The Big Texas Plan to Copy Japan's High-Speed Rail Success

With more than 300 daily departures, the Shinkansen bullet train covers the 300 miles between Tokyo and Osaka, Japan's two largest metro areas, in as little as 2 hours and 25 minutes. To an American tourist, the journey can feel futuristic. But the world’s first high-speed line, which now carries nearly 400,000 people a day, actually began running half a century ago.

It's a galling fact to consider upon returning home, where the fastest American train is Amtrak's comparatively pokey Acela Express, plodding 400 miles from Washington to Boston in about 7 hours. While bullet trains now race across Europe and Asia, American high-speed rail has a long history of delay and disappointment. President Obama's plan for a national network stalled when Republican governors refused to accept federal money. A $68 billion project is underway in California, but that line, which voters approved six years ago, isn't slated to connect Los Angeles with San Francisco until at least 2029.