Pivot - Future of Travel: Is High-Speed Rail Finally Happening in the U.S.?

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

All aboard for Pivot's special series on the future of travel, examining the big changes coming to the way we get around the world! Will 2024 be the year that high-speed rail becomes reality in the United States? How did the U.S. get so far behind other countries? And what cities have the best train systems? On this episode, Kara and Scott talk trains with Yonah Freemark, the principal research associate at the Urban Institute, who also writes the blog, The Transport Politic. Follow Yonah at @yfreemark Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. And you're listening to our special three-part series on the future of travel, where we look at the business and tech trends that are impacting how we make our way through the world. We'll be covering planes, trains, and yes, automobiles. Today, we're hitting the rails to tackle trains at a pivotal time for high-speed rail in this country. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently said people have been dreaming of high-speed rail in America country. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently said people have been dreaming of high-speed rail in America for decades.

It's really happening this time. But is it? Here to enlighten us about the future of train travel is Yonah Fremark. Yonah is a researcher at the Urban Institute and also writes the blog, The Transport Politic. Yonah, welcome.

Thanks so much for having me. So do you agree with Secretary Buttigieg that 2024 is the year that high-speed rail finally becomes a reality? I'm going to read some progress updates. The Biden administration announced $8.2 billion in new funding for 10 major rail projects across the country in December. Amtrak's new faster Acela trains were cleared for testing back in January after many delays. And most recently, private rail service Brightline West broke ground in April for a high-speed 218-mile route between Las Vegas and Southern California. Other countries have had fast trains for years. So just for people who don't know, Japan's bullet

trains started running in the 1960s. France's high-speed rail began in the 80s. China's network covers 2,500 miles and expected to double in length by 2035. So talk a little bit about Buttigieg's, finally we're here. Well, you know, I think it all depends on the definition of being here when it comes to high speed rail, right? You know, the United States used to lead the world in terms of its inner city rail system. We had an enormous network of inner city trains that connected passengers from everywhere to everywhere, frequent trains on major corridors, and people relied on the inner city rail system to get them around. And, you know, I think running into World War II, there was a lot of optimism about the U.S. moving forward. And

actually, there was some experimentation with really fast trains. And even in the post-war period, we started to see some acceleration of some of the corridors like New York to Washington, D.C. Some of that acceleration went up to speeds of, you know, up to 140 miles per hour or so, which in some ways might be defined as high-speed rail. So I'm not sure that this is the year for high-speed rail, but certainly we have seen some major advancements coming from the federal administration that are pushing high-speed rail forward. And I expect to see those having some positive effect in the decades to come. But why so slow? Well, in the years following World War II, instead of investing simultaneously in a national roadway system and in a national railway system, the United States made a really fateful choice, which was to invest far more money, I mean, massively more money in the creation of the interstate highway system. And that interstate highway system is, of course, the system that almost every American

relies on every day to get around. It's the system of roadways that connects every city and state, much like the inner city railway system that preceded it. But the choice to invest massively in the interstate highway system rather than also investing in a city railway system, meant that after World War II, the railway system degraded massively to a point where it had to be nationalized in the late 1960s. And that led to the creation of Amtrak. Right, right.

Now, to be fair, the highway system is better than in other countries. It really is. When you travel, I travel quite a bit, and we just pick the car, essentially, correct? We pick the car over the train, despite our history of train-loving, for example, or trains being important to our growth. car travel as the means of transportation for Americans. That choice actually to some degree was made in opposition to inner city rail because of a fear that the inner city rail companies were trusts, that they were sort of oligarchic organizations that were taking away from Americans. And in some ways, the free interstate highway system was seen as a progressive

alternative to that. It's funny in retrospect that that was the perspective taken because there are a lot of reasons to think that investment in inner city rail would have benefited the United States quite substantially. Scott? Nice to meet you. So the Elizabeth line in London, the trains in Seoul, in Tokyo, even I took the Metro in Moscow. And I've always just sort of been blown away. And I've always thought in terms of a country's brand, and that is people's impression of whether this nation has its act together, there's few things that are more impactful in terms of the airports and the subway or the local train system. But I'd love to just

hear, as an expert here, stack rank what you think are the best local train system. But I'd love to just hear, as an expert here, stack rank what you think are the best local train systems or subway systems and what they've been able to do that we've had trouble doing. So for example, I go to Los Angeles a lot and I keep seeing the new trains. I've heard nobody takes it. I've heard no one takes it. I think it's called the Metro. What are the best or most inspiring for you? And what is it we need to do? And what are we missing? Why aren't we better at this on a local level? Well, there are a number of reasons why U.S. cities have struggled to encourage people to take public transportation or to have effective public transportation systems.

You know, fundamentally, you can look at investment from a government perspective in inner city rail versus automobile systems. You know, fundamentally, you can look at investment from a government perspective in inner city rail versus automobile systems. The United States has historically and continues to invest far more in our highway system than in public transportation or high or inner city rail as a percentage of GDP and just overall per capita. That has some major consequences on the choices that people make on a day-to-day basis. If you invest substantially more in one mode of transportation than another, people will respond with the system that they feel is a higher quality and is

better able to serve their needs. The second is that in the United States, we have chosen from a policy perspective to do very little to encourage concentration of investment and of people and jobs in the core areas of our metropolitan regions. This means that we've allowed our metropolitan regions to spread out quite dramatically in a way that is unlike that what you see in Europe or Asia. More concentrated. Yes, absolutely. Where the cities are more concentrated. And if you're thinking about

the recipe to create a public transportation or any inner city rail system that is effective and that attracts passengers, and that has a high cost efficiency in terms of, you know, being able to serve as many passengers as possible, our decision as a nation to sort of allow the spreading of our regions out into, frankly, former agricultural or natural land has some major negative consequences on our transportation system. This is obviously very much related to the fact that the United States is a considerably less equal society, which has consequences in terms of people's unwillingness to live near to one another. You know, in the research that I do on racial and social segregation,

the United States performs worse in a lot of ways when you look geographically at how people are living. And that too has consequences on decisions about investment. We have much more concentration of poverty and people who are non-white in our center cities than we see in Europe. And that has an effect on people's willingness to invest in, you know, public transportation in those places. That said, I, you know, I do think it's worth pointing out that we do have success stories in the United States. I think you're, you know, the New York City subway, despite challenges, remains an incredibly attractive public transportation system that serves millions and millions of people every day. The Washington DC metro is also a very successful system that has oriented the region's growth around it. If you look at where growth has occurred in the

Washington DC region, you see almost spines coming out along the metro rail system. So we do have some success in the United States, but it is rare. Yeah. So what is the biggest obstacle to make high-speed rail happen? And how long would it take to build? You said decades, correct, to build a successful system? I mean, there's one thing to build a Las Vegas train. I get it. Like, I get why people might use that. But what's the most important obstacle and how long to get to something? Well, you know, I guess it depends on what we define as a system. If we mean a national system like the interstate highway system, you know, to be fair, it took about two decades for the interstate highway system to be largely complete from its origin in 1956 to roughly the mid-1970s. So even that took a really long time to be implemented. And you could expect a similarly

long time for a national high-speed rail system to be implemented if there was the sort of capacity and financial interest in making that possible. You know, when you look at other countries, you can see that in some cases they're able to advance on the creation of national inner city or high-speed rail systems much more rapidly. You know, China went from having no high-speed rail in 2008 to having a system that's more than 25,000 miles long. Well, they can do things like that because it's an authoritarian state. But what's the biggest, is democracy the biggest problem? What's the problem? Yeah, so I think China is sort of at the far end of what is feasible.

But if you look at countries like Spain, which has developed a very substantial high-speed rail network. Madrid is amazing. Madrid Metro is amazing. Yeah, so Spain has a wonderful network of both local public transportation and high-speed rail. It has the longest high-speed rail network in Europe now. It has developed relatively rapidly over the past decade or so. And this isn't a country that has a much lower GDP per capita than the United States. So they've been able to concentrate resources and do it efficiently. I think there are a few key reasons that Spain has been able to do that. So number one, they have a very well

resourced public sector in the form of something called Adif, which is sort of the infrastructure owner in Spain. They manage and construct the Spanish high-speed rail and inner-city rail system, and are able to do that with an incredibly large team of engineers that is far larger, not even per capita, just in terms of basic size, than Amtrak or the Federal Railroad Administration. So we have one major problem in the United States, which is this lack of public sector capacity to lead in the investment in a new type of transportation. We have an enormous number of folks working in state departments of transportation who are charged with designing and building highways. We know how to do that because we've been spending the last 70 years training folks in state engineering schools. So, you know, we need to develop a public sector

that has the capacity there. The second thing I would say is we need a long-term funding commitment. The Biden administration and the Congress in 2021 passed this major infrastructure law, which provided more than $60 billion for inner city rail systems. That is certainly a large amount of money, and it is larger than anything we've seen from the federal government since the 1970s. However, that has two issues associated with it. Number one, it pales in comparison again with the amount of money we're spending on the interstate highway system, much, much more money on the highway system. And second, there's no long-term commitment from the

federal government to fund that into the future. In other words, we don't know whether in 2027, when the infrastructure law expires, whether there's going to be more money available for the funding of new inner-city rail or high-speed rail lines. So what we need is a long-term commitment from the Congress that says we're going to dedicate a guaranteed amount of money so that we can plan into the future. And that's one thing that's really important about these major infrastructure projects.

Nobody expects and nobody can really build a high-speed rail system in five years. A lot of people don't realize there's private alternatives. There's a company, Brightline, that's taking the reign on these projects. Amtrak is a federally chartered corporation. It's operated and managed as a for-profit company. But the U.S. government is the controlling shareholder.

So essentially, a government entity is bringing it private. That's happened in space. We've had great jumps, leaps, and innovation because private has taken over. Although there's issues around that, obviously. Is that one of the answers? I think we've seen a mix of models for the development of inner city rail in the United States and abroad. In some countries like Spain, a purely public sector model has been quite effective. In other countries like France, there have been public-private partnerships

to invest in the building of new lines. So just to give you an example of that, the line that was built between Paris and Bordeaux that opened in the late 2010s involved a public-private partnership with a substantial share of private investment coming in and leading the project through design-build investment. So I think that both approaches are feasible and Brightline is an interesting example of, in my view, a public-private partnership.

Brightline is a private company, but it is relying on very large amounts of federally guaranteed low-interest loans and large federal grants to achieve both the line that it has built in Florida between Miami and Orlando, and its proposed line between Las Vegas and the suburbs of Los Angeles. So I think that there are huge opportunities for public-private partnerships. I also think that Amtrak, you know, could play a major role here. So, you know, hopefully we see a sort of

a variety of approaches as the inner city rail system begins to develop in the United States. OK, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about how sustainability factors into all this. And we'll ask Yona for a few predictions. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer

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each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Send money to people you know and trust. Scott, we're back with our special series on the future of travel. We're talking trains with the Urban Institute's Iona Fremark. Let's talk about sustainability. How does that factor into these conversations and plans? And where is the route that you think could actually have a big impact? Well, you know, transportation is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States right now, and in actually most developed countries, because we've been able to

successfully reduce the carbon impact of our energy systems through the introduction of renewable power and nuclear power in some cases. We've also improved the energy efficiency of buildings through better appliances and things of that sort. So our transportation system remains a major problem because it is incredibly reliant on fossil fuels. Rail systems have this great characteristic, which is that they can be easily powered by electricity. And in fact, the fastest inner city and high speed rail systems in the world are all powered by electricity. And in fact, the fastest inner city and high-speed rail systems in

the world are all powered by electricity. And electricity allows trains to move more quickly without any of the localized negative environmental consequences of fossil fuel emissions. So there are some major benefits to investing in electrified high-speed rail, but it is something that the United States has been really slow at. Just to give you an example of this, the new corridor between Miami and Orlando that is operated by Brightline, which is a system that runs up to about 120 miles per hour and it averages about 70 miles per hour, is still operating on diesel fuel. Okay, so it's actually producing greenhouse gas emissions through its operation. But electrified high speed rail, which would allow trains to operate up to

200 or 220 miles per hour, has the great advantage of being able to rely on renewable power to be able to serve customers and not pollute the areas around them. So there are a lot of environmental benefits to electrified high speed rail, but it's something that we are quite far behind on in terms of actually implementing. That said, you know, it's really fascinating to see what's happened in India over the past decade, which is that there was a decision made by the government of India to electrify their rail network. And the Indian Railway Network went from, I believe, about half electrified to almost entirely electrified in about a decade.

And that was a systematic choice by the Indian government to move to electrification, which has great environmental benefits. Yeah. One of the things that people don't realize is that Brightline is owned by Fortress, which is a private equity fund, which has big investments from Abu Dhabi and SoftBank, correct?

So it's not U.S. investors here. Not only U.S. investors, yeah. Let me ask another question. So I want you to name your favorite subway systems. I'm going to name mine. Number three, Madrid. Number two, actually, Mexico. You don't hear that a lot.

It has a fantastic subway system. Something about people speaking Spanish, just saying, great underground infrastructure. My favorite though, my favorite, Yona, Yona, my favorite, the BTS SkyTrain. I went to Bangkok about 20 years ago and thought it is impossible to get around this city. This city is never going to be a world-class city. They built this elevated train line. And I literally think it changed the entire complexion of the city. It's just such an incredible example of the return on investment you can get in great infrastructure. Anyways, your turn, your favorites. Okay. Well, just sort of continue on your Bangkok theme. I do love the subway system in Singapore. It is a wonderful, beautiful system.

It's automated entirely, which means that the trains are able to operate at extremely high cost efficiency. It serves the city extremely well. It has these beautiful stations that are surrounded by tropical flora. And it's just a wonderful system to visit. I guess another one that I really enjoy actually is in Montreal, which was built... You're a sexy beast. We weren't expecting that. Montreal, say more. Montreal is, for those who love brutalist architecture, it is kind of a wonderful place to visit. It has, you know, it's not new. The Montreal subway system was built in the 60s and 70s for the most part. But it has these beautiful trains and these really interesting stations with really nice architecture and wonderful art all around them.

And, you know, I think Montreal subway system is an example of what can be done in the North American context. You can produce a really effective, very high ridership system at relatively low costs. And that was done really well in Montreal. And then my last favorite system is Paris, where I've spent five years of my life. So I have a lot of experience in Paris. It's just my personal connection with Paris is very close. And obviously, I love the Parisian metro system, which is currently undergoing a 120-mile expansion that is underway right now with four new lines and many new extensions. So- It needs something to get you to the airport. It's a nightmare to get to the airport there. So just a follow up question. What city in the US do you think is ripest would could recognize the same type of return that BTS or Bangkok is recognized? If you were to say to the Biden administration, this is the city where you get the greatest return on a substantial investment in an underground railway system, which city do you think is ripest? Well, that's a difficult question to answer. But you mentioned Los Angeles before. And Los Angeles has invested in a light rail and metro system, which, as you noted or not, super well used.

It's not to say that they're not unused. The transit system in Los Angeles carries more than a million people a day, even now in the post-COVID situation. So it's not unused at all. But there are some major corridors in Los Angeles that if a new subway line could be provided would dramatically change people's life. And the biggest example of that is what's called the Semple Veda Corridor, which runs from the valley through the canyon to UCLA and then down to the airport. That is correct. That's where they need it. And that corridor is the 405. It is extremely congested at every point of the day throughout the entire year. For those who've ever been to the Getty, it runs right past the Getty. And that is a wonderful opportunity for a new subway line. I agree.

That is the spot. That is exactly where it should be, right along the coast there. It's interesting. I'm going to say my favorite, which is always the New York City subway. I'm sorry. I just love it. And also, one of the things I did research on earlier this year was Alfred Ely Beach, who has the first underground transit.

The pneumatic railway? The pneumatic railway. It never went anywhere. I love a failure. It was called the Beach Pneumatic Transit. And it went 300 feet under Broadway, I guess. And I just feel like this guy was a real technologist. You know, he was a journalist, too. He has journalism background. But a real, this idea of this, doing this, it's astonishing what they built way back when in New York. Same thing with London, by the way. The London tube is really quite, and Russia. We left out Moscow, which I think is a really interesting subway system. But let me finish up a prediction. Where do you see

high-speed rail in five years, 10 years? And what's your craziest prediction of what could happen? I mean, hovercrafts, vertical lift and takeoff vehicles, trains in the air kind of thing? The most optimistic prediction is that by 2030, we'll see a high-speed rail corridor between Los Angeles and Las Vegas actually being used by folks and providing service at up to 200 miles per hour. That is something that was funded this year, 2024. And it may seem like a long time from now, but these projects take forever to get underway and get going.

But if we are able to get a true high-speed rail line in operation in the United States, I think it could give folks throughout the country an idea of what this service looks like for those who have never been to Europe or Asia and don't know what that can look like. If that is successful, I think we could see a groundswell of interest from communities all throughout the country to see better service connecting their communities. Which ones? Which are the most? Well, there are huge opportunities in the Midwest, just to give you an example. From

Cleveland to Cincinnati through Columbus, these are very large population centers with relatively dense urban cores that could definitely use inner city rail. Between Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis, this is an incredible corridor with large cities between them that could be really well connected with high-speed rail. Yeah, Motor City there, right? So Motor City, all through all those areas. That's such a heavy car use there. It is. But also, you know, the Midwest was built on trains, streetcars, inner-city rail, et cetera. We can go back to that time if we sort of reorient our mindset around what's possible

and get the right engineers in place to actually make these systems feasible. So I'm optimistic. Okay. What's your wackiest prediction? Hyperloop? Is it coming finally? No, I'm kidding. Hyperloop is certainly not coming. Elon Musk is a fraud, just to be entirely honest. And that is what that is. I think... Wow. That took a turn. That's how you get invited back to Pivot. Go on. You know, I've done a lot of research on autonomous vehicles, and I'm not opposed to autonomous vehicles, and I think there's a lot of opportunity there. So, you know, I'm not super against it. But, you know, one thing that's remarkable is that our train systems can be automated far more easily than our automobile system.

And if you look at other countries, you'll see that their new metros are almost entirely automated. That's not true in the United States. But I think we have a huge opportunity in our subway systems in New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, etc, to automate. So that's what I want to see. Anyway, thank you so much, Yonah Fremark, from the Urban Institute. And you can check out his blog, The Transport Politic. Trains are cool. You do know tech people do love trains, though. Some of them, they really love them.

Some of them, on a good day. On a good day. But they like the routes. They like it has a lot of compute, how you figure out where routes go. That's what they're interested in, is the maps more than the trains. Anyway, Scott, that's it for part one of our three-part series on the future of travel. We've given you trains, and we'll be digging into planes and automobiles next. Read us out. Today's episode was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertide engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew

Rosen, Neil Severio, and Nishat Khar Karouaz, Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.