High-Speed Rail: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone

Some readers seem to think I have an ingrained hatred of trains. Nothing could be further from the truth. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, I used the train as my exclusive mode of travel outside the Pacific Northwest. I made many trips to Washington, DC by train. I was over 30 years old before I flew in an airplane for the first time, and that was only because I was going to Alaska, which you can’t get to by train (while there, I rode both the Alaska Railway and the White Pass & Yukon Route).

If the United States had a true national high-speed rail network, I could see myself taking the train to DC now. Portland to DC is about 2,800 miles, which would be 20 hours in a 140-mph train (which is approximately the average speed of trains whose top speed is 220 mph, the speed the California High-Speed Rail Authority aspires to). That could be enough to get me to stop flying, especially if the train was timed to arrive in DC at, say, 8 in the morning.

Continue reading