The U.S. Is Preparing To Put Billions Into High-Speed Rail
Six decades after Japan debuted its shinkansen bullet trains, high-speed rail connects major cities in Europe, South Korea, Taiwan and especially China, which has a sprawling 26,000-mile system. Other regions are embracing it as well: trains race across Morocco, the Saudi Arabian desert and a high-speed line spanning Indonesia’s Java island opens in June. The one major outlier? The United States, where travelers are stuck with cramped, crowded airplanes and congested freeways as fast, futuristic trains rolled into country after country.
But not for much longer.
The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law set aside billions of dollars for Amtrak to get its Northeast Corridor’s Acela trains running at up to 160 miles per hour this year between Boston, New York and Washington DC. But it also earmarked $12 billion for other projects, some targeting even faster trains. Funding decisions for two of those, California’s high-speed rail system and Brightline West’s Las Vegas-to-L.A. train, are coming soon, according to Mitch Landrieu, President Joe Biden’s senior adviser on infrastructure.
“Outside of the Northeast Corridor, there are opportunities that are present right now. I'm not going to talk about any of the specific proposals that are in play but suffice it to say the president wants to go fast,” Landrieu, New Orleans’ former mayor, told the High-Speed Rail conference in Washington this month. “My expectation, and it’s just an expectation, is these decisions are going to be made by [Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg] before the end of the summer sometime. Maybe before the end of the third or fourth quarter.”
High-speed rail lines are proposed for California, Nevada, Texas, Georgia and the Pacific Northwest, and already under construction in California's Central Valley.
Continued
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanoh...illions-into-high-speed-rail/?sh=2536601c5e3b
Six decades after Japan debuted its shinkansen bullet trains, high-speed rail connects major cities in Europe, South Korea, Taiwan and especially China, which has a sprawling 26,000-mile system. Other regions are embracing it as well: trains race across Morocco, the Saudi Arabian desert and a high-speed line spanning Indonesia’s Java island opens in June. The one major outlier? The United States, where travelers are stuck with cramped, crowded airplanes and congested freeways as fast, futuristic trains rolled into country after country.
But not for much longer.
The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law set aside billions of dollars for Amtrak to get its Northeast Corridor’s Acela trains running at up to 160 miles per hour this year between Boston, New York and Washington DC. But it also earmarked $12 billion for other projects, some targeting even faster trains. Funding decisions for two of those, California’s high-speed rail system and Brightline West’s Las Vegas-to-L.A. train, are coming soon, according to Mitch Landrieu, President Joe Biden’s senior adviser on infrastructure.
“Outside of the Northeast Corridor, there are opportunities that are present right now. I'm not going to talk about any of the specific proposals that are in play but suffice it to say the president wants to go fast,” Landrieu, New Orleans’ former mayor, told the High-Speed Rail conference in Washington this month. “My expectation, and it’s just an expectation, is these decisions are going to be made by [Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg] before the end of the summer sometime. Maybe before the end of the third or fourth quarter.”
High-speed rail lines are proposed for California, Nevada, Texas, Georgia and the Pacific Northwest, and already under construction in California's Central Valley.
Continued
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanoh...illions-into-high-speed-rail/?sh=2536601c5e3b
