High-speed rail in the U.S.: Anyone aboard?

To Americans, high-speed trains evoke the gee-whiz factor of a trip to Tomorrowland: Ride futuristic cars that zoom you to a destination in a fraction of the drive time — without fighting through an airport. Read a book, do paperwork, take a nap while whooshing ahead in high-speed comfort.

To governments, they evoke benefits to the common good — reduced freeway traffic, less carbon pollution, more jobs.

But this country never has built a high-speed "bullet" train rivaling those of Europe and Asia, where passenger railcars have hit speeds nearing 200 mph for decades.

Since the 1980s, every state effort to reproduce such service has failed. The reasons: usually poor planning and simple mathematics.

Yet President Obama, intent on harnessing new technology to rebuild the devastated economy, allocated $8 billion for high-speed rail in his stimulus plan.

It sounds good, but that amount isn't enough to build a single system, or to increase existing speeds dramatically, transportation experts say.

California is the only state with an active project, and its proposed cost is more than five times the stimulus amount. The $42 billion plan is far from shovel ready — local approvals are needed — but it's farther down the track than any other state with an outstretched hand for a slice of Obama's high-speed pie.

Rail advocates say anything is better than nothing when it comes to modernizing U.S. train transportation, which needs all the help it can get. Others say the stimulus injection is like adding a teaspoon of water to the ocean and calling it high tide.

Not many in the running

Roughly six proposed routes with federal approval for high-speed rail have a good chance of getting some of the $8 billion award, Transportation Department officials say. Spurs include parts of Texas, Florida, the Chicago region, and southeast routes through North Carolina and Louisiana.

Obama recently told reporters he'd love to see such trains linking Chicago, his home town, to Wisconsin, Missouri and Michigan.

The economic benefit is enormous, he said. "Railroads were always the pride of America, and stitched us together. Now Japan, China, all of Europe have high-speed rail systems that put ours to shame."

New Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former Illinois Republican congressman, said developing high-speed rail is the country's No. 1 transportation priority.

"Anybody who has ever traveled in Europe or Japan knows that high-speed rail works and that it's very effective," LaHood said.

Different definitions

What exactly is "high speed"? It depends on the location. The Federal Railroad Administration says the term applies to trains traveling more than 90 mph. The European Union standard is more than 125 mph.

And many overseas bullet trains — most powered by overhead electricity lines — run faster than that.

The only rail service that qualifies under America's lower high-speed standard is Amtrak's 9-year-old Acela Express route connecting Boston to Washington, D.C.

The trains are built to reach speeds up to 150 mph, but only average about 80 mph because of curving tracks and slower freight and passenger trains that share the route. On the densely traveled line from New York to the nation's capital, the Acela arrives only about 20 minutes earlier than standard service, at more than twice the cost during peak travel times.

"In virtually no way does the Acela Express perform near overseas standards," said author Joseph Vranich, a former Amtrak public-affairs spokesman and president of the High Speed Rail Association. In 2004, he wrote a highly critical book titled, "End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America's Passenger Trains."

He's equally unimpressed with the stimulus money.

"Here's what's going to happen: The [Obama] administration will issue these funds in dribs and drabs — to this project and that project — and the result will be an Amtrak train from Chicago to St. Louis that takes maybe 15 minutes off the travel time."

Current Amtrak travel time between the two cities is about 5 hours, 30 minutes.

Efforts to make trains faster always will derail, Vranich says. "We're not Europe. We're not Japan. We're looking at shorter travel times, through population densities that are much higher."

That's part of the reason previous efforts failed in Florida, Texas and Southern California.

In 2000, voters approved development of a Florida high-speed rail service. Yet, concerns about community impact and construction costs estimated at $20 billion to $25 billion drove voters to repeal it four years later, ending plans for a Tampa-St. Petersburg-Orlando system, as well as a proposed second link from Orlando to Miami.

Still, the state has high-speed rail enthusiasts who want to tap Obama's $8 billion to resurrect the transit idea, including proposed routes that could include a link between Walt Disney World and Orlando International Airport.

In the 1990s, Texas awarded a 50-year high-speed rail franchise to an international consortium that claimed it could connect the "Texas Triangle" — Dallas, Houston and San Antonio — with a $5.6 billion rail system financed entirely with private funds.

Texas canceled the project four years later after cost estimates rose to $6.8 billion and the consortium failed to meet deadlines. Bullet-train plans have languished since then, although a grass-roots group was formed in 2002 to bring fast rail service to Texas. Some die-hard supporters hope obtaining a piece of the stimulus money would reawaken high-speed-rail desires, but many farmers and landowners fear losing their property to eminent domain.

A not-so-golden past

California has one of the country's most tortured relationships with bullet trains.

In 1982, a hastily written $2 billion bullet-train bill sailed through the closing days of the legislative session and was signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, a longtime cheerleader for fast rail. The measure exempted the project from the state's strict environmental-review process and allowed California to underwrite tax-exempt revenue bonds to help fund a 125-mile route between San Diego and Los Angeles that bragged of nonstop, 59-minute train service.

Led by a private company that included two former Amtrak officials, the project ultimately was abandoned for several reasons, including a barrage of protests from residents near proposed stations and public outcry over the environmental exemption.

Fourteen years later, lawmakers formed the California High Speed Rail Authority, charged with planning and developing fast trains.

After two failed attempts to make the ballot, voters in November authorized a $9.95 billion bond measure to help fund the first leg of what ultimately would be an 800-mile system — service between San Francisco and Anaheim, home to Disneyland, at a promised 2 ½ hours.

Opponents, however, doubt the wisdom of building a gargantuan project that won't move a train for at least 10 years, while California proposes service cuts and higher taxes during a national economic meltdown.

No bonds have been sold. The authority is running out of money. In early March, officials said engineering work may stop unless the state lends it nearly $30 million. Critics also question the authority's ability to get at least $6.5 billion from private investors during the recession.

Ross Capon of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, an advocacy group for rail travel, is a member of the anything-is-better-than-nothing group.

But he's blunt about America's inability to make speedy tracks. "The reason why high-speed rail has never taken off is because this country is determined to live on cheap gasoline and airplane travel."

That means Obama's infusion probably will go toward fixing what the country already has.

"It's very likely that all of the money will go to significant improvements of existing tracks," Capon said. "It's not going to build bullet trains."

Associated Press reporter Joan Lowy contributed to this report.