As America embarks on its first investment in passenger rail in decades, it is important to remember that the strength of our transportation system lies not in single corridors, but in networks. The less reliant we are on a single corridor or mode, the stronger our transportation system.
Thus, when critics of high-speed rail point to the small portion of Americans who will use a particular train, they are missing the point.
Many components of America's transportation infrastructure with local and regional, if not national, significance carry only a small percentage of regional travelers or trips:
• America's busiest airport (Atlanta) handles only six percent of domestic boardings. Dallas, Denver, and Los Angeles each handle less than three percent.
• Interstate 494 in Minnesota serves popular destinations such as the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the Mall of America, and growing suburbs. Yet only seven percent of all trips made in the Twin Cities metro region utilize I-494.
• The Capital Beltway, the busy circumferential highway dividing Washington, D.C., from reality, carries less than 11 percent of area commuters. Replacing a single bridge along this road cost $2.5 billion.
• On a typical business day, only 2 percent of people entering Manhattan's Central Business District drive over the Brooklyn Bridge.
• And on the West Coast, trans-San Francisco Bay trips through the Bay Bridge Corridor, across the San Mateo Howard Bridge and over the Dumbarton Bridge comprise only 4 percent of all regional trips.
Nobody would seriously suggest that any of these pieces of transportation infrastructure is "wasteful" because it serves such a small portion of its potential users. Let's not let critics go unchallenged in saying the same about rail investments.
Kevin Brubaker
Deputy Director
Environmental Law & Policy Center (www.elpc.org)
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