Five corridor rail lines currently exceed Amtrak’s predominant top speed of 79 miles per hour in the United States. Proposals for high speed rail projects in 44 other specific corridors are at some stage of planning and development. Eleven of these projects have advanced into the environmental review phase (see table 1). Financing for the proposed projects has yet to be arranged, with the partial exception of the proposed Los Angeles, California, to San Francisco, California, system, for which voters recently approved $9.95 billion in bond funding. For those projects that currently operate above 79 miles per hour, financing came from federal or state sources. Federal funding for high speed rail has generally gone to improvements to rail service in the Northeast Corridor between Washington, D.C., and Boston, Massachusetts, and to research and development. Some $3.1 billion has been spent by the federal government on the Northeast Corridor since 1990—about 75 percent of all federal funding identified by FRA as having been spent for high speed rail over this period. The remaining 25 percent has primarily gone to research and development purposes related to high speed rail. For example, the first foray into high speed rail development was in 1965, when Congress provided funding to begin studying high speed rail technologies. Later, the Magnetic Levitation Deployment Program provided funds to begin studying maglev as a new high speed transportation technology and to advance a demonstration project in the United States. States have also invested in high speed rail in some instances. For example, state funding was used to help achieve speeds above 79 miles per hour between New York, New York, and Albany, New York; Los Angeles, California, and San Diego, California; Chicago, Illinois, and Detroit, Michigan; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Several federal agencies have played a role in the planning and development of high speed rail projects to date, and others may potentially be involved as projects progress. FRA has generally been the lead federal agency—sharing that role with other federal agencies, such as the Surface Transportation Board—regarding the environmental review process. The Surface Transportation Board must give its approval before any new rail lines can be constructed that connect to the interstate rail network. FRA also designates corridors as “high speed rail” corridors, and is the agency responsible for any safety regulations or standards regarding high speed rail operations. Safety standards relative to tracks and signaling requirements become more stringent as train speeds increase. For example, at speeds of 125 miles per hour or higher, highway-rail grade crossings must be eliminated, and trains must be equipped with positive train control, which will automatically stop a train if the locomotive engineer fails to respond to a signal. To operate at speeds above 150 miles per hour, FRA requires dedicated track—that is, track that can only be used for high speed rail service. No safety regulations currently exist for speeds above 200 miles per hour. In addition to FRA and the Surface Transportation Board, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) may play a role if highway or other transit right-of-way will be used or if highway or transit funds are to be used for some part of a high speed rail project. The Bureau of Land Management is responsible for granting rights-of-way on public lands for transportation purposes and, thus, would be involved in any new high speed rail project that envisions using public lands. Various other agencies would be involved in the environmental approval process, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. Based on our interviews with both domestic project sponsors and foreign operators of high speed rail lines, in addition to a literature review, we identified many common characteristics that tend to lead to relatively high numbers of riders and resulting public benefits and to relatively lower costs. High speed rail tends to attract the most riders and resulting public benefits in corridors between roughly 100 and 500 miles with existing high demand for intercity travel. Service characteristics relative to other travel alternatives—such as travel time and price competitiveness, high frequency, greater reliability, and safety—are also critical in attracting riders and producing public benefits. Costs of high speed rail tend to be lower in corridors where right-of-way exists that can be used for high speed rail purposes, and a relatively flat- and straight-alignment can be used. While several U.S. corridors exhibit characteristics that suggest potential economic viability, decision makers have faced difficulties in ascertaining whether any specific proposed line will be viable due to uncertainties in how accurately project sponsors forecast riders and estimate costs, and to the lack of agreement and standards regarding how a project’s public benefits should be valued and assessed. High levels of demand for intercity travel are needed to justify a new high speed rail line. (See app. V for a discussion of techniques for forecasting demand for intercity travel and riders on high speed rail.) Project sponsors identified high levels of population and expected population growth along a corridor, and strong business and cultural ties between cities as factors that can lead to higher demand for intercity travel. In some corridors, riders are expected to come from business travelers and commuters due to the strong economic ties between cities along the corridor; while in other corridors, a larger number of tourists and leisure travelers comprise the expected riders. Officials in Japan expressed the importance of connecting several high-population areas along a corridor as a key factor in the high number of riders on their system, to effectively serve several travel markets, including commuters and travelers from cities along the corridor. The corridor between Tokyo and Osaka in Japan is unique in that it is one of the most populous regions in the world, with multiple urban areas of several million inhabitants located along the corridor. This corridor attracts the highest number of riders of any high speed rail line in the world—over 150 million riders annually. In other foreign corridors we examined, however, population and densities were not as high, but foreign officials indicated that high speed rail revenues in these areas were sufficient to cover ongoing operating costs, although not necessarily sufficient to recoup the initial investment in the line. Some, but not all of the corridors under development in the United States today have population levels similar to corridors in the foreign countries we examined (see figs. 1 and 2). Poption (in million) Poption (grphic repreenttion) City nme Poption (in million) Poption (grphic repreenttion) Several proposals exist in this corridor, with varying attributes and estimated travel times. See appendix VII of this report for more information on the various proposals. High speed rail also has more potential to attract riders in corridors experiencing heavy travel on existing modes of transportation (i.e., conventional rail, air, and highways—including automobile and bus) and where there is, or is projected to be, congestion and constraints on the capacity of existing transportation systems. These situations lead to demand for an additional transportation alternative, or demand for expansion or improvements to existing transport modes. To attract riders from existing transportation alternatives, a proposed high speed rail line needs to be time- and price-competitive with the alternatives, and also needs to have favorable service characteristics related to frequency, reliability, and safety. FRA and others have found that high speed rail tends to be most time-competitive at distances of up to 500 miles in length. Existing high speed rail lines in Japan tend to be most time- competitive and attain the highest relative levels of service in corrido roughly similar distances (see fig. 3). According to foreign and domestic officials with whom we spoke, generally lines significantly shorter than 100 miles do not compete well with the travel time and convenience of automobile travel, and lines longer than 500 miles are unable to overcom e the speed advantage of air travel. Between 100 and 500 miles, high speed rail can often overcome air travel’s speed advantage because of reductions in access and waiting times. Air travel requires time to get to the airport, which can often be located a significant distance from a city center, as well as time related to checking baggage, getting through security, waiti at the terminal, queuing for takeoff, and waiting for baggage upon arrival at a destination. By contrast, high speed rail service is usually designed to go from city center to city center, which generally allows for reduced access times for most travelers. Some travelers will have destinations starting points outside of city centers in closer proximity to airports, thus potentially minimizing or eliminating in some cases the access time advantage of high speed rail where high speed rail service does not , connect to airports or other locations preferred by travelers. High sp rail also generally has less security and waiting time than airports. On th foreign high speed rail lines we observed, there was no formal security comparable to airport security, and travelers could arrive at a station jus few minutes prior to departure. In France, Japan, Spain, and elsewhere, high speed rail has been shown to be time-competitive with air travel and has relieved capacity constraints at airports. For example, high speed rail in Japan has resulted in eliminating one air route (Tokyo-Nagoya), while several others have lost significant market share to high speed rail. With the introduction of the Madrid- Barcelona high speed rail line in February 2008, air travel between th cities has dropped an estimated 30 percent (from 5.0 million to 3.5 million air passengers), while high speed rail riders increased markedly. In France, high speed rail has captured 90 percent of the Paris-Lyon air market, and Air France officials estimated that for high speed rail trips of between 2 and 3 hours, high speed rail is likely to capture about 80 percen of the air-rail market over time. By displacing shorter distance air travel, high speed rail has freed up considerable airport capacity in those cities for other longer distance flights. However, because high speed rail becomes a new competitor with short-distance air travel, airlines ha ve in some cases actively opposed its development.