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High Speed Rail Research Paper

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High Speed Rail in the United State
4.1 Background of high speed rail in United States
Northeast Corridor (NEC) is the busiest railway line in the North America. It has 457 mile railway line, which starts from the Boston and ends at the Washington, D.C. It is primarily owned by Amtrak, which is the government-owned corporation and the systems in the NEC are fully electrified in order to stay competitive compared to the other modes of transportation. In 1990, Amtrak implemented the NECHSR Improvement Program by introducing Acela Express train. Besides, the HSR improvement program also enhances the rail components and equipment, such as rebuilt the bridges, modified the railway curve and electrified the track. In 2012, Amtrak decided to upgrade …show more content…

Therefore, investing in rail project can boost the economic development by providing estimately 24,000 jobs for each billion dollars of investment. (David Randall Peterman, 2013) Besides, building the high speed rail in US can also reduce the energy consumption as well as carbon emission. Based on the California High Speed Rail Authority (2016), HSR only consumes one-third the energy of air travel and one-fifth the energy of automobile travel. The most important is adopting the HSR can mitigate the congestion problem in the US. The cost of congestion on the highway and runway, which approximate $130 billion per year and the increasing population in the next 40 years for increasing over 100 million people in the US make the government start to pay attention to the importance of the development of the HSR …show more content…

According to United States Conference of Mayors (2001), the investment in high speed rail in the United States will significantly stimulate the economic growth, job creation, business activities as well as the development of sustainable transit alternative service in the 4 major cities of United State, which namely Los Angeles, Orlando Florida, Chicago and also Albany in New York State. The United States Conference of Mayors also estimated that the high speed rail project will bring up about $2.5billion per year in the new business income, 21000 new jobs created and $1.1 billion in new wages to the Albany. Whereas, for Florida High Speed Rail Program, the high speed rail line will be built between Orlando and Tampa which able to carry the passengers at the speed up to 168mph. This railway system estimated can make $2.9 billion of new business sales, create 27500 new jobs and $1.2billion in new wages to the workforce. (United State Conference of Mayors,

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