President Obama recently released new plans for a U.S. high-speed railway system. According to the New York Times, the Obama administration has identified 10 corridors, each from 100 to 600 miles long, with greatest promise for high-speed development. Proposed rail lines include: ”a northern New England line; an Empire line running east to west in New York State; a Keystone corridor running laterally through Pennsylvania; a major Chicago hub network; a southeast network connecting the District of Columbia to Florida and the Gulf Coast; a Gulf Coast line extending from eastern Texas to western Alabama; a corridor in central and southern Florida; a Texas-to-Oklahoma line; a California corridor where voters have already approved a line that will allow travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two and a half hours; and a corridor in the Pacific Northwest.”
The U.S. falls far behind other industrialized countries in high-speed rail average speeds, and length of track. The Acela Express in the Northeast corridor is capable of 150 mph, but rarely reaches half that speed. In Japan, the Shinkansen averages about 180 mph, and carries around 375,000 passengers per day. New maglev train lines planned in Japan will be able to hit 227 mph by 2025. The TGV train in France can sustain speeds of 133 mph on the Paris-Lyon route, and had a ridership of 9.4 million per year in 2005. (A TGV train recently set the world record for high-speed rail travel at 357 mph). While the proposed U.S. high-speed rails won’t employ any new technologies, Positive Train Control, ‘an intelligent railroad monitoring and control system’ will be used to cut down risk of accidents.
According to the MIT Technology Review, new high-speed rail, which would be more efficient than today’s trains, could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by six billion pounds of CO2 a year.
USD 8 billion was allocated to high-speed rail in the stimulus package. The funds are to be spent over two years, with an additional USD 1 billion budgeted over the next five years. The transporation department will begin allocating funds this summer.
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Image credit: Federal Railroad Administration
