introduction
For decades, the United States has been "repeatedly defeated" in the construction of high-speed rail.
Recently, there was news that the Hyperloop One high-speed rail startup founded by Musk is about to shut down, which undoubtedly means that the hope of the birth of the first high-speed rail in the United States has been stranded again and has become distant.
So, why is it that the United States, as a former infrastructure maniac, has not yet put high-speed rail into operation, and how will the United States operate in order to build high-speed rail?
1. Painstaking operation for many years, but still nothing
In people's perception, China is a well-deserved infrastructure maniac in the world today, with 159,000 kilometers of domestic railways and 45,000 kilometers of high-speed railways.
But what everyone doesn't know is that the first infrastructure maniac in the modern world is not China, but the United States.
As early as 1871, the United States began to build railways on a large scale, and thousands of kilometers of railways were built every year, and by the time of World War II, the United States had a very mature railway transportation network, and its total railway mileage accounted for half of the world.
After the end of World War II, Eisenhower enacted the Interstate Highway Plan and began to build a large number of highways in the country.
This has made the United States the country with the most highways in the world, which has led to the development of its own automobile industry to a certain extent.
The experience of railway and highway construction has helped the United States to confirm the name of "infrastructure madness", but this sense of accomplishment in the United States has been exhausted in the subsequent construction of high-speed rail.
Eisenhower
The plan to build high-speed rail in the United States began in 1992, the year when the Federal Railroad Administration proposed a plan for the construction of a "high-speed rail corridor".
Most of the target cities of the project come from the more densely populated southeastern cities, and once completed, people's travel efficiency will be greatly improved.
However, after the project was proposed, there was opposition in the United States.
They believe that the railway in the area covered by the project has many sharp bends and steep slopes, and the high-speed rail is not suitable for walking on such terrain.
Therefore, the construction of high-speed rail means that the route has to be re-selected to lay tracks, and to achieve this, it is undoubtedly necessary to re-obtain various permits, which is more difficult.
As a result, in the midst of this rising opposition, the "high-speed rail corridor" plan was shelved indefinitely.
In the years that followed, the biggest move in the United States to build high-speed rail was in 2008.
This year, with the support of President Obama, California Governor Schwarzenegger launched a project plan to build California high-speed rail, with a planned investment of $30 billion and a plan to be completed and opened to traffic in 2030.
The U.S. federal government approved an investment of $10 billion in the first phase for the construction of the project.
However, due to the disagreement between the government and the local government, the project was delayed and construction did not officially start until 2015.
Schwarzenegger
At the beginning of construction, the government's enthusiasm for the construction of high-speed rail in California was still quite high.
However, as the project progressed, the government found that the cost of construction had risen, and the total investment budget would have soared to $100 billion from the previous $30 billion if the construction had gone as planned.
The U.S. government has been stretched thin on spending, so naturally it can't afford such high spending, not to mention that domestic opposition to the construction of high-speed rail has never stopped.
For a variety of reasons, the U.S. government had no choice but to stop the construction of the California high-speed rail, and to this day, the California high-speed rail is still in a state of unfinished, only 177 kilometers have been built, and the completion has not yet reached one-seventh, which is embarrassing.
Second, Musk tried to turn the tide and insisted on losing helplessly for seven years
Objective analysis shows that there are two reasons why the United States has not been able to successfully build high-speed rail.
One is that the government has mixed political views and lacks funding.
There is a lot of partisan strife in the United States, and there are some differences over whether to build high-speed rail.
Among them, the Democratic Party actively advocates the construction of high-speed rail, Obama and Biden are both Democrats, and during their presidency, the United States was very active in building high-speed rail. But once Republicans came to power, the construction of high-speed rail was put on hold.
Moreover, the United States has always implemented a system of land privatization, which gives landowners greater decision-making power.
If the U.S. government wants to build high-speed rail, it often needs to pay a lot of land acquisition costs, and some land problems cannot be solved by the government with money, so it can only be forced to take a detour, which virtually increases the construction cost.
But the U.S. government naturally can't come up with so much money, so the high-speed rail has not been successfully built so far.
The second reason is that the decision to build a high-speed rail does not have public support.
The United States is a country with a rather relaxed political system, and its citizens have a high desire for freedom. The large cities of the United States are mainly concentrated in the coastal areas of the east and west, and the middle of the country is vast and sparsely populated.
Therefore, the passenger transport in the United States is mainly concentrated in the point-to-point travel in large cities, and the air transport system is very developed, with more than 20,000 routes, which can well meet the long-distance travel needs of the people.
When it comes to short-distance travel, the most popular way to travel is by car, because it satisfies people's yearning for freedom.
The characteristics of high-speed rail departing and arriving on time will make the American people feel a strong sense of constraint, so most Chinese people do not want the United States to build high-speed rail.
Of course, the United States, as the world's premier superpower, has never been able to build high-speed rail, so there are many people in China who are trying to actively promote the construction of high-speed rail, such as Musk, a well-known entrepreneur and founder of the Tesla brand.
Elon Musk
In the matter of building high-speed rail, Musk just doesn't believe in evil.
In 2016, Musk founded Hyperloop One in Los Angeles, USA.
The company is positioned as a "hyperloop start-up", trying to present railway transportation in the form of vacuum pipeline transportation, using magnetic levitation as the power, and trying to achieve high speed and strong safety under the premise of ensuring low energy consumption.
Throughout the 7 years of the company's operation, some achievements have been made.
The following year after its establishment, Hyperloop One achieved a successful test campaign, and the product achieved a driving speed of more than 100km/h with the help of magnetic levitation technology.
In 2020, the company conducted another manned vehicle test, which was successful again, and the speed was upgraded to 172 km/h.
At the same time, CEO Elon Musk is also doing his best to promote the company, almost every time he speaks in front of the public, he does not forget to promote his newly founded Hyperloop One company, and he does not hesitate to praise it, making it a new hope for the development of high-speed rail in the United States.
However, the reality is cruel, Hyperloop One has not received orders for seven years since its establishment, and it has continued to lose money in terms of operation.
Over time, Musk could not see any hope, so he could only choose to stop losses in time and start shutting down the company at the end of 2023 to end this embarrassing situation, and the imminent closure of Hyperloop One also marks another stranding of the American high-speed rail dream.
3. Biden personally went down to seek Japan's assistance, and the first high-speed rail rekindled hope?
The feeling of failure is always bitter.
Perhaps the news of the imminent closure of Hyperloop One pricked US President Joe Biden's nerves about high-speed rail in the United States, and shortly after the news broke, Biden began planning related to the construction of high-speed rail again.
On April 10, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was invited to visit the United States and held talks with Biden.
The main point of the talks between the two sides is to develop cooperation between the two countries in the field of high-speed rail.
During the talks, Biden hoped that Japan's major state-owned banks would jointly fund and participate in the construction of high-speed rail in the United States, so that some high-speed rail projects that had previously stalled could resume work.
To be sure, this cooperation between the United States and Japan, if it can be achieved, will actually be a win-win for both governments.
The Biden administration has been paying attention to the infrastructure of the United States during its term of office, and has made a lot of investments, and the 2024 U.S. election is approaching, if the Biden administration can promote cooperation with Japan at this time to restart the construction of high-speed rail, it is undoubtedly the best embellishment of his political achievements during his tenure.
Coincidentally, Japan, as a major country in the field of infrastructure, lost to China in the previous bids for Indonesia's Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway and Myanmar railway, which made it lose face.
Against this backdrop, Japan is also pinning its hopes on this matter to re-prove its infrastructure strength and win back a place in the regional game with China.
However, if the United States and Japan want to make this win-win situation a reality, they will still need to face many obstacles.
Last month, the Biden administration expressed its opposition to Japan's Nippon Steel company's acquisition of U.S. Steel in an effort to cater to domestic consortiums, creating a rift in the U.S.-Japan relationship.
And now, in order to restart the high-speed rail project, the United States has asked for help from Japan, which is quite a temporary feeling, even if Japan chooses to help the United States, there is a little reluctance in his heart.
In addition, conservatives in the Republican Party in the United States are still firmly opposed to using state money to build high-speed rail and other public projects.
The large consortia in the United States are full of doubts about the profitability of the high-speed rail project in the United States, they believe that the American people basically have no demand for high-speed rail, and if they choose to invest, they will inevitably lose money, so they do not want to invest.
As a result, the cost of cooperation between the United States and Japan in building high-speed rail is nowhere to be found, and the prospects for cooperation have become very uncertain.
epilogue
All in all, with Musk's admission of defeat in the construction of high-speed rail, the United States' attempt to build high-speed rail has officially turned a new page.
As the saying goes, "if you want to get rich, you must first build roads", and the United States has repeatedly hit a wall on the road to building high-speed rail, which just contrasts with its own financial constraints.
If the U.S. finances can't improve and the partisan strife can't be eased, then the arrival of the country's first high-speed rail is still far away.
Bibliography:
- The speed is nearly 1,000 kilometers per hour, and Musk said that the one-way cost is only one dollar. 2022,28(11)
- Wang Yufei.The opening of high-speed rail and the improvement of the innovation level of cross-regional cooperation between enterprises.Journal of Beijing University of Technology
- A Comparative Study on Public Policy Planning for High-Speed Rail Development in China and Foreign Countries.Science and Technology and Industry. 2023,23(15)
- WANG Chong. UIC Participated in the Conference of the American High-Speed Rail Association. 2023,20(06)