Could Donald Trump be the president who brings high-speed rail to America?
The Obama administration spent nearly $10 billion to improve passenger rail service across the country. While it accomplished that goal to some degree, it did not build the faster trains passengers can ride in Europe, Japan and China.
Trains in other countries can travel 200 mph or more, but no train in the United States as yet travels faster than 150 mph. Most go much more slowly than that.
Trump has proposed a $1 trillion investment in U.S. infrastructure, and he has expressed interest in improving roads, bridges, airports and passenger trains.
The subject came up in a White House news conference Friday with Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
Through a translator, Abe said Trump would make “major-scale investments” in infrastructure, including high-speed rail.
He said Japanese technology could cut the travel time between Washington and New York to one hour from the current three.
Before a meeting with airline executives on Thursday, Trump had openly lamented the lack of high-speed rail in the United States.
“I don’t want to compete with your business,” Trump said, “but we don’t have one fast train.”
He fully understands the value of rail investment and the ability of rail to move lots of people in and out, which is very promising.
Andy Kunz, U.S. High Speed Rail Association
Funding, though, remains a huge hurdle. Trump hasn’t been very specific about how he’d pay for these investments, other than to say the private sector would have a more important role. Getting federal money could be difficult, as a Republican-led Congress is expected to look aggressively for ways to save money.
Political and regulatory barriers, such as those recently experienced in California, can discourage private interests from spending the massive amount of capital that’s needed upfront.
Giving private participants certainty about their investment would remove one of the biggest barriers to getting projects off the ground, said Rob Puentes, president and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, a Washington policy group.
“The private folks will take on ridership risks, things they can control,” he said. “It’s the things they can’t control.”
Trump, a Manhattan real estate developer, knows well from his own personal and business experience as a native of the nation’s largest city about the ability of rail systems to move people around and between dense population centers.
“He fully understands the value of rail investment and the ability of rail to move lots of people in and out, which is very promising,” said Andy Kunz, president and CEO of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, a trade group.
Trump’s remarks drew praise from one of his biggest critics, and one of high-speed rail’s biggest promoters, Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown. “California’s ready,” he tweeted Thursday.