LET'S MAKE THE OFFICIAL GUIDE GREAT AGAIN.

The High Speed Rail Alliance have released their Christmas list, er, recommendations for a national system of faster passenger trains.

The Federal Railroad Administration should create a national plan, as directed in the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act. The FRA’s existing regional plans are a good start, but large portions of the country are not accounted for. The most glaring omissions are connections between the Midwest and the Northeast Corridor; Texas and surrounding states; and many western states.

Those omissions are holdovers from the privately operated railroads. Missouri Pacific discontinued almost all of its once-extensive service from St. Louis through Little Rock and into Texas, and Texas to Denver is a bit of a traffic desert, while Penn Central eliminated any semblance of a corridor service west of Harrisburg on the former Pennsylvania Railroad lines or west of Buffalo on the former New York Central.

If you have a railroad atlas showing the principal trunk lines, circa 1950, you will understand the reference in the title to my post.

Our technical advisory committee in particular drew parallels to the planning of the Interstate Highway System. While construction began under President Eisenhower in the 1950s, the planning began in the 1930s. The interstate highway network was constructed by a variety of project sponsors and owners, but a national plan ensured that the system would work together as a whole and provide a similar experience nationwide. An integrated national rail plan can serve the same function, ensuring that passengers can travel throughout the country by train.

The national plan (as in the FRA’s regional plans) should also use the Integrated Network Approach: recognizing the power of network connections to create more opportunities to use the system and therefore increase ridership and revenue on each segment. Basically, this means offering connecting bus and other intermodal connections to boost ridership and make travel anywhere in the network as quick and convenient as possible.

Just as we have been saying for years.

In addition, this list would like some passenger-specific trackage under the tree.

The most glaring example is the need for a South-of-the-Lake Reroute (SOTL): a new passenger-dedicated mainline across northern Indiana. Several corridors linking Chicago to cities such as Detroit, Toronto, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and New York funnel around Lake Michigan through northern Indiana. The FRA’s Midwest Regional Rail Plan recognizes that several of these city pairs have sufficient volume to warrant the construction of a 186-mph or faster high-speed line through this region.

This need for the SOTL has been recognized for decades. It would benefit many states, and would indirectly benefit the entire country. In fact, Amtrak first designed a new routing in the mid-1990s. However, the current state-driven process for seeking funding has meant that this project has not moved forward. In large part, this is because most of the needed infrastructure will be located in Indiana, where top political leaders to date have had little interest in the project.

We can’t allow individual states to hold up progress for the rest of the country. The FRA should identify a way within current law to actively lead this on projects like this, and seek a sponsor to implement their construction. In this way, ordinary changes in political control and priorities in individual states need not hold up what the rest of us need.

I wonder if there's a way to subcontract such a project to Brightline?  A purely governmental operation is too likely to be hamstrung by rent-seekers.  On the other hand, the right sort of offer to the freight railroads, perhaps involving the restoration of tracks that were once there, is not off the shopping list.

Our technical committee argues against investing in major improvements to core routes that would need to be shared with privately owned freight railroads. Sharing the same lines for both freight and passengers has certainly led to many woes and delays for Amtrak and its riders.

Nonetheless, the Alliance has long argued that our plans must make sense for America’s largest freight railroads (sometimes referred to as the Class 1 railroads—companies you might have heard of, including Union Pacific, BNSF, or Canadian National). These railroads, which currently own most of the track that Amtrak uses, have a vested interest in improvements to their infrastructure. The FRA should encourage the railroads to take the lead in creating a service development plan for the Amtrak routes they operate.

Let's see what happens, or if improved passenger trains again become a political hobbyhorse.