(The Associated Press circulated the following story by Jan Dennis on September 14.)
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Seven hours after boarding a train in Kansas City, Douglas Lewandowski finally arrived at Chicago’s Union Station — rested after the 500-mile trip but anxious to get home to Elkhart, Ind.
“How long it takes on these trains is so frustrating,” said Lewandowski, 55. “I’d be more likely to take more trains if they were faster, but I’m afraid I’ll be 6 feet under before that ever happens.”
While sleek new passenger trains streak through Europe, Japan and other corners of the world at speeds nearing 200 mph, most U.S. passenger trains chug along at little more than highway speeds — slowed by a half-century of federal preference for spending on roads and airports.
But advocates say millions of Americans may be ready to embrace high-speed rail for everything from business travel to vacations because of soaring gas prices, airport delays and congested freeways that slow travel and contribute to air pollution.
Still, getting trains moving fast enough, and in enough places, to entice travelers is a funding and logistical challenge.
Track and safety improvements for already-proposed projects could cost billions of dollars — and require reprioritizing of federal transportation funds.
Congress is considering a six-year Amtrak funding bill co-sponsored by 40 senators that would provide the first matching federal grants for rail projects. The measure proposes $100 million in first-year grants, paltry considering that California alone needs $40 billion for a mammoth bullet train project that would link San Francisco and Sacramento with Los Angeles and San Diego.
Some argue federal money would be better spent to research electric-powered cars and other cutting-edge travel alternatives, rather than the ribbons of steel that triggered America’s westward expansion in the 1800s.
“Solutions to our current problems have to be found, not imposed from previous centuries. High-speed rail is just a polished version of 19th-century technology,” said William Garrison, co-author of “Tomorrow’s Transportation” and a retired civil-engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
But supporters contend high-speed trains could be an important alternative, rivaling even air travel once home-to-airport travel times and delays caused by airport security measures are taken into account.
Few envision U.S. high-speed rail would stretch coast to coast or match the dizzying speeds of other countries in the next few decades, even if Congress approves the matching funds for intercity rail projects.
Instead, supporters see most trains running at about 110 mph between major cities 200 to 300 miles apart, similar to Amtrak’s Acela line that trimmed about a half-hour from the usual four-hour trip from Boston to New York and about 15 minutes from the three-hour ride from New York to Washington.
The 6-year-old Acela Express is the only U.S. rail line that tops the 125 mph considered “high speed” by international standards.
And even supporters concede it barely qualifies, hitting its maximum 150 mph for less than 20 miles from Boston to Washington, D.C., and averaging just 86 mph over the full 456-mile run.
Even so, Acela’s ridership rose 20 percent in May as gasoline prices topped $3 a gallon nationwide; also, Amtrak is poised for its fifth straight year of ridership gains this year.
California has proposed the nation’s most ambitious plan: a 700-mile electric-powered train that would run at up to 220 mph from San Francisco to San Diego, cutting the roughly 9-hour drive to about 3-1/2 hours on the train.