April 30, 2024
On Thursday, the missus and I will board the Acela train in Boston and ride it all the way to Washington, D.C. Th trip will take about 6 1/2 hours, which isn’t too too much longer than it would take to fly. Sure, the flight itself is 90 minutes, but you need to add the time it takes to get to the airport, wend your way through security, wait for the plane, board, deboard, collect your luggage and then travel to the downtown hotel. And it’s a heck of a lot more comfortable.
The Acela also travels at up to 150 miles per hour for portions of the trip.
But that’s nothing compared to the U.S.’s first high-speed rail, on which ground was just broken.
The Brightline West, which is expected to be ready to operate within four years, will run from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and reach speeds of 200 miles per hour. Brightline is expected to serve 11 million passengers every year, running alongside US Interstate 15, which can be hindered by weekend traffic jams. In a typical year, 50 million passenger vehicles make the trip between the two cities, and estimates place the number of total vehicle miles that will be saved at around 700 million. That will mean an annual reduction of about 400,000 tonnes of CO2.
Sure beats sitting in traffic.