USA Will Invest in High-Speed Train to Fight Climate Change::The USA Will Invest in High-Speed Train to Fight Climate Change - US President Joe Biden announced in a speech on December 9, 2023 that they are carrying out the first high-speed train projects in US history. These projects are across America
The US is extremely far behind the rest of the developed world and even much of the developing world at this point. It will take decades to catch up, let alone become a leader.
Who cares how long it’s going to take, it still needs to be done. And the only way to do it is to start.
This grant amount is enough to build 39 miles of HSR based on California’s project costs. That’s 39 miles of rail for the entire nation. I’m not sure you can qualify this as a ‘start’. More than likely, this money will be completely wasted as it isn’t enough to do anything especially when you spread it out over 50 different states, which would equate to 4,000 feet of track, or 3/4 mile, per state.
Even then it’ll probably just be from one town to another very close by thus really only useable for a small subset of people. We need trans continental high speed railways not puddle jumpers
No, really not. It would be great for those of us who prefer that solution but let’s pick the right tool for the job. I believe the current rule of thumb is high speed rail beats flying for cities up to 500 miles apart. Let’s focus on those. Hopefully we end up with an interconnected system as the preferred way to travel between those cities and so some of us can do long distance rail, but there will always be a threshold where flying is cheaper, easier, faster
These projects are part of an $10 billion investment
California’s HSR system come in at $80 billion for 520 miles, or $154 million per mile. Amtrak estimates that it would cost $500 million per mile to turn its Northeast Corridor route into a true high-speed system. source
For $10 billion, we are talking an additional 20 to 65 miles of high speed rail to be built. This is basically nothing…
The worst part is that it usually follows well known cycle of:
- project is estimated at $10b, government assigns $10b
- private companies spend it on consultants and analysis, little gets built
- government agrees to invest another $5b but requires cuts to the initial scope
- with reduced scope projected passengers numbers drop, project is less attractive
- repeat until cost is 1000% of the initial estimate and usefulness is 0. cancel project
Most of this is to fund studies and the rest is probably to cover overruns. Is it political for election season? Yes, but still a step in a positive direction. We’re not talking infrastructure week here.
There’s ~$34 million in there to study new routes. The $3 billion of this going to CAHSR will:
- Fund six electric trains for testing and use
- Fund design and construction of trainset facilities
- Fund design and construction of the Fresno station
- Fund final design and right-of-way acquisition for the Merced and the Bakersfield extensions
- Fund construction in the Central Valley
The HSR going through the Central Valley of Cali is INSANE. the bridge and strip of it is infrastructure that area and region has legitimately never seen. I keep telling all of my friends and family here in Cali that once you can travel from Stockton to Bakersfield in 45-1 hour it’ll completely change the region. The massive economic boom from just the construction alone will be huge, but then the effect after will be felt for generation.
Even better, I just hate that people are crapping all over making steps in a positive direction.
Drop in the bucket, I’m curious how much it would take to make most of the US/NA traversable by high speed rail
Depends on what you mean by most.
- most of the population is quite achievable. Send a little time at https://www.ushsr.com/
- most of the geography, trillions, and we couldn’t afford to keep it operating
I really think that confusing this is a common mistake. People claim high speed rail is impossible in the US because we’re big (and ignoring China, eu), but we have plenty of cities, and most of them are clustered. High speed rail is great for cities within a few hundred miles of each other. We got those, and that’s most of the population
It’s specious to take scenarios high speed rail doesn’t do well at and claiming that it means it can’t work. Let’s apply a little intelligence here’d and use the right technology for the right scenario
Jacksonville FL to Mobile AL is not included even though old rail and established railway right of way is already in place. Its an incomplete plan out of the gate before even looking at the realities of the funding equating to near goddamn nothing. We need real Trillion dollar funding plans at this point for high speed rail on a national level, use the long range east west/north south interstate cooridors to build over/under to connect coasts and Mexico to Canada on 4 or 5 major lines each.
Think if we instead of giving trillions of dollars to the Ukraine, spent it on our own country. If we spent all that money on this project alone it might actually be beneficial to our people
Allowing Russia to conquer our allies will hardly get us high speed rail. Furthermore, the vast majority of lethal aid for Ukraine actually pays for US industry and US jobs. Congress approves money for Javelin missile production, US contractors produce the components and assemble it, then the Javelins are sent to Ukraine to blow up Russian invaders.
There is visual confirmation of Ukraine destroying over 13,000 Russian vehicles, including over 2,500 Russian tanks. Click the link, every single example has a picture or video detailing Russia’s devastating losses.
Exactly.
Allowing Russia to start conquering Europe will just mean that the US will eventually have to fight a war against Europe, China, Iran, and North Korea. If we allow it to get that far I’m sure they will recruit more countries to their axis. And then the US will have a lot worse problems than lack of high speed rail.
I’ve been against every US military engagement in my 50 year life except this one.
What a weak article. It’s barely three paragraphs and contains basically no details. Here is the press release from the Dept of Transportation.
I wish them all the best! May this decision carry through administrations and the USA embrace fast, public transport once again.
At this point, Trump will probably win in '24 and immediately kill off the project
Getting more than a little annoyed by the political tennis, back and forth and nothing actually getting done because everything that is done gets undone as soon as the other party takes back control
Isn’t Trump in danger of being taken off the ballot due to something about being involved in a treacherous act? IIRC it was something about an amendment to the constitution introduced after the civil war to stop Southern soldiers from participating in politics.
Yes, and if it actually gets used to prevent him from running I will be stunned.
One judge already ruled that he did, indeed, incite insurrection, but then weaseled out by saying something to the effect of “it doesn’t specify presidents in the amendment” in their ruling so they did absolutely nothing about it.
Hope springs eternal and all, but he seems immune to consequences. Again, hoping that changes, but I’m not holding my breath.
It’s incredibly hard for the government to get anything done that takes more than 8 years. Even if you don’t end up changing presidential parties, trying to keep the house and senate out of the budgets is a serious challenge.
Even if they can keep people out of the piggy bank trying to get the corporations to follow through with their end of the deal It’s like herding cats.
Billions have been sunk into rural broadband with almost no penetration.
As much as I hate musk, The only way we’re going to get people back on the moon and out to Mars Will be because of government leveraging private industry.
Cool. It’s just like, more than 20 years late, but cool
The 2000 election was such a massive turning point for the US. So many branching consequences, but imagine if we had had an environmentalist in the White House instead of Mr. Buy and Drill Our Way Out of This? At the time of 9/11 I believe it was Tom Daschle of SD on record calling for a Green Manhattan Project which obviously fell on deaf ears quite quickly as the bombs started raining down on Baghdad. Sure there’d still be cries for vengeance, but I also think if POTUS had been saying at the time ‘we win this war by getting ourselves off foreign energy’ it just might have been persuasive enough to embark on some major developments.
It’s like a hundred years late. The US was built with invented trains, we should have the best train network in the world.
In fact we did until we also invented cars and fucked the world up by favoring highways and essentially single-person metal boxes.
The US did not invent trains. Trains were invented in the UK with the first public railway being between Stockton and Darlington.
The US was the first to truly master trains on a large scale I’d argue, but you’re right they absolutely did not invent them.
The US invented neither trains nor cars.
It is true the US was basically built on railroads, so I agree that it should have an awesome network, but it is just too big. Even if France ships you all a bunch of TGVs it will take days to go from NYC to LA. Something that takes hours by plane.
