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Brown sees opportunities, challenges for HSR; Oberstar agrees; both cite China
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Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., who is chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, was among the speakers yesterday in a subcommittee hearing in Washington. The topic was “High-Speed Rail in the United States: Opportunities and Challenges.”
The subcommittee was a meeting to hear testimony on high-speed rail in the U.S.
“The dream of high-speed rail in America is finally coming true. In 2007, this subcommittee held a hearing to listen to the experiences of international operators and other countries in developing high-speed rail. Their advice was to invest, get a high-speed rail line operating, and once everyone saw it working they would want it for their area: Build it and they will come!” she said.
The Jacksonville resident reminded her listeners, “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 laid that foundation. It included $8 billion for high-speed rail and $1.3 billion for Amtrak. The Fiscal Year 2010 Transportation Appropriations bill that passed the House included an additional $4 billion, and the surface transportation bill being developed by this committee includes another $50 billion for development of high-speed rail corridors over the next six years.”
Brown explained, “Since enactment of the Recovery Act, interest in high-speed rail has been phenomenal. The Federal Railroad Administration has received numerous applications from the states for development of high-speed and intercity passenger rail projects. These include 45 applications from 24 states totaling approximately $50 billion. They also received 214 applications from 34 states totaling $7 billion for corridor planning and smaller projects.”
Florida is among those states, looking to build as system between Tampa, Orlando and Miami, and, perhaps in the distant future, from Miami to Jacksonville and on to Atlanta and northward.
“These numerous requests clearly indicate a very strong and growing interest in high-speed rail in the U.S. They also make clear that the federal government needs to invest in high-speed rail in order to make the President and this Congress’ vision a reality, and we need to find a dedicated source of funding to do it. The private sector, including international operators and foreign governments like Spain, Japan, and China, isn’t going to help us if they don’t see a true commitment from the federal government to make high-speed rail a priority.”
Brown had done her homework. She pointed out, “Beijing will spend $50 billion on high-speed rail this year alone, and the central government plans to spend another $250 billion over the next decade. By 2020, China will have laid nearly 16,000 miles of high-speed track capable of carrying the fastest trains in the world. So far, the construction of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed route alone has created about 110,000 jobs and is playing an enormous role in China’s economic recovery.”
She said the U.S. faces major challenges that aren’t faced by China’s central government, “but it shows that one of our main international competitors is making high-speed rail a key component of their economic development and recovery.”
She also hopes to see fast trains built in the U.S.
“I believe that one great opportunity that will come from this new funding will be the ability to establish a domestic manufacturing base for high-speed rail right here. Since 1998, the U.S. has lost nearly six million manufacturing jobs. We should seize this opportunity and find ways to incentivize production right here in America. We can work on replacing many of the manufacturing jobs that have disappeared in this country with well paying jobs building new locomotive and passenger rail cars to be used in America and sold to other countries throughout the world. With sustained funding for high-speed rail and a strong commitment from the federal government and our state partners, I am convinced that the U.S. can once again build passenger rail rolling stock that is the envy of the world.”
Rep. James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., Transportation Committee chairman, echoed Brown’s remarks, and offered a history lesson from his part of the planet.
“This is truly an exciting time for passenger rail enthusiasts, and as I travel across the country to various states, I hear the excitement from people who support this committee’s efforts to bring high-speed rail to the U.S.
He recalled a time “not so long ago when rail spectators used to literally line the tracks and watch the Milwaukee Road’s streamlined Hiawathas pass through communities. The Twin Cities Hiawatha ran from Chicago through Milwaukee to St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1947, and was one of the first steam locomotive trains capable of exceeding 100 mph. It is now part of Amtrak’s Empire Builder route. The Milwaukee’s main competitors were the Burlington’s Zephyr trains and the Chicago and North Western’s Twin Cities 400. The Zephyr trains, unlike the Hiawathas, were diesel-powered. On May 26, 1934, the Pioneer Zephyr set a speed record for travel between Denver and Chicago when it made a 1,015-mile non-stop “Dawn-to-Dusk” run in 13 hours 5 minutes at an average speed of 77 mph. For one section of the run it reached a speed of 112.5 mph, just short of the then U.S. land speed record of 115 mph.”
Oberstar said, “The 400, later named the Twin Cities 400, was so named for traveling 400 miles between Chicago and St. Paul in 400 minutes. At its inception in 1935, Time magazine dubbed the 400, “the fastest train scheduled on the American continent, fastest in all the world on a stretch over 200 miles.” You couldn’t drive 400 miles in 400 minutes – it was that fast.”
Things changed – a lot.
“Unfortunately, over the years, numerous railroad bankruptcies ended much of this service, but today we are on the verge of a new rail renaissance. At the end of the 110th Congress, we enacted the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, which laid the foundation for the $8 billion included in the recovery act for high-speed rail. As the President stated in his Vision for High-Speed Rail, that $8 billion was a down payment on a more permanent high-speed rail program.”
The Surface Transportation Authorization Act, which he unveiled in June, “makes the President’s vision a reality by providing $50 billion over six years for high-speed rail corridor development. It also provides funding for planning high-speed rail projects and for research, development, and demonstration of high-speed rail. As we have heard there is a clear need for a $50 billion program because the FRA has received requests totaling $57 billion from states for approximately $8 billion that is available.”
The senior representative pointed out that “over the past 50 years, the federal government has invested nearly $1.3 trillion in our nation’s highways and over $473 billion in aviation. However, only since 1970, when Congress created Amtrak, did we begin a grant program for passenger rail. Since that time we have invested just $53 billion dollars in passenger rail – that is only a small fraction of what European and Asian countries have invested. Without question, the U.S. lags significantly behind the rest of the world when it comes to high-speed rail.”
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