Last week UCLA published a working paper arguing that urban transportation projects were more cost-effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions than high-speed rail (HSR). I posted a critique of that paper, focusing first on the benefits side of the ledger, showing that the authors had overstated the user savings of light rail, bus, and bicycle infrastructure projects while HSR's savings may have been undersold. This week, I'm going to look at costs.

I want to start this out by noting that the study's authors, Juan Matute and Mikhail Chester, Ph.D, seem to be focused on making a case for using the state's cap-and-trade revenues for what they view as worthy investments. That's fine, and there should be a debate about how those funds are spent, but the premises of that debate should be accurate. I don't think this working paper meets that requirement in its current form.

LA's Orange Line bus rapid transit and bicycle path, and Gold Line light rail services are all great projects, and we absolutely should invest in more bicycle paths, light rail, bus rapid transit, and pedestrian facilities. The error in the UCLA report is in the belief that these projects are in competition with HSR, which shouldn't be the case.

Now, onto the numbers.

CAPITAL AND OPERATING COSTS

The California High Speed Rail Authority's 2014 Draft Business Plan says the project should cost $54.9 billion in 2013 dollars to build up to Phase 1, which gets us from San Francisco to Los Angeles. If this estimate sounds low, it's because reports on the rail line often use year-of-expenditure numbers, but we're going to use 2013 dollars for capital, revenue, and costs to keep things simple and consistent. (The UCLA authors use this same 2014 draft business plan for their report, by the way.) The following table shows the projects estimated capital cost; the relevant number can be found in the last row of the "Cumulative Capital Cost (Billions 2013$) column: