Proposed High Speed Rail Lines

Proposed High Speed Rail lines plans in the USA started in 1965 with the High-Speed Ground Transportation Act. The Metroliner that runs between Boston and Washington DC was the first high speed service. High-speed rail is usually defined as over 110 miles per hour. Here is a list of some future plans.

California[edit]

CA Proposition 1A, passed in November 2008 authorized a high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles through the Central Valley. ^[1]. The plan was to use dedicated, grade separated tracks with speeds up to 220 miles per hour, and would attract 28 million passengers per year. The intent was for the line to pay for at least the operating costs. Construction began in 2015, before the route plan was completed and all approvals had been secured. The price continued to increase from the originally forecast 33.6 billion in 2008 to between 63.2 billion and 98.1 billion dollars, and the schedule was delayed by many years.^[2] In 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the project would be cut back to just the Central Valley, despite the money already sunk into the project and that this line would not provide as many positive impacts travelling from the relatively small cities of Bakersfield and Merced, only a 2.5 hour drive already. ^[3]

New York State[edit]

New York already has high-speed rail between Albany-Rensselaer and New York City Future plans include using the NYS thruway I90 right of way to provide high-speed passenger train travel to Buffalo NY, Niagara Falls NY and maybe to the PA state line. ^[4]

Northwest and North Central[edit]

Future plans for a High-speed rail line from Chicago IL to Portland OR and Seattle WA. Part of this plan is to locate some of the high-speed rail lines in the proposed I98 right of way starting where new I98 crosses the existing Amtrak rails in MN and rejoining the existing rails near I15 in MT; if Western section of the I98 Interstate highway is built.

Pennsylvania[edit]

Future high-speed rail between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are planned as part of the Keystone Corridor. High-speed rail services already exist between Philadelphia and Harrisburg.

Southeast[edit]

Plans for extending the high-speed rails used by the Metroliner from Washington DC to Atlanta GA and Jacksonville FL are in the works. ^[5]

References[edit]