(The following story by Rick Montgomery appeared on The Kansas City Star website on March 6, 2009.)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For decades in Tokyo, high-speed rail has meant 180 miles an hour.
Years from now in Kansas City, it just might mean getting to St. Louis by train almost as fast as you can get there by car.
That’s the best-case scenario should Missouri win a chunk of the Obama administration’s multibillion-dollar commitment to speeding up train travel in America.
The president’s funding plans, totaling $13 billion nationwide over five years, have been derided by Republicans as excessive. Transportation experts, however, said the money wouldn’t be enough to pay for a single bullet train.
“Not even $13 billion gets us to being Europe,” said Ross Capon, president of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, an advocacy group. “It’s a matter of going from first to second base, which is the way it has to be,” given how far this nation’s passenger rail systems lag behind others around the globe.
Consider Missouri’s only “high-speed rail corridor” as designated by the U.S. Department of Transportation: The 275-mile Union Pacific route across the state’s midsection, which carries Amtrak, is structurally capable of handling a top speed of 79 mph.
That’s less than half the pace of bullet trains in Japan, Europe and parts of Asia.
According to a 2004 study by the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, the Union Pacific track could be upgraded to allow for speeds of 90 mph — but no higher — without tearing everything up and starting from scratch. That modest improvement could cost upward of a billion bucks, Missouri railroad administrator Rod Massman said.
It would shave the Amtrak ride to St. Louis by about 90 minutes — bringing the trip with all its stops to a not-so-brisk four hours and 14 minutes, barring delays.
“We think it’s feasible someday to fly along at 90 miles an hour … but it’s going to take baby steps to get there,” Massman said.
In any event, Missouri will seek high-speed rail funds from the federal government.
Here and across the country, the problem for high-speed trains rests in the combination of the infrastructure (19th-century technology buffed up over the years) and entities that own that infrastructure (usually private freight companies).
To build afresh the advanced, high-banking, steel-wheel lines that carry passengers in Europe would cost roughly $40 million per mile, according to federal estimates.
At that price, the entirety of Obama’s $13 billion commitment could be spent taking Kansas Citians to St. Louis in about two hours.
“We are where we are because of where we’ve been,” said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari. “Our rail system has functioned on a private ownership model going back to the 1800s. In the much more compact countries of Europe, they work on a government model.”
Making good on a campaign promise, Obama worked a last-minute injection of $8 billion into the economic stimulus package for developing a network of passenger trains capable of going 110 mph or faster. His proposed transportation budget includes $5 billion for the same purpose.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman, has several weeks to draft guidelines for states to apply for the high-speed and intercity rail grants. The government has designated 11 clusters of rail lines eligible for the funds. Missouri is part of the Chicago hub network, which links the Windy City by high-speed rail to cities in eight states.