$8 billion isn't much for HSR, but if anything HSR has a middle to upper income bias. It's intercity and it isn't cheap. It displaces airline trips over its ideal distance. It is not focused on urbanites per se. To go intercity you typically have to go to a major airport or, with an HSR system, to a rail station in a city. That's where suburbanites will go unless they drive. The most important transportation options for the urban working class are regional rail systems, which are not HSR, or the lowly bus.
As things stand highways still got the big Federal bucks and rail remains an afterthought.
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Jan 24, 2010, at 1:12 PM, James Heartfield wrote:
>
>> http://www.newgeography.com/content/001364-the-war-against-suburbia
>
>> In addition, the president’s stimulus—with its $8 billion allocation
>> for high-speed rail and proposed giant increases in mass
>> transit—offers little to anyone who lives outside a handful of large
>> metropolitan cores. Economics writer Robert Samuelson, among others,
>> has denounced the high-speed rail idea as “a boondoggle” not
>> well-suited to a huge, multi-centered country like the United States.
>> Green job schemes also seem more suited to boost employment for
>> university researchers and inner-city residents than middle-income
>> suburbanites.
>> Suburbanites may not yet be conscious of the anti-suburban stance of
>> the Obama team, but perhaps they can read the body language.
>> Administration officials have also started handing out $300 million
>> stimulus-funded grants to cities that follow “smart growth
>> principles.” Grants for cities to adopt “sustainability” oriented
>> development will reward those communities with the proper planning
>> orientation. There is precious little that will benefit suburbanites,
>> such as improved roads or investment in other basic infrastructure.
>>
> This is absolute horseshit. $8 billion is 1% of a $787 billion bill.
> The alternative energy research budget was ransacked to pay for the
> ridiculous cash-for-clunkers program, which isn't much of an urban
> bias. $28 billion went to highway and related projects. Green jobs
> programs hardly have an urban skew - manufacturing doesn't happen in
> cities very often, and weatherization subsidies are mostly being used
> by single-family houses.
>
> Measured as a share of personal income, the biggest chunks of StimPak
> spending are going to Alaska, North Dakota, Montana, South Carolina,
> Idaho, New Mexico, South Dakota, Vermont, and Washington. Real urban,
> eh? And who's at the bottom? New Jersey (the most densely populated
> state in the U.S.), Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, California -
> pretty urban states, most of them.
>
> I know that this sort of thing fits your prejudices, but try to find
> something better argued than a hack like Kotkin.
>
> Doug___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>