Projected Investments in Transportation Infrastructure - A Comparison
A short article in the June 2006 edition of “Schweizer Eisenbahn-Revue” pointed me towards Spain’s plans for future investments in that country’s transportation infrastructure (all modes - road, rail, air, ship). Spain recently adopted a medium-to-long range strategic plan for investments in their transportation infrastructure - the “Strategic Infrastructures and Transport Plan” (Plan Estratégico de Infraestructuras y Transportes, PEIT). The plan covers the timeframe until about the year 2020, i.e. the next 14 years or so. I thought this would make for an interesting comparison to California’s Transportation Infrastructure Bond measure (SB 1266), that will be on the ballot this November (here’s a summary). That bond measure’s funds are supposed to be distributed over the next 10 years - a quite comparable timeframe even if not exactly equivalent.
Also, some quick research shows that the State of California and Spain are of quite similar size - with regards to economic strength and population:
California Spain GDP/GSP (2004) 1,400 billion $ 1,090 billion $ Population (2006) 37 million 40 million
So then, let’s compare the two plans, especially with regards to rail and transit content. The California bond measure allocates 400 million $ (out of a total sum of 20 billion $) for Intercity rail, plus about 3.6 billion $ for transit improvements. The rest is mainly for road-related expenditures. Well, that’s not a whole lot, but better than nothing, you might say?
Let’s have a look at Spain’s plan - the overall amount of the planned expenditures is a whopping 248.8 billion Euros (311 billion $ - let’s assume that one Euro equals 1.25 US Dollars, which is about the current exchange rate). Of this total, 108.7 billion Euros (136 billion $) are allocated to rail infrastructure and rolling stock, the major part of which goes towards construction of high speed/high performance rail lines. This does not include an additional 10.5 billion Euros (13.1 billion $) for urban and commuter rail. The total amount available for rail projects is almost 120 billion Euros (150 billion $) - i.e. almost 50% of the total. Compare that with the paltry 4 billion $ that California intends to spend on rail and transit (only about 20% of the total of the bond measure).
How much did they say that California High Speed Rail would cost? 40 billion $? That sum doesn’t seem so big if you look at how much money Spain intends to spend …
Links:
- Spanish PEIT: http://www.fomento.es/MFOM/LANG_EN/_ESPECIALES/PEIT2/
- California Transportation Bond: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/legislation/bond_summary.htm
Sources:
- GDP Spain 2004: 1,090.8 billion $, OECD Factbook - http://stats.oecd.org/WBOS/default.aspx?DatasetCode=CSP6
- GSP California 2004: 1,409.2 billion $, Bureau of Economic Analysis - http://www.bea.gov/bea/newsrel/gspnewsrelease.htm
- Population Spain: 40,341,462 (July 2006 est.), http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html
- Population California: 37,172,015 (January 1, 2006 est.), State of California, Department of Finance, E-4 Population Estimates for Cities, Counties and the State, 2001-2006, with 2000 Benchmark. http://www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/DEMOGRAP/HistE-4.asp
Tags: california | spain | rail | highspeedrail | hsr
Posted in: Uncategorized | June 15, 2006 12:16 am
1 Comment »
High-Speed Rail - why not in the USA? | TrainBlog, on April 25, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
[…] The answer to that: Some areas of the United States actually have a higher population density than some countries that do have HSR. E.g. France has 111 people per square kilometer - that is similar to the state of Ohio. Spain has an extensive HSR network and is building even more and its density is almost exactly the same as California’s (I had already made the point about the similarity of California and Spain in an earlier post) - both are at 81 people per square kilometer. #2: “But they don’t have any cars over there. Americans just love their cars too much.” […]
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