High-Speed Rail Chugs On
The Obama administration announces $8 billion in awards for various corridor projects.
Kevin Bullis 01/29/2010
- 8 Comments
On Thursday the Obama administration announced awards for its high-speed rail program, started under last year's stimulus bill, and $8 billion will be distributed among nine "major corridor" projects.
These corridors are meant to connect major cities in various regions. They won't offer cross-country trips, and that makes sense--for longer trips, air travel will probably be more appealing. It's not clear, however, that high-speed rail will catch on across a country whose infrastructure is heavily geared toward cars. What will people do once they step off the train in Los Angeles? Maybe some fearless entrepreneur will set up an electric car rental service at the station.
Of course, $8 billion scattered among all these projects won't be enough to get the lines built. It'd be sad if the money to finish them doesn't come through and twenty years from now we've got no more to show for the investment than some dead-end high speed rail tracks overgrown with weeds.
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Matthew Putman
37 Comments
hope
I have great hope for this, both as an old fashioned work stimulus, and for travel. I live in Paris, and travel many places by train. It is a joy of being in Europe. I hope the same for the States.
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BernphiGui
1 Comment
Re: hope
As an unfortunate frequent user of high speed trains, I do not share this optimistic vision. High-speed trains (TGV or ICE) are extremely costly to develop and to operate. High-speed train railroads cost much more per kilometre than a 6-lane highway. The European states have poured billions of money in high-speed trains and no money is left anymore for transporting shuttle users in descent conditions. In addition, high-speed trains show a very poor level of reliability not only in the winter but also in the summer (no air co, machines break down, etc). Remember also that no high-speed train runs at night because the railroads have to be maintained and overhauled at night; additional costs of operations.
Instead of pouring billions in prestigious TGV / ICE projects, the US and the European states should better invest in improving existing services and rail-tracks. Train running at 160-180km/h existed in France and in Germany since more than 50 years providing fast and reliable transport a at reasonable cost. Increasing the speed from 100km/h to 180km/h on a 200km track would cost between 1 and 2 billion Euro instead of 35 billions. Taking into account that a high-speed train needs 20km before reaching its cruise speed and again 20km for a comfortable stop, for most of the trips, 160-180km/h max speed with no intermediate stop would satisfy all passengers.
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