The State of High-Speed Rail Projects in the U.S.

After what seemed like decades of stagnation, U.S. high-speed rail already reached two milestones in 2024. In April, ground was broken on the Brightline West project, a high-speed rail line connecting the Los Angeles area with Las Vegas with speeds of up to 200 mph. The partially funded project by a private rail provider out of Florida is expected to be completed in 2028 (although even the Nevada Department of Transportation calls the timeline "ambitious").

Back in January, after many delays, Amtrak started to test new high-speed Acela trains meant to be operated on the Northeast Corridor, the most busy and advanced U.S. rail infrastructure line that connects Boston with Washington D.C. via New York and Philadelphia. The trains are expected to enter regular service this year still according to Amtrak's website, even though no concrete date has been given yet.

The upgrade to the Acela - the fastest class of trains currently operating in the U.S. and the Americas - will finally give the country true high-speed rail under international standards by reaching speeds in excess of 155 mph (250 km/h). The current train sets have been reaching speeds of up to 150 mph, sometimes seeing them categorized as higher-speed rail. However, due to older and shared tracks in the Northeast Corridor, neither the old nor the new Acela trains reach these top speeds most of the time, making total travel times longer than in other places that operate the same level of high-speed rail.

The Brightline train due to connect the Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Cucamonga with Las Vegas has an advantage there as its tracks will be newly constructed on a highway median for the purpose of running high-speed rail on them. This is expected to cut travel time between the two cities in half compared with car travel, while for the Acela connection between Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, for example, time saved is only around a third. Big cities and lots of traffic in the area obviously are another factor making train travel more convenient for some.

While building new track can lead to a speed advantage, a Texas project is struggling with this. A proposed high-speed rail line that would link Houston and Dallas has already ruffled feathers with locals despite being in an early state of planning as landowners have disputed that the government could seize properties for the train line as a last resort.

Additionally, the Texas project struggles with funding as the cost of planning and building all new high-speed tracks and purchase all new high-speed trains is steep. The line has this in common with the maybe most famous, but also most elusive of U.S. high-speed rail projects - California high-speed rail. While the part of the track between Merced and Bakersfield in the state's Central Valley is under construction and can be classified as partially funded, the rest of the line still has a long way to go to fund the estimated cost of currently $128 billion. In March, the projects had secured funding of $28 billion, still less than the $35 billion needed for the Bakersfield stretch alone. While the partial opening is now expected between 2030 and 2033, the high-speed connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco the project envisions is still many years and around $100 billion away.