Could The U.S. Be a Train Paradise?
Let’s just connect Dallas to Houston first
My brother’s bachelor party was November of last year, and we decided New Orleans was the place to be. When discussing how to get ~25 guys from Houston to New Orleans, we jokingly suggested maybe we could take a train. “Why not,” we thought, “we can do some last minute work things, drink on the ride (within reason), and not have to worry about driving the 6 hours through rural East Texas and West Louisiana.” After further research, we realized that not only was train the slowest option, but also the most expensive! This is not just specific to the South, but all throughout the U.S., and this sobering realization is what brings me to write this post today. People are willing to take cleaner transit, but for the past few decades we have allocated little to nothing of our state/federal budgets to building out those options for our citizens. If we are committed to fighting global warming and living more sustainably, we need to invest in the technologies that support those goals.
When looking at decent transit options around Texas, it’s clear the U.S. has decided to put all it’s weight behind the top three largest CO2 emitters; Domestic flight, Long haul flight and Car infrastructure. This is in large part due to insistent pushing from automobile and airline lobbying, among other reasons. Why bother with new train lines when we can just blow $10B on new highways? As the age-old saying goes, “if you build it, they will come,” and boy have drivers come in abundance. Induced demand — the idea that building more of something will just attract increasing amounts of users — is a real issue, and year after year, U.S. cities continue to expand our highway system, believing that we’ll just luck our way out of inefficient transit. Traffic hasn’t gotten better over the years, and still we seem oblivious to the idea that public transit and highspeed rails could help with both street congestion and global warming.
In the end, my brother and his bachelor party decided to fly. At $100 round trip, and only 45 minutes in the air, it surely beat the $200 train ticket and 9 hours of travel just to go one way. This anecdote, which I’m sure many people my age can relate to, is a call to action for Texas to finally commit to building high speed trains across our great state. The Dallas — Houston line has been in talks for years and still there is no positive sign of construction starting. At this point, we can take the climate change aspect out of this argument, and just talk about how fun and easy it is to travel via train. Skipping airport security, not having to sit behind a wheel for hours on end, no heavy traffic or busy terminals, the list goes on and on. Today, I’m going to talk about the current state of U.S. passenger trains, some model examples of train infrastructure around the globe, and how we should focus our train strategy moving forward.
Not One High Speed Rail Line
We invented the internet, the assembly line and the NBA slam dunk contest, and yet, we don’t have a single high speed rail line (min. 155mph) throughout the U.S. I repeat, the richest and most highly educated nation in the world has not been able to plan, fund and construct one single rail line that can achieve 155mph. And don’t you dare bring up the North East corridor, because the Amtrak may top out at 150mph, but only holds a 66mph average… literal chump change. To discuss our national train system, we should heed Jim Valvano’s advice in his famous Espy speech; you have to know ‘where you started, where you are, and where you’re going to be.’ For the past 80 years, we’ve built out miles of highway systems, all while destroying downtown cores and promoting carbon emitting cars. We let automobile and airline lobbies direct our public spending and rarely questioned why. Now it’s 2022 and we’re lagging behind the developed world in train infrastructure and transit options. That’s not to say that we’re doomed, it just means we have to come to terms with our past and our present to fully appreciate the work, and price tag, necessary to build the future that we want.
While we are missing high speed rail, there are still passenger train options in the Midwest (Chicago to Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana), the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, Portland and Vancouver) and the Northeast Corridor (D.C. all the way to Montreal). They are just slow, expensive and infrequent. While looking up these train lines though, it became evident that people all over the U.S. are excited for the potential high speed rail future. Cascadia Rail is an organization fighting for high speed trains from Seattle to Vancouver just as the California High Speed Rail Authority is making progress on the San Francisco to LA line. A major issue of why these various regions haven’t developed as much as we’d like is due to the success of freight rail. We actually ship a larger share of total goods via rail than our European counterparts. This imbalance causes passenger rail to consistently take the back seat to freight, reducing number of available trips, increasing length of trips, and hiking costs for individuals. Also, because of our original history with passenger rails — developing them at high rate during the early years of the union — we are now stuck with outdated infrastructure embedded in metros throughout the U.S. that would be much costlier to update than if we were starting fresh. In America’s case, we don’t just need billions of dollars, but also immense political capital.
When we take a big picture view of the U.S. train system (which generally we should look regionally), we see that we are burdened with 19th century infrastructure, we are beholden to freight rail, and we consistently balloon local improvements to regional/national projects that are just not feasible. I know that dragging on U.S. rail is low hanging fruit, (and that this is a very simplistic view of the situation) but I needed to emphasize the dearth of train options now before we get into some of the incredible innovations happening around the world.
New York to Montreal in Less Than an Hour
It’s 7am in Taormina, Sicily, and we have to be in Capo D’orlando by noon to check-in to our next hotel. While travelling without a car in Sicily can be tough, the coastal train tracks were an incredible way to see more of the island. I’m not going to lie to you that the Sicilian trains were the most advanced, or always on time, but the universal option throughout Italy to travel by train (multiple departures a day) is incredible. Caveat; much of southern Sicily has no rail… but let’s move on from Sicily.
Once again, we see countries outside of the U.S. put a greater emphasis on passenger rail, and the dividends continue to pay off for their citizens and the tourists coming to enjoy their country. When comparing passenger train lines from international markets to the U.S. though, it’s a fun exercise to imagine actual routes we would want to take here at home. From the image below we see that Japan, China and France could theoretically get from New York to Montreal (~370 miles) in about an hour. China is clearly leading the pack with multiple different high-speed lines, but Italy and South Korea are both able to reach Montreal in about 2 hours. Right now, Amtrak can get you there in 10. With the invention of magnetic trains — maglev uses two sets of magnets to elevate the train and propel it forward without friction to slow it down — Asia is seeing a renaissance of high speed urban connectivity.
I took the Eurostar from Amsterdam to London (~260 miles) recently, and it got me there safe and sound in 4 hours exactly. And that was after stopping in Rotterdam, Brussels and Lille! I know there isn’t much between New York and Montreal (sorry Albany) to economically support something like the Eurostar (which is right in the middle of Western Europe), but New York south to DC, or Portland north to Vancouver, or the Austin — Dallas — Houston triangle are all incredible urban regions that could benefit immensely from a high speed rail. To move away from Europe and Asia, Africa is a great example of how smaller, more manageable projects are better suited for us than jumping right to $100B projects. Senegal recently opened their new $1.3B commuter line from Dakar to Diamniadio, an industrial city being built about 25 miles away. This train departs every 10 minutes and plans to accommodate 115k passengers a day. For only $1.5–3/ticket (much cheaper than the Eurostar), this will help with easing traffic jams and housing issues in the burgeoning capital, while also planting the seed for future rail projects throughout the rest of the nation. American’s don’t need a national rail line (yet), we just need efficient and affordable regional lines to get the ball rolling. Let’s talk about that now.
The Best Time to Plant a Tree Was Ten Years Ago
I’m not recommending we start tomorrow with a $1 Trillion bill in Congress asking for national rail connecting New York, Miami, Portland and LA. We Americans are impatient and simply can’t pass legislation that doesn’t impact us immediately. What we can do is start with small scale regional lines, connecting major metros that already support high rates of driving, bus and flight. An average of 24,300 people already travel between Dallas and Houston every day, proving the transit demand is there. In a state where a car crash happens every 57 seconds, every person we take off the road and put on a train is a potential life saved. Changing our car centric habits will not happen overnight, and until more affordable transit options like this one are available, we will continue to drive everywhere. What we need is motivated local government, private investment, and federal incentives.
I understand that our military budget ($754B) could be diverted for all sorts of initiatives, but $10B (1.3% of the military spending) alone could really make an impact on an individual rail project. For context, the US spends roughly $50B a year on highways. The Houston to Dallas line right now is estimated at $14B. If the federal government granted $10B (via a national state by state competition for high speed rail funds), and the state of Texas put in $2B (1.4% of ’21 budget), then we would only need to raise $2B in private investment. That is a lot, I know, but with the 2026 World Cup coming to both Dallas and Houston, there should be so much excitement and energy around transporting thousands of fans, travelers, businessmen, etc. between the two metros. It would be a wasted opportunity to not use the momentum of a global tournament to spur investment in infrastructure that will positively impact our state for years to come. The same could be said for Portland to Vancouver. If Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Amazon, Microsoft, Nike, and the US/Canadian governments all pitched in, they could have a high speed rail in no time. A partnership that diverse and and legendary is a daydream, but hey, I’m a dreamer!
Conclusion
Coordination between federal and state governments has never been our forte, but drastic times call for drastic measures. I’m optimistic in Pete Buttigieg’s rhetoric, and just hope that the private and public sector can come together on infrastructure that is positive in so many ways; for our environment, communities and economy. While we cannot personally impact federal spending on train infrastructure (other than voting), we need to speak up to our state and local governments to put an emphasis on these projects. If we start small, city to city, then the price tag and construction timeline will be more manageable, and the little wins will snowball into big societal changes. California will supposedly have their SF-LA line by 2033, so who is next? With the Texas Supreme Court granting eminent domain to the Dallas-Houston line to acquire the necessary land, I believe this could be the start of something great in Texas, and soon the whole United States. Let’s prioritize a bit more of passenger rail over freight, let’s get drivers off the road and into trains, and let’s invest in a future we can believe in.
