为什么美国永远都不会有高铁？
《华盛顿邮报》2月12日刊登梅根·麦卡德尔文章《为什么美国永远都不会有高铁》
文：Megan McArdle
译：马力
加利福尼亚人一向把加州看作是“未来诞生之地”。2008年，该州选民认定——高铁就是未来。2008年11月，加州发行了90亿美元债券以启动美国历史上最雄心勃勃的由政府主导的基础设施建设项目，那就是预计总耗资高达330亿美元、连接旧金山与洛杉矶的高速铁路系统。
近几年，乐观主义者一直在描绘一个美妙的构想：数百万加州人乘坐子弹头列车快速、舒适、环保地来往于该州两大中心城市之间。然而与此同时，悲观主义者却已经清醒地看到高铁建设成本正不断攀升。最新的统计数据显示，加州高铁项目的建设成本已经跃升至750亿美元，而且任何明眼人都能看得出来，这个数字还会不断攀升。
本周二（2月12日），来自民主党的州长加文·纽瑟姆（Gavin Newsom）在发表首次州情咨文讲话时呼吁将加州高铁项目大幅缩减为一段成本较低且仅穿越中央谷地（Central Valley）、联结默塞德（Merced）和贝克斯菲尔德（Bakersfield）的长度为191公里的线路。与原建设方案相比，这个新的方案实施起来要容易许多。因为在中央谷地，很少有人会反对高铁建设计划，当然这一地区很少有人会去乘坐高铁。这样一来，加州选民就可以不用再捂着手中的钱包了。不过美国其他地方的选民却应该密切关注这个发生在加州的事件，因为这件事揭示了美国任何一个铁路建设项目可能面临的困境，甚至可以说，发生在加州的这件事揭示了美国任何一个重大基础设施建设项目可能面临的困境。
几乎每一个曾出国旅行的美国人在回来之后都会发出疑问：为什么这个世界上除了美国，几乎每个国家都可以提供便宜、高效的铁路服务，而美国人却要在高速公路上忍受单调乏味的旅行或者在机场安检时忍受来自美国运输安全管理局（TSA）的侮辱？很遗憾，并没有什么明确的原因或问题造成了这个结果；也可以说，有很多问题造成了这个结果，那些问题都是难以解决的，正是那些问题剥夺了我们乘坐子弹头列车的权利。
首先是距离。在世界上其他国家（比如中国、欧洲和日本），人口密集的大城市之间的距离比美国的要近很多。大城市之间距离较近差不多是建设高铁系统的前提条件，这就是中国、欧洲和日本有高铁而我们没有高铁的原因。可以想象一下，在大西洋沿岸的纽约和太平洋沿岸的洛杉矶之间修建一条高铁要付出怎样的代价吧！
其次是征地成本。美国的确有几个地区具备了建设高铁的条件，它们内部的大城市比较密集，比如德克萨斯州和东北部的城市群。然而我们并没有在这些城市之间修建高铁，而是在华盛顿和波士顿之间建设了阿西乐快线（译注：Acela Express，全长734公里，最高速度为240公里/小时，但由于美国东北走廊铁铁路设施严重老化，列车仅能在一小部分路段全速行驶，在大多数路段的行驶速度为115公里/小时），从华盛顿到波士顿几乎需要8个小时，而且车厢晃来晃去，非常不平稳。
我们为什么没有建设等级更高的高速铁路系统呢？因为真正的高铁列车需要走笔直的路线，列车在时速300公里的情况下是不可能转弯的。可是我们现有的铁路线并不直，无法满足高铁列车的需求。修建更新、更好、更直的铁路意味着政府要买下在华盛顿与波士顿之间建设高铁系统需要的所有土地，并且拆除挡住铁路建设的所有建筑。美国已经是一个高度发达的国家，在华盛顿与波士顿之间已经没有尚未开发的农田和荒地了。正相反，两地之间的土地已经被大量价值极高的地产所占据，买下那些地产将需要一大笔钱。此外与中国法律不同，美国宪法在征地问题上赋予美国政府的权力是非常有限的。
第三是法律程序主义。欧洲的城市之间也有大量价值极高的地产，而欧洲却没有那些能够在征地、环境影响评估等领域束缚政府手脚长达几十年的各种法律程序。由于历史原因，美国法律体系为美国公民提供了数量庞大的可以否决一个高铁建设项目的法律着力点，他们可以借此来阻挠政府推动的高铁建设项目。在美国，任何一个比粉刷校舍的规模稍大一些的施工项目都不得不通过多年的评估和诉讼争出个结果，或者是通过花钱收买反对者来解决问题，更有可能需要双管齐下才行。
第四是建设成本。美国基础设施的建设成本比世界上任何其他国家都高得多。右派喜欢指责工会，而左派喜欢指责要价过高的顾问。然而他们争论的内容不过是表面的症状，并不是真正的症结所在。我已经在上面列出了美国交通基础设施建设成本如此之高的原因，当然还有一点，那就是我们的联邦制度已经并不那么健康。
媒体上已经有大量批评美国基础设施建设成本高昂的评论文章，不过在读的时候不要只是一味地关注那些飚升的数字，请想一想那些数字背后的事情。为何在实施一个建设项目时雇佣如此之多的顾问？工会为何要在项目中人为地增加雇员数量？
下面是我对这个问题的回答。雇佣那些人的目的在于，如此一来建设方就可以避免遭遇法律诉讼，就可以表达对某些政府监管机构的顺服态度（一个建设项目往往会涉及很多政府部门，其中任何一个政府部门都没有能力在该项目上扮演终极权威），就可以安抚数不清的实力强大的游说集团。
在其他国家也存在裙带资本主义现象，然而像美国这种权力高度分散的政府体制（大量权力被下放至基层政府部门）却有着一个很大的弊端，那就是任何人都有条件收买一个政客的几位密友，进而影响这位政客的决策。
令人没有想到的是，加州高铁事件在很大程度上揭示了所有这些问题。被保留的那部分高铁线路虽然可以用较低的成本修建完成，但那段路线并不穿过人口密集区，而是穿过地价较低廉、游说团体相对较少的中央谷地。加州高铁真正的价值是联结旧金山和洛杉矶两大城市，然而这样的建设方案意味着冗长的法律和政治纠纷，意味着天文数字般的建设成本。旧金山和洛杉矶之间的距离有600多公里，这段距离太远了，美国可能永远都无法用高铁把这两座城市连接在一起。
Why the United States Will Never Have High-speed Rail
California likes to think of itself as the state where the future happens, and in 2008, its voters decided the future was high-speed rail. In November of that year, they approved a $9 billion bond issue to begin one of the most ambitious government infrastructure projects in U.S. history: a bullet train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles, at a cost of $33 billion.
For years, the optimists have spun starry visions of millions of Californians traveling quickly, comfortably and environmentally consciously between the state’s two major population centers. The pessimists, meanwhile, have grimly watched the projected costs mount. At last count, the estimates had traveled northward of $75 billion, and for all anyone could tell, were still climbing.
On Tuesday, during his first State of the State speech, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) called for the state to scale back the project to a less costly leg that would run through the Central Valley — much simpler to build in large part because there are relatively few people there who might want to raise objections to the project, or, say, ride a high-speed train. California voters can stop clutching their wallets. But voters elsewhere should pay close attention, because what happened in California illustrates the perils that face any U.S. rail project, or for that matter, any project at all that tries to meaningfully reshape U.S. infrastructure.
Almost anyone who travels abroad comes back wondering why every other country in the world seems to have cheap, speedy rail travel while Americans can barely go out for a cup of coffee without enduring either the tedium of an endless road-trip or the indignities of the TSA. Sadly, there is no one reason; rather, there are many reasons, all of them hard-to-impossible to fix, all of them conspiring to deprive us of the (gee-whiz!) trains that many of us would like to ride.
Distance. In other places of the world, such as China, Europe and Japan, major population centers are much closer to each other. And big cities that are reasonably close together is pretty much a prerequisite for high-speed rail, which is why they have it and we don’t. Imagine what it would take to build a line from New York City to Los Angeles — or to Chicago, Houston or Phoenix.
Wealth. Of course, the United States does have a few clusters that look ripe for rail, notably Texas, and the Eastern Seaboard. And instead of high-speed rail between these cities, we have the Acela, which takes eight hours to travel from Washington to Boston and shakes like a maraca player with a meth habit. Why haven’t we built something better? Because truly high-speed rail needs to travel in a fairly straight line; you don’t want to be taking a sharp curve at 300 miles per hour. Our current rail infrastructure isn’t that straight where it needs to be. Building newer, better, straighter rail lines would require the government to buy all the land between Point A and Point B and tear down anything that happened to be in the way. Because we’re already really, really rich, what’s between Point A and Point B is no longer farmland; instead we have a great deal of highly valuable real estate that will be very expensive to purchase — which we’d have to, because unlike China, our constitution gives the government limited ability to displace inconveniently located people.
Legal Proceduralism. Of course, Europe also has some pretty nice, and pretty pricey, stuff sitting between its cities. What Europe does not have, generally speaking, is the ability to tie up the government for a few decades in eminent domain appeals, environmental reviews and so forth. For historical reasons, the U.S. legal system offers citizens an unparalleled number of veto points at which they can attempt to block government projects. Any infrastructure project bigger than painting a schoolhouse thus has to either fight out the reviews and court cases for years, or buy off the opponents, or more likely, both.
Cost. U.S. infrastructure projects cost way more to build than they do everywhere else. The right likes to blame unions; the left likes to blame pricey consultants. But they’re all arguing about the symptom rather than the disease. The reason U.S. transportation infrastructure costs so much is all the stuff I listed above, plus a healthy dose of federalism.
Read any essay bemoaning the cost of American infrastructure — say Brian Rosenthal’s 2017 behemoth for the New York Times — and don’t just gawk at the inflated numbers; ask yourself why U.S. infrastructure projects use so many consultants, so many union featherbedders and so on.
Answer: They are there to fend off future lawsuits, or to smooth compliance with some other level of government’s regulatory bodies, or to appease some powerful lobby. And because these infrastructure projects involve so many different governments, none of whom has final authority over the project, there are a lot of lobbies that must be appeased.
Other countries have crony capitalism, of course, but the downside of our highly decentralized government, which pushes a lot of power down to smaller, more locally responsive governments, is that almost anyone can get a few cronies together and grab some politician’s ear.
California displays all these pathologies with a vengeance. The part of the rail line that was reasonably cheap to build didn’t go anywhere near where the people were; it ran through the Central Valley where land was reasonably cheap and the lobbies were relatively few. The parts of the line that were actually useful — the endpoints — promised endless legal and political headaches and astronomical costs. And those two endpoints were 400 miles apart — too far, in the end, to be reached.
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