America’s high-speed rail fail

Summary

Today, Explained: America’s High-Speed Rail Fail

Vox Media Podcast Network | Episode Release Date: August 3, 2025

---

Introduction

In this episode of Today, Explained, hosts Sean Rameswaram and Noel King delve into the intricate history and current state of passenger rail in the United States. Titled "America’s High-Speed Rail Fail," the episode explores why the U.S. has struggled to develop a robust high-speed rail system compared to other parts of the world, examines significant projects like California’s high-speed rail initiative and Brightline, and discusses the contrasting success of freight rail in America.

---

The Golden Age of American Railroads

The discussion begins with a historical overview of American railroads, highlighting their pivotal role in the nation's growth.

Michael Hiltzik, a columnist at the LA Times and author of Iron Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America, provides insight into the railroad boom:

“The railroads were dominant in America in a region that was very heavily populated and also was the industrial heart of the country, and that was the Northeast and into the Midwest. There was a lot of business to be done, there were a lot of passengers going on...”
(03:18)

Hiltzik emphasizes the transformative impact of the transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, which connected the East and West coasts and spurred economic growth:

“The American economy could simply not have developed as fast or as powerfully as it did without the railroads.”
(05:02)

He draws parallels between the railroads of the late 19th century and modern big tech companies, noting their similar roles as economic drivers:

“They were the big tech of the time. They were drivers of technology.”
(06:43)

---

The Decline of Passenger Rail in the U.S.

Transitioning into the decline, the episode explores the factors that led to the waning prominence of passenger rail in the United States.

Hiltzik explains how competition from automobiles and airplanes, especially after World War I, eroded the dominance of railroads:

“We began to see competition really showing its effects early in the 20th century.”
(07:21)

This competition, coupled with financial struggles and deteriorating infrastructure, led to a significant downturn in passenger rail services. The government’s attempts to consolidate the fragmented railroad system into entities like Amtrak and Conrail were only partially successful:

“Amtrak and Conrail... were necessary to consolidate what was left of the American railroad system into something that could operate profitably.”
(08:05)

---

International High-Speed Rail: A Comparative Perspective

The hosts and guests draw comparisons between the U.S. and other countries excelling in high-speed rail.

Michael Kimmelman, editor at large of Headway (a team at the New York Times focusing on progress), underscores the stark differences:

“High speed rail exists all around the world, in China and in Europe and Japan, and has for decades. But the United States has consistently failed to build high speed rail.”
(13:07)

He highlights successful implementations in China, Japan’s Shinkansen, and extensive networks across Western Europe, contrasting them with the U.S.’s struggles:

“In Europe, it's perfectly normal...to get on a train that will take you at 200 miles an hour to another city.”
(15:03)

---

California’s High-Speed Rail Project: A Case Study

A significant portion of the episode focuses on California’s ambitious high-speed rail project, which has become emblematic of the challenges facing passenger rail in the U.S.

Kimmelman recounts the project's inception under Governor Jerry Brown in the 1980s and its trajectory through the decades:

“By 1996, California had... approved a measure... which set aside about $10 billion to construct a high speed rail... connecting LA and San Francisco.”
(16:06)

However, the project has been plagued by escalating costs and delays:

“The cost estimates doubled, more than doubled. They would ultimately triple.”
(17:06)

Recent developments include the revocation of $4 billion in federal funding by the Trump administration and uncertainty under subsequent administrations:

“The estimated completion date would be sometime in the 2030s perhaps, and at a cost of well over $110 billion.”
(17:23)

This debacle has been cited as a symbol of broader political and infrastructural challenges, as discussed in Ezra Klein’s book Abundance Co.

---

Brightline: The Lone Star on the Rails

Shifting focus to existing high-speed rail endeavors, the episode examines Brightline, the only privately owned and operated intercity passenger rail service in the U.S.

Kimmelman discusses Brightline’s potential and pitfalls:

“They didn't have to go through a million of these approval processes and they kind of already owned the route.”
(19:58)

While Brightline is pioneering in its approach, it faces serious safety concerns:

“Brightline trains have killed 182 people since they've been in operation and failed to make critical safety updates to prevent accidents.”
(20:42)

These safety issues underscore the complexities of managing passenger rail independently, without the extensive regulatory frameworks seen in other countries.

---

The Dominance and Future of Freight Rail

Contrasting passenger rail's struggles, the episode highlights the robust state of freight rail in the U.S., featuring insights from Chris Holland, Executive Director of the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore.

Holland emphasizes the essential role of freight rail:

“Almost 2 billion metric tons of freight cross the country each year. So when I meet people and they'll tell me, 'Oh, I don't take the train. I always say, well, everything you own and use does.'"
(24:22)

She discusses the impending merger between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, which aims to create the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S.:

“They would literally be able to go from California all the way over to Georgia on one company.”
(26:58)

Looking ahead, Holland is optimistic about innovations in the freight sector, planning an innovation hall for the 200th anniversary of American railroads in 2027.

---

Balancing Freight and Passenger Rail: Challenges and Opportunities

The episode concludes by exploring the divergent priorities between freight and passenger rail systems in the U.S. and Europe.

Holland explains the focus on freight in America versus passenger priority in Europe:

“In Europe the railroads are really more government owned and they're prioritized for passengers.”
(25:25)

She underscores the efficiency and environmental benefits of freight rail, which handle massive volumes of goods with minimal environmental impact compared to road transport.

However, the limitation lies in infrastructure constraints, making the expansion of passenger rail a logistical challenge.

---

Looking Forward: The Path to High-Speed Rail Success

Both Kimmelman and Holland express cautious optimism about the future of high-speed rail in America. While acknowledging significant obstacles—such as regulatory hurdles, funding issues, and safety concerns—they believe that technological advancements and changing societal needs could pave the way for a resurgence in passenger rail.

Kimmelman shares his hope for high-speed rail’s potential to transform commuting and connectivity:

“I do think the transportation system is going to continue to modernize. ... It really was the Internet of its time.”
(28:20)

Holland envisions a modernized rail system that integrates safety, speed, and efficiency, drawing lessons from both historical successes and contemporary innovations.

---

Conclusion

"America’s High-Speed Rail Fail" offers a comprehensive exploration of the historical rise and subsequent decline of passenger rail in the United States. Through expert insights and detailed case studies, the episode sheds light on the multifaceted challenges that have hindered the development of a high-speed rail network comparable to those in other parts of the world. While freight rail remains a testament to effective rail management, the path forward for passenger rail requires overcoming significant regulatory, financial, and infrastructural barriers. The episode leaves listeners contemplating whether America can rekindle its railroading legacy to meet the modern demands of connectivity and sustainability.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Hiltzik: “They were the big tech of the time. They were drivers of technology.” (06:43)
• Michael Kimmelman: “High speed rail exists all around the world, in China and in Europe and Japan, and has for decades. But the United States has consistently failed to build high speed rail.” (13:07)
• Chris Holland: “Everything you own and use... does [use freight rail].” (24:22)

---

Produced and Conducted by Devin Schwartz. Edited by Nerene Khan with Fact Checking by Melissa Hirsch and Engineering by Patrick Boyd.

Transcript

[Jacqueline Hill]

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[Listener]

Really a shame that the United States has not gotten on the train.

[Lara]

Train.

[Jacqueline Hill]

No pun intended.

[Lara]

The experience is really bad.

[Train Conductor]

All aboard. Explain it to Me Express.

[Jacqueline Hill]

This is Explain it to Me from Vox. I'm Jacqueline Hill and today we're taking.

[Lara]

The train because trains take a route that roads can't. So you can see see a lot of the terrain changes. You can see the stars at night and it's just so peaceful.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Now. I grew up out west, so I didn't get familiar with trains until I was in college. And honestly, I was wowed by the fact that I could take the Amtrak from D.C. to Philly. But a lot of you aren't nearly as impressed as I was with the state of passenger trains here in the.

[Lara]

U.S. you know, 99% of travel, you're.

[Listener]

Not going to be able to use rail in the American heartland.

[Lara]

The US Is kind of lacking. There should be more stations, more train tracks and more stops, I think. So there is no train I can take to get my kids to see their grandparents.

[Jacqueline Hill]

One of our listeners wanted to know why.

[Lara]

My name is Lara. I'm from Madison, Wisconsin. I hope that you can explain it to me and get me some answers about why the US doesn't do passenger rail well, and what we could do to make it better. Thanks.

[Jacqueline Hill]

So today we're taking a trip to find out what went wrong with passenger rail in America and whether there's any silver linings. Our first stop, we're heading to a time when American rail dominated. I spoke with Michael Hiltzik, a columnist at the LA Times who wrote a book called Iron Robert Barron's Railroads and the Making of Modern America. He told me the American railroad pretty much grew alongside the nation.

[Michael Hiltzik]

The railroads were dominant in America in a region that was very heavily populated and also was the industrial heart of the country, and that was the Northeast and into the Midwest. There was a lot of business to be done, there were a lot of passengers going on, and as a result, those regions were heavily cross hatched by rail lines starting in the mid-1800s.

[Jacqueline Hill]

So we all probably remember learning about the transcontinental railroad back in history class. That was a huge deal at the time, right?

[Michael Hiltzik]

That's true. The transcontinental railroad, the first transcontinental railroad, which is the one we think about most often, that was completed with the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah in 1869. That was a massive undertaking and it really was transformative for the United States of America. It was an enormous event in San Francisco when the golden spike was driven. The church bells rang, city hall bells rang all over the state. At the time of the driving of the golden spike, there was a great ceremony, a promontory summit, and the wire news services actually dispatched telegraphers to the site so that they could type out that the spike had been driven in real time. So you could see how much interest there was in certainly in California and throughout the west for the building of this great line.

[Jacqueline Hill]

How transformative were trains to the American landscape and the American economy. As you know, they took over all corners of the country.

[Michael Hiltzik]

Yeah. The American economy could simply not have developed as fast or as powerfully as it did without the railroads. And that's not just in the Northeast and in Chicago, but out to the West Coast. So it began to be very inexpensive, at least relatively inexpensive to go from the east or from the Midwest to the West. And that really was a spur to the Western economy.

[Jacqueline Hill]

In your book you talk about how robber barons impacted the railroad industry. You know, Vanderbilt, J.P. morgan. I imagine there was lots of drama and corruption in those early days.

[Michael Hiltzik]

Well, corruption was their middle name. There was a vigorous trade on the stock market for stocks and bonds of the railroads. These, these securities drew a lot of investors from Europe. In fact, Pierpont Morgan. The House of Morgan really made its. Its. It was really built on the business of brokering investments in American railroads for European clients.

[Jacqueline Hill]

This sounds like something out of, like that show the Gilded Age.

[Michael Hiltzik]

Well, the Gilded Age, the money that was made in the Gilded Age was based on the railroad business.

[Chris Holland]

I want to connect all the major.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Cities of America to create a continuous line from New York to Chicago and.

[Chris Holland]

Then from Chicago to California without 10.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Stops along the way. So it's almost. It almost sounds like railroads were kind of like the big tech of the time.

[Michael Hiltzik]

Oh, I think they were the big tech of the time. They were drivers of technology. And I think if you look at the big businesses of today, banking, investment banking, high tech out of Silicon Valley, those are the sorts of industries that the railroad played that role in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was the biggest business in the United States by far.

[Jacqueline Hill]

How did we start to lose our grip on passenger rail compared to our counterparts in Europe and other places?

[Michael Hiltzik]

Well, in the United States, it didn't really happen until we were a decade or 2 into the 20th century and World War I. The railroads were nationalized during World War I because the government needed their services to transport troops. They didn't actually have a commercial presence in that period, but while they were still building, we began to see truck transportation, and sooner or later, we began to see air transport. These were all heavily competitive to the railroads. So we began to see competition really showing its effects early in the 20th century.

[Jacqueline Hill]

And that's when things started to go off the rails.

[Michael Hiltzik]

So the railroads began to run into financial problems. Infrastructures began to crumble. People stopped working, really seeing them as convenient and suitable means of transport. And so business was declining. So Amtrak and Conrail, which was the Amtrak for freight, basically, basically were necessary to consolidate what was left of the American railroad system into something that could operate profitably.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Okay, so a lot of our listeners have talked about trains they've taken abroad.

[Lara]

The Shinkansen in Japan is amazing. And they have many other small trains that are wonderful to ride. Same thing in Europe. I was traveling in Europe and I got to take a train under the ocean from London to Amsterdam.

[Jacqueline Hill]

I'm wondering if you have any memorable stories about trains you've taken abroad.

[Michael Hiltzik]

When I lived and worked in Russia, I took the train from Moscow to Petersburg. That was a little weird. In fact, we were told that we should carry cables and padlocks with us to secure the doors of our cabin while we were making that trip, because otherwise marauders would invade our cabin and steal what we had and, you know, maybe commit violence. So it was a little scary, but we were told, you know, it's a trip that you should take once, and we did do that.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Did you walk away unscathed?

[Michael Hiltzik]

Unlike yeah, we walked away unscathed.

[Jacqueline Hill]

All right, Michael, thanks for taking this trip with us.

[Michael Hiltzik]

Happy to do it.

[Train Conductor]

Make way, make way. The train is approaching the station.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Michael Hiltzik is the author of Iron Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America. You can find a link to his book in our show.

[Train Conductor]

Notes Next stop High Speed Rail ish.

[Jacqueline Hill]

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[Listener]

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[Train Conductor]

All aboard all aboard the Explain it to Me Express. Please keep your arms and legs in the train. Yes, that means you, J.Q.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Hey, we're back talking high speed rail. Those trains that can go as fast as around 220mph. My commute would take me about a minute at that speed. But what's the state of high speed rail in the us?

[Michael Kimmelman]

Non existent and terrible, but there's some glimmer of hope.

[Jacqueline Hill]

That's Michael Kimmelman, the editor at large of Headway, a team housed at the New York Times that focuses on progress. And in terms of high speed rail in the US it's not really happening.

[Michael Kimmelman]

High speed rail exists all around the world, in China and in Europe and Japan, and has for decades. But the United States has consistently failed to build high speed rail. And there's been conversation about it for a long time as well.

[Jacqueline Hill]

You know, earlier in the show we got into the history of rail in the US and, you know, it used to be so innovative and so cutting edge. What happened? How did we end up falling behind like this?

[Michael Kimmelman]

The story is usually told that, you know, we had a great rail system. The country was connected by the transcontinental railway in the 19th century, and we gave up that advantage. And that story is true for sure, but it also doesn't take into account the way the country has developed. The fact is that we had a lot of land and a lot of places where people could grow once the automobile became something that people could afford. And it wasn't just for rich people. People wanted roads, so we invested less and less in trains, and that's part of the story. But there are a lot of other reasons why we failed too, which is that we've become a country that's extremely regulated and that has made it very difficult to build anything big anymore. We have a million obstacles to progress and we have very few easy paths.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Okay, it's not here in the US Then where is the best high speed rail system? Like, who's getting this right right now?

[Michael Kimmelman]

Well, a bunch of people. Right? I mean, I think in the time that California has said that it would build a high speed rail between LA and San Francisco and done none of it. I think China has built nearly 30,000 miles of high speed rail just in these couple of decades or less. Japan, of course, has a famous high speed bullet train called the Shinkansen and has had that for decades. And most of Europe now, Western Europe is connected by high speed rail. It's perfectly normal in Europe to go to your local train station and get on a train that will take you at 200 miles an hour to another city.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Wow.

[Michael Kimmelman]

So you don't have to go to an airport, you don't have to come from an airport, you don't have to go through security. It's a much easier, more not just convenient, but more pleasant way to travel.

[Jacqueline Hill]

We were supposed to have high speed rail in the us. What happened to that project? There was a project that was supposed to take place in California.

[Michael Kimmelman]

Yeah, there was and technically there still is, though I wouldn't hold your breath. Yeah, back in the 80s, actually Governor Jerry Brown in California had this idea that California could use high speed rail. I make no bones about it. I like trains. I like high speed trains even better. By the 90s, California had already begun to move ahead with this plan for a high speed rail. By 1996, I think California had a kind of plan in place and it took them until 2008, I think, to approve a measure, I think it was called Prop 1A, which set aside about $10 billion to construct a high speed rail which was going to connect LA and San Francisco. It would take about 2 hours and 40 minutes directly from one to the other. And the cost estimate was around 33, $34 billion. And the completion date was 2020.

[Jacqueline Hill]

2020 has come and gone and there's still no high speed rail from San Francisco to LA. Recently the Trump administration revoked $4 billion in federal funding for the project. Overall, it's been kind of a mess.

[Michael Kimmelman]

By 2018, it was clear this was never going to happen by 2020 and may never happen at all. And the cost estimates doubled, more than doubled. They would ultimately triple. And then when Newsom, Gavin Newsom, the current governor, succeeded Brown, he spoke about the fact that this was obviously not going to be possible anytime soon. And his big promise was that possibly California might have high speed rail between Bakersfield and Merced, two cities in the Central Valley that no one had really asked for high speed rail to travel between. And now that's pretty unlikely too. The estimated completion date would be sometime in the2030s perhaps, and at a cost of well over $110 billion. So yeah, that didn't work out.

[Jacqueline Hill]

The failure of California's high speed rail has been held up as the symbol of all kinds of political problems. It was even talked about in this book called Abundance Co, written by this guy named Ezra Klein, you may have heard of him.

[Train Conductor]

Gentlemen, you wrote a book about an optimistic future, about reforming America's institutions.

[Michael Kimmelman]

Why delve into sci fi to get.

[Jacqueline Hill]

The Future we want, we need to build and invent more of the things we need.

[Chris Holland]

We don't build enough homes, we don't.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Build enough clean energy. We never manage to build high speed rail.

[Michael Kimmelman]

The California high speed rail has been held up definitely as a prime example of that. And that path between LA and San Francisco runs through a lot of properties and a lot of jurisdictions, each one of which can put up obstacles and make complaints and say what they want. So in general, what had been seen as a great boon suddenly becomes a boondoggle. And I think that's what's happened in California. So it's a really good example of the problem that the abundance agenda describes. And I think the fact that we're having this conversation may actually be an indication that the conversation is shifting now finally a little.

[Jacqueline Hill]

So that's California, but there's another project in the US that's already running. It's called Brightline and it's a higher speed train that runs between Miami and Orlando. It's the only privately owned and operated intercity passenger rail in America.

[Michael Kimmelman]

In short, they didn't have to go through a million of these approval processes and they kind of already owned the route. And in California to Vegas, that's pretty much the plan for Brightline 2, which is to go along 15A highway between the two cities that in the median. So there's not a lot of properties to deal with. There are not a lot of sort of obstructions. You don't have to move people out or whatever. And as a consequence, that may actually happen. And that might be in fact the first genuine high speed rail in the United States.

[Jacqueline Hill]

But Brightline has also been found to have a dubious safety record. An investigation from the Miami Herald and WLRN recently reported that Brightline trains have killed 182 people since they've been in operation and failed to make critical safety updates to prevent accidents.

[Michael Kimmelman]

The safety record of Brightline in Florida is really troubling. Partly it's growing pains transitioning from a freight rail to a passenger train that runs through the middle of cities. But the company bears a lot of the blame. It's clearly a crisis and a learning curve for the company and those Florida communities.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Are you hopeful that one day we'll have high speed rail that's both safe and fast? You know, even if it's pie in the sky, is it gonna be like, you know, gonna go see my grandkids by getting on that high speed rail?

[Michael Kimmelman]

Yeah, I have the same dream. It's gonna have to happen sooner. For seeing my grandkids to do that, but yes. I mean, I'm not entirely pessimistic about this. High speed rail is something that could connect large cities and those cities could really use it. And that will serve many, many millions of Americans.

[Jacqueline Hill]

All right, Michael Kimmelman, thank you so much for explaining this to us.

[Michael Kimmelman]

My pleasure.

[Train Conductor]

We have arrived at the station. Please remember to fetch your luggage or else it's mine. Our next stop is our final destination, where American trains are still breaking new ground.

[Chris Holland]

Paquetes expedia. Vivies paradis frutar de la musica con todos. Tu sentidos pormenos expedia. Vivimos paraviajar.

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[Chris Holland]

We all get our packages from Amazon, but you know, those goods have to have come into the country, so they come in via our ports and then usually it's the rail system that's picking them up. So there's very few things that a rail, particularly long haul freight, is not involved in.

[Jacqueline Hill]

That's Chris Holland. She's the executive director of the B and O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, the birthplace of American railroading.

[Chris Holland]

We are where literally the very first stone was ever laid, the first mile of commercial track. We are a 40 acre campus with eight historic buildings. It's all original B and O grounds. And we are coming up on the 200th anniversary of the American railroad. In 2027, it was first chartered. The first commercial railroad, the B and O was chartered on February 28, 1827.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Okay. This whole entire episode we've been talking about passenger rail. Passenger rail in the US doesn't have the best reputation, but there is one way where American railroads are still kind of reigning supreme. Can you talk about that a little bit?

[Chris Holland]

Absolutely. The freight rail is reigning supreme. I mean, we have 140,000 plus miles of rail in this country for freight. So literally one end to the other. And right now, almost 2 billion metric tons of freight cross the country each year. So when I meet people and they'll tell Me? Oh, I don't take the train. I always say, well, everything you own and use does. That's how prevalent it is in American life.

[Jacqueline Hill]

So I think we have this real tendency to romanticize Europe. You know, the food, the healthcare, the trains. Like that scene in Before Sunrise where Ethan Hawke's character meets Julie Delpies. I feel like we have some kind of connection. Right?

[Chris Holland]

Yeah, me too. Yeah. Right.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Well, great. So listen, here's the deal. This is what we should do. You should get off the train with me here in Vienna and come check out the town. What? Come on, it'll be fun. So do they have better modes of transportation or is it more complicated than that?

[Chris Holland]

I think it's an issue of priority. So, you know, in the United States we prioritize the movement of goods. So really there can be some government investment, but it's really the railroads themselves, the private companies who invest and maintain their lines and those lines are used for freight. Whereas in Europe the railroads are really more government owned and they're prioritized for passengers. So on our lines for freight gets priority, passenger second. And it's pretty much reversed in Europe.

[Jacqueline Hill]

All right, so in the US we tend to move our packages by freight and there's an advantage to that.

[Chris Holland]

If you're going to move goods a long distance, it is the most efficient and it's the most efficient for all aspects and particularly environmental. I mean, you can move a ton of freight almost 500 miles on a single gallon of fuel. So there's a lot of efficiencies. There's trade offs too. You know, if you want something very quick, you might go with the airline industry. But if you want to look at cost, if you want to look at the environmental cost, if you want to look at moving goods efficiently, it's going to be via rail. If we didn't move it by rail, we would have so many more trucks and congestion on our roads. Think about the amount of trucks we would add back to the road if we didn't use rail.

[Jacqueline Hill]

I also wanted to know where freight rail is headed and Chris told me there's actually really big news on that front.

[Chris Holland]

You know, I'm sure you've probably heard that Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern announced just this week that they have reached a deal on a proposed merger to create the first transcontinental railroad which would create over 50,000 miles of rail between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. They would literally be able to go from California all the way over to Georgia on one company. But it is rather exciting to see after 200 years that we're now getting that proposal.

[Jacqueline Hill]

What do you think the future of American rail looks like?

[Chris Holland]

The future of American rail? I love that question because we are looking at the 200th anniversary in 2027, and at the museum, I'll just say we are planning an innovation hall as part of 2027, looking at the technologies that are emerging in this industry, looking at safety and speed and efficiency. And you could argue it's gone from the horse to the steam engine at 13 miles an hour, the very first steam engine to now freight and, you know, going, you know, 70, 80, 90 miles an hour to, you know, in Japan going 300 miles an hour. So, you know, the advancements have been pretty great.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Okay, so freight rail is actually pretty good here in the US but what about passenger rail? Will it ever catch up to freight?

[Chris Holland]

The issue is going to be the constraint, the use of the tracks. You know, there's tracks only in so many places. And then if you do try to build new infrastructure, like we're watching high speed rail, trying to get permitted, you know, if you look at an area like the east coast, it's a pretty constrained environment. So where do you, where do you put those tracks? It's certainly not out of the realm of possibility. And if you did have something like high speed rail where you could go from New York to D.C. in less than an hour, you can imagine commuting patterns changing. I live in New York, but work in D.C. what does that mean for sense of community? So I do think the transportation system is going to continue to modernize. There's so much history and the railroad has changed American life socially, culturally, economically. It was formed only 50 years after the birth of the country. So there's almost nothing that it doesn't touch. You know, if you talk about medical, the first railway surgeons, you know, first responders and trauma surgeons really originated from this industry. So, you know, our time zones, railroad standard time, you know, came into effect in 1918ish. You know, those are our four time zones. You just think about every step of the way how it's changed the country. It really was the Internet of its time.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Thanks so much, Chris.

[Chris Holland]

Thank you. It's great to be here.

[Jacqueline Hill]

Before you go, we have a series on wellness coming up and we want to know about your relationship with fitness trackers. Whether it's a watch or a ring or something else. We want to know if you use them and how you use them. Do you find them helpful, harmful? Give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 this episode was produced and conducted by Devin Schwartz.

[Train Conductor]

All Aboard.

[Jacqueline Hill]

It was edited by Nerene Khan with fact checking by Melissa Hirsch and engineering by Patrick Boyd. I'm your host, Jonquin Hill. Explain it to Me is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. For more award winning podcasts, visit podcasts.voxmedia.com thank you so much for listening and please don't talk in the quiet car.

[Lara]

Girl. She is a mess. But America is cute so there's that. So you know, settle in, get ready for a long ass ride and just look upon America and just be like, wow. You know, your politics are terrible, but you are so cute.

[Jacqueline Hill]

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[Listener]

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