Atlanta Urban Debate League 2012-2013
High Speed Rail Negative Supplement
HSR Neg Supplement
HSR Neg Supplement ......................................................................................................... 1
Budget Disadvantage – High Speed Rail – 1NC Link ........................................................ 2
Budget Disadvantage – High Speed Rail – Link Extensions.............................................. 3
Highways Disadvantage – High Speed Rail – Link............................................................ 4
It has come to our attention that there were not specific link cards for Budget or
Highways to the High-Speed Rail aff. This file contains a few of each.
For Budget, there are cards that the costs of HSR are both excessive and likely to be
underestimated.
For Highways, the affirmative will already make arguments the function as the link to the
disadvantage. (the argument is that if people start using other modes of transportation,
like high-speed rail, they will use their cars less. So if the aff wins that people would ride
on high-speed rail, they probably link to this disadvantage.) There is also a piece of
evidence in the file that makes the argument that people would prefer to ride on HSR than
to use their car, so you have evidence to read as well if necessary.
1
Atlanta Urban Debate League 2012-2013
High Speed Rail Negative Supplement
Budget Disadvantage – High Speed Rail – 1NC Link
Cox, 2011 (Wendell, international public-policy consultant, “High-Speed Rail, Budget
Buster”, http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/258417/high-speed-rail-budget-busterwendell-cox)
If the nation is going to reduce its out-of-control spending, the first step is to stop
spending money on things we do not need. Despite President Obama’s call in his State of the Union
speech for linking 80 percent of the nation by high-speed rail, it is hard to imagine a more unnecessary
program. For example, people who travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco — along the route planned for one of the
nation’s first high-speed-rail projects — already have choices. They can fly, drive, take the bus, or travel by train. True, some would
prefer to tax their fellow citizens so that they can have another choice, high-speed rail. But indulging this desire would be as legitimate
as funding government grocery stores for people who prefer not to shop at their local grocery chains. Among intercity transport
modes, only Amtrak is materially subsidized. User fees pay virtually all the costs of airlines and airports, which (together with
connecting ground transportation) link any two points in the nation within a day. The intercity highway system goes everywhere, and
nearly all of it was built with user fees paid by drivers, truckers, and bus companies. High-speed
rail is a budget
buster. Japan, with the world’s leading system, illustrates the financial devastation that high-speed
rail can produce. For 25 years, Japan borrowed to build a system serving the ideal rail
corridor, nestled along a single coast with a population of more than 75 million people. Ridership was artificially
increased by high gasoline prices and one of the highest highway tolls in the world. Yet
this modest system, only twice as long as proposed California system, played a major role in driving up
a gargantuan rail debt that was transferred to Japanese taxpayers. The rail debt added
more than 10 percent to the national debt. This is akin to adding $1.4 trillion to the U.S.
national debt. Virtually everywhere high-speed rail has been constructed, financial
liability has fallen to the taxpayers. In Taiwan and the United Kingdom, taxpayers
assumed billions of dollars in private debts for much more modest high-speed-rail
systems than Japan’s. All of this could have been avoided. Through the years, high-speed-rail cost overruns
have been well documented. Most recently, research by Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford University, Nils Bruzelius of
Stockholm University, and Werner Rothengatter of the University of Karlsruhe (a former president of the influential World
Conference on Transportation Research) found that passenger-rail cost
overruns above 40 percent were
common and that overruns above 80 percent were not uncommon. Overruns can go even higher:
On Korea’s high-speed-rail project, they were between 200 and 300 percent, the president of the
country’s rail system said. High-speed-rail cost escalation has reached these shores. Even before the first shovel has been turned,
California’s high-speed-rail costs have risen at least 50 percent, inflation adjusted. The cost estimates for the first approved section of
the Los Angeles–to–San Francisco line, a “train to nowhere” from Corcoran to Borden, indicate escalation beyond $45 billion. In
Florida, boosters tell taxpayers that their liability for the Tampa to Orlando high-speed-rail line would be only $280 million, and that,
somehow, a private bidder will shower additional billions upon them to pay any cost overruns. Boosters also claim that high-speed rail
will provide substantial environmental benefits, reduce highway-traffic congestion, and ease air-traffic congestion. Yet, as Joseph
Vranich and I showed in the Reason Foundation’s “Due Diligence” report on California’s high-speed-rail proposal, the cost per ton of
greenhouse gas removed would be from $1,900 to $10,000. This is 40 to 250 times what the International Panel on Climate Change
research indicates greenhouse-gas removal should cost ($50 per ton). Our estimate does not account for the revised (much lower)
ridership projection. Even the rosy reports produced by boosters show that high-speed rail would remove only a small percentage of
cars from the roads. The hope of reducing air congestion is just as elusive because travel origins and destinations are so dispersed in
the United States and because the number of people forsaking air travel for high-speed rail will be small. Voters gave the new
Republican House of Representatives a mandate to cut spending. Zeroing
high-speed rail out of the federal
budget may be the litmus test. If Congress fails to stop this costly and unnecessary
program, it would call into question the commitment to spending reduction.
2
Atlanta Urban Debate League 2012-2013
High Speed Rail Negative Supplement
Budget Disadvantage – High Speed Rail – Link Extensions
Rail infrastructure projects are far more expensive than estimated – assume
it’ll cost more
FLYVBJERG, HOLM, & BUHL 02 a. professor of planning with the Department of Development and
Planning, Aalborg University, Denmark. founder and director of the university’s research program on transportation
infrastructure planning and was twice a Visiting Fulbright Scholar to the U.S. b. assistant professor of planning with the
Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University. C. associate professor with the Department of
Mathematics, Aalborg University, and an associate statistician with the university’s research program on transportation
infrastructure planning
[Bent Flyvbjerg, Mette Skamris Holm & Soren Buhl, “Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?,”
Journal of the American Planning Association, Summer 2002 u Vol. 68, No. 3]
Based on the available evidence, we conclude that rail promoters appear to be particularly
prone to cost underestimation, followed by promoters of fixed-link projects. Promoters of road projects appear to be
relatively less inclined to underestimate costs, although actual costs are higher than estimated costs much more often than not for road
projects as well. Further subdivisions of the sample indicate that high-speed
rail tops the list of cost
underestimation, followed by urban and conventional rail, in that order. Similarly, cost underestimation appears to be larger
for tunnels than for bridges. These results suggest that the complexities of technology and geology might have an effect on cost
underestimation. These results are not statistically significant, however. Even if the sample is the largest of its kind, it is too small to
allow repeated subdivisions and still produce significant results. This problem can be solved only by further data collection from more
projects.
We conclude that the question of whether there are significant differences in the practice of cost underestimation among rail, fixedlink, and road projects must be answered in the affirmative. The
average difference between actual and
estimated costs for rail projects is substantially and significantly higher than that for
roads, with fixed-link projects in a statistically nonsignificant middle position. The average inaccuracy for rail projects is more than
twice that for roads, resulting in average cost escalations for rail more than double that for roads. For all three project types, the
evidence shows that it is sound advice for policy and decision makers as well as investors, bankers,
media, and the public to take any estimate of construction costs with a grain of salt, especially
for rail and fixed-link projects.
HSR won’t be profitable – the government won’t derive significant benefits.
WOOD 11 – 2 – 11 CSM Staff Writer
[Can Obama's high-speed rail plans survive California sticker shock? By: Wood, Daniel B., Christian Science Monitor,
08827729, 11/2/2011]
But the
bad economy could also be a selling point. California has the second-highest
unemployment rate in the nation. Studies show that for every $1 billion spent on
infrastructure remediation creates between 18,000 and 34,000 jobs, says Barry LePatner,
author of "Too Big to Fail: America's Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward."
Others, however, see this as evidence of what happens when government tries to trump the private sector.
"The
idea for this was generated out of Washington in an attempt to stimulate the
economy," says Peter Zaleski, an economics professor at the Villanova School of Business.
"In the free marketplace, producers try to earn a profit by efficiently producing something
that customers will value. Rarely are such calculations performed when the decisions are
made by government administrators and elected officials."
3
Atlanta Urban Debate League 2012-2013
High Speed Rail Negative Supplement
Highways Disadvantage – High Speed Rail – Link
People will switch from cars to high speed rail – which decreases car use.
Dutzik et al. 10 — Tony Dutzik, Senior Policy Analyst with Frontier Group specializing
in energy, transportation, and climate policy, holds an M.A. in print journalism from
Boston University and a B.S. in public service from Penn State University, et al., with
Siena Kaplan, Analyst with Frontier Group, and Phineas Baxandall, Federal Tax and
Budget Policy Analyst with U.S. PIRG, holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in Economics from the College of
Social Studies at Wesleyan University, 2010 (“Why Intercity Passenger Rail?,” The
Right Track: Building a 21st Century High-Speed Rail System for America, Published by
the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Available Online at
http://americanhsra.org/whitepapers/uspirg.pdf, Accessed 06-10-2012, p. 15)
Trains are often a preferred mode of travel, especially for distances between 100
and 500 miles. A 2009 survey found that if fare and travel time were equal,  54
percent of Americans would prefer to travel to cities in their region by highspeed rail, with only 33 percent preferring car travel and 13 preferring air travel. Of
Americans who had actually ridden high-speed rail, an overwhelming 82 percent
preferred it to air travel.
4