Interesting Article Opposing High Speed Rail

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I see the method to the madness but still disagree with it. I'm looking at it from a level of service standpoint.
Fair enough; that's a different, and in some sense, orthogonal distinction.

I believe corridor "level of service" can and should be supported on all the routes I think are "corridor-suitable", while long-distance "level of service" should be provided when such corridors get long enough to support passengers travelling overnight. Then there are a few places (the "connnectivity routes" I mentioned) which can't support corridors due to lack of online population, but can still support a minimal long-distance service.

Because people get on and off all the way along, I don't think "corridor level of service" should be limited to trains running a certain distance; running a "coaches and cafe car" train all the way from NYC to Chicago makes sense if half the passengers are going from NYC to Toledo and the other half are going from Chicago to Buffalo.
 
I agree whole heartily with you about corridor v. long-distance. We've got to get rid of this mindset expectation that going some of these long distances has to take so damn long. If we had high speed rail between Chicago and NYC (the biggest problem with our state system is that this corridor could have been a great first place to start with HSR rather than LA-SF, but harder to do with multiple state entities to deal with) we could go between those cities in five hours.

In particular, the utter anti-rail obstructionism which has been present in Ohio and Indiana has made it very hard to make any NYC-Chicago improvement plans operational. :-(

Illinois disinterest in eastward access has also hurt such projects -- one of the most important speedups which could cut an hour off trip times and increase reliability is from Chicago to Porter, Indiana (which is still in Chicagoland); the trackbed is mostly sitting vacant; and it's just been impossible to get the political coalition together for it.

Unfortunately my political tea-leaf-reading doesn't see the political winds shifting in Ohio or Indiana soon, though the approval of the West Lake Corridor for NICTD may signal some softening in the anti-rail fanaticism of the Indiana legislature.
 
OK, checked your references. As said, I believe you understated costs, and all of these confirm this. First, the track reference: It says "siding", that is the cost of an industrial track, not a main line. In its description is says used rail, and several other things that would not be acceptable for a main line track. Here is another set on this one:
From:
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/commentary-do-you-want-to-build-a-freight-railroad
Here is a broad rule of thumb when trying to estimate what a railway line’s new construction might cost.

Ignoring the land cost, the basic rails + ties + ballast + sub-compaction and grading might as a capital budget expense come to between $3.5 million and $4.5 million for each route mile when built as a single-track main line.

If you build a parallel second main track, then consider adding another $1 million to $1.5 million per mile to the budget plan.

Are you building this track in an urban area? Prudently add another $2 to $4 million a mile to the capital construction budget. Add more if the terrain requires tunnels and bridges. Add even more if utilities or structures need to be relocated.
While this says freight, once you get to a solid track structure for main line traffic, there is very little cost difference between heavy duty track for freight or for high speed passenger service, other than allowed tolerances in deviation from perfection. By the way, the "grading" in this reference is fairly incidental and does not include significant cuts and and fills, drainage structures, utility issues or bridges.

Your highway references are from Florida DOT. There are few states, maybe some of the fairly flat farming states in the western plains where road construction costs could possibly be lower. The numbers in the reference do not include any significant grading beyond basic smoothing, so area times depth of cut or fill and cost per unit thereof needs to be added. Also there is an allowance for some minimal culverts, but not for any bridges or significant drainage structures, overpasses, underpasses, etc.

For a single track line, you can use their two lane highway number, subtract pavement, add track, for double track, use the three lane or four lane undivided highway number, again subtract pavement add track.

I stand by my original statement, you cost numbers for both rail construction and road construction are low. In fact, I would say significantly low.
 
Fair enough; that's a different, and in some sense, orthogonal distinction.

I believe corridor "level of service" can and should be supported on all the routes I think are "corridor-suitable", while long-distance "level of service" should be provided when such corridors get long enough to support passengers travelling overnight. Then there are a few places (the "connnectivity routes" I mentioned) which can't support corridors due to lack of online population, but can still support a minimal long-distance service.

Because people get on and off all the way along, I don't think "corridor level of service" should be limited to trains running a certain distance; running a "coaches and cafe car" train all the way from NYC to Chicago makes sense if half the passengers are going from NYC to Toledo and the other half are going from Chicago to Buffalo.

Why I think this is still not any better has to do with how Amtrak would treat this. Amtrak has a bias towards the NEC and the rest of us are lucky to be considered an afterthought. If additional service is justified somewhere, existing once a day trains don't need to be considered for short and medium haul services that they might be sharing tracks with. And they probably shouldn't be forced to be planned through a needless lens of "what is the LD train doing?" This is why there needs to be better terminology to discuss these topics rather than claiming that the existing terms are bogus and then still living within their perceived constraints. And the terminology does need to change, even on Amtrak's pathetic 2035 map, the service between St Paul and Chicago that they want is a different animal than what they normally consider "corridor" service. Which is why I personally think their needs to be a better definition between what is a "state service" or an "interstate service". I'll elaborate more if you'd like.
 
Well, I frankly think that Amtrak should be treating the entire NY-Chicago route the way they treat the NEC, or at least the way they treat the Pacific Surfliner. If that tells you where I'm coming from!

And I think Amtrak needs to take sleeper service on the NEC more seriously, too (restoring #66/67 is a start). If that tells you where I'm coming from, too!
 
Well, I frankly think that Amtrak should be treating the entire NY-Chicago route the way they treat the NEC, or at least the way they treat the Pacific Surfliner. If that tells you where I'm coming from!

And I think Amtrak needs to take sleeper service on the NEC more seriously, too (restoring #66/67 is a start). If that tells you where I'm coming from, too!
Why I don't think additional service along any existing or historical LD route should be planned in the same light is the logistics involved. To have NEC level service along the entire length of the route would essentially make it a 24 hour operation. I grew up in a family of postal workers, so I have heard what its like maintaining something like that all my life. The people needed to maintain 24 departures per direction would take a lot and frankly Amtrak doesn't have it in them to do that. And my concern with trying to plan the whole route as a corridor is that it does take 18 hours to run from end to end. And even if service expanded, I doubt their would be much of a speed improvement anytime soon. And even if the run time did get to the 10-12 hour range, that would still be a much longer run time than any existing corridor routes. And given how short "long distance trips" tend to be (100-300 miles per direction on average). Chicago to Cleveland is about 350 miles, Toledo to Buffalo is about 300 miles, and New York to Buffalo is about 450 miles. Given the city pairs and the mileage, it really does make sense to plan prospective additional services separately from each other. And given the possible city pairs, Chicago to Cleveland should be the priority and its not even on Amtrak's radar. Couple with this with other discussions on here about advocacy, just shows to me, as someone who lives outside of the NEC that Amtrak isn't serious about the rest of the country. Chicago - Cleveland is such low hanging fruit and as far as leadership is concerned its not something they think can happen in 15 years!
 
Well, I frankly think that Amtrak should be treating the entire NY-Chicago route the way they treat the NEC, or at least the way they treat the Pacific Surfliner. If that tells you where I'm coming from!
The Capitol Corridor doesn’t do too bad either, they have more daily round trips than the Surfline (at least pre covid),
 
In practice, practically everyone on the NEC is travelling either north of NYC or south of NYC (almost nobody travels across it), and half the population of the train changes at Philladelphia too. It's still planned as one corridor.

Obviously, Chicago to Cleveland and Syracuse to Cleveland and Detroit to New York should all be part of the considerations for the Chicago-NY corridor. Only a minority of people will travel the whole way. It still deserves holistic planning. Unfortunately, Ohio and Indiana rural-dominated governments provide a very difficult obstacle. Unless there are major population migrations I'm not sure what would reverse the attitudes of those governments.
 
Low they may be - but building and/or widening Interstate highways is not cheaper than building and/or upgrading rail and no one is asking for the very expensive highways to "make a profit" ... that was the point of my post.
Understood, however my intent was to have us use more realistic numbers. You do notice that the relationships did not change. Understating costs was and is one of the major problems in the California HSR is that low ball costs were used throughout. Many "side issues" that tend to run up costs appear to have been ignored. The same is done in highway work, but that seems to be conveniently forgotten. However, there is something of a "heads you win, tails I lose" problem here. Case in point, in the first round of DART studies the intent was and actual results were to avoid low balling costs. This was proven out when some of the first contracts came in well below engineer's estimates. Unfortunately, the politicians and public just assumed that as usual elsewhere the cost were understated and reacted accordingly, so the project died a political death for a few years.
 
Low they may be - but building and/or widening Interstate highways is not cheaper than building and/or upgrading rail and no one is asking for the very expensive highways to "make a profit" ... that was the point of my post.

What you say is mostly true. Politicians and the general public have no problem overlooking cost overruns in certain areas (highways, airports, and military projects), but the moment rail is put on the podium, everyone cries a scandal.

It is simply innacurate so say that High Speed Rail is cheaper than interstate highways. I think with regular rail, the numbers get a lot closer, and perhaps swing against interstates, but HSR is incredibly expensive to build and maintain, especially when you are enter the 186mph+ range. This is more or less the reason I think the focus should be on getting our existing rail network faster (getting as many routes as possible to 125), rather than shooting for some arbitrary number such as 220mph, and therefore shooting any rail project in the foot. Not even in Japan do they have all HSR lines traveling over 200. Most of the lines actually have similar top speeds to the Acela (with overall higher average speeds).

Your larger point about hypocritical attitude favoring some modes of transportation over another, falsely citing costlyness, is extremely valid, and one which much be brought up again and again.

Roads don't pay for themselves, and this country most certainly does subsidize transportation: cars.
Understood, however my intent was to have us use more realistic numbers. You do notice that the relationships did not change. Understating costs was and is one of the major problems in the California HSR is that low ball costs were used throughout. Many "side issues" that tend to run up costs appear to have been ignored. The same is done in highway work, but that seems to be conveniently forgotten. However, there is something of a "heads you win, tails I lose" problem here. Case in point, in the first round of DART studies the intent was and actual results were to avoid low balling costs. This was proven out when some of the first contracts came in well below engineer's estimates. Unfortunately, the politicians and public just assumed that as usual elsewhere the cost were understated and reacted accordingly, so the project died a political death for a few years.
PS - do you mean "heads I win, tails you lose?"
 
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Per mile cost is probably not the best way to look at the value of transportation projects. The dollar value for some measure of capacity is probably better. Even if a high speed rail project and a highway project have similar per mile costs, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that more than likely the rail project will have a greater capacity than the highway project. This doesn't mean that you don't need to balance cost with outcome, but that there is a bigger picture than the cost. For example, if California allotted a similar amount of money on conventional rail, we'd have gotten a lot more capacity out of it than with highways we're spending the money on. Which isn't to say that just spending money on rail is enough, there are other issues that play into the success of various forms of transportation, mostly building patterns.
 
You wonder how many large scale privately financed construction projects exceed their budgets. Those are rarely known to the public. The engineers on here would know better, but you have got to believe that almost any project of magnitude is fraught with uncertainty as to rising costs, delays, unforeseen design challenges, change orders, you name it. But it is also true that private enterprise usually finds a way to lock in some sort of public financing for large projects, which does make the costs more transparent.
 
Chicago - Cleveland is such low hanging fruit and as far as leadership is concerned its not something they think can happen in 15 years!
There is a lot of focus in this thread on the NY-Chicago rust belt route. I know this won't be a popular view here but frankly, I am not sure it makes sense to make such a huge and controversial infrastructure investment in an area of the country that is shrinking (or at best growing only very slowly compared to other parts of the country), especially when it won't be done for at least another 15 years.

The demographic trends have been inexorable for many decades now. The focus should be on areas that are growing and will need more infrastructure to handle that growth.
 
There is a lot of focus in this thread on the NY-Chicago rust belt route. I know this won't be a popular view here but frankly, I am not sure it makes sense to make such a huge and controversial infrastructure investment in an area of the country that is shrinking (or at best growing only very slowly compared to other parts of the country), especially when it won't be done for at least another 15 years.

The demographic trends have been inexorable for many decades now. The focus should be on areas that are growing and will need more infrastructure to handle that growth.
Considering this is based on Amtrak's lackluster 2035 map and all of the outside the NEC work was meant to cost $25 billion, the overall cost of adding service wouldn't be that high in the grand scheme of things. Based on the cost of the Gulf Coast extension, at least the estimates of ~$600,000 per mile. Chicago to Cleveland would have a cost starting around $210 million. In the grand scheme of investments, that's peanuts. Especially considering that added service of 4 round trips per day would turn every station into a magnet for economic activity. Even if it cost three times that, it's still not a lot of money. And frankly, this reflects poorly on the NEC, not the rest of the country. Ohio deserves more Amtrak service and so does Texas, Minnesota and basically everyone of the lower 48 regardless of demographic trends. One train per day if you're lucky is below worthless as a minimum, especially for short trips. At best you can make a convenient day trip in one direction across most of the Amtrak network and that's before we get into sizeable cities that don't have service or service to anywhere useful.
 
There is a lot of focus in this thread on the NY-Chicago rust belt route. I know this won't be a popular view here but frankly, I am not sure it makes sense to make such a huge and controversial infrastructure investment in an area of the country that is shrinking (or at best growing only very slowly compared to other parts of the country), especially when it won't be done for at least another 15 years.

The demographic trends have been inexorable for many decades now. The focus should be on areas that are growing and will need more infrastructure to handle that growth.
Just because those demographic trends have been "inexorable" for the past decades doesn't mean they'll be "inexorable" in the future. In the long run, climate change may make a lot of the southern and western parts of the country uninhabitable, or at least a lot less pleasant place to live. On the other hand, projections indicate that the Great Lakes area may have the least negative effects from climate change. No droughts, no wildfires, no hurricanes and the winters may be milder than than they have been in the past. Plus, urban infrastructure is already built up. If I were locating a business, I'd take a nice long look at Toldeo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, etc.
 
There is a lot of focus in this thread on the NY-Chicago rust belt route. I know this won't be a popular view here but frankly, I am not sure it makes sense to make such a huge and controversial infrastructure investment in an area of the country that is shrinking (or at best growing only very slowly compared to other parts of the country), especially when it won't be done for at least another 15 years.

The demographic trends have been inexorable for many decades now. The focus should be on areas that are growing and will need more infrastructure to handle that growth.

First of all, NY and Chicago remain the largest and third-largest cities in the US. This route is essential. The largest interconnected rail network in the US branches out from the NEC; the second-largest branches out from Chicago. Interconnecting them has maximum network effects.

Secondly, the cities in between are no slouches; they're BIG, even if they used to be relatively bigger.

Thirdly, the prediction from the experts at this point is that there will be growth in the Rust Belt due to climate change migration -- it's got the water, and it's high enough above sea level. Things which are lacking in the Sun Belt. The demographic trend of people leaving the Rust Belt is quite the opposite of inexorable and the signs that it's reversing are already visible.
 
There is definitely some confirmation bias on this forum. People were happy to read a Greenpeace article in support of rail, but refuse to read a Cato Institute article opposed to it. Both organizations are unabashedly biased.

I want to know what the opposition is saying. It helps my advocacy when I can anticipate their objections.
I remember a Fox32 (Chicago) News interview with Randall O’Toole several years back. He was so outrageous that even the Fox News folks were openly laughing and mocking him. When Fox News considers O’Toole silly you can safely say he is silly. Nothing he says stands up to any analysis. Even Fox noted that.
 
There is a lot of focus in this thread on the NY-Chicago rust belt route. I know this won't be a popular view here but frankly, I am not sure it makes sense to make such a huge and controversial infrastructure investment in an area of the country that is shrinking (or at best growing only very slowly compared to other parts of the country), especially when it won't be done for at least another 15 years.

The demographic trends have been inexorable for many decades now. The focus should be on areas that are growing and will need more infrastructure to handle that growth.
You mean like the Southwest? I just attended an economic conference where they were concerned about long term investments in the Southwest because the Southwest is literally running out of water. I have relatives in Vegas and I often visit Lake Mead. It’s now dropping about a foot every couple weeks. If this continues Lake Mead will be dry in 5 to 10 years and many businesses will no longer be economically viable. They’re predicting a migration back to the Midwest and East.
 
You mean like the Southwest? I just attended an economic conference where they were concerned about long term investments in the Southwest because the Southwest is literally running out of water. I have relatives in Vegas and I often visit Lake Mead. It’s now dropping about a foot every couple weeks. If this continues Lake Mead will be dry in 5 to 10 years and many businesses will no longer be economically viable. They’re predicting a migration back to the Midwest and East.
Hopefully these three years of La Nina will be followed by a year or two of El Niño which should bring more rain back to the SW.
Hopefully…

This Too Shall Pass is not just about kidney stones!
 
The argument of cost seems to be in bad faith when we spend how many trillions on military.
While there is some case to be made in regard to hypocritical spending, it would be hard to justify, let alone convince anybody (especially as Germany and Europe on the whole re-arm) that we ought to be spending less on the military.

My personal reconciliation of this matter is to frame an excellent national rail network in the same light as the interstates:
A piece of crucial infrastructure that directly relates to national security and well-being.
 
The argument of cost seems to be in bad faith when we spend how many trillions on military.
We need a strong and effective military, but we did flush 6 to 8 trillion dollars down the drain in Iraq and Afghanistan, and didn't get much to show for it. So, yeah, the argument of cost is in bad faith. Then there's agricultural subsidies to agribusiness that don't need it.
 
While there is some case to be made in regard to hypocritical spending, it would be hard to justify, let alone convince anybody (especially as Germany and Europe on the whole re-arm) that we ought to be spending less on the military.

My personal reconciliation of this matter is to frame an excellent national rail network in the same light as the interstates:
A piece of crucial infrastructure that directly relates to national security and well-being.
Another thought with regard to national security,
The lessons in importance of railway that Ukraine taught the world is notable.

Now of course, Ukraine doesn’t have the highways we have, but their railroads proved to be invaluable in evacuation of large numbers of people without creating crazy congestion on their roads.
 
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