Will Brightline’s LA-Vegas bullet train take off this year?
For years there’s been talk about a high-speed train between Las Vegas and Southern California, but that train has yet to leave the station. A few scheduled groundbreaking dates have come and gone with no action, with the most recent one spoiled by the pandemic in 2020. Now the company behind the project, Brightline West, is targeting the end of this year to get construction started and finally get tracks laid for what is hoped to be a transportation revolution between Southern Nevada and California. [reviewjournal.com]
Covid-weary Americans are giving train travel a boost
Passenger rail is handling the double whammy of a summer vacation surge and end-of-pandemic travel bump well – or at least better than its competitors. Amtrak, which has a monopoly on long-distance rail travel, has hurriedly restored services it mothballed during the worst of COVID-19. Ridership is up, too, reaching 85% of pre-pandemic levels in the Northeast and showing a promising pattern elsewhere. The company is even opening up new lines. [csmonitor.com]
Mexico’s Maya Train chugs forward despite opposition
PODCAST The Maya Train (known in Spanish as ‘Tren Maya’) is in the process of being built, spanning approximately 1,525 km (958 miles) across the Yucatán peninsula, threatening forests, biodiversity, ecosystems, and the homes of many locals. The project has incurred many legal setbacks from alleged environmental destruction to lack of local consultation. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is allegedly pushing past legal requirements to build the rail line faster. [mongabay.com]
What’s the deal with Anchorage’s airport train station?
Alaska’s busiest airport has a railroad station attached to it, just a tunnel away from the terminal of Anchorage’s Ted Stevens International Airport. The Bill Sheffield Alaska Railroad Depot cost $28 million to build back in the early 2000s using federal money secured by the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, then at the pinnacle of his influence in Congress. At its grand opening at the end of 2002, Stevens called the facility “years ahead of its time.” It may still be. Grand plans for use of the depot have never quite materialized. [adn.com]
Italy and Turkey do transit policy better than the US
Most Americans don’t associate Turkey and Italy with efficient public administration, but in at least one important domain, their performance bests that of the United States and, in fact, almost everywhere else in the world. Such, at least, is the upshot of two case studies of urban rail construction presented last month by the Transit Costs Project at New York University. The reports examine transit development in Istanbul and in four cities in Italy: Turin, Milan, Rome, and Naples. [city-journal.org]
