Why doesn’t high speed rail work in America?

By Chris Isidore, CNN

(CNN) — American railroads were once the envy of the world and the engine of its industrial age. But that hasn’t been the case for more than half a century.

Brightline, founded in 2012, wanted to change all that. The Florida private rail company ran yellow trains at near high speed between Miami and Orlando. It has big plans to launch another line with true high speed 200 mph trains making the 200-mile trip between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, California, just outside of Los Angeles.

Then it filed for bankruptcy last month after not making enough money to cover its debts. But the railroad is still operating its Florida service and moving ahead with plans for the true high speed trains between Las Vegas and Southern California.

High speed passenger rail is common around the globe, from major countries like Japan, France and China, all the way to emerging economies like Morocco.

The United States is a glaring exception, with no passenger trains that meet the global definition of high speed, or that run at least 150 mph for extended trips.

That’s partly cultural — America is a country of cars. But the main reason high speed rail hasn’t happened in the United States is due to a lack of government resources, according to leading high speed rail advocate Lou Thompson.

Foreign governments “wanted high speed rail, and they were willing to pay for it,” Thompson, who was involved in the formation of Amtrak in the early 1970s and served as railways advisor to the World Bank, told CNN. “Our government has never met those two conditions.”

All that government support instead went to the nation’s interstate highways and air traffic system. That is partly due to public need — America needed reliable ways to move people and goods across a fast- growing country after World War II.

But it’s also partly due to the powerful business forces behind the highways and skyways: the auto, oil and construction industries in the case of highways, and the airlines and aerospace companies when it comes to air travel.

The lobbying from these industries essentially pushed high-speed rail “into the background in order to keep funding roads and aviation,” said Andy Kunz, CEO of advocacy group US High Speed Rail.

There’s also the problem of geography. The United States is large, and its major cities are further apart than many of the countries with built-out high speed rail.

“Once you get much beyond 400 miles (between destinations), then high speed rail begins to lose out to air because then air becomes faster (in the United States),” Thompson said. “It’s amazing how far you can go in Europe in 400 miles. Most of the major cities are within that kind of distance. That’s true in Japan as well.”

Also, when you don’t have the infrastructure built between major cities, it’s difficult to build the ridership necessary to sustain high speed rail service.

In Japan, for example, hundreds of millions of people a year ride their high-speed trains. The maximum demand predicated for California is about 30 million or 35 million, Thompson said. Amtrak’s Acela rail service between Washington and Boston carries 12 million people a year, he said.

“When you get hundreds of millions of people a year or billions of people a year, then the economic shift pretty significantly,” he said

There are some options for faster rail service in the United States. Amtrak’s NextGen Acela train, which just started running a month ago, can reach 160 mph. Even in bankruptcy, Brightline still operates the Orlando and Miami line that tops speeds of 125 mph.

But both have limits. The Acela can only hit that speed in short bursts. Brightline only hits its top speed during a 38-mile stretch near Orlando.

Brightline had hoped for more government support for its buildout in Florida and its western line, as well as more passengers in Florida. Its quarterly reports show it carried 1.8 million passengers in the second quarter, up 16% from a year earlier.

Despite the lack of US high speed rail success in the past, it believes it can still be a successful business going forward, saying that on an operating basis, it was already making money some months. The company is on record saying its bankruptcy filing should help it move forward with its plans by shedding some of its debt. And it says no tax dollars will be lost due to the filing.

Meanwhile, a publicly funded American high speed rail project meant to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco is years behind schedule and billions over budget. The project has “reached a dead end,” said Thompson, who served on a peer review group overseeing the project for the California legislator.

Kunz said he’s still hopeful about the future of high-speed rail in the country. If a project like Brightline’s Los Angeles to Las Vegas line opens, he thinks it will increase demand for the service elsewhere.

Private investment alone isn’t the answer, said Thompson, adding that it’s not realistic to think high speed rail can be built and operated without some significant form of government support.

“The value of high-speed rail is partly for people riding it … but it’s also partly social things like reduced pollution, reduced noise, better safety, or better land use,” he said. “There are a lot of other lot of other public benefits that the rider won’t and shouldn’t pay for.”

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