The train It is the spine of many countries. In Europe, communications between countries and within them They would not be understood without the trainbut there are others Examples like Japan or a China that has built almost 50,000 kilometers of high speed in record time. If we look at the United States, the case is the opposite: high speed that shines for its absence, with projects that are a nightmare and an overwhelming domain of the plane and the car for passenger transport. Of course, they have proposed to change the situation with a mastodontic project: a train network that connects New York and California.
They have baptized him as ‘Transcontinental Chief’, and they will not have anything easy.
Figures. First of all, some context and the proper names of this story. Amtrakor National Railroad Passenger Corporation, is the national passenger trains company in the United States. It was created as a commercial entity, but depended on federal and state subsidies for most of its routes. Its network covers more than 500 stations in 46 states and has a network of about 39,000 kilometers, including the NEC, the corridor between Boston and Washington DC
Despite that huge network of roads and stations, in 2024 he transported about 32.4 million passengers. Much of the traffic corresponds to paths within the NEC and none of the paths exceeds 200 km/h. For comparing, in 2024, Renfe transported 35.2 million travelers in high -speed services and another 60 million in medium distance. We do not count the 442 million nearby, since they are short journeys.
Chief Transcontinental. It is evident that the country needs a railway impulse, something that has been attempted on a small scale (even with trains that do not use fossil fuels), but the projects do not finish curdling. That is where Ameristarrail enters the scene, a private company dedicated to the proposal and development of long -distance interurban and high capacity interurban services.
The project they are promoting is the one baptized as ‘Transcontinental Chief’ to connect New York and Los Angeles by train. He proposed itinerary He would connect the Hoboken station in New Jersey with Los Angeles, through cities such as Philadelphia, Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and stop at the National Park of Grand Canyon. In this way, large urban and tourist poles would join.
Recycling. He project From America has a couple of good ideas to get ahead. The first is to take advantage of what is already paid. That is, use the roads and stations that are already built to give new life to deficit infrastructure operated by other entities and by Amtrak itself (such as the Southwest Chief). Also use locomotives and wagons that already exist, such as beds beds and men’s restaurant cars because the full trip will be long, since the speed of those tracks is limited to 150 km/h.
According to the company, if this plan is followed, a new legislation will not be necessary that would complicate and delay the project, but no additional public financing, since, in essence, the work is done and you only have to put the infrastructure up to date. Because although the United States does not have a solid passenger transport network by train, it does have a wide railway line focused on merchandise transport.
Hybrid. The second good idea is to try to squeeze this train as much as possible. In addition to passengers, the idea of America is to turn the train into a kind of ferry. This implies that private cars can be charged in platform cars so that a family, for example, can go from end of the country with their car, but without driving them.
In addition, it has also been projected that there would be other cars capable of loading complex trucks, next to their drivers. Thus, truckers can get on the train, rest their mandatory time while the journey towards their destination does not stop. They have called it ‘Rolling Rest Stop’ would be a pioneer in the country, in addition to giving a boost to certain routes of merchandise trucks that cross the territory.
MEH. Aim Football World Cup. Now, from Amtrak they don’t have it so clear.
At the moment, the public company has release that they are not going to promote this proposal for America because they are not clear that public investment has to be made. It is not closed, eye, since the drivers maintain that there is enormous potential to convert long -distance services into profitable and sustainable lines, and that is something that Amertk needs.
Images | Ameristarrail, Amtrak
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