New Report: The Most Promising U.S. High-Speed Rail Routes » INFRASTRUCTURIST
A new report on the most promising high-speed rail corridors in the United States was released this morning byAmerica 2050. The report, a follow-up to a previous America 2050 bullet study (pdf), evaluated 7,870 potential high-speed rail corridors in mega-regions across the country. Emphasizing potential ridership, authors of the new report limited themselves to bullet lines that extend from roughly 100 miles up to 600 miles — the distance, they believe, over which trains can effectively compete with automobile and air travel:
The long term success of the new federal High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail program is dependent on investing in corridors with the potential to attract ridership and realize rail’s benefits, establishing a positive track record for the program as a sound investment in our national economy.
To evaluate each corridor, the authors created a scoring system that weighed 12 factors that contribute to rail ridership, including population, employment concentration, existing transit systems, air travel markets, and highway congestion. They then assigned each high-speed line a point value ranging from 0 to 21.15.
The score comparisons are quite interesting. Obviously I lobby for the Portland—>Seattle—>Vancouver line.
