A year ago I asked, perhaps a little annoyingly, “Why can't we have a 300 mph floating train like Japan?” Apparently some people in New York and Washington have wondered the same thing. The New York Times this week has a story about an outfit called Northeast Maglev that wants bring Japan's maglev train technology to the Northeast Corridor.
The promise: New York to DC in an hour flat. That would be an hour and 40 minutes faster than today's 150 mph Amtrak Acela trains, which are (rather pathetically) the fastest in the United States. In most cases, it would also be much faster than flying.
To dream of fast trains is one thing. The real question is: Is there a real chance of that happening anytime soon?
Maybe not. As my colleague Matt Yglesias points out, Amtrak already is is struggling to get $7.5 billion just to build DC's Union Station. Until or unless conservatives stop hating trains, federal funding for major rail projects will remain difficult. And forget for a moment the mass-transit-phobic US: Even Japan has somewhat botched its Tokyo-to-Osaka plans, the cost of which has ballooned to nearly $100 billion. As the Times points out, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is desperate enough to get other countries to buy his country's maglev technology so it doesn't end up as a one-off.
But Japan's desperation could translate into a rare opportunity for the United States. Abe apparently offered to provide the technology for the first leg of the line, from Baltimore to DC, for free.
Also in favor of the project, potentially, is the fact that Northeast Maglev it is a private company and not a government agency. This could make it easier to raise funds privately, from true believers in mass transit, rather than needing consensus on key decisions from closed-door public officials. The company has also assembled some big names as members of its bipartisan advisory board, including former New York Gov. George Pataki, former EPA Administrator and New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Dustle and a pair of former US secretaries. Transport. These are people who know how to influence, twist arms and push things forward.
One question is how committed they will become to the task. The fact that several of them accepted a junket to Japan to test maglev there doesn't necessarily mean they'll stick with the project when the going gets tough. Still, it's heartening to hear Pataki say it Times“This is awesome. This is the future.“
I've been covering high speed rail for a while now and two things I've learned are:
- Big projects inevitably end up taking more time and money than their backers ever let on.
- It might be worth going ahead and doing them anyway, because the benefits can last for generations and go far beyond simply saving time for wealthy commuters.
Unlike the myriad half-baked regional high-speed rail plans that sprouted up across the country at the start of Obama's first term, maglev on the nation's densest corridor sounds like it could be the right technology in the right place at the right time. The odds are still against him, of course. As the Economist points out, the $50 million Northeast Maglev has raised so far “it wouldn't even take the maglev out of downtown DCStill, I can't help but be glad that someone is at least trying this idea. Say what you want about the pros and cons of mass transit, but it facilitates urban density, and urban density is America's only hope of continuing to grow for generations without destroying what's left of its natural environment.
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