Snail’s pace for high-speed rail
by David Hoppe
They’re building it in Illinois — why not Indiana?
For the past year or so there has been a lot of public hand-wringing about the sorry state of Indiana’s economy. Now that we’re in an election season, we’re hearing even more about our loss of jobs and the slow growth of new businesses, the “brain drain” and our nation-leading rate of home foreclosure. These problems seem daunting in a state whose economy has been dependent on the kinds of manufacturing jobs so famously sucked out of the United States for Third World labor pools.
High-speed rail pulls jobs and people into cities.
Under such circumstances you’d think Indiana’s business and political leaders would be eager to try almost anything that might help give us some traction in reinventing ourselves in ways suited to the 21st century. So it’s been strange to learn about the stony lack of engagement these leaders have shown regarding the opportunity to make our state and, especially, Indianapolis part of a Midwestern high-speed rail network. In June, a coalition of transportation activists working with the Illinois Department of Transportation announced that the groundwork has been laid to provide a high-speed rail link between Chicago and St. Louis within the next two years. That’s right: Trains able to go at speeds of 110 miles per hour could be running between Chicago and St. Louis by 2005. How, I thought, is this possible? And why are we talking about Chicago and St. Louis and not Chicago and Indianapolis? In 1996, representatives from the Departments of Transportation of nine Midwestern states met to determine whether or not they could make passenger rail service work in this region. They concluded that investing in high-speed rail would dramatically increase ridership and either reduce or eliminate operating subsidies. As Kevin Brubaker, a high-speed rail advocate with the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago, puts it, they found that “high speed rail wasn’t the question. It was the answer.” A nine-state, 3,000-mile hub-and-spoke system, utilizing existing track and reaching out from Chicago to cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis and, yes, Indianapolis was envisioned. Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan all began to make investments aimed at making their existing tracks up to par. As of today, all the necessary design and permitting work for corridors between Chicago and St. Louis and Milwaukee and Madison in Wisconsin have been completed. Illinois has invested $50 million to make its rail system ready. Hopes are high that the federal government will match that with $200 million more based on the 80/20 ratio the federal government uses when it matches state expenditures to build highways. Just when that money will materialize, of course, could be in doubt thanks to the demands war in Iraq is making on the federal budget. But the fact remains that while states around us have been moving to create a high-speed rail network that will undoubtedly transform this part of the Midwest’s economic landscape, Indiana has been sitting on its hands. As Brubaker says, “Indiana should recognize the tremendous benefits that high-speed rail can bring to the state and act accordingly. As long as the state government continues to favor construction of a new terrain I-69 over an upgrade to existing highways that would cost $800 million less, we don’t buy the argument that the state can’t afford to do more on high-speed rail.” That so many of Indiana’s business and political leaders — the very people, in other words, who have led us to the kind of economic prosperity Indiana enjoys today — have embraced a megabuck highway project like I-69 ought to be cause for suspicion, if not alarm. It is all too characteristic of this state’s economic leadership to want to pave another road just at the moment when highway building has become associated with an outdated industrial economy. If this project doesn’t remind you of the state’s budget-busting 19th century canal building misadventure, it should. In that case, you’ll recall, Indiana built canals just as railroads were coming into vogue. The project bankrupted the state treasury — it undoubtedly also made a few well-connected contractors an awful lot of money. High-speed rail represents the new, knowledge-based economy — a system that thrives, in part, on cost effective mobility. Opening a two-way link to our region’s economic engine, Chicago, with stops along the way in Lafayette and Hammond, can make Indianapolis part of a dynamic Midwestern system. The system being suggested here could help support urban redevelopment and curb the suburban sprawl associated with our current dependence on cars and highways. It could also provide an alternative to our increasingly inefficient and vulnerable air traffic system. As the candidates come forward in this election season, all of them will be talking about Indiana’s economic crisis. What they say about high-speed rail will mark a difference between those who really want new business for our state — and business as usual. For more information on the Environmental Law and Policy Center, go to
www.elpc.org.
