The day after the Rail Passengers Association’s Fall meeting concluded in Sacramento, twenty of us were given a tour of several construction sites for California’s high-speed rail system. We stopped at three different locations, all in what Californians refer to as “The Valley”, near Fresno. It was about a three-hour bus ride from Sacramento. One…
Both before and after the two world wars, passenger trains in one form or another provided most of the public transportation in the U.S. Long-distance trains linked cities and connected entire regions. Major cities had transit systems. Trains ran underground in New York and Los Angeles, while Chicago opted for an elevated system. Smaller cities…
Americans don’t understand high-speed trains—where they work and where they don’t. And why. And no wonder! A very small percentage of Americans haveever seen a high-speed train, much less traveled on one. Amtrak’s Acela trains operating in the Washington-New York-Boston corridor average 80-plus miles-per-hour and top out at about 150 along a rather short…
Yesterday, we heard from Patrick Goddard, president of Brightline, who spoke about some of the challenges the railroad has faced during this start-up period. One has to do with grade crossing accidents, of which there have been several. Those incidents triggered a rush to judgement by some in communities along the route. People will tolerate…