High Speed Rail Alliance

But that needs to change because it's really done a lot of damage to the country.

That's Rick Harnish, executive director of the High-Speed Rail Alliance.

Right now, the only train line in America that qualifies as high-speed rail is Amtrak's Acela that runs between Washington, D.C. and Boston.

The Acela train can reach a top speed of 160 miles per hour, but only along about 50 miles of track.

So how can we do that in a railway context? And I know there's other countries around the world that have public-private partnerships in this way, or they have operations tenders that they put out there so that private companies can run the rail line while they own the tracks, those types of things.

And so Rick Harnish, who is, uh, you know, a, a passenger rail advocate in the United States, uh, he leads the High Speed Rail Alliance.

He argues in the paper, uh, or in this piece actually in Grist, that rail should be treated more like other fo- forms of transportation.

"Airlines don't pay to build airports.