It is clear that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. The aftermath, mitigation, and cleanup from the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, was offloaded to the National Transportation Safety Board and Norfolk Southern to handle, and he simply complained about the airlines’ failure to meet customer needs while slapping down more regulations that effectively hinder them from doing that. So, what now has the attention of this attention-deficit Transportation secretary? Building a nationwide network of high-speed rail. I guess we’re going to do infrastructure like it’s 1869.
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We’re working on the future of America’s passenger rail system—funding high-speed rail projects in the West and expanding service for communities across the country. Get your ticket to ride!
The last three-and-a-half years have been one disaster after another on this man’s watch. The Infrastructure law has done little to shore up or rebuild our crumbling systems. It is little wonder that they have only installed eight electronic vehicle charging stations, after promising EV chargers across the country (to the tune of $7.5 billion), and airplane parts are falling from the sky. The image that Buttigieg uses in his X post is literally cribbed from a game called “Ticket to Ride.” I guess the Department of Transportation no longer contracts with cartographers. What a sad commentary on his supposed commitment to the future.
The pipe dream of high-speed rail is nothing new, and every administration that has attempted it treats it like it’s a never before implemented solution to what ails the nation. Since 1965, hot air and taxpayer dollars have been wasted on this concept, with little to show for it. California is the most recent example of the siren song and the ashes of taxpayer dollars thrown into the fire.
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Brian Potter is a senior fellow at the Institute for Progress and writes a Substack called “Construction Physics.” He wrote an extensive post about not only the present failure of California’s fever dream of high-speed rail, but how government has tried and failed multiple times to mount these projects, all full of wasted time and wasted resources–at the expense of the taxpayer:
But California’s project is just one of a long string of attempts at building high-speed rail in the US. Ever since Japan deployed its first bullet trains in 1964, the US has angled for high-speed trains of its own. But these projects have almost universally failed. In The Second Age of Rail, author Murray Hughes notes that “so many proposals for high-speed railways in the USA have been dreamt up and shot down that it is almost unsporting to list them.” If you go by the International Union of Railways definition of high-speed rail, trains with speed exceeding 250 kmph/155 mph, the US doesn’t have a single high-speed rail line.
Yet, here we are. Another administration reimagining the future by repeating failures from the past.
Further, NOBODY CARES. People are working at multiple jobs and side hustles in order to put gas in their cars and food on the table. High-speed rail is not on their Top 10 lists of government priorities. The economy, a porous border, and crime are, but Buttigieg has his head in the clouds with lofty visions of a nationwide rail system. As the old mothers used to say: He’s so heavenly-minded, he’s no earthly good.
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It’s time Buttigieg got his head out of the clouds, and instead of reaching into the past in order to imagine the future, he needs to do his actual job of taking care of the multitude of infrastructure troubles we have in the present.