The Keys to Great High-Speed Rail

The Five Essential Principles for Building Successful High-Speed Rail Systems

Not to sound like Old Rose from Titanic, but it’s been 52 years since we first saw train technology capable of reaching speeds of 178 mph, courtesy of Japan’s Shinkansen. Fast forward to today, and the Acela—our country’s only so-called “fast” train—doesn’t even qualify as high-speed rail by international standards. Meanwhile, in one of the U.S.’s fastest-growing states with the 8th largest economy in the world, the train from Dallas to San Antonio via Austin crawls along at an average speed of just 27 mph, taking over 10 hours to complete its route.

Amtrak itinerary for the Texas Eagle route between Dallas and San Antonio.

Our inability to build and maintain infrastructure—particularly high-speed rail—is a glaring sign of governmental inefficiency, especially in the Anglosphere. While the state of the world today isn’t caused by the absence of high-speed rail, our collective failure to execute large-scale infrastructure projects points to a broader cultural and institutional breakdown.

As I rode the subway last weekend, I overheard a couple lamenting, “Once you’ve seen what real infrastructure is like in other countries, it’s so embarrassing to ride stuff here.” That word stuck with me: embarrassing. It perfectly encapsulates how it feels to compare our outdated systems to the world’s best.

This piece lays the groundwork for understanding what makes high-speed rail successful, serving as a reference point for the case studies I’ll explore in future profiles. As North America grapples with the project management failures of California’s high-speed rail initiative, regions like Texas, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest are exploring new possibilities.

But for any high-speed rail system to succeed, it must meet these five essential criteria.

1. It must be time competitive and convenient

Anytime I mention that the country needs high-speed rail, the predictable refrain from skeptics is, “No one will take a train from Boston to Los Angeles!” For the most part, I objectively agree with them. High-speed rail isn’t meant to make airplanes extinct—it’s designed for trips that are too short to fly and too long to drive.

Nearly all data shows that high-speed rail performs best on routes between 100 and 500 miles. Research shows that the ideal intercity trip length is between one and four hours, and at an average train speed of 155 mph, 500 miles is where air travel is more preferable even when security and travel time to/from airport is considered.¹

That’s NYC to DC, SF to LA, Toronto to Montreal, Chicago to Minneapolis, Detroit to Toronto, Montreal to NYC, and Dallas to Houston, for example.

Let’s take a look at some of these city pairs:

Modal Share by HSR Route (LEK International Travel Surveys)

Without question, the paltry rail market share between New York and Boston compared to Paris and Lyon is laughable.

Given that the latter route covers a greater distance, let’s do a quick comparison:

People don’t hate trains, but every time someone leaves their home to travel, they evaluate the available transportation options and choose what works best for them. Slow, infrequent trains will lose out when cars, planes, and buses are faster or more convenient.

In Jarrett Walker’s Human Transit, one of the principles of useful transit is that it “gives me the freedom to change my plans.”² A train you can only catch nine times a day is far less convenient than one that runs 24 times a day. More frequency means flexibility—staying a little later at dinner or sleeping in without completely disrupting your day.

Selected City Pairs by Rail Travel Time and respective Rail Market Share Source: (HotRails)

Historical data supports this: as train travel times between major cities decrease, rail market share increases. For example, Madrid to Barcelona once required a 9-hour rail journey 36 years ago. Today, it’s a 2.5-hour trip, and the rail market share has nearly tripled.

This isn’t rocket science—people want fast, frequent, and reliable high-speed rail.

2. It must be well connected and centrally located

At most North American airports, you’ll grab your bags and find a rideshare, a car rental center, or—if you’re like me—a bus stop with infrequent service. The same could be said for high-speed rail. If you need to rent a car to complete your journey, why leave your car behind in the first place?

High-speed rail works best when it’s integrated with both regional and local transit. Take Tokyo Station, which illustrates this hierarchy beautifully:

The seven Shinkansen lines (in red) are located at one end of the station, while the eight regional rapid transit lines (in yellow) are on separate platforms, creating a seamless connection. At street level, passengers can access local and regional buses as well as the subway (in blue). It’s obvious that the 500,000 people who use this train station daily aren’t there just to reach destinations within walking distance—they’re utilizing the station as a fully integrated transfer point for travel across the entire country.

In practice, a direct high-speed rail route between Allentown and Boston makes little fiscal sense. However, if the Acela were truly high-speed and Allentown were served by a fast regional rail line, the penalty of transferring at Penn Station would be almost negligible. In this case, the transit hierarchy would work seamlessly.

Airports, by contrast, are often situated on the periphery of the cities they serve due to their large footprints. For example, Dulles Airport is 25 miles from the U.S. Capitol, compared to Reagan National, which is just 3 miles away. Despite Dulles having far more capacity, Reagan’s proximity makes it far more desirable.

Diagram showing the distance from major airports to downtown areas in major cities (circles indicating every 10 km). Source: Reddit.

Airports across the world are often far removed from their respective city centers. So, when rail opponents argue that a flight from Boston to New York City is “only” 90 minutes, they ignore the additional time spent waiting for luggage, taking the AirTrain, and traveling another 45 minutes into Manhattan. The convenience of traveling city-center to city-center—where you can quickly connect to your final destination—is paramount.

Consider the former proposal by Texas Central to build high-speed rail between Dallas and Houston. The proposed Houston HSR station was located six miles outside of downtown, with no connection to the city’s light rail system. This location would require nearly all trips to rely on cars due to the lack of walkability and surrounding infrastructure. Building high-speed rail stations within each destination’s center of gravity is crucial, particularly if the goal is to provide a viable alternative to airplanes and cars.

High-speed rail must be located at the heart of urban centers and supported by a robust network of convenient transit connections to effectively get passengers to and from their final destinations.

3. It must be hub focused

I will most certainly take any high-speed rail line this country is willing to build, and while I have no doubt it would be successful, one must wonder what it would look like to see an integrated high-speed rail system of 100-500 mile corridors all converging at key economic or transportation hubs.

Let’s take my favorite example: Frankfurt Airport. Beyond the hundreds of transit options that serve the airport, there are high-speed rail connections linking passengers directly to destinations hours away in multiple countries. Maximizing the service area of an existing airport consolidates air travel and reduces redundancy in connecting flights. Think of the Atlanta airport and how high-speed rail could be used to effectively connect Birmingham, Savannah, Chattanooga, Charlotte, and Charleston to mitigate unnecessary plane connections.

Isochrone map showing rail travel times to and from Frankfurt Airport. (ChronoTrain)

Another example is using a major metro area as a high-speed rail hub—take Chicago, for instance, a potential rail hub that’s been studied far too much but never realized.

Concept plan for a high-speed rail system in the Midwest (Source: AECOM, 2011).

Do I think there’s a major high-speed rail market between Detroit, MI, and Springfield, IL? Absolutely not. Do I think there’s significant demand for Detroit to Chicago and St. Louis to Chicago high-speed rail? Most definitely. With a simple transfer in Chicago, that weaker trip becomes feasible and fast. Multiply this by all the permutations and combinations of Midwest cities, and you’ve dramatically increased the overall market for high-speed rail—far beyond the demand for any single corridor. There’s no doubt St. Louis to Chicago is a great high-speed rail corridor, but how much more utilized would it be with further connections to Cincinnati, Detroit, Cleveland, and the Twin Cities? Without question, it would be better.

High-speed rail must be hub-focused to unlock both high- and low-propensity rail demand.

4. It must see its benefits maximized

If you look at any election map, it’s clear that California is divided into two regions: the major coastal cities and the Central Valley. Since its inception, the controversy surrounding high-speed rail’s alignment has centered on why the project didn’t take a direct route via I-5, instead opting to serve the Central Valley cities of Madera, Merced, Bakersfield, and Fresno. The reasoning was clear: connecting inland cities to larger coastal economies far outweighs the slight travel delay caused by bypassing a direct LA-to-SF route.

California High-Speed Rail route alternatives: the I-5 alternative (blue) and the chosen alternative currently under construction (black).

Take Fresno, for example—a city of half a million people where the median home price is $409,000, and the median household income is $66,000. If someone in Fresno wanted to benefit from Silicon Valley’s economic opportunities—an economy larger than Switzerland’s—they would currently need to either endure a 2.5-hour daily drive or relocate to San Jose, where the average home costs $1.45 million. With California High-Speed Rail, this trip would take just 51 minutes. Conversely, someone burdened by high rents in Silicon Valley could afford to live in the Central Valley while maintaining access to coastal job markets.

High-speed rail also has the potential to address housing shortages. Imagine connecting Hartford to NYC in 43 minutes, unlocking new housing development opportunities and transforming the region overnight. Research shows that in Nagoya, Japan (population 2.3 million), the presence of Shinkansen service led to an 11% increase in employment compared to what would have occurred without the rail connection.³

Using Toledo and Fort Wayne as earlier examples, we should ask critical questions like:

• What economic activity is unlocked by connecting to major job centers like Chicago and Detroit?

• What transportation investments are needed at the local and regional levels to effectively integrate with a high-speed rail system?

• How can cities grow economically by linking to major job hubs?

• What infrastructure must be developed to accommodate new residents who will rely on these high-speed rail corridors?

Unfortunately, projects like Brightline West and California High-Speed Rail are missing these transformative opportunities. They focus solely on building the system, while cities like Las Vegas, Tulare, and Rancho Cucamonga are planning to use these rail systems as glorified park-and-ride facilities with no transit investments on either end. Really? Is that the best we can do?

To fully realize the benefits of high-speed rail, every opportunity for economic growth, housing development, and regional connectivity must be thoughtfully leveraged. High-speed rail shouldn’t be seen as just transportation—it’s a catalyst for transformation.

Every opportunity can and could provide should be utilized when implementing high speed rail

5. It must be built at scale

The biggest crisis facing high-speed rail in the world—particularly in North America—is delivery. There’s no question that California High-Speed Rail, once fully built and implemented, will be transformative for the world’s fifth-largest economy. But at this rate, I might not live to see it completed—and I just turned 30.

I’ve always joked that if we paid every single American to fly to a country with true high-speed rail and let them experience it firsthand, we’d see 95%+ levels of support for it. However, our inability to actually build it—due to political stagnation, funding inefficiencies, and a lack of long-term vision—has turned into a public relations nightmare for high-speed rail in this country.

Proposals like the one from SNCF (France’s national railway) to build hundreds of miles of high-speed rail in the Midwest all at once offer a clear model for what we need. For example, SNCF proposed linking cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cleveland with a coordinated rail network, built in a fraction of the time it’s taking California to lay its first tracks. A nationwide program must focus on scaling up state capacity to plan, design, operate, and maintain this infrastructure.

I plan to discuss how we can tackle the actual process of building high-speed rail in America in subsequent posts. For now, we must confront the consequences of waiting decades for transformative infrastructure: we love the idea of high-speed rail, yet we’re left hoping our grandchildren might someday experience the same technology thriving elsewhere.

We need to build high-speed rail at scale. Public support will never sustain a project that feels like a pipe dream—but with bold, coordinated action, it doesn’t have to.

Conclusion:

We’re entering an era of institutional skepticism, rooted in the idea that we haven’t been able to achieve "nice things." As we continue the conversation about high-speed rail from both private and public perspectives, we must get this right. A single failure—such as the inability to deliver high-speed rail in California—threatens all the grassroots progress made toward bringing these transformative systems to fruition.

High-speed rail represents more than just transportation—it’s a chance to redefine how we connect our cities, grow our economies, and improve lives. While I’m excited to explore how we can actually build these systems, it’s equally important to focus on the principles that ensure they succeed. If we seize this moment, we can build a future where high-speed rail becomes the backbone of a more sustainable and connected nation.

1. Zhenhua Chen, Impacts of high-speed rail on domestic air transportation in China, Journal of Transport Geography, Volume 62, 2017, Pages 184-196, ISSN 0966-6923

2. https://humantransit.org/2011/12/outtake-on-endearing-but-useless-transit.html

3. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/how-high-speed-rail-changes-spatial-distribution-economic-activity-evidence-japans