Train Dreams How high-speed rail in America can become a reality. https://slate.com/business/2024/07/...transportation-policy-china-japan-europe.html It has been a miserable summer for Amtrak, whose failing infrastructure has stranded tens of thousands of travelers in and around the Northeast Corridor in recent weeks. The results: Pricey last-minute airfares, 60-mile Uber rides, missed commitments. And the return of that eternal refrain: What if America, like our peers in China, Japan, France, Spain, Morocco, and Uzbekistan (the list goes on), could have a functioning high-speed rail network? What would it take to make that happen? You have questions; the team at NYU’s Transit Costs Project from the school’s Marron Institute has answers. Their new report may be the only high-speed rail document ever produced without a mouthwatering map tying up the country’s major cities. Instead, it has some recommendations on how to actually build something good. Amtrak’s ongoing Northeast meltdown aside, it’s a relatively auspicious moment for U.S. passenger rail. Amtrak is flush with federal money and aims to double its ridership in the next 15 years with new routes and infrastructure. Brightline has opened the country’s first new, privately funded, intercity train line in a century in Florida, between Miami and Orlando, and broke ground this spring on a West Coast service between Las Vegas and Southern California. In Texas, a company that aims to provide high-speed service between Houston and Dallas has inked a partnership with Amtrak’s new high-speed rail chief, “train daddy” Andy Byford. All of this occurs against a background of relative consensus, now that Hyperloop fever has died down, that high-speed rail would be an economic boon and effectively reduce carbon emissions and pollution from long-distance travel. (Well, popular consensus anyway—though high-speed rail was a plank of the Republican presidential platform as recently as 2000!) In that context, the NYU researchers argue, now is the time to adopt some best practices. For example: Washington should make sure that all American high-speed rail projects are designed with the same standards and equipment, rather than letting each state or company reinvent the rolling stock. With compatible trains, tracks, and wiring, these nascent projects may one day connect to form a national network. States may be laboratories of democracy, but they do not need to be laboratories of high-speed rail technology. Otherwise we’ll end up repeating the mistake of railroads in the American South, which in 1886 had to move all their tracks three inches closer together to be linked with the more developed northern network. A more modern-day debacle along those lines is CalTrain, which pursued a signaling system at great expense that was incompatible with the future California High-Speed Rail project, which may one day connect San Francisco to Los Angeles. Standardization has another benefit. Currently, it’s hard for railroads to buy things like trains in the U.S., since the market is too small to support domestic suppliers. The nation’s various high-speed projects could catalyze a domestic industry by all buying the same stuff. For that to happen, explains Eric Goldwyn, one of the report’s authors, Washington must take the lead on planning American high-speed rail. No other country has built this infrastructure without a coordinated, national approach that can impose standards, supply funding, and concentrate expertise. “We don’t need more maps. That is not our problem,” Goldwyn says. “What we need is someone who has the power to translate map into steel and concrete—a five- and 10-year plan with funding and someone saying what’s happening.” National leadership could do other things, too, like spearhead workforce development and university programs to deepen the talent pool for HSR development and operations, and forge connections with companies. Who among us had the chance to take High-Speed Rail Engineering in college? With a bank of rail experts in Washington and universities churning out grads with relevant skills, individual projects could reduce their reliance on consultants and do more work in-house. (This was also a recommendation of a previous Transit Costs Project study about local mass transit.) To take a related example, for the price of one consultant contract to study whether to put trash in garbage bins or not, you could hire 10 in-house experts for four years to create a culture of trash expertise at the heart of local government. Finally, the report suggests, the U.S. should reform the way big infrastructure projects get planned and permitted—also a hot topic at the moment for transmission lines, solar farms, and wind farms. Most rail projects in the U.S., for example, spend most of their planning phase trying to overcome federal environmental review, rather than paying attention to non-environmental planning basics like relocating underground utilities and buying land. This winds up costing them later, when they need to study everything all over again, and in some cases change plans entirely. Similarly, fear of litigation can force infrastructure planners to submit more than a dozen detailed routes for some sections in order to show that they have studied all possible alternatives. Imagine the time and expense of doing that for a home improvement project. Now imagine doing it for 300 miles of trains running at 220 miles per hour. (Article has pictures, video, etc.)
The reason America can no longer develop forward thinking infrastructure projects is because decision making is highly fragmented. Say what you want about China's or Europe's 5 or 10 years plans, but things move. I saw how Shanghai became a modern metropolis in less time than it took to replace the Bay bridge from Oakland to Treasure Island. You'd think California would be able to build its bullet train from LA to SF in no time since its government is dominated by willing Democrats. 20 years later nothing is built. Why? Republican pushback, special interest, regional and local grifting, special interests kickbacks... Shameful.
How high-speed rail in America can become a reality -----> How low-speed rail in America was a life changer Better talk about the history, not the future. The first high-speed rail happened 60 years ago. Till today, the US doesn't have the high-speed rail.
I think there are a couple, one in Florida and one from LA to Las Vegas (built by a Chinese company). Rail competes with air and cars, both major conglomerates with traditional support from Republican money and Democrat unions. Rail is a union magnet, and if the Bay Area BART rail system is any indication, the cost of tickets will quickly rise to catch up with union labor wages and may or may not be able to compete with air. Once built though, state gov may end up subsidizing tickets, a point Republicans fighting rail like to point out. Time wise, fast rail is on par with air on short distances, like LA to SF in under 3 hours. On longer distances, fast rail could be an alternative to traditional road trips or boat cruises.
California and especially the bay are is full of progressives not liberals. Progressives love grifting. During the pandemic the progressives spent all their time renaming elementary schools that had evil names like Lincoln & Washington. There are no bigger grifters than these psychopaths that call themselves progressives. They are also responsible for the Homeless Industrial Complex where CA wastes billions of dollars to basically employ these psychopaths that achieve nothing. An audit recently revealed multiple NGOs couldn't account for close $20 billion in money that was allocated to the homeless. In the 18 years since the Terminator passed HSR projects it is now finally passed all the CEQA nonsense aka local grifting in each and every district that the train has to pass thru. Maybe in 2060 it will be finished.
You're a fool if you believe grifting is political. Grifters use the system for their personal interest. Look at the guy you want for president; he's the king of grifters.