TEMPERING PRINCIPLE WITH PRACTICALITY.

For all we hear about the vaunted European passenger railways, that public money is Never Enough.  "European governments shrinking railways in favour of road-building, report finds." Seriously.

European governments have “systematically” shrunk their railways and starved them of funding while pouring money into expanding their road network, a report has found.

The length of motorways in Europe grew 60% between 1995 and 2020 while railways shrank 6.5%, according to research from the German thinktanks Wuppertal Institute and T3 Transportation. For every €1 governments spent building railways, they spent €1.6 building roads.

“This is a political choice,” said Lorelei Limousin, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace, which commissioned the report. “We see the consequences today with the climate, but also with people who have been left without an alternative solution to cars.”

The report found the EU, Norway, Switzerland and the UK spent €1.5tn (£1.29tn) between 1995 and 2018 to extend their roads – but just €0.93tn (£0.8tn) to extend their rail networks.

In the four years that followed (2018-21), the average gap in investment in rail and road decreased from 66% to 34%. During that time, seven countries invested more in rail than roads – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the UK – while the rest spent more on roads than rail.

Dr Giulio Mattioli, a transport researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund, who was not involved in the study, said: “Most European countries have been actually encouraging car use by investing large amounts of public money into expanding motorway infrastructure.”

In the public and political debate, Mattioli added, small investments into bike lanes and railways were heavily scrutinised while investments in roads were taken for granted. “This absolutely needs to change if we are to meet climate mitigation targets in the transport sector.”

Yes, the doomsday environmentalists will view any public spending on roads, particularly if it comes at the exclusion of the trains, trams, and cycling paths, as a misuse of public money.

News flash: this is what democracy looks like.  The motor vehicle, whether in Berlin, Germany, or New Berlin, Wisconsin, is a Marshallian improvement and it will develop a constituency for spending public money accordingly.  On the other hand, between the rent-seeking and the weakness of market tests for public projects, those road investments will become future liabilities, whether the government is Polish, Lithuanian, or any other country.