Is long-distance train travel in America near its end or just getting started?

Support in Washington for passenger-train service, already tepid, looks ready to lose more steam under the Trump administration. Amtrak funding gets slashed in the White House’s 2018 budget, which also calls for the elimination of most long-distance rail service.

And Amtrak leadership is facing heavy criticism for delays in service, a March derailment at New York’s Penn Station and the handling of overdue repairs there.

Advocates of faster service and more business-class amenities, meanwhile, see hope in several privately funded projects under way, including a line starting service soon in Florida and efforts to launch a high-speed Dallas-Houston train.

A federal grant for electrification of tracks in California, meanwhile, has breathed new life into a long-delayed proposal for faster service between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

To get a clear picture of what passenger rail transport might look like going forward, The Wall Street Journal reached out to three experts in rail travel and policy: Andy Kunz, president of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, a nonprofit advocating for the creation of a high-tech, cross-country rail network; Baruch Feigenbaum, assistant director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank; and Robert Puentes, president and chief executive of the Eno Center for Transportation, a nonprofit that provides professional development for executives and managers in the transportation sector. Here are edited excerpts.

In a perfect world…

WSJ: What is your vision of passenger rail transport for America?

Andy Kunz: Our vision [at the U.S. High Speed Rail Association] includes a network of fast trains connecting America’s metro areas as our main form of national transportation. This would be seamlessly integrated with local rail, bus and bicycle networks in each city, and supported by dense, walkable communities around the stations.

In 2009 we laid out a national high-speed-rail [HSR] vision map showing a 17,000-mile HSR network of 220-mph trains to be built in phases for completion by 2030. This was modeled after the European HSR network that had evolved over 30 years. Then China built a much larger national network in nine years, so we now have China’s HSR network as the best global model.

Robert Puentes: The country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas are primarily behind the recent growth in Amtrak passengers: Ten major cities are responsible for nearly two-thirds of total ridership. Driving the connection between these metropolitan areas are 26 short-distance corridors, or routes traveling less than 400 miles, that carry 83% of all Amtrak passengers. States now have formalized relationships with Amtrak to upgrade tracks, operate routes and redevelop stations.

To continue the growth, my vision is a system where the federal government and states broker a new agreement between Amtrak and the states to share operating costs and other responsibilities for corridors longer than 750 miles; refine, empower and create a dedicated funding source for future rail investments; and complete a national rail plan that fosters a stronger relationship between public agencies and private capital and management firms.

Baruch Feigenbaum: I work for a free-market think tank. So in general I oppose subsidies to transportation modes that don’t recover their costs.

Having said that, I support funding for transit targeted at low-income passengers and the disabled even though transit does not come close to covering its costs. That does not mean we support every transit project; I oppose many because I see them as a poor use of taxpayer funds.

High-speed rail is different. In Europe and Asia, HSR’s biggest customer is businesspeople who do not need a taxpayer subsidy. As a result I don’t believe in subsidizing high-speed rail. My vision is limited to building out areas in which rail can be profitable or break even, like the Northeast Corridor between Boston and D.C., as well as a direct line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I have looked at the Midwest, and although Chicago is a good city, no other cities in that region have sufficient central-city employment/population density and good enough local transit systems to make HSR work.

Kunz: First off, Baruch, the biggest customers of HSR around the world are people…all sorts of people, not just businesspeople, but families going on trips, students, retired people, young professionals, schoolchildren, basically their entire society. In countries that have HSR, it becomes their main form of transportation for everyone.

And your statement that no other cities in the Midwest have sufficient density or local transit systems to make HSR work is completely false. If you look all around the world at the 20-plus countries that have high-speed rail, most of them serve smaller cities than the size of U.S. cities, and they get enormous ridership. The point is to create a network so the HSR lines connect all the major cities together, and along the way are also connecting into smaller cities. This gives wide access to the populations in the smaller cities, with access to opportunities along the line.

WSJ: Who bears the cost?

Kunz: For the past 70 years, rail has been at the bottom of the priority list for investment and focus. We funded a national interstate system somehow, and a trillion-dollar aviation system somehow. Before that we funded the transcontinental railroad. We currently are spending something like $200 billion a year between federal and state funds on endlessly expanding our highways. Some of that money should be moved to fund rail projects right away. Getting the nation off foreign oil is certainly a top national-security goal, and building a national HSR system is the fastest way to get the nation off foreign oil.

Feigenbaum: I would prefer our system be operated by the private sector or as a public-private partnership. If the government can operate rails more cheaply, that would be an option. Relaxing rules on Davis-Bacon and Buy America [public-works laws focused on wages and domestic sourcing] would help build the lines more quickly and cheaply.

The future of Amtrak

WSJ: Does it make sense to keep putting money into existing Amtrak rail lines, which are government-subsidized and often shared with freight?

Puentes: America’s passenger rail network is really made up of two types of routes: those less than 400 miles and those greater than 400 miles. The former typically enjoy direct state support and always serve at least one large metropolitan area. The latter represent the “geographic equity” portion of the network. These routes travel for vast stretches and offer service to many smaller, relatively isolated communities with limited inter-metropolitan alternatives. Together, they carry about 17% of Amtrak’s passengers but constitute 43.6% of its route-associated operating costs.

If Congress wants to continue serving rural areas with passenger rail, it needs to recognize it as “geographic equity” and not expect it to run “like a business.”

Feigenbaum: With three other modes (aviation, intercity bus and passenger vehicles), I don’t see the wisdom in subsidizing a fourth mode when the other three are largely (although not totally) unsubsidized. I also think that Amtrak’s political challenge is one of the top reasons for having a private company or public-private partnership build and operate the lines.

Kunz: I hate to point out the obvious, but all transportation is subsidized. No roads make money. Airports don’t make money. The FAA doesn’t make money, and so on. Transportation is a public service that makes our economy work. HSR is the only mode of transportation that can deliver very high capacity (more than highways and airports combined) without delays or congestion, reliably and safely, day after day. This is a mode that can stimulate our entire economy.

Consider France. The first HSR line, from Paris to Lyon, was built and paid for by the government. It made money and actually paid back a fee to the government. Then two years later, France decided to build out another region of France, and again it’s paid for by the government and turns a profit. This is growing a network, not subsidizing a losing system. Huge difference.

WSJ: Is there a business case for building out and repairing America’s aging rail system?

Kunz: The thing about HSR is that it does have a huge business case, from the actual time savings of businesspeople using the trains daily, to the massive real estate opportunities that surround the stations, such as the Hudson Yards in New York City, and all the new development now taking shape surrounding the new Transbay station in downtown San Francisco, and others. In addition, the rail operator is a for-profit business that contributes to society, such as the new private rail operator in Italy called NTV.

We agree HSR should be built where it makes sense first. These are the places with high-population centers and high movement between them already, but suffering from excessive congestion and delays. Those places are also where infill real-estate development makes the most sense clustered around the rail stations, instead of sprawling outward into farmland.

Puentes: When it comes to high-speed rail, the U.S. is in kind of an emerging market. As with any infrastructure, it really matters where you put these investments and what they are designed to do. In Japan and European countries, they don’t build the whole network at once. They build a trunk line, and they make that work. They build another one and then make that work.

That’s what’s emerging here. We have the California HSR project that’s very bumpy but still moving along, connecting metropolitan Los Angeles and metropolitan San Francisco—two places that have a clear economic relationship and are the right distance apart—and it has the potential to be very competitive. There are two other projects that are mostly private ventures: one between Dallas and Houston and one between Orlando and Miami. It’s a very strong market signal that you have private investors willing to spend money to build and operate these services.

Self-driving cars

WSJ: Are there technological advances on the horizon that will affect passenger rail?

Puentes: One could see a future where a ubiquitous fleet of driverless cars has a negative impact on passenger rail, but the technology for the vehicles could possibly also be applied to the trains of the future. Smart technology like positive train control [technology aimed at preventing accidents] bears a family resemblance to some of the autonomous vehicles’ technologies. Automated vehicles could also be used to supplement rail service by providing so-called first-mile/last-mile connections around stations, especially in rural areas.

Kunz: Many today are assuming the driverless-car system will replace a rapid-transit system, which will never work. The freeways are already full wall-to-wall now in most regions of the U.S.

The driverless-car idea is trying to copy that functionality of HSR with an unreliable, vulnerable, virtual [wireless] guideway which has to be built with millions of antennas, radar units and sensors. This inherently includes thousands of reasons it will struggle to work, and be subject to constant hacking, glitches, power outages, system failures, weather, incompatible vehicles and endless other problems. Unfortunately every one of those situations will probably result in car crashes—exactly what this is being sold to prevent.

Feigenbaum: Automated vehicles are going to bring about tremendous change. Vehicle ownership is likely to decrease. Connectivity could increase roadway capacity. So there is an argument that we will be able to build less transportation infrastructure period. We should think long and hard about planning for major transportation investments that we cannot fund for the next 20 years.

Electric and hybrid-powered cars will become much more commonplace. If anything, this is a negative for high-speed rail, which is not particularly green regardless of whether it gets its power from coal, natural gas or renewables. This is because building a new HSR line releases so much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

Kunz: I agree with Baruch’s comment about planning for the next 20 years, which is why we question a $1 trillion investment in driverless cars—what the full build-out system is projected to cost. But this argument could also apply to ongoing road investment.

However, his comment on greenhouse gases is pretty outlandish. Any infrastructure that gets built releases greenhouse gases. Highways require 20 times the infrastructure that an HSR line does. Once built, HSR is the cleanest form of transport, and can be 100% powered by renewables.

Quick fix

WSJ: What have been the big failures of rail travel in the U.S.? Can they be overcome?

Puentes: As with other areas of infrastructure, recommendations for passenger rail tend to devolve into calls for increased federal spending. Such a call is probably justified especially over the long term for myriad reasons, including Washington’s historically outsize support of other transportation modes. But Washington and the states can operate better during this remarkably challenging time of fiscal constraint. The goal should not be to eliminate long-distance routes by “offloading” responsibility from the federal government to states, but strengthening the partnership and reaffirming the commitment of states to long-distance routes over time.

Feigenbaum: The biggest failure of rail transit has been poor management. With guaranteed funding, government or otherwise, there is no financial incentive to improve service.

When it comes to HSR, public partnerships with the private sector can bring innovation, minimize political interference and help stretch financial resources further. But given my sentiment of not spending taxpayer dollars on HSR, the number of new lines that could be constructed is limited.