تامین مالی راه آهن سریع السیر در ایالات متحده و فرانسه: سیر تکاملی مشارکت های بخش دولتی و خصوصی

Using cross-national comparative analysis, this paper discusses the reasons why France has succeeded in partially privatizing its most recently constructed high speed line, while the U.S. has not reached this stage. The authors argue that France, with an interventionist government, diverged from the U.S. during the Great Depression by nationalizing its private railways and regulating competition with highway-based transport, thereby establishing favorable conditions for the future development of high speed trains. The U.S., because of its strong free market orientation, delayed nationalization until 1971, by which time passenger railways were severely weakened, so the U.S. lagged far behind France. After accruing a large public debt on its high speed rail program in the 1980s and 1990s, the French government recently took steps to privatize construction and operations on its Tours–Bordeaux line. Similarly, in the U.S., the State of California is trying to attract private participation on its planned high speed line between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Based on French high speed rail history, this paper argues that, to succeed, California must commit both a high level of public borrowing as well as

On October 1, 1964, the world's first dedicated high speed passenger train service, called the Shinkansen, began operating between Tokyo and Kyoto. The line immediately attracted a large ridership and, by the end of its third year of operations, was earning net profits over and above both its operating costs and the debt incurred for infrastructure construction and purchase of rolling stock (Gourvish, 2009: 9). This was a highly significant achievement since, starting in the 1920s, most privately operated intercity passenger rail services had become unprofitable due to competition from highway-based transportation, causing governments throughout the world, including Japan's, to nationalize passenger services. High speed rail created the possibility that these services could return to profitability, become a significant part of the national transportation systems, and perhaps even attract the private sector to return once again to operating passenger trains. The commonly accepted definition of “very high speed” trains are those that run at average speeds greater than 150 miles per hour and operate on dedicated, grade separated track. In more than four decades after Japan achieved high speed commercial operations, public railway companies have developed high speed lines in many Asian countries, much of western Europe and Great Britain. In the United States, a joint public–private venture between the federal government and the Pennsylvania Railroad developed Metroliners, trains with the potential for very high speed, in the mid-1960s. In order to understand how these countries financed their high speed networks and how and why privatization of passenger rail is now a relevant policy option, three questions must be answered: first, how and why did passenger rail services shift from private to public ownership and operation in the mid-20th century? Second, how did that change affect the development of high speed rail? Third, does high speed rail create opportunities for a return of the private sector to passenger rail transport? To answer these questions, we compare France and the United States, since that comparison reveals much about how the public and private sectors related to each other in financing railway development. Throughout most of the 19th century and early 20th centuries, privately owned passenger railways operated profitably in both countries. But, their situation changed in the 1920s and 1930s due to financial problems caused by competition from highway-based transport which were severely exacerbated during the Great Depression. France then diverged from the U.S. by nationalizing its passenger railways and by using government financing and regulation to strengthen their competitive position. This established favorable conditions for the future development of French high speed trains. Though faced with the same Depression-induced financial crisis, the U.S. chose not to nationalize its railways. Instead, private companies were allowed to continue to operate passenger services, competing in the free market with other modes of transport. Ultimately their efforts failed and they were nationalized in 1971. Public takeover rescued American passenger railways, but left them severely weakened. This is one of the major reasons why the U.S. lagged so far behind France in developing high speed trains. The French–U.S. comparison also elucidates many of the key issues involved with public and private financing of high speed rail, such as privatization. High speed rail lines are very expensive to build. After the French government committed to developing high speed trains in the 1970s, decades of capital investment resulted in the accrual of a large amount of railway debt. As a result, the French state took steps to draw the private sector into helping to construct and operate new lines in order to mitigate the large and increasing deficits that accompanied the first 30 years of high speed rail construction. Recent plans for a high speed line between Tours and Bordeaux involve a public–private partnership never previously attempted on French railways. At the same time, in the U.S., the State of California recently committed significant funding to constructing a high speed line between San Francisco and Los Angeles — the first high speed rail line to get this close to actual construction in the U.S. For financing, California is relying largely on public debt and has only preliminary plans for attracting private participation. Comparisons to the French high speed rail history suggest that California's approach may be viable only if the state is willing, as was France for the first 30 years of its high speed rail construction program, to assume most of the construction debt burden in both the short and long term. Thus, French rail history is directly useful in foreseeing consequences of different approaches to financing high speed trains. In sum, cross national comparisons reveal that California will require both a high level of public borrowing as well as public guarantees on private borrowing if it is going to attract the private sector into either construction and/or operation of high speed railways. Even after the shift from privately owned and operated passenger railways to public systems in both France and the U.S., history suggests that public funding is the sine qua non of financing passenger railroads, including high speed trains.

Two large questions informed the research for this article: first, how and why did the mid-20th century shift from private to public ownership, financing and operation of passenger railways affect the subsequent financing and development of high speed rail? Second, does high speed rail create opportunities for the return of the private sector to a significant role in passenger rail transport, such as financing and operating new lines? To answer these questions, we adopted a historical, cross-national approach, which is relatively unusual in the field of public policy. While a number of articles have been written about general lessons that can be learned from foreign experience with high speed rail, our approach analyzes the specific reasons why the U.S. has lagged behind other countries. France was selected as a comparison case because, first, its history of moving from private to public provision of passenger rail services closely paralleled American rail history up to the Great Depression; and, second, because the divergence between the two countries at the end of the Great Depression provides powerful evidence for analyzing the causes of the decline of U.S. passenger railways in the post-World War 2 period. Scholars can build upon our work by carrying out other cross-national and historical comparisons that further elucidate the reasons why high speed rail has succeeded so well in other parts of the world, but not in the U.S. Based on the evidence, we argue that, from the beginning of railway development in the 19th century, France and the U.S. operated within very different institutional frameworks in financing their rail systems: France with an interventionist state; the U.S. with a more laissez-faire orientation. This led France, when its privately operated railroads were on the verge of bankruptcy in the Great Depression, to nationalize its railroads. The French government took over the accrued debt of its private railways, set boundaries on competition with other modes of transport, and began a long term program of investment in improving intercity passenger rail. By establishing firm financial and competitive foundations for its national railway company, France created the conditions within which SNCF could ultimately develop high speed trains. In the U.S., with its more free market orientation, the Roosevelt Administration rejected the options of consolidating or nationalizing the private rail industry and allowed competition with highway-based transport to continue unabated. With a reprieve from nationalization, railroad corporations attempted to revive their passenger services by investing in improved infrastructure and introducing faster trains called streamliners. However, when revenues continued to decline after the end of World War 2, railroads began eliminating lines. The federal government stepped in and nationalized passenger rail service in 1971. However, it provided its new national carrier, Amtrak, with very little financial support and made no commitment to developing high speed trains, even though, in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Railroad, it had developed high speed Metroliners as early as the mid-1960s. In short, where nationalization in France rescued passenger rail services financially and protected them in relation to highway competition – thereby establishing conditions for the eventual development of high speed rail – in the U.S. the public takeover of passenger rail occurred without any commitment to improved service, much less to high speed rail. After the initial success of its Paris–Lyon high speed line in 1981, France used public financing to build a number of additional high speed rail lines and then to operate those lines under public auspices. In the process, its national rail company, SNCF, accrued a huge burden of debt which, in the 1990s, the central government assumed. The government then began looking for ways to entice the private sector to join in public–private ventures for constructing and operating passenger lines, thereby to attenuate its debt burden. (These initiatives also met European Union requirements that member countries increase privatization of their railways.) The first such venture involved a private consortium, LISEA, agreeing to participate in constructing and operating a new line between Tours and Bordeaux in return for taking on significant performance risk. The state of California is attempting to emulate France's privatization initiative in the financing of its new line between San Francisco and Los Angeles. However, as of the writing of this article, California has only managed to find state and federal funds to begin constructing a relatively short initial segment of this line. Both public and private financing for future segments remain unresolved. These findings have important implications for managerial practices with regard to high speed rail planning and implementation in the United States. First and foremost, successful public–private partnerships require a strong government commitment to projects, with a fair allocation of risks to public and private partners. Otherwise either public and/or private participants will not be adequately empowered to make a project succeed. Second, high speed rail initiatives are most likely to succeed when project management is operating within an institutional, regulatory and legal framework that clearly defines roles and responsibilities for public and private partners. Regrettably, that framework is not yet firmly in place in the U.S., partly because no high speed rail projects have yet been implemented in the country, partly because regulation varies from state to state, and partly because state and local control of planning varies greatly across the country. Third, alternative plans should be developed for all components of a project, such as route alignments, because the institutional framework of rail development in the U.S. gives states and localities control over these and related decisions and they might not agree with the plans submitted by project managers. Fourth, project managers and planners are well advised to line up alternative funding sources in case any funding element falls through. Otherwise the entire project could fail as the result of unforeseen financial problems. In short, managers must be extremely flexible in planning and implementing high speed rail projects because of the complex and diverse legal and regulatory frameworks they face when implementing a project in the United States. In the end, the most salient conclusion of our research is that public grants, loans and credit guarantees are required to attract private sector participation in financing high speed rail. Large institutional investors, railway construction and engineering firms, and rolling stock manufacturers will leverage funds to participate in high speed projects, but only if given public guarantees that greatly minimize their financial risk. The French agreement with the LISEA Consortium provides those guarantees, albeit at the cost of falling short of full privatization. This implies that California will need to find public funding to pay for a large proportion of the construction of its proposed line between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Public borrowing and public credit guarantees are the sine qua non for successful implementation of high speed rail. Acknowled