The surprising renaissance of America's railways

Something is stirring in America - and for once, it has nothing to do with politics. It is the unlikely image of a train, zipping across a vast landscape, conveying passengers from Departure Point A to Destination B with something akin to speed and purpose.

The USA has a long and noble association with the railway, but the classic emblem of the locomotive on Stateside soil is still the iron horses of the Wild West, thundering across Nevada, California and New Mexico - being chased by Apache warriors or masked bandits, depending on which John Wayne film you are watching. The modern Amtrak network, though it casts its tentacles across the nation, is not known for its velocity, and has long been out-performed by the airlines on journeys of high mileage.

This, though, may be set to change. This week has witnessed news of fledgling plans to construct a high-speed rail line that would connect portions of the Pacific Northwest - linking Portland in Oregon with Vancouver, over the border in Canada, in two hours.

This bulletin comes less than a month after the revelation of an ambitious scheme to construct an ultra-quick line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles - a trip which thousands of travellers make every weekend, but one which slots into a twilight zone of being too short a distance to fly and a long way by road (the best part of 270 miles).

This, in turn, follows the launch - by Brightline (see gobrightline.com), the operator behind the Vegas-LA proposal - of a dedicated railway line running along the busiest section of Florida's Atlantic coast - between West Palm Beach and Miami, taking in Fort Lauderdale en route. The track came to life in January, initially serving the section between West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, with the continuation south to Miami joining the party in May. The service manages the 70-mile journey in just under one hour - which is faster than it can realistically be completed taking the I-95 highway.

Anyone with even the vaguest grasp of maths will note that a 70-mile rail journey which takes just under an hour is not especially fast. With a top speed of 79mph, the Brightline train through Florida does not even compare to services on Britain's delay-wracked network.

But this is still a leap forward for an America where the railway has largely become a relic of the past, chugging unhurriedly where it chugs at all. Although there are elements of the Amtrak system which work well and regularly (the service from New York to Washington DC, stopping in Philadelphia, is especially effective), Brightline's emergence in Florida counts as an innovation. This is the first privately owned inter-city passenger service in the country since 1983 - when the Rio Grande Zephyr, which tied Denver in Colorado to Ogden in Utah, hit the metaphorical buffers.

Nor is it going to limit itself to 70 miles along the Atlantic's edge. The Brightline network is set to be extended over the next three years, being channelled north along the coastline to the small city of Cocoa (136 miles from West Palm Beach) - before turning inland and dashing west to Orlando.

This is no minor endeavour. While the physical transport infrastructure already exists between West Palm Beach and Cocoa, the extension to Orlando will require the creation of 40 miles of new track - a construction project now almost unheard of in a USA that, for the last half-century, has been more obsessed with runways than sleepers. This section, which will run to Orlando's airport, will be able to accommodate services at speeds of 125mph - still a relative canter in terms of European rail, and decidedly sluggish compared to Japanese and Chinese trains, but fast enough to meet the USA's definition of "high-speed rail".

Brightline's daring blueprint for the Las Vegas-Los Angeles railway link will require a much greater level of planning, work and investment. Costs have been estimated at a considerable $6.9billion (£5.2billion) - as, currently, no track exists between the cities.

There are also challenges galore in the path ahead. To say that the line will run to and from "Los Angeles" is somewhat misleading. In its current form, the plan will see a new 185-mile line built roughly parallel to the I-15 highway, between Sin City and Victorville - a town which sits a full 85 miles from downtown LA. The track will go no further, as this would require construction through the San Bernadino and San Gabriel mountain ranges, probably using the Cajon Pass - a suggestion which has already been dismissed as prohibitively expensive.

Instead, assuming the connection to Victorville proves a success, the line could be extended 50 miles west, to Palmdale. And there is every chance it will be successful. The I-15 is one of America's most car-choked highways, and the drive to Vegas can take seven hours, depending on traffic. The train would cover the distance in around 85 minutes, at speeds of up to 150mph.

This is all, of course, for the relative future - ground will not be broken until next year, and the first trains are unlikely to run before 2022. But the prospect of a much faster journey from Los Angeles to Vegas should intrigue Californians and visitors equally.

A link to Palmdale would be significant. Here, the Brightline would lock arms with the California High-Speed Rail network - an enormous, state-funded project, now tentatively taking shape in the Golden State. Work has been underway since 2015 on a system which will revolutionise travel on the west flank of the USA. If fully implemented, the system will connect San Diego in the south with Sacramento 500 miles to the north - while spreading its arms into Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Again, this is a vision of the future. The first, central segment of the network, between San Jose and Bakersfield, is not due to be completed until 2027; the lines into San Francisco and Anaheim (south of Los Angeles) until 2033. But here, finally, America will have "high-speed" rail - there is a promise of trains running at speeds of 220mph.

In this context, the latest announcement of fast trains between Portland and Vancouver is not so much a bolt from the blue as part of a wider picture. The proposals announced this week rachet up the speed factor again - to 250mph, with services between Portland and Seattle in one hour, and Seattle and Vancouver in a further 60 minutes.

This would be a remarkable boon to a cross-border region, sometimes referred to as "Cascadia", which, even now, has a deep level of economic integration. You can, of course, already travel by train between Portland and Vancouver, using the Amtrak Cascades service. But the train takes nine hours; fine for tourists who want to enjoy the scenery of the Pacific Northwest at what is definitely a leisurely pace, but of no use to people with places to be and appointments to keep - all of whom know where to find an airport.

The Cascadia line is still firmly at the drawing-board stage. A wider feasibility study will be published in July 2019, but the rumble of wheels (or the rapid whoosh of magnetic maglev trains - if the state officials behind the plans decide to go with the cutting-edge technology currently in use in parts of China) is not due to be heard until 2035 at the earliest. But it is clear that America - once one of the planet's great railway-builders - is finally rekindling its love affair with a mode of transport it once eulogised.

Patrick Goddard, the CEO of Brightline, has been quick to outline the benefits of efficient rail travel, commenting - in relation to his company's Florida line - that "South Florida has a vibrant economy and unique lifestyle – yet some of the nation’s worst traffic. We are making an unprecedented investment in Florida, and the benefits can be seen through job creation and the launch of Brightline, and MiamiCentral [a resurrection of the city's 1896 rail terminus - demolished in 1963 - which Brightline's owners, Florida East Coast Industries, have put into place as a part of the project].

"We believe MiamiCentral will be a significant landmark in Miami for generations and Brightline will connect the state in ways that haven’t been done before," he contunues.

Apply this to the rest of the country, and America will once more be the home of the iron horse.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/north-america/united-states/florida/articles/the-rebirth-american-train-brightline-florida-las-vegas/