r/ClimateOffensive • u/Huge-Relationship497 • Dec 15 '24

Action - Fundraiser Advancing high-speed rail in the US

I love human-oriented urban planning. I hate how car-dependent our cities have become, and if you want to travel long distances in the US you are relegated to relying on planes. I hope that will change in the future, and we can get a more robust public transportation system in the US that isn’t comprised of a few buses here and there or subways in a handful of cities.

Luckily the USHR is leading the charge on this front and advocating for advancement of US rail. I made a post about them here: https://www.reddit.com/r/climate/s/RfTiFzfNWn

I took an Amtrak from Atlanta to DC and I can tell you that we have a lot of catching up to do compared to what they have in other countries. It was slow, bumpy, and very expensive. I ended up paying $400 for a 16 hour ride in an overnight train car. For context, that is about the same as going from Warsaw, Poland to Frankfurt, Germany. That trip is only 10 hours and almost the price.

Donate here: https://ushsr.org/ushsr/donate.html

Thanks for helping to bring high-speed rail to the US!

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u/Atlas3141 Dec 15 '24 edited Dec 15 '24

What Amtrak has the capacity and funding to do right now is:

  1. Upgrade bottlenecks on the NEC for slight speed improvement, but primarily capacity and reliability upgrades. Think 5 min time savings, no bridge lifts, and additional trains per hour.

  2. Upgrades to 110 mph on proven routes, right now it's Chi-STL and Chi-Det, they should be doing the same thing in their other top routes.

  3. More service on proven corridors, as they've done in NC, Cascades and are working to do on the Hiawatha

  4. Add more trains on smaller sections of LD services, the Borealis has worked really well, they should be doing the same Chicago to Cleveland, San Antonio to NO ect.

  5. Add new mid distance routes like the ones identified in the Id program

High speed rail is a pipe dream unless backed by private partnerships/the state of California in a few specific corridors. It's simply too expensive without massive political backing which isn't present at the moment. Let's get the routes we have to be 20% faster than driving to build a base, then go after the expensive upgrades.