IL – Manufacturing – Demand Demand for HSR is the key internal link to boost 250 private manufacturing facilities APTA 11 (APTA – American Public Transportation Association; 2011-2; “The Case for Business Investment in and Intercity Passenger Rail”; Transportation Research Board database; accessed July 3) Kristof Duke University looked at this growing market in its report U.S. Manufacture of Rail Vehicles for Intercity Passenger Rail and Urban Transit. 7 It found that an extensive supply chain for rail manufacturing already exists in large part, and that this geographically diverse network stands ready to respond to a spark in demand. America has a multiple market tailor-made for highspeed rail. This supply chain includes at least 249 U.S. manufacturing locations in 35 states. The report identified a total of 15 railcar builders, 5 locomotive builders, and 159 component suppliers. These ranged from small firms with fewer than 20 employees and only one manufacturing site, to large, diverse firms with thousands of employees and several relevant U.S. manufacturing locations. The report also noted that the U.S. value chain includes several gaps – specific manufacturing activities that are not typically performed in the United States. The White House and the U.S. Department of Transportation consider passenger rail to be central to an economic strategy that will lead to hundreds of thousands of forward looking clean energy jobs. Speed
per passenger mile then cars and 66 percent less than planes. The faster diesel trains that would likely be used to upgrade current service would emit slightly more emissions, but would still emit much less than cars and planes and would draw more passengers than current passenger rail.30 (See Figure 3, next page.) Electric trains show the most potential for global warming emission reductions, even using today’s carbon-intensive electricity grid. The CCAP/CNT study surveyed the technology used on three different popular electric train lines, in France, Germany and Japan, and found that all would produce lower carbon dioxide emissions per passenger mile than a fast diesel train when powered by the U.S. electric grid. One train, used on the German ICE line, would produce about half the emissions of America’s current passenger rail system.31 Electric trains are not only more energy efficient, but they are faster, and could eventually be powered at least partially with emission-free renewable energy. By attracting travelers who otherwise would have taken cars or planes, building a high-speed rail network would be much more effective at reducing global warming emissions than our current passenger rail system. The CCAP/CNT study estimated that building the high-speed rail corridors [end page 15] planned by the federal government using fast diesel trains, with top speeds of 99 mph, would attract enough passengers to reduce U.S. global warming emissions by 6.1 billion pounds, the equivalent of taking almost 500,000 cars off the road.33 Passenger rail reduces harmful air pollution as well, especially when it is powered by electricity. For example, a passenger on an electric train in Germany produces about 93 percent less air pollution than someone traveling by car, and 91 percent less than someone making the same trip by plane.34 Although the electricity produced in the United States would create more emissions, electric trains would still be much cleaner than diesel trains, cars or planes. When tracks are upgraded for better passenger rail service, freight traffic needs are considered as well, allowing more freight trains to travel faster and with fewer delays and adding to the environmental benefits. Rail transport is much more fuel efficient than truck transport for freight—various studies estimate that train transport is three to nine times as efficient as truck transport for the same amount of freight.35 The resulting fuel savings add to the emissions reductions from improving passenger rail.
Reducing oil dependence saves the economy from oil shocks Feldstein, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, 2003 (Martin, December, National Bureau of Economic Research, “Reducing America’s Dependence on Foreign Oil Supplies,” , 7/7/12 MDRJ) But even if we cannot completely eliminate the need for oil imports, it is possible to reduce substantially the role of oil in the economy with the technology that now exists and even more so with the technology that will be operational during the next two or three decades. Reducing our consumption of oil would make the U.S. economy less sensitive to global oil prices and therefore to shocks in foreign global supplies. If oil plays a smaller role in the economy, changes in world oil prices would have less of an impact on the domestic price level and on domestic economic output. Reducing the sensitivity of the U.S. economy to foreign oil markets by decreasing oil consumption relative to GDP would also reduce the pressure to bend our foreign policy and our military actions to the geopolitics of oil supply.