(Brightline has also said it may eventually connect to California’s bullet train at a future station in Palmdale.) Another private initiative, the Texas Central Railway, hopes to begin construction soon on a 240-mile high-speed line between Dallas and Houston.
The company, controlled by Milwaukee Bucks co-owner and Fortress Investment cofounder Wes Edens, also expects to announce new funding plans and a revised timetable for its delayed Brightline West, a train from Las Vegas to suburban Los Angeles that may move passengers at 200 mph when service begins late this decade.
Florida-based Brightline, the only private passenger railroad in the U.S., is expanding its Miami to West Palm Beach service to Orlando next year, offering top speeds of 125 mph. CALIFORNIA HIGH-SPEED RAIL AUTHORITYĬalifornia has no monopoly on high-speed dreams. San Joaquin River Viaduct, Madera County, California. Future track improvements should increase that even further. Amtrak is upgrading the Acela fleet on its profitable Northeast Corridor between New York and Boston with new Alstom trains that will boost speeds to 160 mph. is Amtrak’s Acela service between New York and Washington, topping out at 150 mph. While many of those trains run at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour, the fastest line in the U.S. “There’s no shortage of suppliers.”Īuto-obsessed America is a global laggard in high-speed rail, a service widely available across Europe, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, which pioneered the technology six decades ago. “There’s several other train manufacturers, from around Asia and the world, building high-speed trains,” Kelly said. Companies including Siemens, which has a passenger-train factory in Sacramento, and Alstom, which builds them at East Coast plants, both have Amtrak contracts and will likely compete for California’s business. Orders for the first trains could go out as soon as next year. “Those six different pots total about $70 billion over the next five years.” “We identified out of the infrastructure bill six different programs that we can compete in for different project elements,” Kelly told Forbes. While the Build Back Better infrastructure money was never approved, there’s a pool of other new federal money California can tap for future needs. The California project, which estimates travel time between San Francisco and Los Angeles will be less than three hours, also receives about $1 billion annually from the state’s Cap and Trade program, a de facto carbon tax on major emitters of greenhouse gasses. Longtime train commuter President Joe Biden restored those funds in 2021 and wants more bullet-train projects, both for the jobs they’ll generate and to help cut climate-warming emissions from cars. It’s a big shift from a few years ago when then President Donald Trump withheld $929 million of federal funds awarded years earlier and threatened to claw back $2.5 billion doled out by the Obama Administration. That victory and recent funding developments give the train a degree of stability for the time being. It’s “the most transformative project our nation has seen in almost 75 years.”Įxecutive Director Karen Philbrick, Mineta Transportation InstituteĬalifornia’s Court of Appeals ruled against Flashman late last year, allowing construction to continue. “My clients don’t feel it’s ever going to result in a viable high-speed rail line.” “This is an enormous waste of money,” said Oakland-based attorney Stu Flashman, who sued to block funding for the train’s first phase, arguing it violated the state’s constitution. Where Philbrick sees opportunity, critics see a boondoggle.
0 kommentar(er)
