Here’s what’s coming down the tracks.
Illinois now says it will have so-called high-speed rail service from Chicago to St. Louis by 2014, which puts that service on Missouri’s doorstep. Eventual plans are to plug Missouri’s cross-state line – the Amtrak line, Kansas City to St. Louis, with stops in Independence and elsewhere – into that Illinois line, part of a Midwest high-speed network.
But is it really high speed? Is it really enough?
Critics point out that the plans now falling into place include getting Amtrak trains up to 110 mph, as opposed to the current top of 79 mph. Those plans make some sense because they involve upgrading current tracks instead of building new corridors, which takes many years and many more dollars, but, again, critics point out that truly high-speed trains in Europe and Asia typically go better than 200 mph.
An example: In less than a year, China will open a high-speed line from Beijing to Shanghai. That’s about the distance from Kansas City to San Antonio, Kansas City to Atlanta or Kansas City to Pittsburgh. At 230 mph, the time from Point A to Point B on the Chinese train will be four hours. Can anyone imagine getting to San Antonio or Pittsburgh as quickly, given how the ever-increasing hassles and built-in delays make flying not only a miserable experience but often not all that efficient either?
It’s easy to overdo the comparisons. China has a lot of people to move, it’s a rapidly rising economic power possessing the wherewithal to invest in these things, and its autocratic government can make a decision and make it happen in short order. America faces a very different set of choices, but China figures to be our main economic and political rival for decades to come, and our economic underpinnings – everything from communications to transportation to schools – will either enhance or impede our competitiveness. How do we keep up?
Back to Missouri: Would high-speed service change the way we travel and do business? Would those improvements be enough to justify the cost? Would this service be faster than the day-long drive to Chicago and at least in the same ballpark as flying? Would it be at least as fast as driving to St. Louis, as compared with Amtrak’s current five and a half hours?
These are among the questions Missouri officials have to wrestle with – in an era of reduced government revenues and diminished expectations – as they press on. Interestingly, two states – Wisconsin and Ohio – recently rejected federal funding for high-speed rail planning. The feds wasted no time in reallocating that money among 14 other states – most of it to California and Florida. But Missouri got another $2.2 million as well. So plans move ahead, slowly for now but perhaps in higher gear later.
