While plans for high-speed rail in North America date back to the 1960s, inspired by the debut of the Japanese bullet train in 1964, countless proposals to link cities by fast trains have since faltered.
Amtrak’s flagship Acela passenger service between Washington DC and Boston has long been the only service catering to US passengers who feel the need for speed, reaching up to 150mph on some sections of track. The highly anticipated new generation Acela fleet, currently in production, will have a top speed of 160mph and introduce a slew of enhancements in passenger comfort, safety and technology, including personal outlets and USB ports, complimentary Wi-Fi, innovative onboard information systems and sizeable restrooms with contactless features1.
For railroad companies, attracting sufficient funding and proving economic viability are inevitably the biggest challenges associated with high-speed rail projects, factors exacerbated by our car-centric culture and the relatively long distances between cities in the US compared to Europe or Asia.
However, America may be at the start of a new chapter in passenger rail. The shift towards more sustainable, energy-efficient transport combined with factors such as the increasing cost of aviation fuel, the need to reduce road and air congestion, and efforts to rein in urban sprawl all point towards high-speed passenger rail as an efficient transportation solution – albeit an expensive one.
According to the World Bank2, a high-speed rail service can deliver a competitive advantage over airlines for journeys of up to about three hours or around 450 miles, particularly between city pairs where airports are located far from city centers. On longer corridors, high-speed rail can serve multiple city-pairs, both direct and overlapping, maximising the long-term economic benefits to cities served by the routes.
Brightline West: High-speed rail by 2028?
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) announced in September that it has officially signed a $3 billion grant agreement to fund Brightline West – the first dedicated passenger high-speed rail line in the country.
Brightline West will be a 218-mile passenger rail service operating from Las Vegas to Greater Los Angeles, aligned to the I-15 highway. Its all-electric zero emission trains will have top speeds of more than 200mph, enabling a journey time of just over two hours – twice as fast as driving the route.
Construction began this year and the project is scheduled to be completed by 2028, ideally in time for the LA Olympics.
Anticipated economic and sustainability benefits of the high-speed rail project include:
$10+ billion in economic impact
35,000+ construction jobs, and
700M+ fewer vehicle miles travelled per year3
US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg lauds Brightline West as the harbinger of America’s high-speed rail future: “Once completed, the Brightline West project will cut travel time between Las Vegas, NV, and Rancho Cucamonga, CA in half, to just over 2 hours on new high-speed rail versus by car. This is the future of passenger rail in America,” he posted on X in September4.
The California High-Speed Rail Network
Work also continues on the more ambitious, publicly-funded California High-Speed Rail network, being developed by the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Phase 1 is expected to eventually run from San Francisco to Los Angeles and Anaheim via the Central Valley, a distance of almost 500 miles, enabling passengers to travel nonstop from San Francisco to LA by high-speed rail in two hours and 40 minutes. Phase 2 proposes to expand the network north to Sacramento and south to San Diego.
However, while construction began in 2015, the project has been subject to well-documented funding issues, cost overruns and delays5.
The first section – the Initial Operating Segment (IOS), a 171-mile long section connecting Merced and Bakersfield in the Central Valley – is projected to commence revenue service as a self-contained high-speed rail system between 2030 and 20335.
Estimated benefits include:
Reducing vehicle miles of travel in California by 10 million miles per day by 2040
A reduction of 93 to 171 flights daily, resulting in improved air quality
A reduction in automobile traffic on the state’s highways by over 400 billion miles of travel over almost 60 years6
There are currently five more proposed high-speed rail projects that are at least partially funded for planning, design, engineering and/or construction:
Dallas to Houston, TX (Texas Central)
Fort Worth, Dallas and Houston, TX (North Central Texas Council of Governments)
Portland, Seattle, Vancouver: OR-WA- Canada (Cascadia High Speed Rail)
Atlanta to Charlotte, GA-NC-SC (Southeast High Speed Rail)
Victor Valley to Palmdale, CA (High Desert Corridor)7
The projects under construction in California and Nevada will inform engineering, design and financing decisions made elsewhere – but, just as importantly, they will whet the appetite of Americans for the convenience, superior comfort, level of service and environmental benefits associated with high-speed passenger rail.
At the Brightline West groundbreaking ceremony in Las Vegas in April, Secretary Buttigieg said the project was “just the start”8:
“I am firmly convinced that once the first customer buys that first ticket – to ride true high-speed rail on American soil, there will be no going back,” he said. “People will demand and expect this everywhere and leaders will respond, and more high-speed rail lines are coming. Or to put it another way, in this particular case what happens in Vegas should absolutely not be confined to Las Vegas.”
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1. https://www.amtrak.com/next-generation-high-speed-trains
3. https://www.brightlinewest.com/overview/project
4. X: Secretary Pete Buttigieg @SecretaryPete: 09/19/24
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
6. ‘Long Term Prospects for High-Speed Rail’: https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-high-speed-rail-development-worldwide
7. https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/track-high-speed-rail-projects-latest-developments/709753/
