Attending the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) convention last week in Houston, Texas was like being the proverbial kid in a candy shop. The massive Expo, covering 280,000 square feet of the Brown Convention Center, had displays showcasing everything related to public transit, from electric buses, to high-tech digital signs, to the latest in vehicle washing technology. (To watch grown men and women taking videos of themselves racing through moving brushes and super-sized dryers, was truly hysterical.)
For me, the highlight was taking an up-close tour of Siemens’ latest high-speed rail car. Man, that thing just looks fast.
I haven’t had the opportunity to travel in countries already employing high-speed rail. But sitting in the comfy seats inside that modern car, I could easily imagine myself rocketing across the country-side, awaiting arrival in a major city.
Sadly, in the near term, I’ll have to travel abroad (or attend the next APTA Expo in three years), to actually take a ride on a high-speed rail system. Even with recent court victories in California, America’s first high-speed rail passengers are still likely years away.
Without a doubt, the greatest disappointment during my time at USDOT was the rejection of federal funding for high-speed rail planning and engineering in Wisconsin, Florida, and Ohio. On one hand, political fears were not unreasonable — the engineering challenges are great, and the cost will most definitely be high. On the other hand, I wonder if the Governors of those states would have felt differently about their decisions if they saw the almost giddy enthusiasm of all the Expo attendees crowding in and around that rail car.
Come to think of it, that might be the answer to the fundamental question of whether a high-speed rail system will attract sufficient ridership to make this new form of public transportation viable. Take that car and others like it to likely destination cities around in the country. In Ohio, showcase the technology in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Maybe Siemens should throw a tail-gate party for the ages at the next Browns or Bengals game. I guarantee that even the beer and chicken wings would wait while football fans stream in and out of the car.
I’ll have much more to say about the APTA convention in upcoming posts. For now, we should all cheer on private high-speed rail efforts in Florida and Texas as the best hope for witnessing true transportation innovation in the foreseeable future.
