Week 0

Hello everyone, my name is Maxim and welcome to my Week 0 Senior Project Blog! I am excited to embark on this personal academic journey while sharing my progress in the field of transportation economics. In this blog, I will be going over the importance of my research topic, introduce my project/project advisors, and mention some things to look forward to in Week 1.

Importance of the Subject/Background Research: 

Since the creation of Japan’s Shinkansen in 1964, high-speed rail (HSR) has significantly evolved (Cao & Zhu, 2017). From France’s TGV to China’s 22,000 km HSR network, countries from across the world have seen the benefits HSR development has had on sustainability, urbanization, and economic growth (Cao & Zhu, 2017). With this technology proliferating throughout the globe, countries are implementing HSR in vastly different market systems (Jiao et al., 2013). 

Despite nearly 50 years of international experience, the U.S. faces distinct problems in developing HSR, requiring careful analysis and research to develop satisfactory solutions (Saat & Barkan, 2013). Existing U.S. initiatives involve 64 corridors, covering 15,552 miles of route and reaching 163 of the 250 largest metropolitan areas (Schwieterman & Scheidt, 2007). However, 87% of the identified railroad mileage is operated by freight-oriented railroads, presenting unique technical and operational challenges of either building a new railroad network or creating capacity-limiting agreements with freight train companies (Saat & Barkan, 2013).

Recent trends show a bottom-up approach to projects, with governments prioritizing the improvement of existing corridors for higher-speed services rather than dedicated HSR lines due to the extremely high start-up costs and long-term commitment to building new infrastructure as seen in the California high-speed rail project (Schorung, 2022). This restoration of old rail infrastructure leads to trains running at significantly slower speeds than other high-speed rail projects, with the claimed “high-speed” Acela corridor running on average only 68 miles per hour (Handler, 2014). Congressional initiatives, such as the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, aimed to promote HSR development, but implementation challenges persist with no new Acela trackage being built since then (Peterman et al., 2009). 

With the Brightline West Palm Beach – Miami high-speed rail segment becoming profitable and its new high-speed rail operations expanding to Orlando, it is evident that there is a demand for high-speed rail in the United States. With HSR’s massive benefits but high capital costs required to make HSR projects work, it is especially crucial for HSR development to be done safely and efficiently. Wanting to identify the most optimal HSR development method, I decided to make my research question be: What is the most effective, sustainable, and equitable approach to high-speed rail development in the United States?

Research Project and Advisors Introduction:

With the assistance of my onsite advisor Mr. Hamzawsky and my offsite advisor at the High Speed Rail research department of the Ukrainian Railways, I will analyze how well the European Union’s, Japan’s, China’s, Morocco’s, South Korea’s, and Saudi Arabia’s high speed rail development method performed in each of these 6 sub-questions:

1: What high-speed rail market structure has been the most effective on a per-kilometer basis in spurring high-speed rail network development/network coverage?

2: What high-speed rail market structure has been the most equitable in providing cheap and accessible tickets in the context of the country’s cost of living?

3: What high-speed rail market structure has resulted in the most limited environmental impact?

4: What high-speed rail market structure has resulted in the safest high-speed rail infrastructure?

5: What high-speed rail market structure has the highest utilization rates?

6: What high speed rail market structure has the highest profit margins?

Each of these sub-questions will be evaluated on a rubric scale from 1-10 established by a literature review of what is considered a success and a failure for each sub-question. 

After assigning a raw score for each subquestion for each development method, I will then assign a different weight to each sub question based on how much the American government prioritizes a successful outcome in this lens (i.e prioritizing economic efficiency over ticket equity). I will then multiply the weight to the subquestion by the raw score received out of ten, adding up each development method’s weighted subscores to determine which development method has the highest total score or most ideal for the United States. 

Week 1 Future Plan:

For week 1, I plan to complete the rubric criteria for at least 3 of the subquestions. To achieve this, I aim to create a coding rubric with key numbers/terms to look out for when analyzing the specific development methods. An hypothetical example to illustrate this coding rubric would be that to get a 5 on the economic effectiveness of the development method, the project would have to be between 40-50% over initial budget. If it’s less over budget, it gets a higher score. If more over budget, then a lower score. This would remove my personal biases out of the equation, as just qualitative analysis may result in error caused by a lack of research standardization. Overall, I am very excited to start this project and I hope my resulting framework can guide future HSR development in the United States. 

Thank you for reading and see you next week!

Sources

Cao, J., & Zhu, P. (2017). High-Speed Rail. Transportation Letters, 9(4), 185–186. https://doi.org/10.1080/19427867.2017.1318472

Handler, M. (2014). Planning for a New Northeast Corridor. http://www.realtransit.org/PlanningForANewNortheastCorridor.pdf

Jiao, J., Harbin, J., & Li, Y. (2013). Fast Tracks: A Comparison of High-Speed Rail in China, Europe and the United States. Journal of Transportation Technologies, 03(02), 57–62. https://doi.org/10.4236/jtts.2013.32a007

Peterman, D.R., Frittelli, J.F., & Mallett, W.J. (2009). High-Speed Rail (HSR) in the United States.

Saat, M.R., & Barkan, C.P. (2013). Investigating Technical Challenges and Research Needs Related to Shared Corridors for High-Speed Passenger and Railroad Freight Operations.

Schorung, M. (2022). A Geographical Contribution on Interurban Passenger Rail Transportation in the United States.

Schwieterman, J.P., & Scheidt, J. (2007). Survey of Current High-Speed Rail Planning Efforts in the United States. Transportation Research Record, 1995, 27 – 34.