HSR's future.. How we the people can help!

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Acela150

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For the longest time in the US we've been without High Speed Rail. Acela somewhat broke the mold of that. Now we need to push for a more supported and structured HSR in the US!! I had the thought of who's gunna pay for it all?? The money would have to be split in three ways IMO..

1. Congress

2. Amtrak

3. Private Investors (which may be a hot topic)

If one does the math that equals to 33.33% of the cost equaling 99.99%

So where does that .01% come from?? I think that if invested properly that .01% could be invested and put into maintenance, equipment, facilities, new ROW, and the list goes on. Ok so who pays this .01%???

All three!! Why should Congress or Amtrak or even these potential private investors have to pay one way? If all three of these components put up this .01% this could pay off big.

So in the long term spending Billions of Dollars would also be paying off into savings for FUTURE HSR!!!!

HSR is a very hot topic now a days. I rarely talk about it around my in-laws cause they avoid Amtrak!! But why do they? Mom travels for business frequently. Sometimes between BOS and DC. Just think that now the fastest trip is about 6 hours and 45 minutes. RTE is 30 minutes from the house. Logan... 2 hours.. So lets do some math. 2 hour drive to logan, 2 hours at the airport for security checks, that's four hours already.. From Logan to DC it's about 3 and a half hours including a layover at JFK or LaGuardia. 5 and a half hours there.. Then god knows how much longer for bags and a taxi ride.. While the timing of those AE trains isn't ideal that 6 hours and 45 minutes is just about the same as driving to logan, checking in, going through security, boarding, layovers, getting off, collecting your luggage if one checks any, and then getting a cab.

How does that seem time wise? About the same right? Which is cheaper?? Acela! A quick look up of fares between Logan and the DC area goes for $300! At the highest bucket between Boston and DC it's a little bit lower.

It's not fair that someone who is on business should have to go through hoops to get to DC.

Let's promote HSR and rail in general.

It's hard to convert my in-laws. But someday I hope I will.

Back to the topic at hand... In Pennsylvania Keystone Trains and the Pennsylvanian are supported by the state.. When the topic of the Pennsylvanian possibly facing elimination thousands of Pennsylvanians from Pittsburgh to Philly to Harrisburg to Johnstown to Paoli wrote their state reps and said "We NEED this train"! It's as simple as a letter or email or even a phone call. Their are always going to be Haters.. Cough Cough John Mica.. But look at how one sentence can do to the folks in congress. That one sentence being.. "I travel by rail"! While their will always be John Mica's in congress we control that!! We the People can vote him out! The best part of being an American IMO!

I would love to hear other AU members spread the word about how HSR can happen! And their thoughts on how WE the PEOPLE can get it started! It starts with one person saying how great their trip was! I can't count how many Facebook comments I get when I would do a points run. One of my close friends isn't anti rail but doesn't prefer to ride Amtrak.. When Amtrak announced another broken ridership record, I laughed and said "Jim, people take the train"! To which he joked "Cause you're always on the train".

Just going to the firehouse after a trip to Chicago and telling him my experience he wanted to try it. Word of mouth works!! So do the cheesy photos of dinners and lunches on the train. I'm finding the more I post, the more my friends want to try it! :)

Let's all get out there and write to our congressmen, our state reps, and our mayors and city reps saying we want HSR and any type of train running in our towns, cities, and states!
 
I support HSR and think it would actually put a dent in the air market between the major cities in the northeast. However, you seem to imply in your post that there are no non-stop flights between BOS and DCA. This is just not true. There are a number of non-stops between the two cities with flight time of 1.5 hours. Your math seems to indicate an actual 7.5 hour trip door to door via a connecting flight but should only be 6 via a non-stop.

That said, when I was living in the NYC area and going to Washington on business the big draw to the train for me was the convenience factor in that I didn't have to spend the hour to go to LGA then deal with the airport,(and the airport parking and its cost) fly to DCA then take Metro to Capitol Hill for meetings. I could walk to the LIRR take it to Penn Station then take Amtrak to DC and walk the few blocks from Union Station to where I needed to go. In the end the time was about the same but the convenience was what made it better. That's the way I'd mention it to the MIL. If the time is within a half hour or so then play the convenience angle.
 
Also, there are markets where there are some non-stops but they're few and far between. As an example, I remember seeing a report showing that from several major cities in VA, you had exceedingly indirect flights to get to Washington (I think you had something like Roanoke-Pittsburgh-DC and Norfolk-Charlotte-DC). There are other cases where you've got very real cost issues (witness Des Moines as such a market...folks may want to save two hours by flying, but they're not going to want to do so for an extra $250)...and attempts to lure lower-priced airlines in have failed.

Depending on your market, you've got various mixes of cost and convenience that can be played. There's also relative stability...state-backed trains tend not to go through wild/random gyrations in frequency. On the one hand, there's a loss of flexibility there; on the other hand, that stability can be very good for business.
 
HSR is indeed a hot topic. Rail advocates should focus on a few points.

  1. We will get far more bang for our buck with higher speed conventional rail than we would with exotic technologies like maglev and hyperloop.
  2. There is a lot of pent-up support for a truly national HSR system. Witness the success of Alfred Twu’s US High Speed Rail Map, which was nothing more than pretty visuals. NARP's Vision Plan is far more practical.
  3. Despite its shortcomings, the California HSR plan is the only US project that is close to being underway. If it fails, we won't see another attempt at HSR for a long time. So we need to support it, and fix its limitations.
 
I'm very confused by the math in the first post.

First, I'm not sure where the .01% figure comes from, or why discussion of that .01% takes three paragraphs. If the assumption is that you split the funding three ways exactly, then there is no .01% left over (i.e. if you divide a number by three, and add those thirds together, your result is not 99.99% of the original number). But in any event, the exact split of who pays can be debated.

Second, this post seems to fall into the trap that many rail advocates do of exaggerating the time needed for air travel. I don't know where "the house" is that is referenced in the first post (and I'm not going to ask for a specific location), but, and while I grant Google can be wrong, the drive time from RTE to Boston Logan on Google is showing around a half hour. I suppose it's possible that rush hour traffic could triple that number, but still that's a worst-case scenario assuming you have to drive past RTE in order to get to Logan. Any place else, and I don't see how it could take 90 minutes longer from a given origin to get to Logan vs. Route 128 (and I am also assuming driving to the point of departure; could be wrong about that and maybe the difference is a public transit time). If the person is west of RTE, then it would be closer to go to Providence airport, which is still less than 45 minutes away from RTE.

Next, very few business travelers are going to arrive at an airport two hours before departure. Delta Airlines "recommends" arriving 75 minutes before, but that's not a requirement. Many frequent travelers (and even infrequent travelers who have Nexus/Global Entry) can use TSA Pre-Check which, when I've used it, has taken me an average of less than 1 minute to go through security (including the "waiting in line" part). Expert business travelers are probably arriving more on the order of 45 minutes before. I'd figure 60 minutes if checking a bag, 45 minutes if not.

So the real timing for a business traveler BOS-WAS by air is probably 1 hour (or less) commute to the airport, 1 hour early arrival, 1.5 hour flight, 30 minutes (being very generous) to collect a checked bag (if they have a checked bag), and 30 minutes into town on Metro. Total: 4.5 hours.

Put another way, if they left their home at 4:45 am, they could get to WAS by 11:45 am on Amtrak, or 9:30 am by plane. To get home the same day, one would have to leave at 4 pm on Amtrak (or, let's assume Amtrak one day extends the 5 pm Acela to BOS, so you step off the train in the 11 pm hour), or 10:00 pm (so, leaving the Union Station area around 8:30 pm) by plane.

What is really needed to make HSR (or any expanded passenger rail) work in this country is to get local support. The other half of what's needed is proper local infrastructure to make HSR worthwhile.

Acela/NEC Regional works because every major city along the way has a good transit system to get people from the train station to where they need to go. The Florida HSR corridor would have failed miserably because it doesn't have that (and, come on, starting with Tampa-Orlando? Really?).

While convincing congress is a nice idea, the reality is that it's the local areas that need to make the commitment to support their end of the deal. Plus, local politicians tend to have more influence on other politicians than individual members of the public do. Your congressman is getting thousands of letters per day (probably tens of thousands, or more, if you include all those "click here to sign a petition and auto-generate an email" instant advocacy type drives that are becoming more and more meaningless). How many letters is your mayor getting? I'd say letters to the editor of a newspaper as well, but I honestly don't think anybody would see it these days, so it's probably not worth bothering.

But it's also important to be factually accurate. Opponents of things love scandals (even when there isn't one), and something as easily dismissable as "it takes 7 hours to fly from Boston to DC" if used as the base of your argument, can bring down the whole thing.
 
Part of the problem in most of this train vs. plane writeups that I have seen is that they are often written by people who don't really use planes in their day to day work at all (and indeed many are vocally and obsessively opposed to air travel too). So the numbers they come up with are all theoretical. And then given their biases, the numbers inevitably get biased, and they have no way of doing a reality check on them. I see this happen over and over in this venue, and have basically given up correcting such. Used to do so much more before getting jaded I suppose.

The fact that someone thinks that any business traveler on a regular basis spends 2 hours for security check is a clear giveway that the writer has zero experience being a business traveler traveling by air. In the last 18 months I have never spent more than 3 minutes at security check even at proverbial hell holes like Orlando. Yep, some combination of GOES, Clear and FF status gets you Pre-Check, and almost everyone that is a business traveler gets through these barriers rather quickly these days.

Among my business traveler friends (and I have dozens of those) who regularly travel from Boston to Washington DC, I don;t know of a single one who takes the Acela. Boston to New York, or New york to Washington, absolutely yes, but never for Boston to DC. It just does not work. They can do a single day trip for a meeting from Boston to DC and back by air on a regular and reliable basis, absent weather issues. And they reliably cannot do so on Acela. Case closed.

And please, Who in their right mind travels by air from Boston to Washington with a layover in New York? While at it might as well add a layover in Philadelphia while you are at it, to add a few more hours to the flying time.

Bottom line, the Boston to Washington example presented is so flawed it is not worth the bits used to represent it. Please don't present it as a pro-HSR argument to anyone. It will only cause harm and distraction.
 
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Trog's writeup is a lot more in line with what I've generally understood the "right" air travel allowances to be, give or take a few minutes. As I see it, HSR has at least one other advantage, namely the ability to grab a number of midsized markets along the way. For example, the Acela gets you WAS-NYP and NYP-BOS, yes. But it also gets you a disparate mix of others, such as NYP-PHL, BOS-PHL, BAL-NYP, etc.

BOS-PHL is actually an interesting case in point: When the cheap nonstop vanished, travel on Amtrak roughly doubled. Even after a new nonstop got put in, IIRC Amtrak is still up about 10-20% in this market.

I'll agree that BOS-WAS is, at present, too long of a run for a lot of business folks to take during the day as long as there's also a relatively cheap air alternative. HSR's advantages don't tend to lie in 6+ hour markets with frequent air service; they lie in markets in the 2-4 hour range and/or those with spotty air service and messy transfers that tend to run travel time up.

Edit: Just to be clear, there are plenty of cases where an HSR line might run 6-8 hours long. However, cases like that are going to be sustained by interlocking intermediate markets, not end-to-end travel. Case in point? The Acela.
 
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It might be encouraging to many to read such a passionate plea about the importance to get active to construct high-speed rail systems in the United States.

For the longest time in the US we've been without High Speed Rail. Acela somewhat broke the mold of that. Now we need to push for a more supported and structured HSR in the US!! I had the thought of who's gunna pay for it all?? The money would have to be split in three ways IMO..

1. Congress

2. Amtrak

3. Private Investors (which may be a hot topic)

If one does the math that equals to 33.33% of the cost equaling 99.99%

So where does that .01% come from?? I think that if invested properly that .01% could be invested and put into maintenance, equipment, facilities, new ROW, and the list goes on. Ok so who pays this .01%???

All three!! Why should Congress or Amtrak or even these potential private investors have to pay one way? If all three of these components put up this .01% this could pay off big.

So in the long term spending Billions of Dollars would also be paying off into savings for FUTURE HSR!!!!
That investing in high-speed rail will result in savings in the long-term, might already seem logical to many people.

Still, the above formula of 33% Congress, 33% Amtrak, 33% private investors might not work out like that, besides the fact that until Amtrak makes profits (which it already does with Acela and Northeast Corridor Regional trains, but the operating deficit of the other long-distance routes more than eats up that profit), the 33% from Amtrak actually might have to come from Congress as well, so it would be 66% Congress, 33% private investors.


And so far, it seems like there are only two kinds of private investors wanting to invest:

1) successful rail companies from abroad, like JR Central being involved in Texas Central Railway, those might actually be willing to spend billions in investments to make billions in profits in the long-run (JR Central already approx. 1.69 billion US$ profits alone in 2011, which AFAIK is more in profits than all US airlines combined).

2) companies who want to benefit from the real estate development around the newly built or revitalized areas around high-speed rail train stations, like Florida East Coast Industries does with their All Aboard Florida service currently under construction.

But it seems like there's no dublicate of that situation in Florida anywhere else, so probably not so many more investors of type 2. And when it comes to other corridors like those in Texas or Florida, it seems like there won't be a big chance private companies of type 1 will make big investments, unless like in California the public builds a core system for billions and billions than then private investors can expand. Still more private companies wouldn't even do that, because they want short-term profits. Investing billions, just to see a break-even after a decade or longer, and then after that finally profits coming in, is not attractive for many investors. JR Central might do that, as operating rail successfully is already their business in Japan, still they might be so many more investors of that kind. And it might seem like there's a reason JR Central chose Texas for their venture, as it's low density and flat, so even just that might already be a $10 billion or $15 billion project. Still 220mph rail in the Northeast corridor with its high density, multiple bridges and possible tunnels was estimated by Amtrak to be a roughly $118 billion investment. That might seem like too much for private investors, even in case they just had to shoulder 33% of that.

It might also be beneficial though, to not only socialize the costs and privatize the profits. By building a rail system publicly, and then operating it publicly, then the public also gets to keep the profits, instead of building it publicly, but then handing the operations to a private company that then gets to keep the profits. For example in Germany, out all of the profits of the publicly owned railway company Deutsche Bahn, 500 million Euro each year are being transfered to the federal general fund, while the public rail company can use the rest towards investments, or improving its financial situation. As much as that might be politicially unpopular at least for some, public ownership and operation might prove to be a good solution financially, when it comes to the interests of the public.

Especially as for example for high-speed rail in the Northeast, with the population density and all the huge metro areas, ridership would very likely be very high. The system would probably be a great service to the people, and efficient and profitable at the same time.

HSR is a very hot topic now a days. I rarely talk about it around my in-laws cause they avoid Amtrak!! But why do they? Mom travels for business frequently. Sometimes between BOS and DC. Just think that now the fastest trip is about 6 hours and 45 minutes. RTE is 30 minutes from the house. Logan... 2 hours.. So lets do some math. 2 hour drive to logan, 2 hours at the airport for security checks, that's four hours already.. From Logan to DC it's about 3 and a half hours including a layover at JFK or LaGuardia. 5 and a half hours there.. Then god knows how much longer for bags and a taxi ride.. While the timing of those AE trains isn't ideal that 6 hours and 45 minutes is just about the same as driving to logan, checking in, going through security, boarding, layovers, getting off, collecting your luggage if one checks any, and then getting a cab.

How does that seem time wise? About the same right? Which is cheaper?? Acela! A quick look up of fares between Logan and the DC area goes for $300! At the highest bucket between Boston and DC it's a little bit lower.

It's not fair that someone who is on business should have to go through hoops to get to DC.

Let's promote HSR and rail in general.
It appears that the concrete example above was a very good one, to show how rail would be a good alternative to flying.

Instead of spending hours in security or at the airport, waiting on the tarmac or waiting at the baggage carousel, in addition to the time to get to and from the airport, the direct train ride from Route 128 to Washington D.C. would only take exactly the same travel time. And probably being more convenient at the same time.



While of course many people will agree that it might make sense to promote high-speed rail and rail in general, it seems like it also would be important to get it across that there is a difference. Amtrak's vision for a 220-mph high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor offers 96-minute trips between Washington and New York and 84-minute trips between New York and Boston. So instead of the current 6h 45min, it would be more of a travel time of roughly 3h from Boston to Washington.


Especially on the Northeast Corridor there might be the advantage and the challenge at the same time that some kind of "high-speed rail" already exists. So when promoting the idea that "high-speed rail should be constructed in the Northeast Corridor", people might reply "Well, don't we already have high-speed rail, the Acela Express? And it takes 6 hours and 30 minutes from Boston to Washington". Then it would be necessary to get it across that while the Acela Express currently is the fastest rail service in the US, a high-speed rail similar like the one in other countries should exist as well, that would only need 3 hours.



Another challenge could be, that the current Acela Express service has fares are seen as comparatively expensive (especially as good Regional services are not much slower but have substantially lower ticket prices), so people might conclude promoting high-speed rail is promoting some service only to be used by the rich. Instead of pointing out that prices are set by supply and demand, and Amtrak currently has too few trainsets that are too short as well, so supply is low while demand is very high so prices obviously are high as well for a scarce resource, the way to communicate this that can understood more easily could be that high-speed rail in other countries is very affordable as well, and it will be in the USA, too, once high-speed rail systems like in those other countries are built.

So while high-speed rail by some might be perceived as expensive, actually you can make cross-country trips in France for as little as 35 Euro (approx. 49 US$). In Germany, it is possible for a whole family of four to travel f.e. from the very north to the very south for an advance-purchase price of 49 Euro (approx. 67 US$). In Italy, the private high-speed rail operator Italo (the "Ferrari train") competing with state-owned Trenitalia's high-speed rail offers Firenze to Roma for 20 Euro (approx. 27 US$). An advance-purchase ticket for Spain's AVE from Madrid to Sevilla starts at 26.25 Euro (approx. 36 US$). Even the highest class of service, including meals and wine and much more, on that same train, starts at 58 Euro (79 US$). That might seem different than the 400$+ for Acela First Class. So high-speed rail is affordable for most people. And there's a high likeliness it might be affordable also in the US once high-speed rail services like in other countries go into operation.

What many also might not be aware of, is the service on many high-speed rail systems. Not only is the seat pitch much better compared to flying, but f.e. on Spain's AVE between Madrid and Sevilla, in case the train reaches its destination more than 5 minutes late, passengers are refunded the complete price of the ticket. And f.e. on all German ICE trains, in case there's a delay of 1 hour, 25% of the ticket price will be refunded, in case there's 2 hours or more of a delay, 50% of the ticket price will be refunded. Many might compare that to the next flight that arrives 2+hours late, where all the passengers will get is "We are sorry for the inconvenience" on the intercom.

A different aspect is that in most places there are no subsidies for high-speed rail operations, even though these affordable fares mentioned above are offered. For example the french TGV high speed trains saw 900 million Euro in profits in 2011, and the ICE and IC (InterCity) high speed trains in Germany cam in with 157 million Euro profits in 2011. Most of Spain's AVE lines are profitable. And the Italo high-speed rail service in Italy - being a private company - is not receiving any subsidies by the state, and in some press reports it was said the service already showed a profit after just 5 months of operations. While there is nothing wrong with subsidies to rail, considering the massive macro-economic benefits and benefits regarding externalities rail offers, many people are not aware of this, that high-speed rail operations usually don't only offer affordable tickets, but still at the same time are very efficient and profitable as well.

Back to the topic at hand... In Pennsylvania Keystone Trains and the Pennsylvanian are supported by the state.. When the topic of the Pennsylvanian possibly facing elimination thousands of Pennsylvanians from Pittsburgh to Philly to Harrisburg to Johnstown to Paoli wrote their state reps and said "We NEED this train"! It's as simple as a letter or email or even a phone call. Their are always going to be Haters.. Cough Cough John Mica.. But look at how one sentence can do to the folks in congress. That one sentence being.. "I travel by rail"! While their will always be John Mica's in congress we control that!! We the People can vote him out! The best part of being an American IMO!
Of course that is a wonderful thing about any democracy, that the citizens can be active, and contact their representatives. Or become a member of an organization, as in a single-issue advocacy group, the combined voices might be heard even louder. Or to vote for or against a certain candidate, though at general elections, there are so many different political issues that it might be comparatively harder to convince people to just vote for or against one certain candidate just based on his position on high-speed rail. Still, the example with the Keystone/Pennsylvanian trains above is an encouraging example, that in a reality of these last decades while many might think too big a percentage of the population would not care about any political anymore, this action of so many was able to be seen.

Many might hope that more advocacy by the people towards high-speed rail can be seen in the future.

One issue here is, that with lots of passenger rail advocacy organisations, it seems like they don't necessarily support high-speed rail that much, or some maybe even not at all. It could be interesting, in a different thread, to list for several different organizations to what degree they actually support high-speed rail.

I would love to hear other AU members spread the word about how HSR can happen! And their thoughts on how WE the PEOPLE can get it started! It starts with one person saying how great their trip was! I can't count how many Facebook comments I get when I would do a points run. One of my close friends isn't anti rail but doesn't prefer to ride Amtrak.. When Amtrak announced another broken ridership record, I laughed and said "Jim, people take the train"! To which he joked "Cause you're always on the train".

Just going to the firehouse after a trip to Chicago and telling him my experience he wanted to try it. Word of mouth works!! So do the cheesy photos of dinners and lunches on the train. I'm finding the more I post, the more my friends want to try it! :)
Yes, it seems like word of mouth would be a very efficient way to advocate for rail indeed.

One challenge might be again that advocating for high-speed rail, there are no high-speed rail services yet to post pictures from in Facebook, except for Acela Express, and even that high-speed rail is not the 220mph high-speed rail that could be such a big boost in that corridor. Besides for posting pictures when riding high-speed rail in Asia or Europe, still only a select group of people gets the chance to travel overseas in the first place.

Of course it may seem like the right strategy - given the current situation - to first try to spark enthusiasm for the current rail services (though not high-speed) so once people discovered the benefits of rail travel, then one can still try to communicate the additional benefits of high-speed services.

Let's all get out there and write to our congressmen, our state reps, and our mayors and city reps saying we want HSR and any type of train running in our towns, cities, and states!
Please post updates regarding these efforts. It probably would be very encouraging to many to read about that.

One challenge that could arise is that depending on a person's location, they might not have too much of an incentive to get active about this. For someone f.e. residing in Rapid City, South Dakota, it might seem like there is not too much personal benefit when advocating for high-speed rail as they might all possibly be at least a 12 hours car ride away.

And even when it came down to conventional rail, and even in case all of the rail lines in NARP's vision "Proposed National Grid-and-Gateway Passenger Train Network" were up and running with passenger rail, then still it would only mean that possibly the closest rail stop would not be 6 hours away in Denver, but 4 hours away in Casper. It might seem like it's something that won't affect the people living in Rapid City, South Dakota so much. This could be discussed further in a different thread, as maybe then it could be helpful to cite all the benefits of high-speed rail including macro-economic ones as well as externalities, both externalities that can be measured financially, and externalities that cannot be measured financially.

Still it might be widely seen as encouraging if at least as many as possible living in those corridors that would be suitable for high-speed rail did advocate for it. I'm curious to see what will happen in the future. :)
 
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