The Biden administration just decided to spend three trillion dollars of your money on a high-speed rail boondoggle that's been in the works since 2005. The line, if it's ever actually built, will run from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga and is currently projected to cost over $12 billion in total.
On Saturday morning, Joe Biden put out a graphic touting the supposed time savings the project will offer. See if you can spot the issues.
When I ran for president, I made a commitment to finally bring high-speed rail to our nation.
— President Biden (@POTUS) December 8, 2023
Today, I'm delivering on that vision. pic.twitter.com/gCHOlzR5lI
It's hard to know where to start with something so misleading, but let's begin with the claims regarding time of travel.
Would it take just two hours and ten minutes to get from Las Vegas to Los Angeles on this hypothetical high-speed rail line? To answer that question, let's start with the fact that Rancho Cucamonga isn't Los Angeles. To get to the latter, you would need to switch to a low-speed commuter train that would add at least an hour to the trip, and that assumes you time it just right and don't have to sit around any additional time to catch said commuter train.
Those facts alone bust Biden's graphic. It would not take two hours and ten minutes to get from Las Vegas to Los Angeles via high-speed rail. It would take far longer, and there are other factors to consider as well.
For example, that two hours and ten minutes is an optimal estimate (i.e. the train never slows down) with no stops. Guess how many stops the proposed line has. That would be three, all of which would take 10-20 minutes depending on the density of transfers at each stop. Notice that he includes times for stops regarding the bus on the graphic, but doesn't do so for the train. Again, Biden's original claim is quickly busted.
Now, let's talk about the time to take a flight. Does it take "three hours" to hop a flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles? It could take that long, but if you are commuting with nothing but a carry-on, which is what most people taking that flight are doing, then three hours is a stretch. More importantly, though, you end up in Los Angeles if you take a flight (and there are multiple airports in the LA area with commercial airline travel from Las Vegas).
Further, would you rather sit at a gate for 30 minutes to take a 50-minute flight, having the chance to do some work and grab some food, or would you rather be bouncing around on a train, making multiple stops, for most of your travel time? There's also cost to think about, with plane tickets between Las Vegas and Los Angeles typically costing around $50 (some ultra-low-cost carries are as low as $20 with fees for carry-on baggage and such). How much does a currently built train cost to cover the same route? As of this writing, the minimum cost is $95, and you can bet a new high-speed rail train will cost substantially more.
Lastly, let's discuss the option to use a car. Yes, it would take longer than any of the other options on the graphic because of traffic congestion in the area. But do you know what you have when you get to your destination? You have a car. You can go wherever you want. You don't have to go and rent a car or take a series of trains and buses to get to your final destination. That alone may make taking a car the most viable option in many situations.
Here's my rule of thumb. If a politician has to continually promote falsehoods to promote something, then what they are promoting is probably pretty terrible. Spending billions upon billions of dollars on a mode of transportation that is ultimately slower and far more expensive for passengers (and taxpayers) than other, already-existent options is idiotic. Instead of spending so much money on a silly vanity project, the government should use that money to build more roads or to speed up the security procedures at airports.
Perhaps the largest issue, though, is that there's no reason to believe this high-speed rail project will ever happen. Certainly, there's no reason to believe it will happen on budget. Look at what happened to California's proposed high-speed rail line. Billions of dollars wasted later, it has turned into one of the biggest public works failures in history. If high-speed rail was profitable and made sense for passengers, it would already exist in America. It doesn't because it isn't. It's that simple.
