Let me state something that seems obvious from the trend for my Civic Issue Blogs: I like trains. I have always had a deep connection to railroads.
My ancestors managed railroads across the British Empire, like this one in Sri Lanka, and some of my earliest memories are of myself trainspotting with my grandmother at the local train station as a toddler. I have followed advances in railway technology for most of my life, and I enjoyed travelling on foreign railways during my trips around the world.
However, as I have gotten older, I have realized a significant gap between the railways in my two worlds.
I would always return home to the United States and be greeted with sights like this. One of my commutes home from high school was significantly delayed when the train in front of mine caught fire.
I am sure that mishaps occur for railroads across the world, but American railways seem to be the most unreliable and behind the times. Nowhere is this more true than the innovations presented by high-speed rail.
This is Acela, the United States’ only true high speed rail train in service. It links Washington D.C. to Boston in under seven hours, but does not achieve a high average speed along the way due to additional traffic and infrastructure limitations.
This was the most advanced train in the world during the earlier part of my childhood. It is the Japanese 500 Series Shinkansen, which could operate up to 200 miles per hour on the Japanese rail network. It began operation on Japan’s fastest rail network in 1997 and was replaced by faster trains after only thirteen years on this main line. How is it that a Japanese contemporary to the Acela outperformed it and was replaced in half the time? To answer this infrastructure problem, we need a quick history lesson.
During the first half of the twentieth century, American Railroads were among the most prestigious, prosperous, and advanced in the world. Trains were the backbone of the industrial revolution and allowed for easy transportation across the country at unprecedented speeds. What happened?
The downfall can be summed up in one consistent trend across American industries during this era: lack of appropriate investment for innovation. Like American steel giants, the railroads relied heavily on a network that dated from the previous century. Cars and planes eventually came to compete with the trains, which were stuck on rails of the past. Once again, like large American steel companies, countries around the world began making advancements in their own infrastructure and quickly surpassed American companies, which became strangled of cash.
America can make the world’s fastest trains but they will ultimately be limited by the network on which they operate.
In 2015, a major Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia made national and international headlines. Eight people lost their lives and over two hundred were injured when a Northeast Regional train took a speed restricted turn at overspeed. The derailment also led to major delays and cancelations of services on the Northeast Corridor. The turn on which the accident occurred was first surveyed in the 1830s and the operating speed on it was only fifty miles per hour. The derailed train was running at twice the speed during the accident.
The reason why Shinkansen has a pristine service record is due to the condition of its high speed lines. They are separated from conventional commuter lines and were developed specifically for high speed trains from the 1960s to the present day. These modern lines also contain less curves than American railways, since tunneling technologies were greatly improved by the time Shinkansen was introduced.
It is clear that America lags behind competing countries in high speed rail development, but our country is now beginning to make developments in its network fit for the 21st century.
Amtrak has built a new generation of Acela rolling stock that will be introduced to service this year. Additionally, the State of Texas is proceeding with plans to construct a new high speed rail line from Dallas to Houston, which should dramatically reduce commuter traffic on Texas road networks.
These projects could usher in a second era of prosperous rail development in the United States, and I look forward to the innovations they will bring.