Previously Published on New York Daily News
As Congressional lawmakers continue to debate the eventual contents of an infrastructure bill, much focus has rightfully been placed on the rail transportation portions of the package. According to the White House, the bipartisan infrastructure framework, if passed into law, will be “the largest federal investment in public transit in history and is the largest federal investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak.” All told, the framework proposes $49 billion in public transit spending, which includes mass rapid transit, and $66 billion in passenger and freight rail spending.
The importance of these provisions cannot be understated. The low cost of rail travel along certain routes means that it is one of the most equitable forms of transportation America has at its disposal. Along routes such as the Northeast Corridor, it is the most time-efficient. It is also one of the cleanest: According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, rail transit has on average less than one-third the carbon footprint of private automobile travel and less than half the carbon footprint of bus transit.
However, despite the promise of rail, for decades America has struggled to expand and invest in it efficiently and affordably. California’s high-profile attempt to build a high-speed rail line ended tens of billions of dollars over budget and hundreds of miles short of its original vision to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles. The cost-per-mile to expand commuter rail in New York City is the most expensive of any mass transportation system in the world. Amtrak’s marquee high-speed rail service, Acela, in fact takes longer to go from New York to D.C. than its predecessor Metroliner did decades ago.
