Everybody knows that, as with health care, the U.S. rail system lags well behind that of other developed countries. But did you know that our current trains are also slower than the trains we had in the 1940s?
After accounting for speed-restricted curves, snail-like crawls through junctions, stops for opposing trains, and other obstacles thrown in their path, Amtrak trains average no better than 50 m.p.h. between terminals—and much less if unscheduled delays are counted. The result is that train service is slower today than it was in the 1940s, when “streamliners” touted for their speed—such as the Super Chief, 20th Century Limited, Denver Zephyr, and Hiawatha—routinely topped 90 to 100 m.p.h. between station stops. [emphasis added]
Not only can our trains not compete with the rest of the world’s – they can’t even compete with those from 70 years ago!
Make no mistake: the global comparisons are pretty grim as well. In Japan and Europe, high-speed trains have been a part of the transit landscape for decades. China is on pace to build 8,000 miles of high-speed railways by 2020. Meanwhile, as Mark Reutter points out in an article for the Wilson Center, Amtrak’s “high speed” line, the Acela Express along the Northeast Corridor, doesn’t even qualify as high-speed by international standards, averaging only 67 mph between Boston and New York and 77 mph south of New York. By contrast, the train between Madrid and Barcelona averages 146 miles mph along the 386-mile route.
For far too long, rail has been the neglected child of our transportation policy. In the last 50 years, the federal government has invested $1.3 trillion in highways, $473 billion in aviation, and a paltry $53 billion in passenger rail.
This year, the Obama administration announced that it will allocate $8 billion in grants to states from the stimulus package toward building a high-speed rail system. Though much more needs to be done – federal, state, and private actors all have a stake in this – the investment is a good first step. Here’s hoping it jumpstarts a rail renaissance that will finally get us moving again – first back to the 1940s, then into the 21st century and beyond.
