But when the man picks up his pen to write a piece for public consumption, he tends to take complete leave of his senses. I realize that this is a common affliction among economists, but Glaeser suffers from a severe case of the syndrome.
In a Friday piece in the Boston Globe, Glaeser takes on the administration's push to fund construction of high-speed rail corridors around the country. In doing so, he combines the cognitive failures of every amateur train hater with a serious lapse in critical thinking.
He begins by making two very valid points: transit agencies are currently suffering serious and unfortunate shortfalls, and transportation funding generally is allocated where it's least needed -- to states with low levels of population, population density, and congestion.
But then he rapidly goes off the rails. Glaeser writes
Now the administration wants Americans to envision high-speed rail lines in the wide-open spaces of Texas.
For most workers in America’s sprawling metropolitan areas, no train is going to drop them within walking distance of their home or job. In Greater Houston, only 11.6 percent of jobs are within three miles of an area’s center and more than 55 percent of jobs are more than 10 miles away from the city center.
Of course, Texas has four of the nation's fastest growing metropolitan areas, all within a few hundred miles of each other -- an ideal distance for high-speed rail. Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio are currently home to some 16 million people, and those metropolitan areas have added 3 million people since 2000 alone. Congestion is an issue within those metropolitan areas and will continue to worsen as they grow.
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