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Why are we lagging decades behind the rest of the world's fast-train infrastructure?

A month before the Hangzhou-Shanghai line was anointed, Amtrak rolled out its own grand vision for the future of high-speed rail in America: an upgrade that will increase average speeds between Boston and D.C. to 148 miles per hour – just two-thirds the speed of China’s new line – and not until 2040.

Questioning why America is so far behind Europe, China, and Japan in passenger rail technology is a pastime among high-speed advocates, but it’s not really productive. There are more important, forward-looking questions that need asking: Will true high-speed rail even work in America, and if so are we deploying it in the smartest ways possible?

The answers, respectively, are “maybe,” and “probably not.” There probably are places where trains topping 200 miles per hour make sense, but those places are not leading the national conversation. Instead, the northeast corridor – the largest passenger rail market in the nation – has taken center stage even though there are few places in America more ill suited for super-fast surface trains.

“Amtrak is going to set its sights first on the northeast because that’s its cash cow, but where the Federal Railroad Administration could really help out is taking rail to the next level in other parts of the country,” says Dr. Leslie McCarthy, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Villanova who works closely with the Transportation Research Board.

Why not make the densely packed, train-savvy northeast corridor the model for blistering fast next-gen American rail? There are a variety of reasons – history, politics, unchecked urban sprawl – but simply put, it’s not practical. America suffers from something of a high-speed rail quandary, in which the places that want true high-speed rail the most can’t have it and the places where it’s most feasible can’t support it.

Unlike Europe and Asia, where the dividing line between urban and rural is far more defined, the northeast corridor is the definition of urban sprawl, with populated cities separated by endless suburbs and smaller burgs that all want access to the train. To bullet trains, sprawl is anathema.

“The very high speeds that China is achieving can be obtained only if you space the stations far apart because it takes time to accelerate and decelerate the trains,” says Ken Orski, a career urban transit expert who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations and is now publisher of Innovation NewsBriefs, a widely read transportation policy newsletter. “If you space those stations very closely you lose the technological advantage of high speed.”

Basic physics and human physiology dictate the limits to how fast a train can gather speed or slow down. The intercity distances – from Washington to Baltimore, Baltimore to Wilmington, Wilmington to Philadelphia, Philadelphia Newark and on to NYC and so on – are all short hauls, too abbreviated to take advantage of bullet trains’ top speeds. That’s not even taking into account all the street crossings, which hinder both automobile and train traffic along the route. Take all that into consideration, and 150 miles per hour is probably about as fast as northeast corridor trains can hope for.

Therein lies the aforementioned quandary: In the northeast corridor, there is enough demand to support an investment in next-gen high-speed rail, but bullet trains simply aren’t practical there. And, as Dr. David Levinson, associate professor of transportation engineering at the University of Minnesota, points out, in more wide-open places like the Midwest where true, 200-plus miles per hour high-speed trains have room to run, populations often aren’t dense enough to justify the trains. “The cost side of this is very high,” Levinson says. “And outside of the northeast corridor and a few other places, the benefits are relatively low, so there are limited places where you have enough demand to support passenger service.”

Of course, if Amtrak really wants to roll out China-magnitude trains in the northeast it could simply eliminate stops between major cities. But where trains go and where trains stop is a political issue, and nothing is so effective a destroyer of a potential public good as politics. High-speed rail tends to enjoy hot-button-issue status in the places where it’s an issue at all. In other places, it’s not even on the political radar.

“Fifty or 60 years ago, Eisenhower knew the value of the Interstate highway system,” says Jose Holguin-Veras, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “All the governors were clamoring for it. Who is speaking about this? There are some governors, there are some senators, but it’s not an agenda item.”

Where it is on the agenda, it’s often a divisive issue at every level. Local officials are happy to get on board as long as their constituencies – regardless of size or significance – get access to the rails by way of a train-slowing station stop. Then there’s politics at the state level, where attitudes shift with the election cycle. For instance, both Wisconsin and Ohio had aggressive plans to improve passenger rail prior to the recent gubernatorial elections; now, new governors in those states have vowed to scrub the costly projects.

But the money comes from the federal level, and that’s where American democratic politics introduce obstacles that centralized countries like China don’t have to deal with. “It’s hard to get national support for a localized system,” Levinson explains. “In order to get national support you have to build stuff everywhere, which dissipates all the benefits you might get if you did just one good thing.”

To build the northeast corridor to Amtrak’s vision would cost roughly $400 for every person in the United States, the vast majority of whom would never ride the train. It’s difficult to sell that kind of spending in Congress. Levinson opposes the deployment of high-speed rail in the U.S. for exactly this reason: the costs are astronomically high and the benefits relatively low for most people. To him, spending tens of billion of dollars chasing the last century’s technology simply doesn’t make sense.

“Look, in 2040 – as other readers of your magazine know – we’ll have cars that drive themselves,” he says. “It’s not merely that you’re building 2010 technology in 2040, it’s that you’re building 1960 technology in 2040. There’s no reason to be spending money on 80-year-old technology.”

It’s a valid point. At the current pace of innovation, technological improvements in automobiles and aircraft – or trains, for that matter – may leapfrog wheel-on-rail train tech completely, easing congestion and moving people more efficiently without laying an inch of track.

But not everyone shares that argument.

“Let’s say in the next 30 years we really take our technology to the next level and cut our congestion in half,” McCarthy says. “We’re still looking at some real inefficiency on our highways.” She sees potential for bullet trains in places like the Midwest where intercity rail can be competitive with both driving and short-haul flights. Rensselaer’s Holguin-Veras agrees, citing air traffic congestion on top of highway inefficiencies.

“From an economic point of view, it doesn’t make any sense to use air for all these short trips,” he says. “The demand for these short trips is very, very high, and if you crowd the airports with all these short flights, airports must continue to expand. Over short distances, high-speed rail can move thousands of people in one shot.”

Orski, approaching the issue with his years of government experience in transit policy, takes a less-optimistic stance regarding high-speed rail’s real value to America. “You’ve got to find the proper kind of situation,” he says. “You need to find cities that are not too closely situated but also cities that are large enough to provide the ridership to make it an economic venture. There aren’t a lot of places like that in America.”

The consensus seems to be that real, 200-plus-miles-per-hour high-speed rail is within reach in America, but only in situations where the distance, population density, demand, and dollar signs all line up like some kind of rare astronomical event. Those situations are far fewer that one might guess by looking at the number of rail projects seeking federal funding.

If America really wants to see super-fast passenger trains connecting its cities within a generation, it needs to be both realistic and efficient – find those few places where laying dedicated, high-speed track is economically viable and concentrate its billions there. Otherwise, the lackluster northeast corridor plan will remain the height of America’s rail ambitions, rolling out 20th century tech while the rest of the world goes screaming past.

$2.4 billion is a significant amount of money, but when you place it in the context of 54 projects across 23 states it becomes a rather less princely sum. Keep in mind, our last investment in high-speed rail, from the stimulus act, totaled $8 billion. But there are some significant investments in this bill buried among the interminable feasibility studies and development plans that should lead to some shovel-ready (yeah, we said it) rail projects laying down some actual track.

For instance, California – a state that is so delightfully progressive that it has both an actual plan for high-speed rail and none of the fiscal responsibility required to invest in it – received more than $905 million for new high-speed lines in the Central Valley, lines that will hopefully become part of a larger vision for a Sacramento to San Diego line linking the state north to south. Another $800 million went toward construction of a Tampa-Orlando corridor.

In the Midwest, Michigan received $161 million for a high-speed link connecting Detroit to Chicago via Kalamazoo, and Iowa received $230 million for a new intercity rail link from Iowa City to Chicago through the Quad Cities. The latter won’t technically be high speed, but it’s part of the larger effort to put Chicago at center of a massive Midwest rail hub blending high-speed with slower intercity rail. And at 79 miles per hour, the Iowa City link won’t crawl along either.

Why did these projects get the lion’s share of the investment when 132 applications from 32 states sought $8.8 billion? Because they have mature plans investing in actual rail construction. The balance of the $2.4 billion will go to various projects seeking to plan high-speed corridors, improve existing service, and otherwise figure out how to align politics at the state and local level to get this done.

However frustrating it may be to watch China continue to break rail speed records when America can’t even seem to break ground, it is encouraging that so many applications poured in seeking three times the funding that was available. More than 30 companies have agreed to establish or expand their U.S. operations if they are hired to help build American high-speed rail. That’s job creation, America.

A full project list is available here.

[US DOT]

The new train will operate between Shanghai and Hangzhou, the capital of East China’s Zhejiang province, and is expected to start regular service next month October.

Although China has the most high-speed railway lines in the world, covering over 4,300 miles, the response to the high-speed train, particularly on the Shanghai to Hangzhou route, has been lukewarm, owing in part to fares almost twice the cost of traditional trains and the complaint that frequent stops negate the benefit of moving quickly between them.

Hopefully cranking the speed will make it more agreeable to Chinese commuters, though the outlook might be more grim for China's fauna.

[IB Times]

CORRECTION: The IB Times has printed a correction to their original report that China's new train set a world speed record. The high-speed train record set in April 2007 by the French TGV at 357 mph still stands.

On a trade mission to Asia this week, Schwarzenegger said he hopes China will invest in his state both in terms of financing and in bidding to work on the project. California is about $19 billion in the red, so “creative financing” is a must, the governor acknowledged.

Under the federal stimulus plan, California is getting $2.25 billion to start work on a a high-speed rail system that will carry 90 million passengers a year, especially between Los Angeles and San Francisco. California aims to finish it by 2030.

On Monday, Japan offered to loan funds to support the project, Bloomberg reported. Officials with the state-owned Japan Bank for International Cooperation didn't say how much they would offer, but sizable loans will be needed — the project could cost $40 billion.

The stimulus awarded $8.5 billion to 13 regional high-speed rail projects, and most will require imported technology — though the U.S. leads the world in rail freight, the nation is far behind the rest of the world in high-speed passenger trains.

While flirting with China might not please American manufacturers, it’s a good idea to at least get some Chinese perspective. China’s high-speed rail network covers 4,300 miles — the distance from Anchorage to New York by car. And the country plans to stretch this network across Europe by 2020.

Chinese companies also have international experience — they’re building high-speed rail projects in several countries, including Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, according to Marketplace.

Schwarzenegger is also scheduled to view high-speed trains in Japan and South Korea.

[AFP]

As it stands now, the deal involves the leasing of Chinese bullet train technology to General Electric. GE claims that 80 percent of the train components would be manufactured in the US, with China providing the technical know how and the other 20 percent of parts. To build the parts, GE may convert a joint GE/Toyota plant in Fremont, California that's currently slated for closure.

In recent years, China has outpaced the US in high-speed rail technology, and has even begun to challenge early adopters like Europe and Japan. China has already built 4,000 miles of high-speed rail at home, and will add another 1,200 miles to its system this year. Like in other rail projects initiated by the China Government, China would foot the bill for a significant portion of the construction.

Naturally, the project is far from a done deal. California is also entertaining offers from Japan, Germany, South Korea, Spain, France and Italy, and China has yet to prove it can maintain its low costs and speed production times in countries with strict labor and environmental protection laws. However, with China also proposing to connect Beijing and London with bullet trains within the next ten years, already building similar bullet train systems in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and hoping to build similar high-speed rail routes to Germany, Iran, and the Czech Republic, China is poised to be the world's go-to manufacturer of futuristic trains.

[The New York Times]