(Observer Network News)
According to the US "politician" news network reported on the 28th, people in the transportation industry are worried that the Biden administration's upgraded version of the "buy American goods" federal funding requirements may kill the last hope of the United States to have a "real high-speed rail", because the United States currently has no relevant technology and experience, and the "buy American goods" policy has pushed up construction costs. Andy Kuntz, president of the American High-Speed Rail Association, even asserted that if it had to be 100 percent "Made in America," the United States "can't get a high-speed rail system."
American "politician" news network: how the "buy American goods" policy "derailed" the construction of high-speed rail in the United States
The so-called "buy American" policy dates back decades, and it typically requires federally funded transportation infrastructure, including rail vehicles, to be manufactured in the United States and use U.S.-made steel to support local industries. The U.S. government can waive those requirements, but Biden has taken steps to scrutinize the issuance of exemptions.
Promoting high-speed rail is an important commitment of the Biden administration and an important part of Biden's climate agenda. The report pointed out that according to the definition of the International Union of Railways (UIC), the mileage of high-speed rail in the United States is actually 0. The UIC defines high-speed rail as a train traveling at speeds of more than 250 km/h on dedicated tracks, while the Acela Express, currently the fastest rail train in the United States, has a maximum speed of 240 kilometers per hour, and the average speed of normal travel is about 115 kilometers per hour.
According to the EPA, transportation accounts for 28 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and is the largest sector of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. In the United States, cars, including trucks and passenger cars, account for 81 percent of transportation emissions, and railroads account for only 2 percent. The report also cited a report that compared to cars and planes, traveling by high-speed rail can reduce carbon emissions by about 14 to 16 times.
However, in the United States, where only three projects are considering speeds of up to 200 miles per hour (321.8 kilometers), European- and Japanese-style bullet trains remain a distant dream. At the end of 2021, Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act worth about $1 trillion, of which $43.5 billion was used to expand passenger railways, but so far none of the projects have received this special funding.
The California High-Speed Rail Project (CHSR), which was put on the table in 1996, is expected to be completed around 2030 after political disputes and shrinking mileage. Image source: Bloomberg
Just five days after taking office, Biden issued an executive order to create a new "Made in America" office under the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to oversee exemption requests under the "buy American" policy. The office would strictly interpret the terms and effectively limit the number of exemptions the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) could issue under the Buy America policy.
Timothy Wyatt, a lawyer who studies public works permits and "buy American" policies, said previous federal governments had interpreted exemptions under "buy American" policies more broadly, and that FRAs often issued exemptions when domestic parts were more expensive than imported parts and there were not enough domestic parts in the market, but with a new office to review exemptions centrally, "they will have a harder time doing that."
Louis Thompson, former director of the FRA's Northeast Corridor Improvement Project (NECIP) and a member of the California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Panel, said the new review process will make the FRA "particularly careful" in approving waivers. "As a direct result of 'buying American', the products used are often more expensive and take longer than they were." "If it weren't for that, you wouldn't be forced to 'buy American,'" he said. ”
U.S. transportation industry veterans further said that such projects would face more hurdles if they could not obtain a "buy American" exemption, because there was no factory in the United States that could produce specialized rail vehicles traveling at such high speeds. Andy Koontz, president of the American High-Speed Rail Association, said bluntly: "There are only a few places in the world that produce trains that can reach speeds of up to 200 miles per hour. If you say, 'It has to be 100% made in the USA, then you can't get a high-speed rail system.'" ”
Michael Cahill, president of rolling stock at Siemens Transportation North America, reportedly said Siemens has produced more than 3,000 trains at its plant in Sacramento, California, but none of them are high-speed trains. He said in an email: "For Siemens Mobility or any other train manufacturer, there is currently no domestic production capacity for 200 miles per hour trains. ”
Neil Ato-Okin, a professor of orbital engineering at the University of Maryland, said the United States lacks the engineering knowledge to design, build and maintain high-speed rail systems. To support trains traveling at 200 miles per hour, high-speed rail tracks must be much stronger than standard U.S. tracks that cope with slower passenger and freight trains. Ato-Okin also said the U.S. also does not produce specialized signaling systems that are critical to the safety and speed of high-speed rail.
High-speed rail supporters have expressed disappointment with the low priority of high-speed rail in Biden's infrastructure plan and Biden's high priority on electric vehicles in his climate proposal. Jim Matthews, president of the American Railroad Passengers Association, said rail funding in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has the potential to help kick-start high-speed rail construction in the United States, provided Biden compromises on "buying American."
The "high-speed rail dream" of the United States has a long history, but it has been repeatedly frustrated, and the US media has disclosed the political struggle behind it more than once. The California high-speed rail, originally planned to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco, was the first high-speed rail project in the United States, and the New York Times reported in October that after reviewing hundreds of pages of documents, engineering reports, meeting minutes and interviews with dozens of key politicians, it found that the design of the country's most ambitious infrastructure project was not always based on the simplest or most direct route. Instead, the train's route out of Los Angeles was diverted through the mountains and past the fast-growing Mojave desert town. The most prominent benefit of this route, or the business opportunities it will bring to Los Angeles County's districts, is clearly inseparable from the considerations of local politics and big donors.
The New York Times said the diversion across the Mojave Desert was just one part of a series of decisions under political wrangling that in hindrance severely hampered the project's construction, turning a faster, relatively cheap construction into a money pit. When California voters agreed in 2008 to issue bonds for the high-speed rail construction, the plan was to be completed in 2020 at an estimated cost of US$33 billion (235.607 billion yuan). Now, more than a decade later, the construction cost of high-speed rail in California continues to rise, and according to the California High-Speed Rail Authority, it is estimated that the final cost of high-speed rail will reach $113 billion. According to projections by the engineering community and project managers, at the current rate of $1.8 million per day in construction, it will not be completed this century.
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