Reported by Dan Zukowski for Smart Cities Dive
In just four years, trains traveling nearly 200 mph could whoosh passengers between the entertainment capital of Las Vegas and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. “When that starts to happen, people all across the country will say, ‘Why can’t we have this closer to where I live?’” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in an interview.
High-speed rail projects are under construction in California and Nevada and in the planning stages in the Pacific Northwest, the Southeast and Texas. Government officials, industry leaders, labor representatives and rail advocates this summer and fall described the growing momentum in the U.S. for true high-speed trains like those in Europe, Japan and China.
But the history of U.S. high-speed rail is one of starts and stops instead of smooth, fast journeys. When Japan launched the world’s first bullet train in 1964, some in President Lyndon Johnson’s administration called for the launch of similar service between Boston and Washington, D.C. Sixty years later, that corridor is still waiting.
The 1965 High-Speed Ground Transportation Act authorized high-speed rail research and development, primarily focused on the Northeast Corridor. The outcome was the development of electrically powered, self-propelled Metroliners for the Washington-New York City portion of the corridor, which is electrified, and trains with gas-turbine engines, dubbed TurboTrains, for the New York City-Boston portion, which was not completely electrified at that time. Both went into service in 1969.