Air travel isn’t always the most pleasant experience, but recent issues have made it feel even more fraught. In January, a rear door plug flew off of an Alaskan Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 passenger jet mid flight; then, multiple airlines found loose parts on their grounded jets. At the beginning of March, a United Airlines Boeing 777 lost a tire after takeoff; the next day, another United plane’s landing gear collapsed while it was taxiing on the runway.
In a recent Fast Company-Harris Poll, 43% of Americans say these recent incidents have made them more wary of flying. The impact is even more stark by generation: 67% of Gen Zers said traveling by air makes them nervous, and they were also the age group most likely to say they’d adjust their behavior in the wake of recent safety issues, like by selecting a specific seat or paying attention to safety materials.
But what if you’d rather not get on an airplane at all? Depending on where you’re traveling, it may be hard to avoid. But for domestic trips at least, some Americans are now wondering, why isn’t there a high-speed rail option instead?
“I think these concerns with flying have definitely made Americans question why we don’t have alternatives and the freedom to choose different ways to travel,” says Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton. He recently re-introduced the High-Speed Rail Act, a bill that would invest $205 billion into a high speed rail system across the U.S.
In China, driving from Beijing to Shanghai—roughly the same distance as going from Chicago to Atlanta—would take you about 12 hours, but a high-speed rail line makes the trip in just four hours and 18 minutes. (It currently takes about four hours to ride an Amtrak train just from Boston to New York.) China has some 28,000 miles of high-speed rail that can accommodate trains going upwards of 200 miles per hour. The U.S., on the other hand, has just 375 miles of track that can accommodate trains over 100 miles an hour.
China’s rail system isn’t impressive only in size, but in the speed in which it was built. The country had no high-speed rail at the beginning of the 21st century, and now boasts the world’s largest network. Similarly, Spain has more than 2,400 miles of high-speed rail, which it built in about 20 years. France has more than 1,700 miles of high-speed tracks, and in 2021 the country actually banned any flight that can be replaced by a 180-minute-or-less train trip.
“We’re only about 100 years behind,” Moulton says of the U.S. rail system. “I say 100 years because most Amtrak routes today are literally slower than the same routes run by private railroads 100 years ago.” Part of the reason for that, he thinks, has to do with how much the U.S. has subsidized driving and flying. A train speed’s is also limited by the type of track it uses, and more than 70% of Amtrak’s travel happens on tracks owned by freight railroads. According to the High Speed Rail Alliance, for trains to go more than 90 miles per hour, passenger tracks should be separate from freight tracks. Still, being this far behind doesn’t mean it will take 100 years to catch up, as countries like Spain and China have shown.
There’s already somewhat of a high-speed rail movement underway. In 2023, Brightline began operating a train that reaches speeds of 125 miles per hour between Orlando and Miami, and it has plans to begin construction on a high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles this year. California High-Speed Rail, a bullet train that will connect the Bay Area to Los Angeles, is in the works. Amtrak also has plans to introduce trains with higher speeds—on its East Coast Acela route, they’ll reach up to 160 mph.
“All over the world, there is a renaissance in transit,” says Russell Jackson, global transit director at AECOM, an infrastructure consulting firm. It connects more people to jobs and housing, and also has economic and sustainability benefits. For high-speed rail specifically, he says, “it’s a pivotal moment, because you’ve got a bunch of projects that are moving into a step change.”
Construction on California High-Speed Rail, for example, began back in 2015, but soon the project will actually begin to lay tracks. Jackson points to Brightline, Amtrak, and even Moulton’s bill as positive signs for high-speed rail in the U.S. (Jackson also says high-speed rail can work in conjunction with air travel, like by connecting airports to each other, and to communities, more easily.)
The California project illustrates some challenges with high-speed rail, though. Already, without any track laid so far, the project has spent $9.8 billion. “Building rail is expensive,” Moulton admits. “But it’s less expensive than alternatives.” Exact cost comparisons of building a mile of track versus highway are tricky to come by, but studies have shown that building highways come with billions in social costs, like lost home values and property taxes, plus the environmental costs of air pollution, and the economic costs of congestion.
Environmental costs come into play with air travel as well, and expanding or redeveloping airport terminals often comes with a hefty price tag. The redevelopment of Terminal 6 at New York’s JFK airport is expected to cost $4.9 billion. Aside from the recent safety issues in air travel, flying has also become increasingly unpleasant—and unreliable. Last year saw more flight delays than usual, and that comes with its own costs; one trade group estimates that flight delays cost the industry “several billion dollars” a year.
Moulton imagines a high speed rail system with no delays: “Washington to Boston should be three hours or less. That’s what [that distance] is everywhere else in the developed world,” he says. “That would mean a high speed train every 10 or 15 minutes, never a weather delay. Just show up and go.” (Currently, that route would take nearly seven hours on the Acela.)
Moulton says the U.S. could learn from other countries about how to better allocate infrastructure funding for rail. “What the administration is doing so far is taking the infrastructure money and spreading it out to little rail projects all over the country.” But in places like Spain, officials invested in “one true high-speed rail line” that showed the benefits of rail and then spurred development in others. “What the administration should be doing is focusing on one or two high speed rail lines to get it all started.”
Admittedly, Moulton isn’t totally optimistic his bill will pass this year, but he’s hopeful that high-speed rail will gain more traction. The High-Speed Rail Act was first introduced in 2021, but this time, the reintroduced bill already has more than 25 cosponsors, compared to 11 previously. “I think it’s going to gain a lot of momentum and help us get to a place where we can actually pass it in the coming years,” he says.
A big reason why there’s not yet overwhelming demand for high-speed rail in the U.S., both Moulton and Jackson say, is because Americans simply don’t know what they’re missing. Jackson says he has experienced high-speed rail around the world, and “the transformation effects for communities are genuinely profound.” High-speed rail has been shown to improve job creation and economic output of a region, increase tourism, create affordable housing options (since people can live further from work), and boost development around train stations; it has also been linked to time savings, reduced congestion, and lower emissions.
Creating a future where high-speed rail is truly a transit option in the U.S. won’t be easy. “These are some of the most complex and challenging national infrastructure projects any country can do,” Jackson says. But the U.S. is in the middle of unlocking those challenges. And political support could help unlock them even further. “If communities have an appetite for this,” he says, “that’s a really powerful and important factor for the industry.”