Talking about the HSR fiasco again

Krugman promotes High Speed Rail.

His argument about population density is an argument against Samuelson that he continues with Dean Baker.

The better answer regarding low density is that sometimes rail works and sometimes something else works better. It depends on the local metropolitan district. Because of the Obama earmark for HSR we get these stories about governors flip flopping on the issue. The problem is that federal taxes are applied to all, but not all need HSR. Sometimes communities need BRT, Light Rail, or even better freeways, maybe with congestion pricing.

But the money is on the table, and as Keynes implied, taking the money is good even if you only generate vu grafs, because the money goes away eventually. Just because Obama's kids like trains does not mean that Ray LaHood should be pushing vu graf generation on communities which need something else.

Obama and Congress need to get out of the business of specifying what transit needs make sense for what communities. Let LaHood use some discretion in working with local communities and quit taking direction from Yglesias and the rest of the naive kids who love trains. I can easily see that rail upgrades make sense for many corridors, and that other corridors will simply waste money because of the "earmark". Here is a very good summary of the HSR problems.

One size does not fit all.