A high-speed train in Beijing.
Credit: Reuters/China Daily

“After a half century of neglect, America now has a railroad system that the Bolivians would be ashamed of,” wrote James Howard Kunstler, the piercing writer who introduced me to urbanism, in 2006. “There isn’t another project we could do that would have a greater impact on our oil consumption than fixing our rail system and restoring passenger service.”

Ten years later, little has changed. A new ranking of high-speed rail networks by nation from GoEuro, a travel search engine, puts the U.S. at 19th out of the 20 countries assessed. Bolivia isn’t on the list, but the U.S. does rank below Turkey and Uzbekistan.

GoEuro ranked all countries with high-speed rail lines (as defined by its slightly complex criteria) and made some arbitrary choices as to which factors matter most. It put the biggest emphasis on population coverage, as it should, but its second most important factor was record speed, which is silly. America would benefit more […]