Maybe Our Railroads Need Some Robber Barons
Is Florida’s Brightline a remedy for our ailing rail system?
Americans like to believe we have the best of everything. But there’s one exception where people are willing to admit we fall short: high-speed rail. Americans travel to Europe or Japan or China, enjoy their high-speed rail experience, and wonder why we don’t have that here.
Amtrak’s Acela line in the Northeastern United States technically has sections that reach high-speed service levels but is far below the global standard. An Amtrak-led consortium says that it would cost $117 billion to upgrade the line to a true high-speed service. This is a cost level that’s far out of line with global norms, but sadly consistent with the extraordinary costs we’ve come to expect from American rail projects. The New York Times once called the Second Avenue Subway extension in New York the most expensive mile of subway track on earth for example. American rail projects cost multiples of what other countries spend; the Times, for example, notes that the East Side Access rail project in New York was seven times the global average construction cost.