Amtrak’s Post

Transcript

So in one word, the future of high speed rail. Very simple. Now let's get on with it. Now is the magic word. In the year 2000, Amtrak introduced Ascella, the first high speed rail service in the Western Hemisphere. Since then we've served more than 65,000,000 passengers. And the question has been what's next and can you help us untangle that a little bit? Sure. Well, I mean first of all, just a bit about the seller, I mean I I personally need to sell is amazing. It's the fastest train in the Western Hemisphere, which is you know. Just so surprised to us here at Amtrak, we're really proud of it and the existing trains have done us proud. They've been in service for over 20 years. They've done a great job for us. Of course we got the new ones on the horizon. It's something that I know you're very focused on. I can't wait to see them. I think they're they're beautiful. They're real they're real advert for Amtrak in the in the modern era and but we we definitely want to we don't want to leave it there. We want to go to the next level. There are so many compelling corridors routes across the US. That to me a tailor made for high speed rail and your point about the market share we've got on the Northeast corridor. It's that's the power of high speed rail. Why would you take the plane and you have to go out to the airport when instead you can take the train and go downtown to downtown. So that I very much see is the way of the future. That's why I came here. Why is it so hard You got to have the right characteristics. So what we're always looking at for a a successful high speed route is good size population centres at either end and. Maybe one in the middle, so limited stops, fully enclosed. In other words, no. No possibility of trespass onto the tracks and modern infrastructure under the wires. Minimal curds, reasonably simple topography, those kinds of things. What do you think is? Feasible for us to see, say in the next 10 years, which city pairings have those characteristics that I talked about earlier, Those, you know, those key pieces that you've got to have in place. And the one that stands out is one that, to be fair, was already being looked at before I got here. But we've taken it to the next level and that's Dallas to Houston. So why Dallas to Houston? Something like 5th and 6th fastest growing metropolis is in the states Dallas and Houston. You've got a good intermediate stop at college. You've got suboptimal modal alternatives. You've got the I-45 Interstate, which are very, very crowded and quite dangerous Interstate and there's a lot of people flying between Dallas and Houston. But to be fair, it it it's really kind of too short to fly. You know, by the time you've got to the airport, gone through everything. So we really think Dallas to Houston is the one it it ticks all the boxes and I'm particularly excited about it because the cities are 240 miles apart. The the proposal is what we're looking to do. Is introduced the legendary Japanese bullet train the Shinkansen. So what's called a Shinkansen then 700 S and people are just gonna be blown away when they when they experience that I have been lucky enough to go to Japan and ride it and that that train will cover the 240 miles at 205 miles an hour the the the average speed will be about 187 mph which is actually would be the fastest average speed in the world. Sorry Andy I heard you say earlier that. You were at Union Station. Let's go and take a look. Let's do that. I've been very lucky to have written on many high speed trains across the world. Really. Let's see, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the UK on the Eurostar between Paris and London. But the one that always stands out. I've been lucky enough to go on the Shinkansen, the legendary bullet train in Japan. It is just amazing. I think in coming years, once we've got high speed in on a on one maybe 2 routes, what Americans will say? In years to come is we should have had this years ago. It's fantastic. Bring it on. Let's have some more Andy. Let's go make it happen. Let's do that.