Stop dreaming about high-speed rail
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Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
👋 Ryan here. I have to burst your bubble: Pittsburgh isn’t getting high-speed rail in our lifetime.
The big picture: We got a lot of comments on our story about Pittsburgh getting more Amtrak service, and many were focused on how the route is too slow, saying it should be high-speed rail instead.
- I have been covering transit in Pittsburgh for over a decade, and I’ve reached my limit of these takes. It's like asking for that stadium that was supposed to be built as a massive bridge over the Mon: conceivable in imagination, but a fantasy in the real world.
Let me explain: A 2014 study by PennDOT and the Federal Railroad Administration determined that speeding up the train on the current right-of-way between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg would provide little benefit.
- It would cost over $10 billion to straighten and improve the tracks along this corridor, and it would only trim about 30 minutes off the journey, from 5.5 to 5 hours.
Building a new electric, high-speed line along the Pennsylvania Turnpike corridor is technically feasible according to the study — and it would travel faster than 110 mph and reach Harrisburg in 1 hour and 40 minutes — but it ranked lowest on the agencies’ priority list due to high cost, anticipated opposition, and how it would skip Central Pennsylvania cities currently with rail service.
- Estimates from 2014 put costs over $38 billion, and they would need to acquire a lot of private property.
- That price tag for one project is over 40% of the state’s entire transit improvement budget for the next 12 years.
- And the 2014 estimate would be higher now due to inflation.
Flashback: We’ve tried, and failed, multiple times to create high-speed public transit out of Pittsburgh.
- A maglev line, aka a high-speed magnetic train, proposed between Westmoreland County and the Pittsburgh airport spent over 20 years in planning, received $30 million in federal and state money, and never materialized.
- A proposal to build a hyperloop network across Pennsylvania was rejected due to a lack of technical readiness, an uncompelling business case, and insufficient private and public funding, according to a 2020 Turnpike Commission report.
The other side: U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Aspinwall, wrote in an X post that he was proud to help secure the federal funding to get additional Amtrak service for Pittsburgh, but added he wants to dream bigger.
- “I want high-speed rail that’s cheap and reliable for folks across the Commonwealth and America.”
💠My thought bubble: It's not virtuous to take the train. It's just a mode of transportation. It’s fine to prefer the freedom and convenience of driving or the speed of flying.
- It doesn’t need your help anyway. Demand for the Pennsylvanian line is already high — it regularly sells out — and it's one of Amtrak’s best-performing routes. That’s part of the reason it’s getting more service.
The bottom line: Trains in America are mostly, and definitely in Pittsburgh, about wanting the journey to be as pleasant as possible, not about speed or freedom to leave when you want.
- Amtrak routes from Pittsburgh — whether to Chicago, New York, or Washington, D.C. — allow travelers to get lost in a book or movie, stretch their legs as much as they want, sleep with relative ease, and grab food and drinks while traveling.
- People who want that are taking the trains and sacrificing speed and convenience.