Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about High-Speed Rail

Tomorrow morning, I’m getting on a train from Washington, DC to New York. It’s going to take me almost three-and-a-half hours to get there. Sure, I could pay more for an Acela and get there in less than three hours. But why can’t it take 90 minutes? Yesterday, Amtrak unveiled a plan [PDF] to build […]

What’s the fastest way to travel between Los Angeles and the Bay Area? How about Tampa and Miami? Or Chicago and St. Louis? Siemens is using images of its 230-mph Velaro train to make a direct pitch to airline customers. Image: Ogilvy and Mather Any American would tell you to head for the airport. But […]

Does New York need bullet trains, or just better trains? Photo: Gilliamhome/Flickr Skeptics and boosters of high-speed rail traded views at NYU this Wednesday at a conference notable for the low expectations expressed by many panelists. While the much-heralded potential of 200 mph trains was discussed at length, many speakers, particularly those close to the […]

Three months after the Obama administration announced the first winners of what it hopes will be the first of many federal grants to build U.S. high-speed rail networks, advocates and planners are settling in for a long battle to surmount the obstacles and unknowns that stand in the way of long-term bullet train development. If […]

Image: U.S. PIRG Now that the Obama administration has awarded $8 billion in high-speed rail grants to more than two dozen states, with $2.5 billion more coming soon, why not keep thinking big when it comes to bullet-train expansion? That’s the ethos of a new report released today by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group […]