Recent content by cirdan

I don't know about India, but in the legal systems of some countries land ownersip also means you technically own the subsoil going a long way down. Property owners can thus block tunneling projects even if these have no noticeable impact. This is the reason that in London for example, most of...

Could it be that the reason for these joints is to provide some sort of electrical isolation between segments for signal and detection purposes?

seems on odd way to demolish the bridge to me. It means the debris is now on the river bed where it will in future be a hazard to dredgers and may one day cost many times what was saved here to lift back to the surface. A severe case of "not my department" mentality.

Also, the trolley would have to go somewhere meaningful to be useful. Just ferrying passengers a few blocks and dropping them there is not going to make it an attractive alternative to driving. I agree. However Brightline seem to be working quite hard to tap into the cruise market and want to...

I don't know, but am assuming Florida is especially attractive as a sun and sea destination for people from the north east, and maybe to a lesser degree from across the broader mid-west, offering them a means to escape grey winters. LA (and its broader area) is pretty much a rival to Florida in...

Interesting to read the claim that "Union Station in Tampa remains Florida’s second busiest passenger train station." I guess this claim means second busiest Amtrak station? Or would that claim genuinely also relate to any Brightline or commuter station?

The wording is a bit contradictory here. The article says the tunnel is being built through a working-class black neighborhood, which sounds at first like a massive swathe of urban destruction, until you think about it being a tunnel. That surely means it is being built under the neighborhood...

The alternative would be to design the cars to have a private office where the crew can retreat to do their paperwork or have their coffee break behind a closed door. If that happened we would probably be here now moaning over crew who disappear and cannot be found when needed and are...

My criticism is that Amtrak has no magic gold dust up its sleeve, but is weighed down by the drawbacks of being a government entity. Amtrak may have deep pockets in principle, but needs to spread that money thinly over all its various activities, and so will not somehow be able to magically...

Do the former ATSF bi-levels have any useful life left in them? I guess they were eliminated by Amtrak for a reason, and the many years of subsequent languishing in the open will not have improved them either. OTOH modifying commuter equipment would entail a near total rebuild, at least for the...

The current version of the plans feature one intermediate stop at Brazos Valley. I understand that stop will be served by a highway connection with parking facilities and that the proposal includes operating a shuttle bus to the nearby college. I do not think the rail line will come near many...

Texas HSR is planning to build everything from scratch. I do not think they will be crossing through any built up areas (except at the two ends). Thus conflicts with urban fabric will be at a minimum. Most of the alignment will be built on what is presently farmland. I do not think there will be...

I don't know how Texas HSR went about approaching landowners, but I understand that in France and Spain they did a lot of land-swapping deals. So they listened to farmers for example to understand why cutting up this field was going to damage the economic prospects of the entire farm, and then...

I understand local manufacturing is defined not by how or where stuff is assembled, but by the percentage of the total value that is created locally. This can mean that some of the sub-suppliers need to be local as well. Preferably the high value ones. Assembly is only a small part of the total...

The cynic in me says Amtrak may be good at the operating side of running a railroad, but doesn't have much of a track record when it comes to delivering major projects from scratch or pushing for service expansion. Such projects tend to take forever, and Amtrak, being directly answerable to...