Despite the excitement of railway buffs and the enthusiasm of environmentalists, high-speed rail in America is likely to mean a few more diesel-electric intercity trains at 110mph, not swish electric expresses going nearly twice as fast.īut the problem with America's plans for high-speed rail is not their modesty. Acela, like virtually all trains run by publicly owned Amtrak, has to use tracks belonging to freight railways, whose trains trundle along at 50mph passenger trains must stick below 80mph. It rarely reaches its top speed of 150mph (240kph) and for much of the way manages little more than half that, because the track is not equipped for higher speeds. Such lines are common in Europe, Japan and, increasingly, China, yet the only thing at all like them in America is Amtrak's Acela service from Boston via New York to Washington, DC. This earmarks a lump sum of $8 billion, plus $1 billion a year, to help construct fast rail corridors around America (see map). The company also announced in April 2019 that it is pursuing plans to extend its route in Florida farther west from Orlando to Tampa.California's plans were given a boost by Barack Obama's stimulus package last year. The station in Orlando is nearly complete, but construction on the 170 miles of new track, which broke ground in June 2019, will take three years to finish. Those lines mostly are frequented by commuters at this point, but when the line expands to Orlando International Airport and Walt Disney World in 2022, it is expected to cut the travel time between Miami and Orlando to three hours on trains traveling up to 125 miles per hour. The line also has a 60-minute route between Miami and West Palm Beach, which can take up to two hours by car, and is potentially adding another stop along the line in Boca Raton. Rebranded as Virgin Trains USA after partnering with Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, the privately owned Brightline high-speed trains started to run along Florida’s east coast in 2018, cutting the travel time between Miami and Fort Lauderdale to 30 minutes by train. But as of July 2019, those dates have been pushed backed to 20, respectively. ![]() Virgin Trains inititally said construction on the all-electric train was scheduled to begin in 2019 with service expected to be operational by 2022. That came after XpressWest struggled to raise money to break ground on the 185 miles of track connecting Las Vegas to Victorville, California, a city on the outskirts of Los Angeles. However, in September 2018, Virgin Trains USA (formerly known as Brightline Trains) acquired the project. Privately owned rail company XpressWest has been planning since 2005 to build a high-speed train route that connects Las Vegas to Southern California in under two hours. The proposed plans recommend a brand new line to be built to eliminate those delays. Currently, it takes over eight hours to travel between Portland and Vancouver via Amtrak. While Amtrak already operates its existing Cascades service along that corridor, it competes with freight and commuter trains that run on the same line, slowing down travel time significantly. Getting between Portland and Seattle could also take less than an hour instead of over three hours in a car. If completed with trains that could run at roughly 220 mph, the new line could cut the 5.5-hour drive time between Vancouver and Portland down to just under two hours and the three-hour drive between Seattle and Vancouver to under one hour. In July 2019, the Washington State Department of Transportation delivered a new report to lay out its case for building a high-speed rail line along the Cascadia Corridor that would connect Portland, Oregon, with Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia. ![]() Here’s what’s next for high-speed train travel in the United States. But getting between major cities in the United States has long been relegated to lengthy road trips or flights, while trains have remained a novelty for slow-travel enthusiasts who wish to stop and take in the views along the way.īut with a major overhaul of Amtrak’s Acela service in the Northeast Corridor coming up in 2021 and several major routes planned over the next decade, that’s all about to change. It’s possible to get from Milan to Rome on the high-speed Frecciarossa train in under three hours and from Tokyo to Osaka on the Shinkansen bullet train in just two and a half hours.
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