There is no money for high speed rail in California. With a State deficit of over $31 billion, money for the scam is being taken from public safety, education and health care.
Happily the Buy America laws have blocked the High Speed Rail scam of unions and greedy corporations from moving forward. Of course, the lack of $200 billion is also a factor.
““Trains capable of going 200 miles per hour are only made in a couple places in the whole world,” said Andy Kunz, president of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, an advocacy group. “You stand behind it and say, ‘It has to be 100 percent made in America,’ you’re not going to get a [high-speed] rail system.”
Buy America is a decades-old policy that generally requires federally funded transportation infrastructure including rail cars to be manufactured domestically and to use U.S.-made iron and steel. The requirements can be waived, but Biden has taken steps to limit waivers and has vowed strict adherence to Buy America provisions.
Too bad Biden doesn’t use this to stop the killing of the American solar industry—but then, he would have to stop his owners, the Communist Chinese Party. Neither the State nor the Feds have money to finance a rider less train system. That is good news.
How ‘Buy America’ could kill high-speed rail
By Minho Kim , Climate wire, 5/23/23 https://www.eenews.net/articles/how-buy-america-could-kill-high-speed-rail/
President Joe Biden is famous as a supporter and patron of passenger trains, but advocates hoping he would jump-start high-speed rail say his manufacturing policies will hinder the climate-friendly transportation.
Biden’s strengthening of Buy America provisions could make high-speed rail impossible to build in the U.S. and stymie a transit mode that would cut automobile and aviation emissions, experts said.
“Trains capable of going 200 miles per hour are only made in a couple places in the whole world,” said Andy Kunz, president of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, an advocacy group. “You stand behind it and say, ‘It has to be 100 percent made in America,’ you’re not going to get a [high-speed] rail system.”
Buy America is a decades-old policy that generally requires federally funded transportation infrastructure including rail cars to be manufactured domestically and to use U.S.-made iron and steel. The requirements can be waived, but Biden has taken steps to limit waivers and has vowed strict adherence to Buy America provisions.
Experts say waivers are crucial to developing high-speed rail in the U.S. because no domestic facility is currently capable of building specialized rail cars that can travel up to 200 mph.
Siemens, a German company that manufactures trains, has produced more than 3,000 rail cars in its Sacramento, Calif., plant, but none is a high-speed train, said Michael Cahill, president of rolling stock at Siemens Mobility North America.
“There are no domestic production capabilities in the U.S. today for trains that run 200 mph, for Siemens Mobility or any other train manufacturer,” Cahill said in an email. “It simply does not exist in the U.S. today.”
The U.S. also lacks the engineering knowledge to design, build and maintain high-speed rail systems, said Nii Attoh-Okine, a rail engineering professor at the University of Maryland.
To support cars traveling at 200 mph, high-speed rail tracks have to be much stronger than standard U.S. tracks that handle slower passenger trains and freight rail. Specialized signal systems essential to high-speed rail safety and speed also are not produced in the U.S., Attoh-Okine said.
High-speed rail could help Biden reach his climate goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
Transportation accounts for 28 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the largest share of five broad sectors, according to EPA. Automobiles including trucks and passenger cars account for 81 percent of transportation emissions, while rail contributes just 2 percent in the U.S.
Trips on bullet trains emit about 14 to 16 times less carbon per passenger than those in cars or airplanes, according to a report that evaluated the carbon footprint of transportation options in southern France.
The Biden administration last year vowed to fund high-speed rail as one of the 37 “game changing” technologies that would achieve the net-zero goal.
On Wednesday, Federal Railroad Administration chief Amit Bose told a rail conference that high-speed trains are “a critical element” of rail modernization. The FRA, which funds rail projects, is “committed to meeting the president’s goal of delivering high-speed intercity passenger rail to the American people,” said Bose, a Biden appointee.
Biden made bullet train projects eligible for money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, which includes $43.5 billion for passenger rail expansion. At least two high-speed rail applicants are seeking money.
Acela is fast but not high-speed
The U.S. has no high-speed rail under definitions set by the International Union of Railways, a professional association representing the rail industry. The group defines high-speed rail as trains that travel faster than 155 mph on dedicated tracks.
The definition also includes trains running on standard tracks if they reach 125 mph and have an integrated high-speed system. Rail experts do not consider Amtrak’s Acela high-speed rail because it reaches the threshold only on a few segments between Boston and Washington and takes more than six hours to travel the 450-mile route.
In China, high-speed trains take less than 4½ hours to travel the 800-mile route between Shanghai and Beijing. As passengers have opted for trains, air travel between China’s two largest cities dropped by 34 percent after bullet trains began service in 2011, according to a study that analyzed the impact of three major Chinese high-speed rail lines on aviation.
More than 20 European and East Asian countries now operate high-speed rail after Japan debuted its bullet train in the 1960s. A handful of French, German, Chinese and Japanese companies dominate the international market for bullet trains.
The rail money in the infrastructure law could kick-start high-speed rail in the U.S.— but only if Biden compromises on Buy America, said Jim Mathews, the president of the Rail Passengers Association.
Five days after taking office, Biden strengthened Buy America by establishing through executive order a new Made in America Office under the Office of Management and Budget to oversee waiver requests.
During his State of the Union address in February, Biden criticized past administrations for avoiding a strict application of Buy America and vowed to require all materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in the U.S.
“I mean it,” Biden added.
Biden’s new office will tightly interpret the laws and effectively limit the number of Buy America waivers the FRA can issue, said Timothy Wyatt, an attorney at Conner Gwyn Schenck who specializes in permitting and Buy America for public construction projects.
Previous administrations have made waivers widely available, applying a broader reading of exemption clauses in federal law, Wyatt said. The FRA often issued waivers when U.S. components were more expensive than imported parts and concluded that no adequate domestic products were available in the market, Wyatt said.
“It’s going to be harder for them to do that now that there’s a centralized office that reviews all waivers,” Wyatt added.
The new review process will make the FRA “especially careful” about approving waivers, said Louis Thompson, a former FRA director and a member of the oversight board California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group.
“The net result of Buy America is that often things are more expensive and take longer than they would otherwise,” Thompson said. “If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t have to have Buy America.”
FRA spokesperson Cory Gattie said in an email that “all waiver requests” must now be approved by the Made in America Office and the Department of Transportation. The FRA said in December 2022 that it expects all grant applicants to comply with Buy America “without needing a waiver.”
U.S. high-speed rail is stalled
Buy America has a history of derailing bullet train projects.
DesertXpress, a private company trying to build high-speed rail between the Los Angeles area and Las Vegas, sought a $5.5 billion federal railway loan during President Barack Obama’s first term. The FRA rejected the application in 2013, saying it failed to satisfy Buy America priorities. Without federal funding, the project lost momentum.
The project was taken over in 2019 by Brightline Holdings LLC, a Florida company that operates passenger rail between Orlando and Miami. Brightline is seeking $3.75 billion from the infrastructure law to help pay for the $10 billion project, said Ben Porritt, a company vice president. Brightline is reviewing with rail car manufacturers whether it will need Buy America waivers, Porritt said.
A proposed high-speed rail project between Los Angeles and San Francisco also got caught up in Buy America. In the early 2010s, French national railroad company SNCF tried to win a contract to build the system. But California officials decided against the company in part due to the concern about complying with Buy America, said Bent Flyvbjerg, the author of “How Big Things Get Done” and an Oxford University professor who studies project management.
The project remains stalled as costs have ballooned, and the state was forced to hire European engineers it had initially shunned.
Cahill of Siemens said he is confident that high-speed rail can be built in the U.S. — if a few components for the initial batch of bullet trains come from Europe.
Mathews of the Rail Passengers Association said previous waivers did not prevent rail manufacturers such as Siemens, Alstom and Hitachi from building plants in the U.S.
“Would a tweak to Buy America fundamentally alter that trajectory for a stronger [domestic rail] industry?” Mathews asked. “I don’t think it would. But it would get more equipment into the United States quicker and get Americans riding passenger trains.”
