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  • When I think about taking a train,

  • I get this warm, fuzzy, nostalgic feeling,

  • sort of like--

  • There's something about a train

  • That's magic

  • Of course, the reality of train travel

  • in America is less than magical.

  • There's just huge parts of this country

  • where it's just a hassle to get anywhere by train,

  • and the trains barely run.

  • For the most part, the only passenger trains are Amtrak.

  • That's the case that it's been for almost 50 years now.

  • Even along the busy Northeast Corridor,

  • stretching from Washington, D.C. to Boston,

  • less than 10% of trips each year are taken by train.

  • So it might be surprising to learn that this guy,

  • a billionaire investor who co-owns

  • the Milwaukee Bucks basketball franchise,

  • is super optimistic about the future

  • of trains in America and has a plan

  • to bring them back.

  • I think people lack imagination a little bit sometimes,

  • of what actually could happen.

  • And once they can experience it,

  • I think it'll be a question of, you know,

  • why is it not everyplace else?

  • So how did trains get such a bad rap in America?

  • Well, here's a little background.

  • Just over a hundred years ago, train travel was really

  • the only option for long-distance trips.

  • But as two major technological innovations came online,

  • passenger rail's competitiveness dropped significantly.

  • One of those, of course, is the car.

  • And then to combine those vehicles

  • with a massive amount of highway construction.

  • The other major technological innovation,

  • of course, was the airplane.

  • Both of those were heavily subsidized

  • by the federal government, and as a result,

  • the number of riders on passenger trains started to plummet.

  • And so, the railroad companies, they were losing

  • all sorts of money on their passenger lines,

  • so they wanted to dump them, so they basically convinced

  • the federal government in 1971 to create Amtrak

  • and basically take over intercity passenger rail.

  • In the busy Northeast Corridor,

  • Amtrak actually runs a fairly popular, reliable service.

  • But in most of the rest of the country,

  • where Amtrak doesn't even own its own tracks,

  • frequent delays are the norm, and ticket sales are dismal.

  • But of course, it doesn't have to be this way.

  • In much of Europe and Asia,

  • taking an intercity train is as natural as it is

  • for Americans to hop into their own cars.

  • There's a dramatic and large-scale public investment

  • in rail in East Asia and Western and Central Europe.

  • That's just not an investment we've made here in the U.S.

  • So we just have significantly less service on offer.

  • But in some ways, you could see that as a glass half-full,

  • and there's a tremendous amount of opportunity there.

  • The question is, how can we build more of it,

  • how can we afford that service,

  • and where is that service gonna work best?

  • Brightline announcing it's just a few weeks

  • away from service in Miami-Dade,

  • and they started testing the tracks today.

  • Here in Miami, a city founded

  • by Gilded Age railroad magnate Henry Flagler,

  • a new grand rail experiment is taking place,

  • the first brand new, privately-owned

  • intercity passenger rail service in America

  • in nearly a century.

  • It's the brainchild of this guy, Wes Edens,

  • head of private equity firm Fortress Investment Group.

  • How do you help convince a culture that isn't really

  • interested in the train as transportation

  • to become interested in trains as transportation?

  • Get 'em to try it once.

  • Not only is it the time and the efficiency of it,

  • it's a very, very pleasurable experience.

  • It's a proven commodity around the world.

  • It's only the United States in the industrialized world

  • that doesn't have it, but I think that's gonna change soon.

  • Wes's project, called Brightline,

  • started operating in 2018,

  • running modern Siemens-built passenger trains

  • between Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach

  • at speeds at up to around 70 miles per hour,

  • running on existing freight track

  • owned by the Florida East Coast Railway.

  • By 2022, the route will be extended up to Orlando,

  • on newly-built tracks that will allow the trains

  • to cruise at up to 125 miles per hour.

  • The entire 250-mile route will take around three hours,

  • falling into an important passenger rail sweet spot.

  • It's too short to fly but too long to drive.

  • If it's too short,

  • then rail service doesn't really make much sense.

  • People are gonna take their car.

  • And then you're talkin' 1,000 miles.

  • Aviation's always gonna be competitive.

  • But for that two to 500-mile range,

  • rail service really offers

  • potentially the best alternative.

  • These paired corridors that are too far to drive,

  • too short to fly, there's about a dozen significant ones.

  • So Atlanta to Charlotte, Dallas to Houston,

  • Las Vegas to Los Angeles, which is our next project.

  • I think that it's quite possible you'll see trains

  • in all those places over the next 10 years.

  • I actually grew up in South Florida,

  • not far from where Brightline's route passes today.

  • My parents, like many other transplants,

  • escaped cold, crowded New York for the tropical,

  • laid-back charm of South Florida.

  • And, like most of the U.S.,

  • Florida has a firmly-entrenched car culture.

  • But in recent decades, Florida's population has surged,

  • as retiring baby boomers have been lured in by the state's

  • lack of income and estate taxes.

  • Traffic, especially along the I-95 corridor,

  • has become a nightmare at all hours.

  • Have you done the drive from West Palm to Miami before?

  • I have. What's that like?

  • It's terrible, you're stuck in at least

  • two to three hours of traffic.

  • And just, Florida drivers-- Are terrible.

  • They're the worst. They're just horrendous.

  • They make New York drivers look like

  • they just got out of driving school.

  • Well, a lot of them are New Yorkers

  • who just made their way down here--

  • That's true, that's true. Brought their bad skills,

  • and got worse. And got worse as they drove

  • down here. That's so true.

  • It's not hard to see how a train

  • would be an improvement over all of that.

  • But logic aside, there's still the strong

  • cultural bias against trains, that bad reputation.

  • So Brightline sweetens the deal,

  • and for about $18-40 each way, you get to ride

  • on a bright, clean, brand spankin' new train,

  • with some luxury-flavored amenities.

  • And finally, there's the biggest luxury of all,

  • reducing your carbon footprint.

  • We think we'll take four million cars off the road here,

  • so that's millions of metric tons of CO2.

  • This system will run on biodiesel.

  • Obviously, it's not fossil-free,

  • but you're concentrating people into transportation,

  • which is a lot more efficient than individual cars.

  • For all these potential upsides,

  • Brightline has already faced some serious challenges.

  • One is a bizarrely high level of fatalities

  • caused by collisions.

  • A Brightline train comes to a smashing stop,

  • hitting a car on the tracks.

  • Officials say that this person

  • who was in this vehicle is okay.

  • These accidents are pretty clearly

  • not the railway's fault.

  • It's more like risky Floridian drivers

  • are used to ignoring crossing warnings

  • to get past slow-moving freight trains.

  • To their credit, Brightline has undertaken

  • some measures to reduce these accidents,

  • such as improving signage at crossings,

  • and using drones to monitor potential collisions.

  • The real hurdle, though, is the business itself.

  • The total bill for Brightline's completed

  • Orlando-to-Miami route is expected

  • to come in at around $4 billion,

  • funded mostly by what are called private activity bonds,

  • a form of tax-exempt bonds sold to private investors.

  • Eventually, the bonds will need to be repaid.

  • So far, ridership has been climbing.

  • Last July, they welcomed their one-millionth rider.

  • But on a Tuesday afternoon, well,

  • this is what our train looked like.

  • It's disconcerting to see how few

  • people are on the train, though.

  • I walk my dogs every morning,

  • and every time it goes by, I kinda look.

  • There's maybe three people riding it.

  • To help increase ridership,

  • they've partnered with everyone from local museums

  • to ridesharing services to the Miami Heat.

  • And more recently, they announced

  • a branding partnership with this guy.

  • Hi, everybody!

  • Which will result in Brightline being renamed

  • Virgin Trains USA sometime in 2020.

  • But Brightline isn't just betting on ridership.

  • What train service does always really well

  • is it's not just making money on the service,

  • it's that knowing the land around train stations

  • is incredibly valuable, and Brightline's parent company

  • effectively owns land in particular

  • around the station in central Miami.

  • We've built about 1,500,000 square feet of real estate.

  • I mean, this is a part of Miami, that you would know well,

  • was not really a vibrant economic zone.

  • It now is really the hub of economic

  • development here in downtown Miami,

  • and transportation plays a huge role in that.

  • So we think that the real estate part of it

  • is a big component, and actually linking

  • those two things together, economically,

  • it creates a lot of the foundation for the project.

  • Brightline's Florida route isn't the only

  • recent development for passenger rail in the U.S.

  • The company's next project is a high-speed electric train,

  • stretching from Las Vegas to just outside L.A.,

  • a route millions of tourists drive every year.

  • Other high-speed rail projects have been proposed

  • in places like Texas and the Pacific Northwest,

  • though these proposals are far behind Brightline's

  • operational service.

  • Meanwhile, Amtrak isn't taking all of this

  • private competition lying down.

  • A couple of years ago,

  • it brought on Richard Anderson as CEO,

  • who previously revived Delta Airlines from bankruptcy.

  • We really need to reposition Amtrak

  • as a modern mode of transportation similar to what

  • we see in Europe and what we see in Japan.

  • He's been cutting costs in an effort

  • to free up capital for much-needed infrastructure

  • improvements and revamped trains,

  • like these state-of-the-art high-speed cars

  • that are coming in 2021

  • to the business-traveler-focused Acela line.

  • While Amtrak still needs subsidies to get by,

  • it's financially healthier than ever,

  • and in 2019, it set a new record for ridership,

  • serving nearly a million more passengers

  • than the year prior.

  • Ultimately, the future of American passenger rail,

  • whether public or private,

  • will depend on one really big question,

  • will Americans want to actually ride trains,

  • or do we prefer to think of them

  • as nostalgia-inducing relics of the past?

  • Rail has always made sense, but it seems like

  • it's never made more sense than in 2020!

  • We're gonna need more of it.

  • There's the climate issue, the less people drive,

  • the less people fly, the better it is for the environment.

  • Countries that invest in infrastructure

  • are the ones that do the best,

  • do the best economically, do the best for the people,

  • they create the best quality of life.

  • We used to be the leader of infrastructure in the world.

  • And I mean, frankly, we're not the leader anymore,

  • and that's something that should change!

When I think about taking a train,

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アメリカ人は再び鉄道を愛する準備ができているのか? (Are Americans Ready to Love Trains Again?)

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    林宜悉 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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