Birmingham Bids To Become Hub Of UK’s High Speed Rail Industry — Are US Cities Taking Notes?

Britain is years behind most mainland European countries in building a high speed rail network — but still many years ahead of the US. They have a spiffy new system up and running called the Javelin that you will certainly be hearing a lot about during the 2012 Olympics (NBC correspondents doing goofy “local flavor” segments about it, etc…) There’s also a plan afoot to build out the backbone of a nationwide network, linking London in the south to Edinburgh and Glasgow in the north.

Now a national undertaking this big creates great opportunity, of course. Birmingham — the place where intercity rail travel was born in 1837 — is now stepping forward to seize that it, attempting to become the national hub for the nascent domestic high speed rail industry:

The Leader of the city council Mike Whitby told a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference that the city’s engineering heritage, central location and readily available skills-base meant it was ‘the only logical choice’. He explained: ‘Birmingham’s experience, capacity and engineering skills-base is unparalleled by  any other city sitting on the network, making us the only logical choice to host the large scale engineering and train valeting facilities which will be required to operate the network. Not only would locating these services in Birmingham make sense for the train operators, but it would also reap great benefits for the city.”

You know, benefits like lots of good jobs in the rail industry. And lots of good jobs in supporting industries. And a new atmosphere of economic vitality. And a magnet for attracting talent to the city. And likely carry-on effects in local investment and real estate values. And so on.

With US investment in passenger rail infrastructure likely to grow robustly for many years to come, American cities might want to take notes. Because there hasn’t been much activity here to date. The little burg of Racine, Wisconsin, is an exception, smartly trying to court Spanish train-maker to locate a manufacturing facility in town–which makes a lot of sense given that Wisconsin has already ordered two Talgo train sets (required by contract to be build in WI), and the Midwest generally will likely be spending a lot on rail over the next two or three decades. In 2040, this could look like a genius move for Racine (or Kenosha, also courting Talgo).

On a larger scale, Detroit is a compelling candidate for both sentimental and practical reasons. Like Birmingham, there’s a great skills base already extant in the city. Not to mention plenty of spare manufacturing capacity. Bombardier, a leading global rail equipment maker, also happens to have a major presence in Ontario, just on the other side of that big lake. With a smart partnership or two, there could be some great neighborly synergies developed (it’s always a good thing when America and America’s Hat can help each other out).

Given that the passenger rail equipment industry has essentially died in this country, the foreign partnership route is probably the way to go. Since rail is going to be a government financed endeavor, there will be regional and state-level favoritism involved, meaning lots of little rail industry hubs scattered across the country. Places like Racine. But now’s the time to start staking out that territory, Local Leaders Of America.