America’s railroads were once the envy of the world and the engine of its industrial age. But this has not been the case for more than half a century.
Brightline, founded in 2012, wanted to change all that. The private Florida railroad company ran high-speed yellow trains between Miami and Orlando. He has big plans to launch another line with real 200 mph bullet trains making the 200-mile trip between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., just outside Los Angeles.
Then she filed for bankruptcy last month after not making enough money to cover her debts. But the railroad still operates its service in Florida and continues plans for true high-speed trains between Las Vegas and Southern California.
High-speed passenger rail is common around the world, from large countries like Japan, France and China to emerging economies like Morocco.
The United States is a glaring exception, as no passenger train meets the global definition of high speed or runs at least 150 mph for extended journeys.
It’s partly cultural: America is a country of cars. But the main reason high-speed rail hasn’t seen the light of day in the United States is due to a lack of government resources, according to Lou Thompson, high-speed rail’s leading advocate.
Foreign governments “wanted high-speed rail and they were willing to pay for it,” Thompson, who helped found Amtrak in the early 1970s and served as a rail adviser to the World Bank, told CNN. “Our government has never met these two conditions.”
All that government support has instead gone toward the nation’s interstate highways and air traffic system. This was partly due to public need: America needed reliable ways to move people and goods in a rapidly growing country after World War II.
But it is also due in part to the powerful commercial forces behind highways and airways: the automobile, oil, and construction industries in the case of highways, and the airlines and aerospace companies in the case of air transportation.
Lobbying from these industries has essentially relegated high-speed rail “to the back burner in order to continue funding roads and aviation,” said Andy Kunz, CEO of the advocacy group US High Speed Rail.
There is also the problem of geography. The United States is large and its major cities are further apart than most countries with high-speed rail.
“Once you go well beyond 400 miles (between destinations), high-speed rail starts to lose ground to air, because then air travel becomes faster (in the United States),” Thompson said. “It’s amazing how far you can travel in Europe in 400 miles. Most major cities are within that kind of distance. This is also true in Japan.”
Additionally, when infrastructure is not built between major cities, it is difficult to increase the ridership needed to maintain high-speed rail service.
In Japan, for example, hundreds of millions of people ride high-speed trains every year. The maximum expected demand for California is about 30 or 35 million, Thompson said. Amtrak’s Acela train service between Washington and Boston carries 12 million people a year, he said.
“When you have hundreds of millions or billions of people a year, the economic change is quite significant,” he said.
There are some options for faster rail service in the United States. Amtrak’s NextGen Acela train, which just started a month ago, can reach 160 mph. Even in bankruptcy, Brightline still operates the Orlando and Miami line which reaches speeds of 125 mph.
But both have limits. The Acela can only reach this speed in short bursts. Brightline only reaches its maximum speed on a 38-mile stretch near Orlando.
Brightline had hoped for more government support for its Florida development and west line, as well as for more passengers in Florida. Its quarterly reports show it carried 1.8 million passengers in the second quarter, up 16% from the previous year.
Despite the US high-speed rail sector’s lack of success in the past, the company believes it can still become a successful business in the future, saying that on an operational basis it has already been making money for a few months. The company has publicly stated that its bankruptcy filing should help it continue its plans by shedding some of its debt. And it says no taxpayer dollars will be lost because of this declaration.
Meanwhile, a publicly funded U.S. high-speed rail project to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco is years behind schedule and billions over budget. The project is “at an impasse,” said Thompson, who served on a peer review group overseeing the project for the California legislature.
Kunz said he remains hopeful about the future of high-speed rail in the country. If a project like Brightline’s Los Angeles-Las Vegas line opens, he believes it will increase demand for the service elsewhere.
Private investment alone is not the solution, Thompson said, adding that it is unrealistic to think that high-speed rail can be built and operated without a significant form of government support.
“The value of high-speed rail lies partly in the benefit of users… but also partly in social aspects such as reduced pollution, reduced noise, better safety or better land use,” he said. “There are many other public benefits that the passenger does not want to and should not pay for.”
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