Slow, Slow, Quick-Quick, Slow

Since Japan opened its first high-speed rail line in 1964, superfast rail services have spread across Europe and Asia. But the U.S. government has taken a more conservative approach, appropriating small sums of money to help states make scattered improvements to existing rail lines. This fixer-upper approach is known as incremental high-speed rail. The Amtrak Acela Express, which runs between Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., is its poster child.

The Department of Transportation has designated 10 new incremental high-speed rail corridors around the country, and as more federal funding becomes available, these will stand at the head of the receiving line.

The Southeast High-Speed Rail corridor, known as SEHSR (pronounced "Caesar"), is a four-state project led by North Carolina's Department of Transportation (DOT). SEHSR is a grand design to extend the Northeast Corridor (the Acela's domain) 450 miles to the south, from Washington, D.C. to Charlotte, North Carolina, and eventually down to Atlanta and beyond. "The cost-benefit of the TGV-level, independent-right-of-way type facility just didn't pencil out for us," says Patrick Simmons, director of the North Carolina DOT rail division. "Our judgment was that we could get 90 percent of the benefit for 25 percent of the cost."

The Midwest Regional Rail Initiative (MRRI) has used the same reasoning. Since 1996 nine states have worked together to develop a 3,000-mile passenger rail network with Chicago as its hub, focusing mainly on upgrading existing rights-of-way that are shared with freight and commuter trains. The network includes several Amtrak routes, such as the popular Hiawatha service between Chicago and Milwaukee. The goal is up to 100-mile-per-hour passenger service on most routes, which would cut the 85-mile journey between Chicago and Milwaukee from 90 minutes to one hour. Plans for the MRRI are being coordinated with those of another proposed network, the Ohio Hub, which in turn will link with the Empire Corridor in New York State and the Keystone Corridor in Pennsylvania.

In the Pacific Northwest, another designated high-speed corridor runs from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Eugene, Oregon, via Seattle and Portland. Since 1994 Washington State and Oregon have spent more than $300 million to improve service on this 467-mile route -- home to the Amtrak Cascades service -- by adding sidings and beefing up the safety of road crossings. They plan to spend $6 billion more in the next 14 years to upgrade track owned primarily by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad.

When fully upgraded, incrementally improved passenger rail lines have the potential to replace millions of car trips, relieving congestion and producing significant net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Still, with a top speed of 110 mph (half that of true high-speed trains) and average speeds of under 60 mph, they will rarely be time-competitive with airlines, and capacity growth will be hampered by the needs of the freight carriers that own the track. Most incrementally improved services use diesel engines and have no plans to convert to electrified operations. Hence, they cannot run on carbon-free energy from renewable sources such as wind- and solar-powered generators.

The main advantage of the incremental approach is that it costs less. Upgrading existing rights-of-way runs about $1 million to $10 million per mile, whereas building a 220 mph TGV-style system costs from $10 million to $45 million per mile. Still, advocates of true high-speed rail believe that in the long run, the incremental approach is not the bargain it appears to be. "If you've ridden on the Acela, you know that it's marginally better than the Metroliner, which is marginally better than what preceded it," says Chris Calwell of the energy efficiency consulting firm Ecos. "But a ticket to ride the Acela is significantly more expensive. Is the incremental improvement worth it? For lots of people, no. But if you build a TGV or Shinkansen type of service you can achieve an economy of scale and offer a much better service at a lower cost." Not to mention achieving reductions in fossil-fuel use and emissions that half-measures simply can't match.