Does High-Speed Rail Equal Green Jobs?

This is the first installment of my opinion on the building of the high-speed rail network in the USA. The benefits that I will discuss here are from www.ushsr.com/benefits.html web site. I recommend you poke around the site a little and also do a search on "high-speed rail".  Some very interesting information out there for you to review.

1. Creates millions of “green jobs” nationwide building the new rail infrastructure and manufacturing the rail cars.

  --Greens Jobs/Infrastructure construction? Would this be like the “green jobs” successes of Spain over the past couple of years? For every green job created in Spain, over two private sector jobs were lost. This is a proven fact (facts are stubborn things). And where do “they” come up with “millions” of jobs? I am sure that once construction is underway, there will be jobs o-plenty. But millions? I don’t think so, unless each projected corridor was started at the same time. These are construction jobs and by their very nature are temporary. Once the line is built, the jobs are gone. There won’t be enough jobs actually working for the completed high-speed rail line (station attendants, conductors, engineers, right-of-way maintenance) to cover the losses once construction closed down. Would these people move from job to job? Once the California corridor is complete, would they move to NC to start on the NC to AL line? If all lines were built simultaneously then no, they wouldn’t move to the next job? If built in phases (as planned), millions of jobs would not be created.  1000’s and even perhaps 100,000’s but certainly not millions.

Another point to consider when counting the number of jobs the construction is supposed to create. This isn’t the 1870’s when 1000’s of workers were building our trans-continental railroads. Laying track and all the sub-structure the rails sit on is fairly automated. Certainly worker must attend to the machinery and do the prep work, but track isn’t laid by hand anymore.

  --Rail cars? I’d bet my last paycheck that these won’t be American made. If I am not mistaken, the ACELA isn’t built here. Would we start a whole new industry in the USA to build these rail cars or would we just go overseas to where to experts and experience is located? I seem to recall that when all of these solar panels and wind turbines were going to be installed, the greenies talked about all of the green jobs that would be created by building these panels and turbines.  But that has not happened. This equipment is being built elsewhere. The construction money and jobs is going overseas.

Update on 10 Dec 2010.  Prince Harry Reid has helped a Chinese company secure $450M in stimulus money to build wind turbines in west Texas.  This is same company that built a wind farm southeast of Las Vegas using a different chunk of stimulus money.  The company is headquartered in China, the wind turbines were built in China, and the eventual profits go to China. I am not being xenophobic; I am just trying to state the obvious: If the stimulus money was to get the US economy going once again with “shovel ready” projects, why was $450M dollars sent to a Chinese company to construct wind turbines in China?