By Will Corbin, Project Associate. 

 

During my semester of graduate study abroad in Newcastle, England, I decided to visit a friend of mine who was also studying abroad. My friend was taking classes at the London School of Economics, which is located, of course, in London. This presented a minor issue, because Newcastle is about 300 miles north of London. At an average driving speed of 70mph, it should take a little over four hours from start to finish. Accounting for traffic and various stoppages, however, it is not uncommon for the drive to take five - or even six - hours. Add on money for gas (which is about £5 per gallon!), and what appears to be a simple trip turns into an expensive undertaking.

 

This is why I was more than happy to pay only £40 for a roundtrip train ticket, which got me to London in just about three hours. The United Kingdom is actually on the slower end of countries using high-speed rail, with the average speed of its fastest scheduled train being 219 km/h – or 136 mph (China’s trains are the fastest, literally pulling away from the competition with an average speed of 313 km/h - 194 mph - by its fastest scheduled train). Embarrassingly, the United States continues to lag far behind the rest of the developed world in high-speed train travel. Its fastest scheduled train achieves average speeds of only 161 km/h (100 mph). ¹ Adding insult to injury, on the heavily-travelled New York to Washington, DC rail corridor, Amtrack’s Acela “Express” trains average only 129 km/h (80 mph), with a travel time of nearly three hours.

 

Simply put, this is not good enough. President Obama, however, is moving forward with plans to make positive changes. In early 2010, the White House announced the awarding of $8 billion in transportation stimulus funds to over a dozen transportation corridors across the country. Congress has earmarked the funds in order to launch high-speed rail projects and improve travel between major cities in the US.

 

The Obama administration designated the Tampa to Orlando corridor as the test area partly because of high presence of tourist and vacation traffic, and also because the state of Florida already owns over 90 percent of the right of way. In addition, an environmental impact assessment has already been conducted. Combine this with the fact that Florida has already approved the project, and you have an ideal test case.

 

I appreciate Obama’s pro-activity and optimism; and while his efforts are laudable, major issues still remain as to whether or not America will adopt “true” high-speed rail – and if so, when, and to what extent. The first problem has to do with funding. $8 billion is not nearly enough to make the widespread, systematic changes it would take to significantly upgrade and improve America’s current rail infrastructure to accommodate high-speed traffic. In order to achieve the blinding fast speeds that the Chinese and French currently have, newer, modern tracks will almost certainly have to be laid. In President Obama’s defense, it is a smart move to grant the bulk of the $8 million in stimulus money to the test corridor of Orlando-Tampa. The American people are going to have to be convinced that this is indeed the right direction to pursue, before their congressional representatives will feel comfortable devoting the larger amounts of money necessary to make comprehensive high-speed rail a reality. Vice President Joe Biden likened the Orlando-Tampa high-speed rail stimulus project to “a down payment on a truly national program.” ² Petra Todorovich, director of the American 2050 program at the Regional Planning Association, echoed Biden’s statement about the Florida project: “This is the sort of project they can use to build support on a national basis,” she said. “You need a success.”

 

The Orlando-Tampa high-speed rail project is set to open in 2015. A great opportunity awaits America in the coming decade, as it recovers economically and moves past the recession. Hopefully the high-speed rail line in Florida will be an enormous success, and persuade America’s leaders to allocate more funding to similar projects, helping to nudge the country towards a more complete overhaul of its national passenger train transportation setup. As seen in the northeastern corridor (where, in Acela’s first decade, rail has displaced air as the dominant mode between New York City and Washington, DC ³ ), Americans are willing to embrace high-speed rail travel, and give it a chance – and this is with current train travel times, which can be greatly improved upon.

 

Transportation, and the ability to have a variety of viable choices, is imperative to the economic vitality and livability of a region, and, ultimately, the nation. “Every other major industrialized nation has recognized that high-speed rail is key to economic growth and mobility,” said Todorovich. “It’s time for America to realize that as well.”

 

 

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(1) Railway Gazette International, http://www.railwaygazette.com/.

 

(2) Can High-Speed Rail Succeed in America?, Time Magazine, January 29, 2010.

 

(3) All Aboard?, Time Magazine, July 19, 2010.