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What If The United States Had A National High Speed Rail Network?
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Mar 31, 2025
The United States has never had a true high speed rail line, let alone an entire network. Instead, a quasi-governmental organization called Amtrak has provided the vast majority of passenger rail service across the country. But because Amtrak does not currently own 98% of its own track, its ability to speed up its trains or provide more service is severely hampered. But what if the United States had built out a high speed rail line?
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The United States has a long history of passenger rail
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100 years ago, taking a train from one city to the next was a common occurrence
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Today, however, trains are rarely used by people and mostly used for carrying freight around the country
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But what if the United States had a national high-speed rail system today
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Hello and welcome to What If Geography, where we try and answer the great geographic what
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if questions of the world. I'm your host, Jeff Gibson, and today we're talking about high-speed rail for the second time
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But while my last video highlighted a few high-speed rail projects around the country, today's video is about what if the United States had a high-speed rail network all across
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the country. So, because it needs to be said at least once during this video..
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On board! Trains are not a recent invention in the United States
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In fact, rail as a form of transportation predates the United States by about 20 years
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During the French and Indian War, British engineers built a gravity railroad in Lewiston, New York
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Granted, it wasn't powered, so it's debatable on whether you would consider it a true train or not
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Still, the fact remains that rail transportation has existed in the United States for a very long time
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But while there was rail of some form in the 1700s, it was certainly not a network system that would interlink cities and towns
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That didn't come until about 100 years later in the mid-1800s. At this point, trains were now powered by coal and were able to start transporting people and goods from place to place
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This all led up to one of the most prominent historical moments in US history
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the connection of the west coast of the United States to the east coast by way of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869
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For the first time in US history, people could get to the west coast without the need for
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a heinously long ship journey or a treacherous journey by covered wagon
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For the next 100 years after, passenger rail in the United States was roaring
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Inner city travel suddenly went from a multi-day, uncomfortable, dirty trek to a relatively
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easy and comfortable train trip. Depending on the location, traveling from one city to the next could occur in a matter
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of hours. This newfound method of transportation helped to radically transform the United States from
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a predominantly rural and agrarian country into a modern, urban, and industrialized one
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Unfortunately for modern day passenger rail services, three things ultimately led to its downfall
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within the United States. The first was the invention of the automobile While trains were nice the allure of the personal car brought a level of freedom and efficiency that trains simply couldn match at the time The second was the invention of the passenger airplane
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While the car was able to successfully replace many short-haul train trips within cities
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or to nearby cities, it was the plane that deposed the train from the long-haul trip throne
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Planes, after all, are much faster and don't have to deal with all that pesky track laying
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that trains require. The third and final nail in the coffin of a true national passenger rail service was when the United States government opted to spend billions of dollars on an interstate highway system, literally paving the way for cars to cement their place as the transportation kings of the United States
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Today, passenger rail is confined to a relatively few service lines run by a continually underfunded quasi-governmental service called Amtrak
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And most of the tracks that these trains run on aren't even owned by Amtrak
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This has had a hugely detrimental effect on the build-out of any future high-speed rail projects
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But before we get into what high-speed rail could have looked like today, if you're enjoying this video, now would be a great time to subscribe
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More fun what-if geography videos are just one click away. You might not know it, but the United States does have a functional national passenger rail service
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that connects most major cities with one another. And while it's certainly not high speed, you can board a train in Los Angeles and get off in Chicago 40 hours later
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This service is, of course, Amtrak. Today, Amtrak runs 44 routes covering every state in the contiguous United States except for Wyoming and South Dakota
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Amtrak also connects to the Canadian cities of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal
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All of this is connected along more than 21,000 miles of track throughout the United States
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But of that 21,000 miles of track, Amtrak only owns 623 miles of it themselves
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That's a little less than 2%. This lack of ownership causes many problems for Amtrak such as not being able to run trains
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on their own schedule or being able to upgrade their routes to higher speeds
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But much of the track they do own is along the Northeast Corridor, also called the Acela Express
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This route currently runs from Washington DC to Boston by way of Philadelphia and New
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York City. It also happens to be Amtrak's most popular route, only profitable route, and fastest route
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That's no coincidence and it's proof that a high speed rail network in the United States
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can actually work. A true high-speed rail network would revolutionize the United States
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transportation system much in the same way that the interstate highway system did for the car It would bring a resurgence to a method of transportation that is far more convenient than current plane travel and easier on the environment than either flying or driving
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But a high-speed rail system would need to be a true network in order to function on the
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same level as these two other dominant forms of transportation. You see, the power of any method of transportation is providing as much ease of access as possible
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It's why the interstate system works so well and why the airline system works so well
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Any single person can get from point A to point B with relative ease
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For this same reason, it's also why having a true coast-to-coast network is important
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Because while few people would ever take a high-speed rail from Los Angeles to New York City
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which would still take quite a long time, being able to connect LA to Las Vegas
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Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City to Denver, Denver to Omaha
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Omaha to St. Louis, St. Louis to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Columbus, Columbus to Pittsburgh Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and Philadelphia to New York City provides all of
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those inner city connections on a single high-speed rail line so a person living in Cincinnati could
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get to Columbus or St. Louis very quickly and so on and so on. This is the exact same logic that
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applies to the interstate highway system. Very few people travel from Los Angeles to New York City by
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car but millions use the system as a whole for smaller trips in between all along the same freeway
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Now imagine this same high-speed rail network, but spread all across the country
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Multiple high-speed rail lines running north to south, multiple high-speed rail lines running
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east to west. Suddenly going from Dallas to Kansas City, normally an 8-hour drive
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could take as little as 2.5 hours by high-speed rail. Granted, that's still a bit slower than
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the current 1.5-hour plane trip, but you also wouldn't have to go to the airport 2 hours before
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your flight and deal with security just to fly to an airport that's still an hour's drive outside
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of the city you've just flown into. Suddenly, arriving at a train station at a central location
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in the city 15 minutes before it departs, and arriving at your destination city in a central
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part of that city becomes very appealing. This is why the Northeast Corridor works even in its
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limited capacity. And it's why the European high-speed rail network is so popular. Granted
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Europe also has a very robust regional train system that complements the high-speed rail
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network in ways that we can't even really conceive for the United States today. Despite not having a true network
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there are multiple high rail projects currently underway in the United States right now and many more are either being planned or at the very least conceptualized for the future The California High Rail Project is perhaps the most famous project that will connect Los Angeles to San
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Francisco, and eventually San Diego and Sacramento as well. Granted, this project has had its
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controversies, it will still pave the way for showing how true high-speed rail can work in the
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United States. There's also the Texas High-Speed Rail Project that will connect Dallas to Houston
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while the project is limited in its scope, with just a single stop in between
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it will still be transformational to the two Texas cities, as residents will only be 90 minutes away from each other
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Florida currently has a higher speed rail line called the Bright Line, which connects Miami to West Palm Beach in just one hour
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In 2023, it will connect to Orlando and will take about three hours. When it does eventually connect to Orlando, the line will run at about 125 miles per hour
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making it a true high-speed rail line, albeit on the lower end of the speeds
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And of course, there's Amtrak's Acela Express, which is currently undergoing its own high-speed rail transformation efforts
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Eventually, traveling from Washington, D.C. to Boston could take as little as three and a half hours
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That's an incredible jump from its current seven-hour travel time. There are also a number of planned corridors, such as
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the Empire Corridor connecting New York City to Buffalo, New York, the Keystone Corridor connecting Philadelphia to Pittsburgh
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the Desert Express connecting Los Angeles to Las Vegas, the Pacific Northwest Corridor connecting Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, British Columbia
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the Southeast Corridor connecting Washington, D.C. to Atlanta and Jacksonville, Florida, the Midwest Regional Rail Network, which would connect Chicago to Minneapolis
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Kansas City, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Detroit, and the Western High-Speed Rail Alliance, which would connect Denver, Las Vegas, Reno, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City
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And while many of these projects might never become actual high-speed rail, they are all making progress in bringing high-speed rail to the country, and that's very important
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A high-speed rail network would truly transform the United States transportation network
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And while there would certainly be an adjustment period, eventually people would realize just how easy and simple taking a train could be
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Certainly for short-haul trips, it makes much more sense to take a train than take a plane
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But right now, we just don't have enough good examples of this working in the United States
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Hopefully, that will change over the coming decades. I hope you enjoyed today's episode on high speed rail in the United States
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If you did, please subscribe to my channel. And if you want to watch more of my What If Geography videos, you can do so right here
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Thanks for watching, see you next time
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