enormous, and existing traffic will necessarily be disturbed. Finally, the addition of a lane will probably induce more traffic: in other words, more people will be tempted to use a car to travel to work once they realize an extra lane is available. However, when a train such as the Eurostar becomes overcrowded, managers can simply add an extra car or increase frequency of service.
Driving back from Leuven to my grandparents’ house on Thursday, we were stuck in a nightmarish traffic jam on the Brussels beltway: in an hour and a half, we crept forward six or seven miles. Belgium’s well-designed public transportation network is barely coping with the daily flow of people to and from the capital. Apparently, tens of thousands of people still find it beneficial to climb into their cars every morning and drive to work. At the end of their cost-benefit analysis, these people still find it easier to drive rather than to take the train. No amount of government inducements and employee benefits is enough to convince them to take the train.
That then, is Europe’s challenge. I’m afraid America has a very long way to go before it ever gets to this point.
