High Speed Rail (HSR) – 4 Reasons the U.S. needs it!

If you were to ask what the benefits of HSR would be, the most obvious answer for most people would probably be that it will get a passenger from point A to point B in the shortest period of time.  Of course, this is a key benefit of HSR, but there are other very important benefits to HSR:

HSR Train in Japan

1)      Relieve Congestion – it can relieve congestion between major cities at airports and on the highways

2)      Limited Land Use – expanding airports or expanding highways take up a lot of land.  An HSR link can be build on a track only 4 feet wide and in most instances existing rail links can be used to convert

3)      Energy Efficient – the latest technology ensures that trains traveling at dazzling speeds of well over 250 mph are very energy efficient.  Moving 1,000+ people at once in a train is much more eco-friendly versus the same people driving in cars

Many publications lately have been touting the fact that China has not only caught up with Japan and the European Union when it comes HSR technology, but it’s actually surpassed them in the length of rail tracks built in kilometers.

Source:  International Union of Railways

HSR Europe

Notice the absence of one country?  Yes, the United States is not listed on here.  There’s actually one rail link in the U.S. that’s operating as an HSR link, which is between Washington D.C. and Boston, with a stop in New York City.  Unfortunately the average speed is only 78 mph, which doesn’t qualify it officially as an HSR connection.  Only on certain parts of the track in Rhode Island and in Massachusetts can the Acela Express operate at 150 mph.

The main problem for Acela’s slow speed is that it’s sharing the tracks with other passenger trains and with freight trains.  To complicate things even further, and for safety reasons, it’s the only HSR that has railroad crossings.  Under normal circumstances HSR cannot have railroad crossings, as it becomes a safety issue when a train comes flying down the track at 250 mph.

Does the U.S. really need HSR?

1)      Competition – the U.S. for many decades has been the worldwide leader in industrial output, technical innovation, etc., but when it comes to HSR it’s falling rapidly behind the competition.  U.S. companies manufacturing trains, tracks, etc. will have a hard time competing on the world-stage if their own country doesn’t even have its own infrastructure for it

2)      Congestion – ever tried driving from Washington D.C. to Boston?  It will take you almost 9 hours…in the middle of the night; good luck driving during a weekday and making your away across the George Washington Bridge between New Jersey and New York states.  Congestion results in lost productivity and costs us all money (companies, government and tax-payers).  An HSR link at 250+ mph, would get you there in 3 hours, with stops in New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore along the way

Acela Train

3)      Economy – any economist will tell you that moving goods and people between two points in 3 hours versus 9 hours is good for economic growth.  Economic growth spurs job growth and that in turn drives increased tax revenues

4)      Infrastructure – as mentioned in earlier articles, the U.S. is in desperate need to upgrade its infrastructure.  Airports, highways and rail are in desperate need of upgrades.  Infrastructure has been at a standstill for decades now.  Ever flown into LaGuardia or Newark Int’l?  It simply can’t compete with Heathrow, Schiphol or other more modern airports.  How about highway construction?  We are paving over existing roads, but fail to expand them or improve the traffic flow on a large scale.  HSR can fill that void and make an immediate impact on not only the local economies, but the national economy as a whole

Why doesn’t the U.S. have HSR?

We are a large country.  HSR is cost effective when constructed for distances between 150 – 550 miles.  After World War II emphasis was made on constructing airports and expanding the national highway system.  Rail systems only made financial sense in urban areas around Chicago or in the northeastern corridor between Washington D.C. and Boston.

However, plans are in the works to start building HSR in the U.S.  There are plans to build an HSR link in California between San Diego and San Francisco via Los Angeles and Sacramento.  Currently Florida is having bids come in for an HSR link between Tampa and Orlando and Texas is jumping on the bandwagon as well, by proposing a link between its biggest cities, Dallas/Ft Worth, Austin, San Antonio and Houston.

How much will it cost?

Tracks – It costs about $25 million per km to build an HSR track, which doesn’t include the cost of building stations.  So a track between Washington D.C. and Boston, with stops in Stamford, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia and Baltimore is about 440 miles in length or 704 km.  Multiply this by $25 million per km and the cost of construction, minus stations equals a staggering $17.6 billion.  Factor in the cost of land, which adds about 10 percent, then the cost totals $19.36 billion.

Stations – We’ll need seven stations build along the track.  Under normal circumstances a train station can be build for about $200 million, but we’re talking HSR stations and we’re talking prime real estate in the northeast, so you can easily double the figure to $400 million per station.

HSR in USA

Maintenance – A new train station and new HSR track is no good if it doesn’t get maintained.  It costs about $42,000 per km per year for the track to be maintained, so the northeast corridor would cost almost $30 million per year to maintain.  Rolling Stock maintenance (cost of maintaining the train) equals $2.1 million per train.  Cost of the actual train per year equals $3.36 million and then there is the operating cost per train, which equals $35 million per year.

There are 10.3 million passengers using the northeast corridor, which equals just over 28k passengers per day.  A train can hold 545 passengers (double-decker TGV), thus you’ll need 26 trains in service per day to handle the volume.  This means that the cost of per passenger equals $1.08 billion (track maintenance + rolling stock maintenance + train cost + operating cost) / 10.3 million passengers = $105.04 per passenger per day.  Add 10 percent for operating costs for the train stations and you’re talking about at $115 per passenger cost.  Easy to say that an operating profit can easily be attained.

The one catch…it doesn’t include the cost of building the tracks, but that should fall onto the federal government.  A special tax can be added to the cost of a ticket to pay for it over the long haul.  Even if you taxed each ticket at $10 per ticket it would still be cost beneficial compared to driving your car or flying between the cities.

In Summary

It’s worth the capital investment into HSR, but it needs to be done in certain areas first.  The northeast corridor, Florida, Texas , mid-west (Chicago, Milwaukee, Akron, etc.) and California are prime candidates for this type of investment.  It will drive economic benefits, let alone the thousands of jobs created building these projects and the long term impact on creating jobs due to increased commerce.  Then there’s the environmental impact by removing trucks, cars and airplanes from our roads and airspace.  Let’s not forget the impact it will have on our national prestige; a bullet train zipping along at 250 mph can instill some national pride into our hearts.  We will need the support of the federal government in conjunction with the states, but the thinking is that once the economy recovers that the momentum will build.  Let’s hope it picks up speed soon, because China and the E.U. are going full steam ahead…

What are your thoughts?

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