Emerging Challenges and Opportunities for U.S. High-Speed Rail Development
As we witness the advancement of U.S. high-speed rail initiatives, the country can look towards its European and Asian counterparts for best practices and lessons learned from their decades of high-speed rail design and operations. These experiences gained may be applicable towards projects such as the Texas Central Railway and the California High-Speed Rail Project. This chapter will address the events of 2009 that have brought domestic high-speed rail to the forefront of U.S. rail transportation. This includes the new FRA Tier I and proposed Tier III criteria, challenges associated with each FRA tier of operation, overseas interoperability efforts, snapshots of international experiences (from policy and technological perspectives), the holistic system-based approach to safety, ongoing efforts of the FRA Engineering Task Force, and additional challenges and opportunities moving forward.