The Wachs/Hotlz-Eakin report on transportation spending

Menzie wants us to read it. So I read the 36 page flyer which basically said that Romer type fiscal multipliers don't work well and the current, federal  transportation funding system is a failure.  Wisconsin's current governor evidently read the report because he canceled the HSR.

Then Menzie quotes Eichengreen on the need for smooth construction of High Speed Rail,  but in China we have this:

The problem, writes Patrick Chovanec at Business Insider, is that most of China’s long-distance travel during the peak season is done by migrant workers who either cannot afford the price of a high-speed ticket, or simply would prefer to spend their money other ways:

China Daily notes that a new luxury sleeper service between Shanghai and Chengdu costs an astonishing US$352 (easily comparable — and possibly more expensive than — an air ticket).

Here Chovanec has chosen a poor example. Sure, $350 is more than commercial airfare to some places, but it doesn’t even approach the true equivalent to a luxury train, which would be first-class air travel. Still, his larger point about China’s high-speed pricing problem merits further consideration. One purpose of the country’s bullet network, he writes, was to allow conventional tracks to carry more freight, relieving the coal trucks that clutter the country’s roadways. By bumping passengers “down-market” from slow trains to buses, China may have inadvertently increased its already notorious highway traffic.

And this:

Thursday, July 1, 2010 | Ridership projections for the $43 billion proposed California high-speed rail system are so unreliable, according to a University of California, Berkeley study released Thursday, that it's impossible to predict whether the project will succeed or fail.
"We found that the model that the rail authority relied upon to create average ridership projections was flawed at key decision-making junctures," said Samer Madanat, the study's principal investigator, in a news release. "This means that the forecast of ridership is unlikely to be very close to the ridership that would actually materialize if the system were built."

An honest  view of HSR looks an awful lot like the Eakin report on projects ill conceived, not like the Eichengreen report proposing HSR delusions.

The whole key to transportation infrastructure is to fix the potholes and use the asphalt we have.  The great bulk of transportation gains will come from adding silicon intelligence to roads and vehicles.  Toll lanes, priced accurately will allocate funding according to need.