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The Long, Sad History of American Attempts to Build High-Speed Rail, Part I

construction-physics.com · 2,878 words · saved by 1 readers

California has received its fair share of criticism for the trajectory of its high-speed rail project. When voters first approved the $10 billion dollar bond issue for the project in 2008, it was projected to be completed by 2020 at a cost of $33 billion. Instead, its costs have ballooned to $128 billion, and the initial segment (which won’t connect Los Angeles and San Francisco), won’t be done until between 2030 and 2033. But California’s project is just one of a long string of attempts at building high-speed rail in the US. Ever since Japan deployed its first bullet trains in 1964, the US has angled for high-speed trains of its own. But these projects have almost universally failed. In The Second Age of Rail, author Murray Hughes notes that “so many proposals for high-speed railways in the USA have been dreamt up and shot down that it is almost unsporting to list them.” If you go by the International Union of Railways definition of high-speed rail, trains with speed exceeding 250 kmp

The Long, Sad History of American Attempts to Build High-Speed Rail, Part I Brian Potter Oct 12, 2023 78 16 8 Share California has received its fair share of criticism for the trajectory of its high-speed rail project. When voters first approved the $10 billion dollar bond issue for the project in 2008, it was projected to be completed by 2020 at a cost of $33 billion. Instead, its costs have ballooned to $128 billion , and the initial segment (which won’t connect Los Angeles and San Francisco), won’t be done until between 2030 and 2033. But California’s project is just one of a long string of

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