Map Chat: Amtrak's "Big" Plans
Amtrak has big plans for railway expansion, but it's still just a shadow of Asia and Europe.
Amtrak is an interested railway provider. In some ways, it’s similar to the U.S. Postal Service. It’s federally owned and operated, and yet it’s intentionally hamstrung by the same federal government that keeps it alive. It’s been in a perpetual state of limbo for the last 40 years. But now we have a President and Secretary of Transportation who want to change that… a little.
But first some background on Amtrak. While Europe, China, Japan, and so many others have expansive train networks that haul millions of passengers around daily, Amtrak does not. And the primary reason for this is, outside of the NE corridor. Amtrak doesn’t own any of its own railway. Instead they’ve signed a series of complicated deals with Union Pacific, BNSF, and other rail freight haulers to use tracks that they have no control over. This prevents the trains from traveling at high speeds and it causes constant train delays as Amtrak’s sit and wait for freight trains to move. So you can see understand why Amtrak is probably never going to be a European-style high speed rail network. It just can’t. Not until it gets its own track built out across the country.
Enter the Connect US plan as laid out in the above map and you can start to see how Amtrak is starting to prioritize its rail lines. Instead of pouring resources into a national network, it’s focusing on key corridors. My own backyard, the Pacific Northwest, is already home to a train that runs from Eugene to Vancouver, but it’s slow often held up by frieght trains, and otherwise just doesn’t run very often. This plan would help bolster that line and others around the country by investing $75 billion into Amtrak. No small sum, but still not nearly enough, especially considering California’s high speed rail network is costing the state over $60 billion just for phase 1.
Anyway, I don’t have too much more to add to this map chat aside from that, despite the recent progress, we have so far to go when it comes to building out a world class high speed rail network. In truth, the USA and Amtrak may never get there, but at least they’re actually trying again.