An interview with Daniel Brand

As high speed rail in the US continues to push forward, Steer Davies Gleave gets some perspective on where it should be heading from one of the industry’s well-known and respected transportation experts.

Daniel Brand is a well-known transportation expert with more than 35 years of transportation policy and investment analysis experience. He has been the Chairman of three major Transportation Research Board Committees (Passenger Travel Demand Forecasting, New Transportation Systems and Technology, and ITS). Before joining CRA in 1977, Brand was Undersecretary of Transportation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and an Associate Professor at Harvard University.

What is your perspective on the current high speed rail initiatives in the US?
There are two kinds of rail projects currently applying for and being awarded Federal grant money. My perspective is that the benefits of each type of project are quite different, and the goals of the federal program should publicly recognize this.

Most of the money is being spread around the country to improve conventional rail – speed it up a bit with the goal of providing another option for people to get from one city to another, or perhaps more often from small cities and towns to a major city. For example, proposed improvements to the Vermonter service to New York may take an hour off an eight hour trip to NYC. This will provide user benefits but won’t attract large numbers of new riders or provide significant congestion relief to other modes. It will also continue to require substantial subsidies.

The second kind of rail project is true high speed rail (HSR) between major cities 200-400 miles apart, where it can compete effectively for intercity travel with air and auto. In addition to providing significant benefits to users, true HSR can provide airport and highway congestion relief. These very different benefits between conventional and high speed rail need to be recognized and incorporated into the goals of the federal program.

In terms of specific corridors, the Northeast Corridor has the strongest claim on significant federal investment. Delays per passenger at New York’s three airports are the highest in the country. The price of car ownership and operation in NYC is the highest in the country. The distances between major cities in the Northeast Corridor are ideal for true HSR. The benefits of true HSR in the NEC are likely to be higher than in any other corridor in the country.

One of the questions that frequently comes up in HSR project planning is where stations should be provided – at airports, in the suburbs, in intermediate cities?
What are your thoughts about this? I don’t generally favor HSR stations at airports. Airports serving the largest US metropolitan areas (where HSR has the most merit) are large unpopulated land areas, congested, with expensive parking and difficult transfers. Suburban stations near major activity centers, often at the intersections of major regional highways, have the potential to attract far more riders. This is where people live and work who are most likely to use HSR which will provide the sought after airport congestion relief.

I would point to a very recent New York Regional Plan Association study of improving the NYC airport system, which may be the first time airport planners have studied the airlines’ response to the diversion of air travelers to HSR. The study showed that when major metropolitan areas are linked by many flights/day, airlines will be able to respond to passenger diversions to HSR by eliminating flights. But in a smaller market with say three to five flights/day (often carrying connecting passengers), the carriers are likely to simply fly smaller planes to maintain their hub-and-spoke feed. So it is only HSR between the largest cities, where air carriers also have high volumes, that will provide benefits from airport congestion relief.