One more lane or one more track?
Updated: Sep 22
As high-speed rail infrastructure continues to crop up across the globe, one global giant continues to hold back.
I recently had the privilege of driving the entirety of arguably the most picturesque road in America, Interstate Highway H-3 on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu. The road slithers through lush rainforests and emerald hills, plunging through the valleys of the Ko’olau mountain range and even slicing through them with the Tetsuo Harano tunnels. Almost the entire highway is raised on an overpass, with breathtaking views on either side of the road.
This experience came after weeks of taking public transit in Asia such as China’s HSR (高铁), Japan’s Shinkansen, and various local metro systems. After being back in America, I first thought to myself: “Why is everything here so inaccessible unless you have a car?” I mean, sure, the views are stunning, but wouldn’t a rail line through this valley serve the island far better?
I went home and looked up the numbers.
Interstate H-3 stretches just 15.3 miles across O’ahu. It took 37 years of legal and environmental issues to clear. Price estimates quickly went from $50 million in the early 1960s to $250 million by the end of the decade. By the time it was finished in 1997, it had taken $1.3 billion, equivalent to $2.3 billion in today’s money. At the time, that came out to approximately $80 million dollars per mile (around $150 million today), making it the most expensive interstate highway on a per-mile basis.
For reference, the Tōkaidō line of the Japanese Shinkansen connecting Tokyo and Osaka was proposed in 1940, began construction in 1959, and was operational by 1964. It cost around $12-14 billion inflation adjusted for 320 miles of track with a per-mile cost of approximately $38-43 million. The Chinese HSR was first proposed in 1990, began construction in 2004 (according to its original “4 vertical 4 horizontal” plan), and was completed in 2021. The network, spanning over 50000 kilometers (~31000 miles) of track, continues to expand in the present day. The current construction costs amount to around $1 trillion, or a per-mile cost of $38-48 million.
Since Asia has been developing their rail networks so vastly and efficiently, surely the U.S. has also hopped on board?
Not quite. While China is continuing to expand their existing high-speed rail infrastructure and Japan is refining its Shinkansen corridors, the United States remains trapped in a double standard. America does not lack the financial capacity or engineering talent to build world-class transit, with Interstate H-3 proving that state and federal agencies will cheerfully spend over $150 million per mile to slice through mountain ranges when the project in question carries automobiles. The barrier is political, and above anything, cultural. When money flows toward asphalt, it is viewed as an essential public utility, but when it flows toward steel rails, it is treated as an exorbitantly priced luxury.
This imbalance begins at the level of funding. American roads and highways benefit from guaranteed, predictable revenue pipelines historically backed by the Highway Trust Fund and other favorable federal match rates, often covering 80% to 90% of a project's total cost. State departments of transportation can plan, widen, and repave highways on multi-decade horizons with minimal fear that their capital could vanish.
Passenger rail, by contrast, has spent half a century surviving on discretionary grant cycles and congressional appropriations. Since most historical cargo railways and tracks in the U.S. are privately owned, projects are forced to fight for competitive scraps to build new infrastructure, leaving planners unable to guarantee steady and predictable long-term funding over ten to fifteen years.
The consequence of inconsistent funding is starkly visible in projects like California High-Speed Rail (CA HSR). Forced to build in fragmented phases as funding trickled in, the project became a war zone for environmental litigation, local land-acquisition disputes, and shifting political preferences. As costs escalated upwards of $200 million per mile, critics pounced on the figure as proof that high-speed rail is inherently unviable on American soil.
Yet this outrage reveals a curious blind spot in American infrastructure discourse. Urban highway expansions such as the reconstruction of the I-35 corridor in Texas frequently cross the $100 million to $150 million per mile threshold with remarkably little national pushback. Furthermore, other projects deemed critically necessary for communities such as Boston’s Big Dig have technically cost upwards of $1 billion per mile. The cost overruns of a freeway widening are quietly absorbed as the unavoidable cost of modern civil engineering; the cost overruns of a rail line are held up as an existential policy failure. America evidently does not refuse to spend money on transportation, but for some forsaken reason, it simply holds passenger rail to a different standard that highway planners never face.
Our obsession with highways also leads America into the trap of induced demand. Simply put, adding a new lane could provide temporary relief to a congested area and improve travel time temporarily. However, the new lane will attract new commuters, leading to more usage of the “improved” highway and plunging it straight back into bumper to bumper traffic. For example, cheaper land further out of the city could be developed into car-dependent suburbs, forcing more and more new drivers onto the same road. And after that? Another lane to join the repair cycle, costing more in federal funding every year. (You can see an extreme example of induced demand in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, where after a project adding 20 lanes actually increased travel times in the long term.
What could our cities have looked like instead of this? It turns out that cars are wildly inefficient at moving large volumes of people through limited space. A single lane of highway can typically handle around 1,800 to 2,000 cars per hour—which usually translates to fewer than 2,500 people. Let’s be wildly generous and say that each car is carrying five people, meaning that 10,000 people are travelling on this road per hour. By comparison, a single high-speed or commuter rail track can effortlessly carry over 20,000 to 30,000 passengers per hour. It is true that multi-lane HSR corridors would require a substantial amount of space, but that’s evened out by the amount of space saved in equivalent car infrastructure. Trains eliminate the massive spatial footprint required by highways, giant interchanges, and endless parking lots, making them vastly more resilient to induced demand. When a train line sees an increase in riders, you don't need to bulldoze another neighborhood to add a lane; you simply add another car to the train or run services a few minutes closer together. Even long-term maintenance leans heavily in rail’s favor: while thousands of heavy multi-ton vehicles constantly pulverize asphalt and trigger endless, multi-million-dollar repaving cycles, steel wheels on steel rails experience far less wear per passenger, making rail exponentially cheaper to maintain per mile over its lifespan. Instead of green parks and blue lakes, we got gray concrete and grey concrete.
Ultimately, America’s reluctance to pivot to trains isn't a question of geography, engineering, or even money. As Interstate H-3 proves, we have no shortage of cash or technical skill when we want to carve transit corridors through mountains and over valleys. The difference is intention. While other continents (like Asia) treat high-speed rail as the backbone of modern and sustainable transportation, America remains stuck paying billions to maintain a traffic loop that never ends. Until we stop treating asphalt as royalty, we’ll be stuck building extra lanes to nowhere, wondering why our traffic only gets worse.
References
California High-Speed Rail Authority. 2024 Business Plan. Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority, 2024. https://hsr.ca.gov/about/business-plans/.
China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. China Railway Statistical Bulletin. Beijing: China State Railway Group Co., Ltd., 2021. http://www.china-railway.com.cn/.
Duranton, Gilles, and Matthew A. Turner. "The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities." American Economic Review 101, no. 6 (2011): 2616–52. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.6.2616.
Federal Highway Administration. "Highway History: Interstate H-3." U.S. Department of Transportation. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/hawaii.cfm.
Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Central Artery/Tunnel Project Financial Oversight Monthly Report. Boston: MassDOT, 2008. https://www.mass.gov/orgs/massachusetts-department-of-transportation.
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Shinkansen Infrastructure Economics and Operations Data Report. Tokyo: MLIT, 2020. https://www.mlit.go.jp/english/.
National Association of City Transportation Officials. Transit Street Design Guide. New York: Island Press, 2016. https://nacto.org/publication/transit-street-design-guide/.
Ollivier, Gerald, Richard Bullock, Yisheng Jin, and Nanyan Zhou. "High-Speed Railways in China: An Update on Cost, Construction, and Operations." World Bank Research Paper, no. 135839 (2019). https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/906721563342300084/high-speed-railways-in-china-an-update-on-cost-construction-and-operations.
Texas Department of Transportation. I-35 Capital Express Program Financial Breakdown. Austin: TxDOT, 2023. https://www.my35.org/capital.htm.
Transportation Research Board. Highway Capacity Manual, 6th ed. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.17226/24798.
U.S. Congress. House. Making Further Continuing Appropriations for the Fiscal Year 1987, and for Other Purposes. HJ Res 738, 99th Cong., 2nd sess., passed October 18, 1986. https://www.congress.gov/bill/99th-congress/house-joint-resolution/738.
World Bank Group. Project Loan 0280: Japan Tōkaidō Shinkansen Infrastructure Project. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group, 1961. https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/.
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