BALTIMORE, Md.—The North American Building Trades Unions has endorsed building a high-speed maglev train route
between Baltimore and Washington, the federation announced this week, after Baltimore Washington Rapid Rail, the proposed plan’s developer, signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing to use union labor to build and maintain the $10 billion project. “Union labor will be used on this project, and lots of people who currently aren’t in the construction industry will get their opportunity to be in the construction industry,” North American Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey said, pledging that the unions would give “full, unmitigated support” to wining government approval for it. The line would use Japanese superconducting magnetic-levitation technology to run trains at speeds of up to 300 miles an hour, for a 15-minute trip between Baltimore and Washington. Developers and state officials hope to extend it to New York. They project it will generate 74,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent full-time jobs. However, it is not likely to happen soon. A federal environmental review won’t be completed until 2019, and there are also questions about how it would be financed and how it could be built in the densely populated Northeast Corridor.
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