There is an old saying that Americans will always do the right thing, but only after they have tried everything else first.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to make the transition. Latest example: visceral opposition to high-speed rail by those who should be thinking more innovatively. Consider Robert Samuelson’s recent column in the Washington Post– “A Rail Boondoggle, Moving at High Speed.” Samuelson cites the usual statistics–that we are an auto culture, that not enough people ride trains, that the costs are high. So, he concludes, President Obama’s commitment to high-speed passenger rail is a fool’s errand.

But Samuelson’s among those who has been playing this song for over 20 years. Their message has turned into a weird anomaly given what is happening around the rest of the globe.

First, lets look at the true subsidy costs of a mono focus on highway investment. At least $100 billion of state, county, and city general funds are invested every year in highways and highway costs. Those are direct subsidies to the highway system, outside of any “user pay” trust fund. The federal government has started to invest general funds into highways, in part because no one wants to actually have to pay for the costs of highways with an increase in user fees.

Second, there are over 2 million Americans injured every year on America’s roads, at an annual medical cost of over $200 billion. Saving half of that cost would pay the entire cost of health care reform over the next decade.

Third, the energy and environmental costs of our auto culture drive our defense and medical costs in ways that we have all agreed to turn a blind eye to–though the true cost is probably in the range of a half trillion dollars a year.

If we can manage to ignore the $750 billion cost of our highway fixation, then Samuelson’s argument makes some kind of weird sense–though you have to suspend logic, economics, and global experience to get there.

Why has every industrialized nation in the world made, and continues to make, large scale investments in high-speed rail? That’s what Samuelson’s argument can’t reach. If you look at the roll call of nations with high-speed passenger rail, it includes Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, China, and South Korea. Could all of them be wrong? China alone is pursuing a 3,000-mile high-speed network. What propels all of these industrial nations to invest so seriously in this mode of transportation? They are making hardheaded decisions about their nation’s future and their economic self-interest. We have just started to do so.

In the U.S. House of Representative, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has marked up a reauthorization bill for highways and transit. The bill proposes to spend $550 billion over the next 6 years. The vast majority of those funds would go to the highway program. The bill would allocate $50 billion over the life of the bill for high-speed passenger rail. That’s less than 10 percent of our national transportation funding. The Samuelsons of the world may call it a waste. I see a humongous greater waste–the $750 billion we’re incurring, year-in and year-out, in the indirect costs we incur by failing to build alternatives to our transportation monoculture. That’s the unconscionable economic waste.

I am not suggesting that highways are going to be anything other than the dominant mode of transportation in the United States for a long time. I am suggesting that there are corridors, less than 500 miles long, where density and economic activity make high speed passenger rail the only viable mobility investment. The total trip time of air travel in those corridors, combined with the energy costs, makes high speed rail the logical choice and a far better choice than the costs of expanding highway capacity in those congested and dense corridors. For those trips, high-speed rail delivers you to the heart of the city, not to a remote airport. I am also suggesting that there is simply no comparison between the safety of a train trip verses the safety of an auto trip. In the end, we need a broader set of mobility choices than we have created for ourselves. The public seems to understand this, as editorial and public opinion polling is making clear.

What is discouraging in this debate is that someone as bright as Samuelson cannot think in broader, more expansive terms about the American future. We can do better. Yes, we can!

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For public transit in America, 2008 has produced a vivid “best” and “worst” of times scenario.

After 50 years of sagging ridership and lost stature, buses and transit trains are back in heavy demand. Nationwide ridership is 4.5 percent higher than 2007, with some cities experiencing growth of 10 to 15 percent.

The top reason’s clear: high gas prices. Highway vehicle miles of travel nationwide have taken a 4.5 percent dip in a year — an unprecedented decline even as our population increases.

But sadly, the nation’s transit operators have little chance to celebrate their systems’ new popularity.

Check Miami-Dade County. The county commissioners are in political agony trying to commit themselves to a 50-cent bus and rail fare increase. If they don’t, the financially strapped transit authority will be forced to fire 700 workers and eliminate 4.1 million miles of annual bus and rail service.

“The cuts would wreak havoc on the quality of service to major job centers, including hospitals, the airport and Seaport,” reports the Miami Herald’s Larry Liebowitz. Heaviest hit would be third-shift blue collar workers, seniors, students and transit-dependent domestics.

The Chicago Transit Authority, hit with surging ridership but short on the rail cars and buses it needs, is in a similar dilemma. Example: it’s removing all the seats from some of its rail cars, just to pack in more passengers.

Parallel stories have emerged nationwide — transit agencies increasing fares, reducing service, in the face of a demand surge that the industry has been waiting for a half century.

Why?

First, transit ridership does not cover the cost of providing the service. Transit provides immense benefits: reduced energy consumption, less crowded highways, mobility for people who can’t or don’t want to drive.

But still, fare box revenues provide only 25 to 50 percent of the cost of providing the service. New ridership does not cover its full cost from fares.

Second, fuel costs hit a bus system particularly hard. Most transit systems are as vulnerable to fuel price swings as the average motorist.

So what are local governments — the first-line funders of transit systems — to do? Their choices are all painful: raise fares, raise taxes, or accept service reductions and fare increases.

Last week, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters asked Congress to come up with an $8 billion infusion for the Highway Trust Fund, the federal account that helps states finance highway and bridge projects. The House has already passed such legislation. The nation’s governors are lobbying for it.

It’s understandable why the trust fund is short: the high cost of gas encourages people to buy less. Highway miles traveled have dipped 50 million in the last eight months. The federal gas tax level of 18.4 cents that hasn’t changed in 15 years, notwithstanding inflation. Small wonder the funds seem short.

But let’s think twice. Why respond to state highway departments anxious to keep funding roads and bridges, but ignore the compelling immediate needs of the local transit systems and their riders?

There ought to be a presidential request for an emergency appropriation to the transit account of the Federal Highway Trust Fund that would allow every transit system in the country to fund minor overhauls of bus fleets to increase their fleet’s fuel efficiency and reliability.

Sending enough funds to transit systems to repair buses that are damaged or sidelined for overhaul would put more buses on the street to meet the demand that they are now struggling to meet. Most bus manufacturers have a two-year backlog of orders, so new buses are not the answer in the short term.

Besides, better running maintenance would allow some systems to put more of their reserve fleets (which are often 30 or more buses) into regular service and at the same time reduce fuel expenses.

Another step would be the sponsorship of large cooperative fuel purchases, with some corporate or government security, would allow transit systems to act like Southwest Airlines does in hedging its fuel purchases, guaranteeing some cushion against the wild swings we have seen in fuel prices.

And the timing may be critical. Transit provides an energy-efficient and affordable option for a lot of Americans right now. If we respond to their need by cutting bus lines, packing transit cars to the gills and ordering steep fare increases, we will risk losing critical public support and ridership at a time when our transit systems have their best opportunity in 60 or more years to position themselves for long-term growth.

And we’ll be forfeiting a major opportunity nationally. In a century of looming deep energy shortages and the immense need to cut back carbon emissions to cope with global warming, our local bus and rail systems are a critical shared resource — not just for riders, but us all.

According to the survey, almost all agencies responding (91 percent) report they are facing limitations in their ability to add service to meet increased ridership demands. The survey reveals the most common limitation is budgetary, with 65 percent reporting insufficient revenue to operate additional service. More than half of all agencies reported declining or stable local and state financial assistance over the last year, due to the economic downturn. The survey also indicated that due to the high cost of fuel, more than 60 percent of the responding public transportation systems are considering fare increases and 35 percent are considering service cuts, some for the second time in less than a year.