Secretary Pete wants fast trains. He will have to succeed where Obama could not.

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U.S. investment in transportation has been dominated by the car since hundreds of billions of dollars were spent building the interstate highway system in the 20th century. But Buttigieg, echoing his boss, President Joe Biden (who is sometimes referred to as “Amtrak Joe”, thanks to his habit of taking the train between his home state of Delaware and Washington) recently spoke of modernizing the rail. American.

“We have to take it to the next level,” Buttigieg told MSNBC last week. “I think we have a real opportunity to do that, especially with the bipartisan appetite for real investment that we have ahead of us this year.”
Buttigieg has a history of thinking differently about transportation. As mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he led an effort to reorient his downtown area around pedestrians and cyclists, rather than motorists. Now he is working on a bigger stage and will try to succeed where others have failed.

America had the world’s fastest passenger trains in 1959, according to Amtrak, but now 18 countries are faster than its fastest option, the Acela, which connects Boston and Washington DC.

“We have been asked to settle for less in this country,” Buttigieg said in the MSNBC interview. “I just don’t know why people in other countries should have better train service and more investment in bullet train service than Americans.”

Ten years ago, Biden and the Obama administration lobbied for bullet train across the country, but they lacked funding and political support.

In 2010, the administration unveiled an initial investment of $ 8 billion, as well as $ 5 billion to be invested over five years. By comparison, Amtrak typically receives less than $ 2 billion each year.

Obama’s initial funding was a significant increase in rail funding, but only a small step towards paying for a nationwide network.

Biden will have to invest a lot more to respond to Buttigieg’s comments about running the world. A plan by Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton to build a national high-speed rail system called for $ 205 billion over five years. (For context, the United States spends about $ 50 billion a year on highways.)

Obama’s speech about faster trains has not been well received in Republican-led states. The governors of Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida have refused billions of dollars in federal funding, scuttling bullet train plans in those states.

“A huge, huge disappointment,” was how Ray LaHood, who was Obama’s first transportation secretary, described Florida refusing $ 2.3 billion to build a bullet train in 2011, in a CNN Business interview this month.

LaHood said the project was ready to go, but Florida Governor Rick Scott declined funding. Scott, now a U.S. Senator, said in a statement to CNN Business that he rejected the funding because Florida taxpayers would have to pay hundreds of millions for the project.

The Obama administration was more interested in California. Work is underway to link San Francisco and Los Angeles. But the initial construction is limited to central California, far from the major cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles. The project faced challenges, including increased costs, extended deadlines, and funding cuts from the Trump administration. Additional funding will be needed to connect large cities.
Brian Kelly, CEO of the California High Speed ​​Rail Authority, expressed optimism that the project will attract funding from the private sector once key hurdles are overcome, such as environmental approvals and building land. The private sector has shown increased interest in high-speed rail in recent years, with projects underway to link Houston and Dallas, as well as Las Vegas and greater Los Angeles.

Bullet train supporters believe the Biden administration is in a better position to succeed given what was learned at the Department of Transportation during the Obama years when there was less experience with train projects high speed.

“A lot of people had to learn a lot of things very quickly. They did their best,” Rick Harnish, executive director of the High Speed ​​Rail Alliance, told CNN Business.

LaHood believes more U.S. governors would take the funding now, and estimates that up to half would take one. He thinks the biggest hurdle is whether the Biden administration can get Congress to fund high-speed rail.

That route will be difficult, according to Moulton, who introduced his bill last year to invest billions in high-speed rail.

“There will be a lot of lawmakers who are just going to want to fix their local potholes or old bridges rather than invest in 21st century technology,” Moulton told CNN Business. “We cannot waste a generational opportunity by investing in the latest generation infrastructure.”

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