Why The US Has No High Speed Rail

The U.S. has no true high-speed trains, aside from sections of Amtrak’s Acela line in the Northeast Corridor.

• The Acela can reach 150 mph for only 34 miles of its 457-mile span.
• Its average speed between New York and Boston is about 65 mph.

FLORIDA IS A HIT

• Virgin Rail is now running high-speed between Miami and Fort Lauderdale which will continue onto Orlando.
• It’s being finished with great optimism.

CALIFORNIA IS A FLOP

• California’s high-speed rail system is under construction, but whether it will ever get completed as intended, between San Francisco and Los Angeles, is uncertain.
• The tragedy of California’s high-speed rail project is that so much time and money have been wasted since 2008.
• The only visible progress is part of the route between Bakersfield and Merced, which eventually will be completed.

THE USA IS A “FAST RAIL” PUNCH LINE

• China has the world’s fastest and largest high-speed rail network — more than 19,000 miles, the vast majority of which was built in the past decade. Japan’s bullet trains can reach nearly 200 miles per hour and date to the 1960s.
• They have moved more than 9 billion people without a single passenger causality.
• France began service of the high-speed TGV train in 1981 and the rest of Europe quickly followed.