But in any case, the impact of gentrification shows that you don’t help inner cities by spending money on megaprojects, least of all megaprojects that primarily benefit rural areas; you help them by spending money on teachers, cops, and doctors, and by reducing pollution. HSR is not a social program but a business investment, and should not be used to move money away from social programs. It’s a public good insofar as it’s used by large numbers of people to get from one place to another; if it doesn’t so that, then it’s as useless as I-90 in South Dakota.

“It’s about the new lines to Soria, Ourense, Ferrol, Coruña, and Almeria, and the two separate lines to Albacete. Who asked for those?”

1) The line to Soria is not economically viable and will not be built. The famous blueprint with a line to Soria was a proposal, not a final project; that blueprint will be reviewed this year and the line to Soria will disappear for sure.

2) Tthe line to Orense connects Vigo (metro pop: 670,000) and Coruña (metro pop: 410,000) to Madrid (metro pop: 6 million) and the Portuguese metro areas of Porto (metro pop: 1,2 million) and Lisbon (metro pop: 2,8 million), so it makes economic sense. Orense was just lucky to lie in between.

3) The line from Coruña to Ferrol does not make economic sense and will probably not be built.

4) There is a huge movement of people between cities in the middle of the country (especially Madrid) and the Mediterranean coast (including Almería) every long weekend, on holidays and in the summer. Huge as in “millions of people getting to the coast at the same time”, so it is economically justifiable. Albacete (expected metro pop in 2020: 300,000) got a good deal, indeed; but I still think all its lines will be economically viable.

I am surprised you didn’t point out other obviously uneconomic links such as Madrid-Ávila-Salamanca or the Northern corridor Coruña-Oviedo-Santander-Bilbao. None of them have economic sense. They won’t be built, either.

Anyway, small towns (in the 100,000-200,000 range) out of the AVE network will probably get some upgraded rail link, which suits them better in ticket price and freight-rail compatibility.

“The first line Madrid-Seville was built as part of Spain’s big party for the 500th anniversary of the voyage of Columbus. Native Americans weren’t in a mood to celebrate…”

Well, they DID celebrate. In fact, they celebrate it every year in Latin American countries (Día de la Raza – Day of the Spanish-speaking Race, known with the PC name of Columbus Day in the US) since more than a century ago, and officially since 1913. It is a sign of maturity to celebrate your own defeat and put it in a positive light; that’s why Spain will celebrate its own defeat (200 years ago) by Latin American independentists in the next months.

I’m sure they will continue to suffer, but whether more or less from more better rail service, I dunno.

I’ve seen a couple or more business plans for high speed rail that conclude with raising the ticket prices “in recognition of the better service”. Or to raise the ticket prices to get those big fat black women off the train, sort of like half acre-lot zoning keeps the riff-raff out of the better suburbs.

That’s one reason I keep talking about improving regular trains with more frequent service, new routes, etc. If the business user ruling class decide they need high speed trains they will get them without my help needed.

I’m not so hot to subsidize the big cities that you say will power the economy. In that case, the black people will get gentrified out of Harlem and … Oh, wait. That is happening already.

Anyway, in a democracy composed of 50 states and 50 delegations in Congress, you gotta give something to almost every district or it ain’t gonna happen. So I’m thinking that subsidizing another train through Tuscaloosa is more likely to help ordinary people there than some of the other programs you mention, like the agricultural subsidies to big landowners.

And as the biggest cities like Atlanta and Chicago continue to grow, the young people will continue to leave the small cities like Tuscaloosa and Fargo. Linking those smaller places to the big cities will be a public good. So as I said, if that is how Spain is wasting some of its money, I’m OK with that.

Of course, the US can do a 180 and waste money on rail instead of roads. However, this won’t solve the core problem of subsidies from successful urban areas to dying rural areas. These subsidies are rarely based on need; if you compare the subsidies delivered to Philadelphia and Baltimore with those delivered to Wyoming and Montana, which are far better off, you’ll see that the cities are getting shortchanged. What the subsidies are based on is the disproportionate representation that rural states get in the Senate, plus the idea that paying farmers is morally superior to paying inner-city teachers.

Roads to nowhere perpetuate this mentality. The US already has a communist transportation system, with state-owned roads built by legislative fiat; nowadays there’s even a state-owned automaker producing Trabis Chevys for the people. In principle it can extend the same model to HSR construction – there’s nothing inherently wrong with throwing a few hundred billion in HSR money to tobacco growers in Asheville and ranchers in Lubbock so that they can take fast trains to Washington to lobby for more agricultural subsidies. It just means that New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and the other cities that power the US economy will be burdened with paying more taxes to support activities that for all intents and purposes are burning money. And when that happens, the first groups of people to suffer will be the ordinary citizens of the South Bronx, East LA, and North Philadelphia.

Well, who asked for that multi-million dollar airport in Johnstown, Pa., and the annual subsidy of flight to Washington, D.C., the only city served from Johnstown? Don’t they have the equivalent of powerful Congressmen in Spain? Aren’t they gonna get some gravy for their constituents, not to mention convenient connections for their important selves? Or is it self-important selves?

Lessee. The first line Madrid-Seville was built as part of Spain’s big party for the 500th anniversary of the voyage of Columbus. Native Americans weren’t in a mood to celebrate, but Spain had the World’s Fair in Seville and the AVE to Madrid, and the Olympics in Barcelona. I think they got some European Union infrastructure funds for the first AVE, too, because when Spain joined it was considered poor. To the surprise of critics it immediately began showing an operating profit, even paying off the debt for the new trains in short order.

The success of the first line gave momentum to other lines, Barcelona-Valencia, Madrid-Barcelona, and now Madrid-Malaga and Madrid-just about everywhere. Putting aside capital costs for a moment, they have to be making huge money on Madrid-Barcelona now, probably enough to absorb losses on some smaller links.

Diego seems to think the building of new lines will slow down and not reach all the proclaimed targets. If they simply finish the main ones underway, like Madrid-Lisbon and Barcelona-France, they will have pretty well accomplished their stated goal of unifying the country with rail.

That’s a matter of national pride, apparently, not unlike the Olympics and World’s Fair stuff almost a generation ago now. And if that involves uneconomic routes into some backwater corners, I’m not sure it’s a bad way for a government to “waste” its money.

I wish our country cared as much about mobility for its ordinary citizens in places like Battle Creek and Toledo, or Macon and Tuscaloosa, or Monroe, Shreveport, Alexandria, and Baton Rouge. Or even Johnstown, PA, which of course would benefit from better train service Pittsburgh-East Coast.. We spend billions subsidizing air travel for our business user ruling class. Why can’t we spend billions on rail for the masses, even those in Fargo and Missoula and the rest of FlyoverLand?

I wonder what is a small town for you. If you connect Madrid (pop. 6 million) with Seville (pop. 1,5 million), it is logical to build a couple of stations along the way. As there are no big cities in between, smallish Puertollano (pop. 50,000) and Cordoba (pop. 300,000) got connected; but the line was not built for Puertollano and Cordoba, they just happened to be along the way.

The same happens on almost any other line. While there are plans to connect a couple of small towns laying out of economically justified lines, those lines just won’t be built. In fact, as a Spaniard, I’d take the plans to build 20,000km by 2020 with a grain of salt. It will probably end up being 10,000km by 2025 (which will be the largest in the world, anyway, as the Chinese have no spending power to buy HSR tickets; existing HSR in China have been utter failures).

By the way, I’d bet the US has not a single operational HSR line by 2025.

Yes, construction costs are about $262.5 million per km for the Fukutoshin Line, which includes stations with platform doors, escalators, elevators, etc. But the Oedo Line, finished in 2000, cost nearly 40% more at $360.4 million per km. Mind you the stations are clean, there are few problems due to water leakage compared to equivalent U.S. systems, and there are very few problems caused by equipment malfunctions. Still, there was a lot of criticism directed at the project for being wasteful, but capital costs are gradually being repaid through operating revenues, and I think the respective lines are worth the cost when you consider the serious issues of crowding and expected continued population growth in greater Tokyo.