Can the US finally get its railways on track? The promise and politics of high-speed trains
America’s shiny new Acela trains can technically hit 257 km/h – so why are passengers still crawling along the Connecticut coast? The answer lies in politics, not engineering.
What’s the political secret to high-speed rail? I once put that question to Antonio Perez, former CEO of Spanish train manufacturer Talgo. His country has built a network nearly 4,000km long in a little more than three decades. In that time, the US has managed to eke out a mere 735km between Boston and Washington. Success breeds success, he told me, and Spanish politicians compete with each other to see who can deliver more mileage. While feeble US attempts have long been the laughing stock of high-speed-train riders worldwide, there’s a glimmer of hope just around the bend that North America – a continent once stitched together by rail – is finally getting back on track.
On 27 August at Union Station in Washington, US transportation secretary Sean Duffy boarded the maiden voyage of Amtrak’s NextGen Acela trains, the largest investment in the railroad’s rolling stock in 25 years. His deputy praised the Trump administration for doing “what they do best – making big, beautiful projects come to life.” Commentators have been quick to cry foul, given that Duffy’s office yanked $4bn (€3.39bn) from the troubled California High-Speed Rail Authority in July. They have pointed out that Barack Obama first funded the new Acela in 2015 and the Biden administration’s signature infrastructure bill pumped additional money into the project. Trump was a vociferous critic of the legislation, threatening Republicans who supported it.
But hypocrisy be damned. Let Trump take the credit – and keep it coming. Considering the amount of Biden’s legacy that the current president has sought to dismantle, the administration’s new tune on trains is a hopeful sign of Perez’s prophecy coming true. I hopped aboard a brand-new NextGen over the weekend. The Acela route was opened in 2000 and runs at an average speed of 113km/h – yes, I hear you scoffing aboard your TGV Lyria. Amtrak has been touting that its 28 new trains, made from 95 per cent US components at the French manufacturer’s upstate New York plant and rolling out through 2027, can reach 257 km/h.
But as I write this column while poking along the Connecticut shoreline slowly enough to make out the names of sailboats bound for Long Island Sound, it’s obvious that this top speed is a marketing ploy. What matters more is a consistently zippy ride. To make that a reality, Amtrak needs federal support to upgrade centuries-old infrastructure and plow through local opposition to new, straighter tracks that can skirt speed limits to deliver true high-speed service. Many of these improvements are already happening, such as replacing a 151-year-old tunnel in Baltimore and a 114-year-old bridge in New Jersey. If the federal government doesn’t derail these infrastructure schemes, the New York-Washington leg could shrink to under two hours by 2040 – faster than the roughly comparable Paris-Lyon TGV. Quel miracle!
In the meantime, Acela riders will have to content themselves with incremental speed gains such as the deployment of Alstom’s Tiltronix technology that allows the NextGen (a rebranded Avelia for those keeping score) to lean into curves without spilling my La Colombe coffee from the café car – even during the brief, glorious stretch where we reach top speed for a whole 20 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I’ll offer one last rivalry-tinged incentive for the White House to stay on course. In February, Canada’s now former prime minister Justin Trudeau unveiled plans for his country’s first high-speed rail corridor. Last week, Ottawa declared the Alto line from Toronto to Québec City as a priority infrastructure project. Canada might have the US’s number in ice hockey but it would be a national embarrassment to lose out in the race for an iron horse worthy of the 21st century.
Gregory Scruggs is Monocle’s Seattle correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
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