We spoke with Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton (D-6th District) on January 13, 2021 about his bold plan for high-speed rail in the United States. He filed his “American High-Speed Rail” bill last May. The prospects for investment in rail look far better now and we will be following developments in federal infrastructure recovery, knowing that Rep. Moulton will be one of the leading voices for rail.

This podcast is shorter than usual, because Moulton and his aide were delayed by the increased security in Washington, and he had another interview scheduled. Later that day he voted on impeachment, so we were especially pleased to catch him.

Rep. Moulton is no stranger to conflict, having served four tours in Iraq. And he has dealt with the challenges of building a new train system, since he worked for Texas Central before turning to public service. We spoke about passenger rail as something to be approached as a 21st-century project: not preserving something from the 1950s but building something for the 2050s. This "moon landing" approach is bigger and bolder than the approach of many in the rail advocacy world. Take a listen and see what you think! We’ll be picking up the conversation as the Biden transportation team gets to work.

See below for an edited transcript of the interview. And here's a link to Rep. Moulton's proposal for American High-Speed Rail.

Transcript

Note: This transcript was created using AI and then lightly edited for readability. It is time-stamped , which is useful as a guide to finding a point in the recording, but the time-stamps are not a perfect match to the podcast because we've added an introduction and did some editing.

SPEAKERS Karen Christensen, Seth Moulton

Seth Moulton

It's a delight to be here. And yes, it's nice to be able to talk about the future at this difficult juncture for our country.

Karen Christensen

So we will be talking about your vision for high speed rail and higher speed rail. But tell us a bit about yourself, you have an unusual background in rail.

Seth Moulton 00:47

I've been interested in rail, particularly high speed rail, as a way to quite literally move our country forward for a long time. And it was actually a bit of an academic interest in appreciating the benefits, economic benefits, environmental benefits and other things of rail transportation over the alternatives. It's something that I studied in school, both when I was quite young. And then up into grad school, I did a financial analysis of the California high speed rail proposal as a graduate student at Harvard Business School, for example. But when I was really young, I said, I just need to learn more about this industry. And I had an appreciation for how unique it is, how it has its own language and terminology. And I decided that I couldn't really learn it at a fundamental level if I didn't have on the ground experience. So I was fortunate to have an opportunity to work at a short line in New Hampshire. And I can't tell you how much I learned from that experience.

Karen Christensen 01:55

What stands out?

01:58

What stands out is how it is a unique industry that is hard to understand from the outside. But it has a lot of people who work in it who are incredibly dedicated to making it a success. Because this was a short line, it hired a number of people who had retired from larger railroads and I worked with an engineer, for example, who ran trains in the Korean War for the US Army in Korea, who came back and ran commuter trains out of Boston when they were still powered by steam, who told stories of running crack passenger trains up into northern New England, knowing the route well enough that he could, shall we say, safely exceed the speed limit when you pick up really romantic stories from the past, but this was also a man who put in hours and hours of hard work who took tremendous pride in his trade, and was damn good at it. I was proud of him.

03:01

I hadn't realized that you've done