A new history of high-speed rail takes on a familiar question

Why not here?

In 1962, two years before Japan began running its Shinkansen high-speed trains and launched the modern era of high-speed rail, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke predicted that railways were in their “final chapter.”

The runaway success of Japan’s experiment makes it easy to forget just how dicey the project was in the early 1960s, when cars and airplanes were ascendant. Yet here we are. China has built around 31,000 miles of high-speed line over the past two decades. It intends to have nearly 40,000 by the end of this decade.

China’s achievements are “jaw-dropping,” Christian Wolmar writes in Fast Track, his new history of high-speed rail. He notes that its network of high-speed trains is “on a scale comparable to the building of the pyramids, but rather more useful.”

In a recent webinar with the Alliance, he added that “this is a fantastic story, an exciting story. My contention is that high-speed rail saved the railways. They modernized them and created a new technology that enabled the railways to flourish in the twenty-first century.”

As Wolmar makes clear, the question that’s often asked about HSR—“why can’t we do it here”—isn’t much of a mystery. The countries that build successful HSR networks don’t succeed because of geography, government type, or economics. They succeed because they treat building railroads as a long-term national commitment, insulated from the next election cycle or two.

The US hasn’t made that kind of political commitment to trains in a long time. And political commitment is the whole ballgame.

Fortunately, the possibilities are wide open for changing the debate in D.C. The Alliance is pushing Congress to include the policy ideas and funding commitments outlined in the American High-Speed Rail Act in the new surface transportation bill. We also want Congress to direct the FRA to create a plan for a national railroad network in the bill, which is being debated and will likely pass in 2027— under the new Congress. Learn more here and sign our petition here.

The common bond

Each of the four stars in Wolmar’s narrative—Japan, France, Spain, and China—has played a distinct role in HSR’s development.

Japan pioneered it in the 1960s; France piggybacked on Japan’s success and brought it to Europe in the 1980s; Spain put it at the center of its transportation agenda in the 1990s— and has steadily demonstrated its awesome transformative power ever since; and China has been its great champion and innovator for the past two decades.

One great strength of Fast Track is Wolmar’s myth-busting. HSR skeptics, for example, often say it’s fine for smaller countries—like Japan and Italy and France—but not right for a country like the US, which is “too spread out.” Yet China routinely builds lines of more than a thousand miles. The Beijing-Guangzhou route, for example, runs roughly 1,400 miles—about the distance from New York to Miami. The trains pass through more than 30 cities and the trip takes about eight hours.

The idea that China’s sprawling HSR network has to do mainly with its authoritarian government is a second busted myth. Three of Wolmar’s four narrative stars—Japan, France, and Spain—have some form of democratic government. They’re vastly smaller countries than China, so their networks are smaller. But in relative terms, the scale and speed of their HSR development is comparable.

What unites the countries that do it well isn’t the how but the why. What matters is whether a country’s political leaders grasp the big-picture possibilities and the payoffs of building HSR; have a long-term strategy and plan for translating possibilities into on-the-ground reality; and have a fierce commitment to seeing their strategy and plan through.

This is in sharp contrast to the US, where politicians often focus on whether Amtrak turns a profit when they talk about trains at all. Which is the equivalent of asking whether highways and public schools turn a profit. Like highways and schools, great trains are the foundation for building an economy. It’s not about turning a profit. It’s about giving people better tools and opportunities to improve their lives and connect with others.

Thus, HSR “cannot be solely measured in the economic rate of return on the capital cost,” Wolmar writes. “Given the cost and impact of building these lines, their importance cannot be assessed in terms of merely carrying lots of passengers over long distances. Judging their success or failure requires a far deeper analysis.”

Here to stay

The great irony of Wolmar’s story is that the two countries he singles out for their failures—the US and Britain—were key to HSR’s development in the first half of the twentieth century.

In Britain, a train set a world record in 1939 by breaking the 130 mph barrier. And the US had the 10 fastest regular train services in the world in the 1930s, Wolmar notes, largely due to the innovations of Ralph Budd and the Zephyr trains he launched with “streamlined diesel locomotives,” as well as big investments in the passenger experience.

The rupture of World War II created two very different trajectories. It killed the momentum for train innovation in the US, as the federal government began investing almost exclusively in car and airplane infrastructure. At the same time, the war’s devastation created space and strong incentives for Japan to rethink its approach to transportation from the ground up.

The Shinkansen’s launch, in 1964, was a commitment to rebuilding and unifying the nation—economically, physically, and even spiritually. It was valued and funded as a national project. The same has been true of all countries that have done HSR successfully.

Meanwhile, the model that evolved in the US relies on fragmented, state-led initiatives. And when a state does demonstrate ambition, as with California’s high-speed line, the federal government often proves to be an unreliable partner (at best). The funding—and political commitment—are always uncertain and vulnerable to the results of the next election. Which leads to our cycle of dysfunction and “why can’t we have nice things”hand wringing.

The truth is, we can have HSR—soon—if we choose it. Spain began building its HSR network in the early 1990s. It now has the most operational HSR of any country except for China, which launched its first line less than 20 years ago. It’s just a question of values, politics, and commitment.

Every year of delay reinforces the idea that our car-and-plane status quo is a law of nature. But it isn’t, and high-speed trains will go on winning the twenty-first century. They’re “here to stay and will increase relentlessly in the coming decades,” as Wolmar writes. The only question is whether the US will choose to make the same long-term commitment as Japan, France, Spain, and China did.

The choice starts now: Ask Congress to direct the FRA to create a plan for a national railroad network in the new surface transportation bill, with the policy ideas and funding levels laid out in the American High-Speed Rail Act. Learn more here and sign our petition here.

Note: Fast Track author Christian Wolmar joined the Alliance on August 21 to talk about the history and future of high-speed rail. Watch the video here.

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