# cross country high speed corridors



## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 15, 2008)

I would very much like to be able to get from Boston to California by sleeping car in about 24 hours or less. TGV technology ought to make something like this possible.

However, it's unlikely that a high speed track all the way across the country is going to be funded purely to run sleepers. On the other hand, most travelers who have a bit of experience with trains seem to find that if their trip happens to be doable in about 3 hours or less by train, the train is a better choice than the plane. So I've been looking at the question of whether you can build a lot of these track segments which individually will make sense to the average airplane traveler, which will happen to connect to each other for the convenience of the long distance train traveler.

If we as a country were to collectively decide that where a major city is within about three hours or less by high speed train of another major city, that building TGV quality track makes sense, I believe it is possible to come up with a route that goes all the way across the country by high speed train. I'm assuming that the train will average 170 miles per hour from station to station, and that the major cities that can be considered are the top 30 US Combined Statistical Areas.

Where I've used track miles, they come from the Amtrak timetable; a high speed route might end up being a little shorter. Where I've used highway miles, the numbers are a bit rough, in that I've gone with whatever Google Maps thinks is the city center to be used when an address within the city is not specified, and a track route might not follow a highway route at all. Still, a rough estimate is better than no data.

The times between Denver and adjacent cities are a bit on the long side; then again, the Denver airport has managed to make itself huge to help keep itself competitively slow with the extra travel time those trains encounter relative to the rest of the train segments on this list.

One possible routing:

Philadelphia is the 8th largest Combined Statistical Area.

Philadelphia to Pittsburgh is 353 track miles on the current route; that trip would be roughly 2 hours at 170 MPH.

Pittsburgh is the 18th largest Combined Statistical Area.

Pittsburgh to Cleveland is currently 140 track miles, which would be under an hour at 170 MPH.

Cleveland is the 15th largest Combined Stastical Area.

Cleveland to Chicago is currently 341 track miles, which is right around 2 hours at 170 MPH.

Chicago is the 3rd largest Combined Statistical Area.

Chicago to St Louis is 297 highway miles, a bit under 2 hours at 170 MPH.

St Louis is the 16th largest Combined Statistical Area.

St Louis to Kansas City is roughly 250 highway miles, roughly 1.5 hours at 170 MPH.

Kansas City is the 22nd Largest Combined Statstical Area.

Kansas City to Denver is 603 highway miles, a little over 3.5 hours at 170 MPH.

Denver is the 14th largest Combined Stastictal Area.

Denver to Salt Lake City is 534 highway miles, but that's a pretty indirect route. However, 534 miles at 170 MPH is a bit over 3 hours.

Salt Lake City is the 27th largest Combined Statistical Area.

Salt Lake City to Las Vegas is 420 highway miles, about 2.5 hours at 170 MPH.

Las Vegas is the 25th largest Combined Statistical Area.

Las Vegas to Los Angeles is 271 highway miles, a bit over 1.5 hours at 170 MPH.

And Los Angeles is the 2nd largest Combined Statistical Area.

There are some other possible variations on this theme. I was looking at Pittsburgh to Philadelphia because that's where the tracks go now, but Pittsburgh to NYP and Pittsburgh to WAS tracks might also be viable options for routes that would take less than three hours at 170 MPH. I think Pittsburg to Columbus to Indianapolis to St Louis is a viable option for meeting all of the basic criteria, but if not all relatively nearby large cities get high speed track connecting them, focusing on the very largest cities is probably best, even if that makes the cross country route a bit less direct.


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## wayman (Jun 15, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Salt Lake City to Las Vegas is 420 highway miles, about 2.5 hours at 170 MPH.


They may look close on a map, but they're a world apart, culturally! :lol:


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## George Harris (Jun 15, 2008)

We had the beginnings in the early 1950's but without funding from Uncle Sugar, there was no way for the railroads to keep it going. At that time long sections of the ATSF between Chicago and LA had 100 mph speed limts and long sections of the UP across Nebraska and Wyoming and a lot of Ogden to LA allowed at least 90 mph. Other than the ICRR and ACL most lines in the east thought 80 mph was fast enough.


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## the_traveler (Jun 16, 2008)

George Harris said:


> and long sections of the UP across Nebraska and Wyoming and a lot of Ogden to LA allowed at least 90 mph


And now UP can't (or at least doesn't want to) run Amtrak timely!


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## Walt (Jun 16, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> I'm assuming that the train will average 170 miles per hour from station to station, ...


Gosh, how would one even protect the tracks, for a train traveling at that speed?

The ol', stop at a crossing, look both ways, would no longer work well since at that speed, a train could easily go from "no where in sight" to "smash, crash, derailed", before the double tractor/trailer could safely cross.

Would such a train need some real, serious, braking power too?

I just can't imagine the existing style of infrastructure being able to handle speeds like that. Would one need enclosed, tunnel like, tracks?


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## AlanB (Jun 16, 2008)

Walt said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > I'm assuming that the train will average 170 miles per hour from station to station, ...
> ...


According to FRA regs, you can't run trains that fast on tracks that have grade crossings. Such a line would need to have zero grade crossings or the train would have to slow down for any grade crossings, so your scenario of a double tractor trailer, much less a car getting hit, could never come to pass.

On the other hand there would still be a worry for animals and people just wandering across the tracks, and that would be very hard to combat.


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## jackal (Jun 16, 2008)

I assume such a HSR as Joel is proposing would be built from scratch, not using any current tracks (at the very most, possibly using portions of some current ROWs if they were straight enough and the current railroads were willing to give them up, though even then the tracks themselves would need to be rebuilt).

The new tracks and ROW would, as it is in European high-speed railway, be completely grade-separated as well as fenced off to discourage trespassing.

It would be an absolutely massive undertaking (especially to build the ROW to 170mph standards in built-up or geographically-challenging areas), but if a majority of the air traffic between these cities were diverted to rail, it might potentially be fairly cost-effective.


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## puck71 (Jun 16, 2008)

Something like this would be awesome and could take away (or at least lessen) one of the biggest downsides of long-distance train travel in the US - time. The best way to make it happen I think would be to start on one of the routes (probably LA to LV, but maybe east coast) and see how it does. If it does as well as I think it probably would, then expand from there.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 16, 2008)

jackal said:


> I assume such a HSR as Joel is proposing would be built from scratch, not using any current tracks (at the very most, possibly using portions of some current ROWs if they were straight enough and the current railroads were willing to give them up, though even then the tracks themselves would need to be rebuilt).
> The new tracks and ROW would, as it is in European high-speed railway, be completely grade-separated as well as fenced off to discourage trespassing.
> 
> It would be an absolutely massive undertaking (especially to build the ROW to 170mph standards in built-up or geographically-challenging areas), but if a majority of the air traffic between these cities were diverted to rail, it might potentially be fairly cost-effective.


The older French TGV tracks that are only good to 200 MPH have a minimum curve radius of four miles. The newer stuff they're building has an even larger curve radius in preparation for the faster speeds they hope to run someday.

The parts of America that I've been looking at in Google Maps don't tend to have even a 10 mile stretch that is free of curves that would fail to meet the four mile radius standard. (I'd love to see someone come along and tell me that I'm wrong and I haven't been looking in the right places, and that actually, there's a nice existing 100 mile long stretch that's already straight enough for 200 MPH operation the whole way without all the construction costs associated with establishing a new right of way, even if a track had to be bulit from scratch on that right of way.)

Part of this is because historically, US railroads were generally focused on keeping the grade down to about 1% or 1.5% as much as possible, and they didn't want to tunnel more than absolutely necessary, and if they had to have lots of curves to make that work, that was OK. Unfortunately, that doesn't result in a route that works for high speed passenger trains.

So while maybe there's an existing right of way that's out there that's straight enough, I think basically you'd probably need to build track from scratch on a new right of way if you want to do 150-200 MPH.

When I talk about an average speed of 170 MPH, I'm actually thinking of 200 MPH track through areas that's barely populated, and the existing right of way (where I'm guessing 45 MPH might be a reasonable expectation) through densely populated areas. I think I have seen something that says that the French have actually achieved 176 MPH station to station averages, using existing rights of way in densely populated areas, and new 200 MPH track in less populated areas.

I'm starting to think that when going through nearly flat farmland, elevating the tracks about 15 feet above the surrounding land would be really nice. It would improve the view for the passengers, it would get the tracks at about the right elevation for crossing roadways on bridges, and it might provide some protection against flooding if the land suporting the railroad is stable enough when the surrounding land is flooded.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 16, 2008)

AlanB said:


> On the other hand there would still be a worry for animals and people just wandering across the tracks, and that would be very hard to combat.


If you can get people out of their automobiles and on to trains, there's a good chance that the reduction in fatal automobile accidents will more than make up for the deaths along the tracks.

People who die in car accidents also often aren't doing something that's easy for a careful person who's risk averse to avoid, whereas an intelligent person who doesn't want to be killed by a train running on a fenced, grade separated track has a good chance of being able to choose to avoid trespassing.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 16, 2008)

puck71 said:


> Something like this would be awesome and could take away (or at least lessen) one of the biggest downsides of long-distance train travel in the US - time. The best way to make it happen I think would be to start on one of the routes (probably LA to LV, but maybe east coast) and see how it does. If it does as well as I think it probably would, then expand from there.


I'm starting to think that the inital route with the most potential is probably one that starts just west of the greater New York City area (possibly taking NJT's route as far as High Bridge to get through the densely populated area, with the 200 MPH track starting near High Bridge and heading west from there, but I'm not sure if that's really the best way to get out of New York City). It would then head in a straight line to somewhere a bit to the north of Pittsburgh, with tracks so that the trains that aren't super-express could slow down and head south a bit and stop at the existing Pittsburgh station, and the super-express train wouldn't have to go any slower than 200 MPH while bypassing Pittsburgh. The track would then head northwest towards Cleveland, again with slower track to the existing station, and a bypass that's 200 MPH the whole way around Cleveland, and then the 200 MPH track would head west towards Chicago, and eventually connect with the existing tracks feeding into Chicago once it reaches a heavily populated area.

Then, when there's money to expand on that, additional tracks could be built connecting to Harrisburg (possibly with the idea that a train heading south from this new track to Harrisburg would either continue to Philadelphia or to Pittsburg via the existing route with all the local stops rather than finding its way back to the 200 MPH track after stopping in Harrisburg), and an additional track could be built just west of Pittsburg that would continue southeast to Washington, DC at 200 MPH.

The New York City Combined Statistical Area has a population of almost 22 million; the Chicago CSA almost 10 million; the Cleveland CSA almost 3 million; and the Pittsburg CSA almost 2.5 million. The Las Vegas CSA is smaller than any of these, at almost 2 million; the Los Angeles CSA has almost 18 million. If you assume that both Cleveland and Pittsburg should be close enough to New York City that planes would become obsolete for this route if such a high speed track is built, and if you assume that number of trips is going to be proportional to population, then New York City to Pittsburgh ought to have more riders. Plus, people who go to New York City tend to be comfortable with trains. The downside is that New York City to Pittsburgh is a longer route than Los Angeles to Las Vegas and thus will probably be a more expensive experiment.

It would also be interesting to try to get a good estimate of what fraction of the New York to Chicago market Amtrak would capture if Amtrak could do the trip in five hours. And of course, maybe it will be possible for Amtrak to exceed 200 MPH on a good portion of that route someday, which is certainly something that should be planned for when it's built. Are there numbers on Amtrak's share of the Boston to Washington DC market, which would be a pretty good indicator of how willing people are to take 5-7 hour train trips (as NYP to CHI would end up being with this 200 MPH track) where a faster plane is available?


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## jackal (Jun 17, 2008)

According to Wikipedia, "by some reckoning, Amtrak has captured over half of the market share of travelers between Washington and New York." (The source is an article in Trains magazine, June 2006, if anyone wants to verify that claim.)

Since we're still in the experimental stages and there is no way this will be built without a lot more proof that HSR works, I wonder if it would be more cost-effective to revamp the NEC to allow these 200mph speeds. Yes, it will require a lot of land taken under eminent domain and will upset a lot of people, but it would probably still be cheaper and would probably have a better ROI than tunneling through the Appalachians. If we could achieve a 170mph average between WAS and NYP, that would virtually guarantee 100% marketshare to Amtrak between those cities. (The current average is somewhere around 75mph, IIRC.)

Once Amtrak has complete dominance there, then we can start looking at expanding westward...


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## AlanB (Jun 17, 2008)

jackal said:


> Once Amtrak has complete dominance there, then we can start looking at expanding westward...


Actually I'd look to expand south first, where they already have and interest and plans for higher speed trains.


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## wayman (Jun 17, 2008)

AlanB said:


> jackal said:
> 
> 
> > Once Amtrak has complete dominance there, then we can start looking at expanding westward...
> ...


Slowing down the definition of "high-speed" a bit, moving to the South where everything is a bit more laid-back... 

What's the likelihood of Amtrak--once given the permission to initiate new routes--working with Norfolk Southern to add higher-speed (not "high-speed", but at least trains that can reliably clip along at 79 rather than poke along at 45) between Atlanta and Jacksonville, Memphis and Chattanooga and Atlanta, and other enormous corridor capacity and infrastructure projects in the south which NS is undertaking? Obviously, NS is doing this to increase their freight traffic capacity and efficiency, but if Amtrak could benefit from ATL-JAX with one reliable fast train a day that would be fantastic. NS isn't exactly upgrading the Crescent's route, but parts of the Crescent might benefit and certainly connecting routes to the Crescent would benefit Amtrak.

If those connecting routes run on brand new well-designed corridor track and show off how reliable train travel can be given the money for solid infrastructure, that could be a huge demonstration and bring more money in that direction....


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 17, 2008)

jackal said:


> According to Wikipedia, "by some reckoning, Amtrak has captured over half of the market share of travelers between Washington and New York." (The source is an article in Trains magazine, June 2006, if anyone wants to verify that claim.)
> Since we're still in the experimental stages and there is no way this will be built without a lot more proof that HSR works, I wonder if it would be more cost-effective to revamp the NEC to allow these 200mph speeds. Yes, it will require a lot of land taken under eminent domain and will upset a lot of people, but it would probably still be cheaper and would probably have a better ROI than tunneling through the Appalachians. If we could achieve a 170mph average between WAS and NYP, that would virtually guarantee 100% marketshare to Amtrak between those cities. (The current average is somewhere around 75mph, IIRC.)
> 
> Once Amtrak has complete dominance there, then we can start looking at expanding westward...


There are a finite number of seats available on the Acela trainsets. I have to wonder if just buying two more business class cars for each existing Acela trainset and buying 10 or 20 more Acela trainsets would help Amtrak's market share more cost effectively. Or maybe even just some new electric locomotives so that Amtrak could add some trains with Amfleet Is that make only Acela stops. That would drive down Amtrak's ticket prices, which would make Amtrak attractive to more travelers. I know I've heard a coworker complaining about how expensive Acela has gotten lately, and there's a trip I'm contemplating later this year where I may choose the Regional in at least one direction due to Acela's high prices. That suggests to me that there are travelers who are more sensitive to price than any mode preference who will prefer the plane simply because Amtrak doesn't have cheap seats (because of stupidity in the equipment acquisition process, not because of underlying energy costs).

And I bet if you found some way to upgrade most of the track to 200 MPH but made sure that Amtrak's number of available seats was the same as now, you'd find that Amtrak's market share wouldn't grow much.

Annoying people who will scream NIMBY is far more politically dangerous than spending lots of money, as far as I can tell.

I also think the long term plan should be for the existing NEC to turn into largely a commuter route, and if we want to spend real money on achieving 200 MPH for a good part of the route, we should build a completely new route that will probably skip most city centers entirely. Such a route could be built under the Deleware River, the Chesapeake & Deleware Canal, and the Deleware River expensively but with minimal legal paperwork, or perhaps it could be built 10-30 miles to the east or west of the existing route, largely over land, to be completed 30-40 years from now whenever the political process and eminent domain process can be completed.

(The MBTA recently spent a decade building the roughly 20 mile Greenbush Line on an existing but not active right of way. If we want any of this to actually get built at any useful point in our lifetimes, we need to be looking to agressively prefer options that will avoid as many potential delays as possible.)

I also think that Acela as it exists proves that there's demand for high speed rail. You don't need 100% market share to know that a service works; a service that has even 20% market share is valuable to travelers.

If we want to have any chance of having a 24 hour or less Boston to California sleeper 20 years from now, we probably should be trying to get the New York City to Chicago and quite possibly also Los Angeles to Las Vegas segment under construction soon, so that they'll have a chance of being done 10 years from now, and hopefully once Americans have an opportunity to experience those routes, it will become obvious that we should fill in the Las Vegas to Chicago segments.


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## George Harris (Jun 17, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> The older French TGV tracks that are only good to 200 MPH have a minimum curve radius of four miles. The newer stuff they're building has an even larger curve radius in preparation for the faster speeds they hope to run someday.. . . .
> 
> I'm starting to think that when going through nearly flat farmland, elevating the tracks about 15 feet above the surrounding land would be really nice. It would improve the view for the passengers, it would get the tracks at about the right elevation for crossing roadways on bridges, and it might provide some protection against flooding if the land suporting the railroad is stable enough when the surrounding land is flooded.


Joel: The basic French design was for 300 km/h = 186 mph

The original standards for Taiwan High Speed were written by them based on

"Initial operation at 300 km/h, but not precluding ultimately running at 350 km/h"

350 km/h = 217 mph

I think they kept the curve radius unchanged from what they used for 300 km/h in France.

For that system, the minimum curve radius was 6,250 meters = 20,500 feet (real close) = 3.88 miles

It also allowed an "exceptional" radius of 5,500 meters = 18,000 feet (real close) = 3.42 miles.

If we think faster, then say at 250 mph, you would want to have a curve radius of 36,000 feet = 6.82 miles or larger.

For your second point, for almost the whole country the "100 year" flood elevation can be found, and if you get a few feet above that you will be above the even more extreme floods. Usually, 15 feet above the prevailing ground is way more than necessary for that.

However: In Taiwan there was also the political promise that the line would be on structure through the southern farming area. As a result, a continuous viaduct nearly 100 miles long was built. In general, the deck was about 25 to 30 feet above the ground.

Minimum clearance over roadways in this country is defined as 14'-6", and for major roads usually is 16'-0" to 16'-3" Add an allowance of about 7 to 10 feet for bottom of structure to top of rail, and you get the track elevation at about 25 feet above the ground. Then, if the roadways are built clear of flood elevation, in the areas subject to flooding you will be higher than that.

As to speeding up the northeast corridor: It is way past time to start spending the money somewhere else. When we get a few other areas to an equivalent level of service, then we can start thinking about doing more there. I am thinking about such things as California high speed, or even Chicago - St. Louis, Miami - Tampa Bay, Seattle - Portland, etc.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 17, 2008)

The third paragraph of the intro to the TGV article in Wikipedia states



> TGV trainsets travel at up to 320 km/h (200 mph) in commercial use.


And a couple sentences after that, Wikipedia links to this article which states:



> France's electrically-powered fast trains have been operating since 1981, daily reaching speeds of 320 kph over some 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) of track.


Mostly I'm posting this because I want to demonstrate that I'd made some halfway reasonable attempt at gathering accurate facts. (I hadn't bothered to check wikipedia's citation prior to this post, but the 320 km/h claim does seem to be accurate. Google's calculator seems to think that 320 km/hr is more like 198.8 MPH, but I don't think that 1.2 MPH discrepeancy has a meaningful effect on the passenger's experience.)

I'm not sure getting lost in splitting hairs over 300 vs 320 vs 350 km/h has much point, however. The basic problems involved in achieving any of these speeds are similar in needing to find a right of way that is very straight. Whether your minimum radius is 3.5 miles, 4 miles, 7 miles, or something even larger than that just in case faster speeds become possible later, you're stuck with the same basic problem that existing rights of way in the US have curves that are too tight. Any of these speeds would require trainsets faster than the existing Acela trainsets, and meeting FRA safety standards on such fast trainsets is something that has never been done, though I expect it's an entirely solveable problem.

The real problem to be solved is figuring out how to get the American public to decide that building these new high speed routes is worth the money.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 17, 2008)

Here's another Telegraph article that lists slightly different speeds than the other Telegraph article:



> Currently, average travelling speeds for the TGV are around 186 mph, but trains on the new Paris-Strasbourg line are to run at 198.7 mph.


But those numbers look an awful lot like the numbers cited outside of that article as maximum speeds, which makes me think the reporter may have been confused when using the word average.


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## Green Maned Lion (Jun 17, 2008)

Joel, I have a considerable respect for you as an intelligent and forward-thinking individual, but allow me to pose the following question:

Our government can't keep our basic infrastructure (ex. the northeast corridor or even the interstate highway system- witness the MSP bridge collapse) even in a "state of good repair". Given this, how do you expect them to design, engineer, procure land for, build, and especially properly maintain something to FRA 200mph standards?


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## George Harris (Jun 17, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> The third paragraph of the intro to the TGV article in Wikipedia states
> 
> 
> > TGV trainsets travel at up to 320 km/h (200 mph) in commercial use.
> ...


I was not trying to either nit-pick or split hairs. My source happened to have been a couple of civil engineer type Frenchmen that worked on the system, but not on their newest line.


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## AlanB (Jun 18, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> There are a finite number of seats available on the Acela trainsets. I have to wonder if just buying two more business class cars for each existing Acela trainset and buying 10 or 20 more Acela trainsets would help Amtrak's market share more cost effectively. Or maybe even just some new electric locomotives so that Amtrak could add some trains with Amfleet Is that make only Acela stops. That would drive down Amtrak's ticket prices, which would make Amtrak attractive to more travelers. I know I've heard a coworker complaining about how expensive Acela has gotten lately, and there's a trip I'm contemplating later this year where I may choose the Regional in at least one direction due to Acela's high prices. That suggests to me that there are travelers who are more sensitive to price than any mode preference who will prefer the plane simply because Amtrak doesn't have cheap seats (because of stupidity in the equipment acquisition process, not because of underlying energy costs).


Amtrak's prices for Acela aren't due to a lack of seats or the fixed nature of the Acela. The prices are driven by the fact that people are paying for them, and Congress and the White House are breathing down Amtrak's neck to turn a profit.

Buying two more cars per train set probably would help a bit to improve Amtrak's marketshare, would certainly improve Amtrak's bottom line operationally as well as driving up ridership numbers. But I strongly suspect that it would have little impact on the prices being charged. There might be more low bucket seat available than there are now, but I doubt that you'd see much drop in the high bucket prices.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 18, 2008)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Our government can't keep our basic infrastructure (ex. the northeast corridor or even the interstate highway system- witness the MSP bridge collapse) even in a "state of good repair". Given this, how do you expect them to design, engineer, procure land for, build, and especially properly maintain something to FRA 200mph standards?


The FRA's standards are pretty strict. The rules are pretty clear about how when the standards for a particular track class aren't met, you have to run the trains slower (though I think there are a few cases where you have a month or two in which to meet the standards before the trains have to fully slow down). If a lot of track that was supposed to be 200 MPH isn't, there's a good chance that the trains will slow down for a little while, the news media will notice, and the politicians will decide to throw money at the problem.

Sometimes building new things from scratch for $X is also politically easier than spending one twentieth of $X fixing something.

And I have to wonder if the sense of satisfaction engineers get varies. Would you rather spend a year of your working life building a new 200 MPH track, or doing a bunch of things along the lines of fixing some track that has a speed restriction of 90 MPH so that it can operate at 135 MPH like it's supposed to (and when you're done, still not being able to do anything about that catenary wire that won't let the trains run at 150 MPH)? (I assume the old catenary is not considered to be not in good repair merely on account of not being constant tension, but I don't really know.)

The US Navy's submarine force found that when the officers who had done best in school got to pick their assignments, the ships that were in overhaul ended up getting the weaker officers pretty consistently. The Navy eventually noticed that having weaker officers on the ships that were getting overhauled was a bad thing, and changed how they handled assignments.

If indeed the civilian engineers working on the railroads are going to prefer working on the 200 MPH track, there is no way in our democracy to force the best engineers to work on the stupid annoying little problems on the NEC. (And I strongly suspect that good engineers / management can do a lot to stretch budget dollars in a safe manner, where weaker engineers / management will take a less efficient approach and get less done with the same money.)

Notice also how the way Amtrak most recently managed to buy new rolling stock at all was that it was ``high speed''. Nevermind that the top speed south of New York City is a whole 8% faster for the Acela than the Regional, and an 8% speed difference probably barely has any effect on how many people are willing to ride the train. (It's more complicated than that, of course, since the Acela doesn't even get to enjoy that 8% speed advantage for the whole route, but the Acela also skips a bunch of stops, and can probably accelerate faster. But Amtrak could have simply bought some more electric locomotives and made a habit of running them in pairs and rewritten the schedule if they wanted the Amfleet I coaches to enjoy those last two advantages.)

I'm sort of curious about the NEC state of good repair issue. I do think I recall reading about it being an issue in the bill that Congress has almost managed to pass. But when I've ridden the NEC, I haven't noticed it being broken, and I suspect that the NEC in its present state is a safer way to travel than the current Interstate highway system, or any improved version of the highway system we might see in the next few decades.

I'm also wondering if the highway bridge standards are as clear cut as the FRA track standards. For some reason, I suspect they may not be, but I'm not really sure. I think I've seen news articles saying that engineers inspected some particular highway bridge and decided it was safe enough in some case in the distant past. I'm wondering how much subjectivity gets involved there; I'm reminded of what Richard Feynman discovered about various estimates of the safety of the Challenger. (Various lower level people at NASA apparently had a pretty good idea of the actual safety. Management figured they couldn't possibly be sending actual living human beings into outer space in something that dangerous, because if it was that dangerous you wouldn't want to send actual living human beings, so obviously it was safer than the people who were working for them thought it was. Unfortunately, we discovered that management writing wishful numbers down on a piece of paper didn't make reality so.)

While I do think we need to be working to fix the highway bridges (as well as thinking about whether we could save money in the long run in meeting our total transportation needs by getting some of the load off the highway and onto the rails), a single highway bridge collapse really doesn't bother me much. I'm too lazy to go find the real numbers at the moment, but if there were 150 people who died in that collapse and about 150 million Interstate highway bridge users in the US (counting both drivers and passengers), it would seem that collapse only killed one out of every 1 million Interstate highway users. There are probably a bunch of other ways of dying on an Interstate highway that are a lot more likely.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 18, 2008)

AlanB said:


> Amtrak's prices for Acela aren't due to a lack of seats or the fixed nature of the Acela. The prices are driven by the fact that people are paying for them, and Congress and the White House are breathing down Amtrak's neck to turn a profit.
> Buying two more cars per train set probably would help a bit to improve Amtrak's marketshare, would certainly improve Amtrak's bottom line operationally as well as driving up ridership numbers. But I strongly suspect that it would have little impact on the prices being charged. There might be more low bucket seat available than there are now, but I doubt that you'd see much drop in the high bucket prices.


I believe more seats would indeed increase the number of low bucket seats; the prices are supposed to be set so that however many people are willing to pay the high bucket prices will pay the high bucket prices, and lower bucket prices are available to people who book early to make sure all the seats get sold. Additional seats aren't going to increase the number of people willing to pay the high bucket, so they'll have to be sold to lower bucket customers.

(The system obviously doesn't manage to maximize revenue perfectly, because the people who are willing to pay the highest prices occasionally buy their tickets too early to do so.)

But when I'm looking at potential BOS-WAS trips in September where booking three months out can vary from under $100 for coach on a Regional to over $200 in Acela Business Class, I have to wonder if more Acela seats could increase the likelyhood that I'd choose to take the Acela instead of the Regional.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 18, 2008)

One other thing to consider is that the Northeast Corridor has grade crossings and moveable bridges. In some ways, grade crossings are harder to maintain than grade separated crossings (on the other hand, grade separated crossings do have bridges that need occasional work, and I'm not sure which factor ultimately outweighs the other).

A new high speed track that's specifically intended for passenger trains may be able to avoid having any moveable bridges, as such a track tends to avoid some of the issues that traditional freight railroads ran into with wanting to avoid having a steep track grade. That certainly will improve the reliability of the system. (The surface platforms at North Station in Boston are reached by a moveable bridge across the Charles river, and there has been at least one occasion in the last couple years when mechanical problems with that bridge have delayed a bunch of rush hour MBTA trains. If the North South Rail Link gets built, and if all of the trains start running through it, that maintenance issue might go away.)

Also, a dedicated high speed passenger track probably has to be built away from populated areas in order to get reasonable curves without huge amounts of land acquisition hassles. That is probably going to also mean that it will have far fewer switches where it connects to other branches of the system. And I suspect you may be able to get away with spacing passing tracks based upon the time the slowest train takes to reach them. If you're content to risk having trains have to wait 5 minutes to meet other trains, at 200 MPH you can space the passing sidings about 16 miles apart. (Maybe you'd regret that on days when the trains have to run slowly because of some mechanical problem, though.)

An interesting question is whether you can build a switch that will let a train run through it at 200 MPH regardless of which of the two directions the train is going (which you'd want if you build the track mostly single tracked, with double track in the sections where you expect the schedule will put the trains where they meet). I bet you can, but it probably doesn't tend to be done. But keeping high speed switches maintained is apparently pricy, I think somewhere I read that a switch that you can go through at 45 MPH (in the slower direction, I think) can cost something like $10k or $30k a year to maintain.

George Harris has also mentioned that concrete slab construction will cut maintenance costs, though I don't know if 200 MPH concrete slab track maintenance is cheaper than maintaining 135 MPH track that merely has concrete ties.


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## Chafford1 (Jun 18, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> The third paragraph of the intro to the TGV article in Wikipedia states
> 
> 
> > TGV trainsets travel at up to 320 km/h (200 mph) in commercial use.
> ...


The line speed for French 'Lignes a Grand Vitesse' is 300km/h (186mph), apart from the LGV Est line where the line speed is 320 km/h (199mph). The French are looking into raising the maximum speed to 360km/h (225mph).

The recently opened Madrid-Barcelona line in Spain currently runs at 300km/h (186mph), but line speeds will be raised to 350km/h (217mph) later in 2008 or 2009.


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## Green Maned Lion (Jun 18, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Green Maned Lion said:
> 
> 
> > Our government can't keep our basic infrastructure (ex. the northeast corridor or even the interstate highway system- witness the MSP bridge collapse) even in a "state of good repair". Given this, how do you expect them to design, engineer, procure land for, build, and especially properly maintain something to FRA 200mph standards?
> ...


It might be a good thing if it happens, but I doubt it ever will. Maybe I'm just too cynical.


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## George Harris (Jun 18, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> (Various lower level people at NASA apparently had a pretty good idea of the actual safety. Management figured they couldn't possibly be sending actual living human beings into outer space in something that dangerous, because if it was that dangerous you wouldn't want to send actual living human beings, so obviously it was safer than the people who were working for them thought it was. Unfortunately, we discovered that management writing wishful numbers down on a piece of paper didn't make reality so.)


Dilbert management at its best. Way, way too common.


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## George Harris (Jun 18, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> An interesting question is whether you can build a switch that will let a train run through it at 200 MPH regardless of which of the two directions the train is going (which you'd want if you build the track mostly single tracked, with double track in the sections where you expect the schedule will put the trains where they meet). I bet you can, but it probably doesn't tend to be done. But keeping high speed switches maintained is apparently pricy, I think somewhere I read that a switch that you can go through at 45 MPH (in the slower direction, I think) can cost something like $10k or $30k a year to maintain.


If you are going to have enough volume of people and trains to be worth building the railroad at all, it will probably need to be double tracked from day one.

Not sure about the maintenance cost you quote for the 45 mph turnout. I have been working outside the country too long to have recent maintenance cost handy, but it seems high. A 45 mph turnout is nothing more than a garden variety No. 20 turnout. There are lots of them out there. Caltrain probably has somewhere between 30 and 40 of these things between San Francisco and San Jose.

As to the very high speed turnouts: There are German standards for up to 200 km/h = 125 mph. The German 200 km/h turnout is 197 meters (646 feet) long, has a spiraled switch piont, an internal radius of 6,100 meters (20,018 feet), and has 8 switch machines on the point and 4 more on the movable frog. The switch point alone is 63 meters (206 feet) long, which is almost as long as an entire No. 20 (45 mph ) turnout. (I have drawings of both of these things.)

To make one for 200 mph would require an internal radius of around 60,000 feet. and the whole thing would be something around 1/4 mile long.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 29, 2008)

George Harris said:


> If you are going to have enough volume of people and trains to be worth building the railroad at all, it will probably need to be double tracked from day one.


This statement has certainly made me think things through a bit more.

If there was 150+ MPH track that was designed to just not have sections requiring slowing down from that speed going from somewhere a bit west of the greater New York City area to somewhere a bit north of Pittsburgh to somewhere a bit south of Cleveland to somewhere near Chicago, with slower tracks getting the trains into the downtown stations, there'd probably be enough distinct routes that if several of them were run with one hour headways, any given section of the right of way would see multiple trains per hour in each direction, and trying to do less than double tracking the whole thing in that case probably would be crazy.

But then there's the Los Angeles to Las Vegas route. If there were hourly departures on a fast, passenger-only track, I'm not sure there'd be more than one train per hour in each direction. There might also be one or two long distance trains a day, of course, but that may not be terribly significant. Adding high speed track from near Las Vegas to Phoenix would potentially bring most of the Las Vegas to LA route up to two trains per hour in each direction if LA residents had a choice of either going to Las Vegas on that track, or going to Phoenix by going near Las Vegas but skipping the slow track through Vegas itself, but it's not obvious to me that two trains per hour would justify double tracking the whole length of the route. And maybe I'm not being imaginative enough, but I'm having trouble seeing how there'd ever be much point in having more than about two trains an hour in each direction on most of the Los Angeles to Las Vegas track.

Then again, I have little sense of the relative cost of laying the second track, vs the overall cost of establishing a new right of way (while doing all of the things needed for the second track that would be more expensive if not done when the right of way is established for the first track) in the first place.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 29, 2008)

It looks like the primary census statistical areas list is actually a better thing to look at than the combined statistical areas, because, as the text at the top of Wikipedia's combined statistical areas page notes, there are some cities like Phoenix whose population is quite large even though there aren't multiple entertangled MSAs, and discriminating against Phoenix because of its single core nature would be dumb.

If you look at the list of the top five areas, New York City, Washington DC, and Boston all fall in the top five. And Boston to Washington DC is under 460 track miles with the current route, which suggests that with sufficiently straight track, BOS to WAS could probably be done by rail in under three hours.

(Though I don't understand why Congress is so focused on new Baltimore tunnels, which if they're built soon, in isolation, probably will be in the wrong place to be used by a railroad made of class 9 track, if we ever get that.)

If you expand your view to the top 10, Los Angeles to San Francisco and Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston also look like very attractive places for high speed trains; both of those routes are well under 500 miles, and therefore can probably be done in under three hours.

Trying to evaluate the relative value of various routes becomes difficult, if you wanted to declare a single winner.

One unanswerable question is whether the goal should be to maximize the number of riders enjoying the new track, or to maximize the number of riders diverted from airplanes. NYP to Philadelphia riders can be counted towards justifying a new NEC if you care about the former, but probably not if you're focused on the latter. (If there are people who take a plane from the greater New York City area to Philadelphia today, I really doubt the airplane is saving them any time over Amtrak's current service, and therefore I really doubt faster Amtrak service would make them switch. Amazingly, when I ask the Internet for Newark to Philadelphia airfare, it tells me I can pay $400+ for the round trip and change planes in Pittsburgh or probably some other places, and doesn't suggest that I should just take a train.) New York City is huge, but being in the center of the NEC, it currently has pretty decent runtimes to the rest of the NEC.

It appears that if you were trying to justify a new NEC on the basis that it would help Bostonians get to Philadelpiha and WAS, the total population of those three CSAs is 21 million if you round each CSA's population down to the nearest million and then add. Los Angeles plus San Fracisco has a slightly larger population. And Los Angeles to San Francisco is 382 highway miles, so it's a slightly shorter route.

I guess this argues that the first place to build approximately 200 MPH track in the US ought to be Los Angeles to San Francisco. (Why is LA to Las Vegas being studied as a high speed route at all, then, even ignoring the whole maglev vs rail issue? I guess for the same reason that the political rules now specify that rail is not as good as maglev, regardless of the financial and technical realities.)

Kansas City (22nd largest CSA, 27th largest primary census statistical area)'s location is kind of annoying: 603 highway miles to Denver, 552 highway miles to Dallas. Trains with a top speed of 200 MPH probably are going to take a bit more than 3 hours, which may mean those routes would have trouble killing airplanes. And then you get into the question of how much value there is of having an interconnected system of 200 MPH track to make trips longer than three hours possible at high speeds. Then again, Kansas city is small enough that routes connecting to it at 200 MPH aren't going to be among the first built, and maybe that will make higher top speeds possible; 350 km/h might turn out to be fast enough to get Kansas City to Denver down to three hours, and if it doesn't, maybe 250 MPH would work.

We might someday have a train that goes slowly from New Orleans to Houston (363 miles and 9:18 on the current Sunset Limited schedule, and New Orleans is small enough that upgrades may be harder to justify), and then quickly from Houston to Dallas-Fort Worth to Kansas City to St Louis to Chicago.


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## Larry H. (Jun 29, 2008)

This make me recall that if I wanted to fly I would take a plane.. I think a speedy trip, say 100 might be nice, but any idea what a wreck would look like at 250! Besides it would make rail travel for sure have the excuse of a bag of chips for 4.00 as your only perk. No thanks..


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jun 29, 2008)

Larry H. said:


> This make me recall that if I wanted to fly I would take a plane.. I think a speedy trip, say 100 might be nice, but any idea what a wreck would look like at 250!


The French have several decades of experience at 300 km/h, and I don't think they've managed to have fatal high speed wrecks yet.

Besides, how fast are you orbiting the sun?

I also don't think there's much danger of, say, the majority of the Empire Builder's route being upgraded to anywhere close to 200 MPH. There just isn't a huge population density along most of its route. Minneapolis to Chicago might be a good place to eventually build high speed track, but once you get outside the greater Minneapolis area heading west, there's not really much population until you're almost to the coast, as far as I can tell. There are probably always going to be lots of routes carrying some local passengers that aren't worth making all that fast, too.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jul 5, 2008)

This topic claims that a part of France's government has proposed that they should end up with about 3700 km of 300 km/h or better track by 2020, a mere 12 years from now.

The US about 4.7 the population of France, going by the numbers in Wikipedia's List of countries by population article.

If we want to be competitive with the French in terms of miles of 300 km/h or better track per capita, we need to have a major government official proposing that by 2020 we should have about 17390 km or about 10,800 miles of 300 km/h or better track in the US.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jul 5, 2008)

The Pittsburgh to Los Angeles route I gave early in this topic adds up to 2856 miles using the mix of highway mile and current track mile numbers I'd come up with.

Pittsburgh to New York City is 371 highway miles.

Pittsburgh to DC is 247 highway miles.

The Boston to DC route is 457 miles; building faster track for that may someday make sense.

Charlotte to DC is 399 highway miles.

Atlanta to Charlotte is 264 highway miles.

Atlanta to Orlando is 438 highway miles.

Orland to Miami is 239 highway miles.

Atlanta to Cincinnati is 461 highway miles.

Cincinnati to Chicago, going close to Indinanapolis along the way, is 297 highway miles.

Kansas City to Dallas is 552 highway miles.

Dallas to Houston is 239 highway miles.

Houston to San Antonio is 197 highway miles.

San Antonio to Dallas is 273 highway miles.

Las Vegas to Phoenix is 294 highway miles.

Los Angeles to San Francisco is 382 highway miles.

Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles is 634 highway miles.

Portland, Oregon to Seattle is 174 highway miles.

The sum of the above routes is 8774 miles.

One thing I'm not clear on is how the numbers in my previous post in this thread account for double track. It's quite possible that we'd only need to be proposing to have 5400 route miles of 300 km/h or better track by 2020 to be competitive with France, per capita, if a mile long right of way with two tracks on it is being counted as two track miles in counting how much track France has. Then again, would there be anything wrong with proposing to have more 300 km/h or better track per capita than France?


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## wayman (Jul 5, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Then again, would there be anything wrong with proposing to have more 300 km/h or better track per capita than France?


But where do you stop, once you start thinking about it like that? Do we up our wine and cheese production to equal or better France's per-capita?  Wait a sec, that would allow for wine-and-cheese tastings on more trains than just the LSL, so I'm all for it! :lol:


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jul 5, 2008)

According to Wikipedia's List of countries by electricity consumption, we use about 1.7 times the wattage per capita as France. If we had 8774 route miles of 300 km/h or better track and only needed 5400 to match them in terms of track miles per capita, we'd have about 1.6 times the high speed track miles per capita as France, and that imaginary 1.6 track factor is less than the current real 1.7 electricity factor.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jul 28, 2008)

I'm starting to think that a logical approach to transcontinental high speed trains, assuming a willingness to build lots of new high speed track on new rights of way, would be to run pretty much all of them (giving the examples for the eastbound trains) from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to Salt Lake City to Denver to Kansas City, and probably from there to St. Louis.

At St. Louis, there could be a three way split:

One route would go to Chicago. (Someday, if there's a desire to build even more track, that trip could be shortened a bit by track directly from Kansas City to Chicago that bypassed St Louis.)

The second route would go to Atlanta (via Chattanooga, because it's pretty much on the way) and then from there to Orlando and Miami. (Or it could do Orlando to Tampa, but Miami has a larger population than Tampa; or maybe trains should alternate between Orlando and Tampa.)

The third route would go to Indianapolis, Columbus, and Pittsburgh. At Pittsburgh, some trains would then continue to DC and perhaps Philadelphia, and others would go to New York City, Hartford, Springfield, and Boston.

There might also be some trains that go from Miami to Orlando to Atlanta to Chattanooga to St Louis to Chicago without requiring passengers to change trains in St Louis.


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## frj1983 (Jul 28, 2008)

"assuming a willingness to build lots of new high speed track on new rights of way"

Well that's the problem Joel,

It's GIGANTIC assumption and I don't see anyone in Congress in your or my lifetime suggesting this. In fact, I think there will be a 10 year angst filled argument within Congress just to help the private railroads(in some way) get more trucks off the road. Passenger Rail is just not on their radar and will never be in this current generation of constantly re-elected legislators!


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## wayman (Jul 28, 2008)

frj1983 said:


> "assuming a willingness to build lots of new high speed track on new rights of way"
> Well that's the problem Joel,
> 
> It's GIGANTIC assumption and I don't see anyone in Congress in your or my lifetime suggesting this. In fact, I think there will be a 10 year angst filled argument within Congress just to help the private railroads(in some way) get more trucks off the road. Passenger Rail is just not on their radar and will never be in this current generation of constantly re-elected legislators!


Amtrak Putsch, anyone? h34r:


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## Green Maned Lion (Jul 28, 2008)

Our government is not in the financial position to finance anything like this, Joel. We can't even afford the war our idiot-in-office is putting us through. Upgrading Amtrak funding is easy, and should be done. But frankly, before they spend trillions on a system like you suggest, they need to get a positive cash flow.


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## George Harris (Jul 28, 2008)

If the California High Speed, Los Angeles to San Francisco gets built, and it seems more and more likely that it will, the political landscape should shift dramatically. Suddenly we will have one that even the politicians can feel and touch without having to go overseas to do it. Considering that right now there are six trains daily that are reasonably full even though it take bus rides on both ends to get to either SF or LA, and about 10 hours downtown to downtown, once you can make the trip in under 3 hours in the same seat, the problem with the system will probably be insufficient capacity rather than lack of ridership.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Jul 28, 2008)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Our government is not in the financial position to finance anything like this, Joel. We can't even afford the war our idiot-in-office is putting us through. Upgrading Amtrak funding is easy, and should be done. But frankly, before they spend trillions on a system like you suggest, they need to get a positive cash flow.


If we could move 100-300 billion a year from the military to train tracks, we could probably get catch up to the French in a decade or two, without changing the total we're spending each year.


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## Green Maned Lion (Jul 28, 2008)

Thats like financially suggesting that I divest $300,000 a year from Ferraris to BMWs when I'm in a negative cash position.


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## frj1983 (Jul 29, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Green Maned Lion said:
> 
> 
> > Our government is not in the financial position to finance anything like this, Joel. We can't even afford the war our idiot-in-office is putting us through. Upgrading Amtrak funding is easy, and should be done. But frankly, before they spend trillions on a system like you suggest, they need to get a positive cash flow.
> ...


Again Joel,

I DO NOT see any political will to do this...and while George Harris is correct that a California high speed system will change things a bit, I still think most legislators will think: "oh that's California where they have the budget of a small wealthy country and the size/population to make something like high speed work. In the Midwest where I live, high speed rail might work, but would end up crossing many state lines and each state, would of course, have their own views on how it should be done and where it should go, of course slowing the whole process down to a trickle! :blink:


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 3, 2008)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Thats like financially suggesting that I divest $300,000 a year from Ferraris to BMWs when I'm in a negative cash position.


Wikipedia thinks the US GDP is $13.8 trillion. If we spent $100 billion a year on better track, that wouldn't even be 1% of the US GDP. $300 billion a year on track would still be well under 3% of the US GDP.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 3, 2008)

frj1983 said:


> I DO NOT see any political will to do this...and while George Harris is correct that a California high speed system will change things a bit, I still think most legislators will think: "oh that's California where they have the budget of a small wealthy country and the size/population to make something like high speed work. In the Midwest where I live, high speed rail might work, but would end up crossing many state lines and each state, would of course, have their own views on how it should be done and where it should go, of course slowing the whole process down to a trickle! :blink:


The Interstate Highway system crosses many state lines. How did it ever get built in the midwest, and why is high speed rail harder than the Interstate Highway system?

The key to creating the political will to build this is to figure out how to get the average American to see how this would benefit them. Then there will be voters demanding high speed rail from politicians. I think the way to make this happen is to make people in major cities aware of what would be possible if we decide we want to catch up to the French. Specifically, it would be good for people in major cities to be aware of which other cities they could get to in how much time (for the places they'd be able to get in 3 hours or less) if we invested in high speed rail.


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## frj1983 (Aug 4, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> frj1983 said:
> 
> 
> > I DO NOT see any political will to do this...and while George Harris is correct that a California high speed system will change things a bit, I still think most legislators will think: "oh that's California where they have the budget of a small wealthy country and the size/population to make something like high speed work. In the Midwest where I live, high speed rail might work, but would end up crossing many state lines and each state, would of course, have their own views on how it should be done and where it should go, of course slowing the whole process down to a trickle! :blink:
> ...


OK Joel,

I'll bite: How? How? How? are you going to get average Joe/Josie America to see how it benefits them???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The average American isn't even aware that Amtrak exists as a travel option, let alone see it as a benefit! And most American's experience with trains has to do with waiting for one of those %*#[email protected] freight trains getting in my way and holding me up!! They have absolutely no perception of the need for any kind of train. Is it any wonder that elected members of congress have no conception about it either (unless of course they serve on a couple of committees that are somehow involved with trains)?

So HOW exactly are you going to convince America and Congress of the need? I hope you have a "detailed" miracle up your sleeve! I'd really like to hear it!


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## Guest_TransAtlantic_* (Aug 4, 2008)

While the idea of cross-country HSR is great to dream about, it is impractical for a variety of reasons, not the least being the size of the country compared with the nature of successful HSR systems. You could fit most of France, for example, within Texas, so we are talking about MUCH longer distances than those in Europe or Asia; even in France, there are large parts of the country which are not - and will not be - served by HSR because of their low population densities.

What WILL work in this country - and the sooner, the better, I say! - is the development of regional corridors which can connect to more conventional (probably diesel/electric, at least for now) rail, which would still allow a person to cross the entire country in not much over a day. California and the NEC are well underway with corridor development; Florida, Texas, the Southeastern seaboard area, the Pacific Northwest, and the Midwest corridor areas (Chicago/Milwaukee/St. Louis/Kansas City) have all been proposed. With only the remaining gaps, one could conceivably go from LA to Orlando or Seattle, or from NYC to Minneapolis or Oklahoma City within a single day. We just need to make politicians AND the FRA aware of the realities of HSR around the world: proven, safe technology that is far more energy-efficient than the short-haul airlines currently cluttering the skies, and the comparatively low cost of maintaining the corridors once they've been built (much less than, say, maintaining another Interstate highway).


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 4, 2008)

Guest_TransAtlantic_* said:


> While the idea of cross-country HSR is great to dream about, it is impractical for a variety of reasons, not the least being the size of the country compared with the nature of successful HSR systems. You could fit most of France, for example, within Texas, so we are talking about MUCH longer distances than those in Europe or Asia; even in France, there are large parts of the country which are not - and will not be - served by HSR because of their low population densities.


I certainly agree that there are some parts of the country where high speed rail doesn't make much sense due to low population density. An excellent example of this is the portion of the Empire Builder route to the west of Minneapolis / St. Paul, which might end up being the longest long distance route in terms of hours if we do start agressively building high speed rail.

But if you want to compare the US to France, you also have to remember that the US population is roughly 4.7 times the population of France, so if we need 4.7 times as many miles of track, that shouldn't discourage us at all. I do think we may want to end up with nearly twice as much high speed track per capita as the French, but I don't think that's impossible.



Guest_TransAtlantic_* said:


> What WILL work in this country - and the sooner, the better, I say! - is the development of regional corridors which can connect to more conventional (probably diesel/electric, at least for now) rail, which would still allow a person to cross the entire country in not much over a day. California and the NEC are well underway with corridor development; Florida, Texas, the Southeastern seaboard area, the Pacific Northwest, and the Midwest corridor areas (Chicago/Milwaukee/St. Louis/Kansas City) have all been proposed. With only the remaining gaps, one could conceivably go from LA to Orlando or Seattle, or from NYC to Minneapolis or Oklahoma City within a single day. We just need to make politicians AND the FRA aware of the realities of HSR around the world: proven, safe technology that is far more energy-efficient than the short-haul airlines currently cluttering the skies, and the comparatively low cost of maintaining the corridors once they've been built (much less than, say, maintaining another Interstate highway).


If we're talking about east coast to west coast in a day, I don't think that's going to work if there's any significant stretch of conventional speed track that one has to travel across. Travel between Denver and Winnemucca, NV is roughly 23-25 hours by conventional rail on the current California Zephyr schedule. I don't see how you're going to get from LA to Orlando in a day if there are any significant gaps where you have to resort to conventional speed track.

(10-30 miles of conventional speed track into the station at the center of a major city doesn't count as a gap for this purpose. But 1,000 miles of conventional speed track across the western US certainly does.)

If you aren't specifically concerned about having high speed track that goes from one coast to the other, the obvious areas to build in are approximately Kansas City and to the east (or maybe not even that far west) plus along the Pacific coast. If we want to be able to get from the eastern half of the country to the west coast in an amount of time that's more or less competitive with planes (when you consider the benefits of sleeping cars), we need high speed rail from Kansas City to Denver to Salt Lake City to Las Vegas to Los Angeles, even though most of those cities are smaller than might otherwise get high speed rail.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 4, 2008)

frj1983 said:


> The average American isn't even aware that Amtrak exists as a travel option, let alone see it as a benefit! And most American's experience with trains has to do with waiting for one of those %*#[email protected] freight trains getting in my way and holding me up!! They have absolutely no perception of the need for any kind of train. Is it any wonder that elected members of congress have no conception about it either (unless of course they serve on a couple of committees that are somehow involved with trains)?
> So HOW exactly are you going to convince America and Congress of the need? I hope you have a "detailed" miracle up your sleeve! I'd really like to hear it!


If California's high speed rail actually happens, that should generate lots of word of mouth advertising about what a high speed train is like. People who have never left this country have never experienced a high speed train. (In spite of its maximum speed, Acela's average speed is pathetic enough that I don't think it counts as a high speed train. A high speed train would be able to go from Boston to DC in a bit less time than Acela goes from New York City to DC.)

I think it would also be a good thing for there to be some organization which is organized to promote a national high speed rail system. This is something NARP could be doing but isn't, so maybe a separate organization would be a good thing. That organization could consider taking out ads in airports discussing the potential of high speed rail (and overly congested airports might not be opposed to such advertising) and/or hiring a PR firm (this article has some information on what PR firms can accomplish). That organization should also have a website describing the potential route structure for a national high speed rail system.


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## Alice (Aug 4, 2008)

Several people have brought up the California high speed rail project. This is from today's Sacramento Bee:

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1130046.html

Generally, the route chosen reduces the number of people it will serve in order to satisfy communities that are afraid of the train coming through their area. Today's story is that environmental organizations may take a position against the bond and possibly also sue for more environmental impact reports. The Sierra Club and Howard Jarvis are not usually on the same side of an issue.

One other point that I don't see mentioned often: This will be a Parsons Brinckerhoff project in part. They have a real bad reputation around here for completing projects late and over budget. Some cynics think their business plan is to encourage change orders (with accompanying payment).


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## jackal (Aug 5, 2008)

frj1983 said:


> The average American isn't even aware that Amtrak exists as a travel option, let alone see it as a benefit! And most American's experience with trains has to do with waiting for one of those %*#[email protected] freight trains getting in my way and holding me up!! They have absolutely no perception of the need for any kind of train.


You're absolutely right that most Americans don't even know Amtrak could get them to the place they want to to, sometimes at an even better price!

This isn't exactly OT to what your point is, but it brought up a thought that I had awhile back: online travel agencies (Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Cheaptickets.com, etc.) and metasearchers (Kayak, Sidestep, etc.) should return Amtrak itineraries right in line with airline itineraries when people search for a city pair served by Amtrak. If more people see the option to travel by train, and the fare is low enough and the time is competitive enough, we just might see more bookings! I think such a thing would do absolute wonders for getting the word out that Amtrak exists and is a viable option. (Of course, availability would instantly shoot to sold out, and none of us would ever get to ride the train again, but hopefully if Amtrak becomes that popular, enough people will scream to Congress that the train is "always sold out" and that Congress should authorize capital funding for more equipment.

I've already submitted feedback to Kayak suggesting this, and I don't remember if they replied to me or not, but it still hasn't happened (I figured that a smaller company like that would be more likely to take the time to implement such a thing). But it seems strange that Amtrak isn't pushing to be listed on the online travel agencies, since they already are set up through the GDS systems and do pay commission to travel agents.

The closest thing that exists right now is a link on Travelocity under the "Cars/Rail" tab (see here), which links to Amtrak's home page (presumably with a referrer that tracks back to Travelocity so they get a little booking bonus or commission or something). That's not good enough--for enough people to notice it to create a critical mass and get in the public's eye, it needs to be as prominent as literally listing the trip option _right in line_ with the airfare results--in other words, if I search for "Washington DC" to "Chicago," the first option would be the CL (first if sorted by fare, anyway, since it's almost guaranteed to be cheaper than any airfare between the two).

Is this doable? Anyone with the ear of Mr. Kummant or other Amtrak higher-ups (hmm, *Rafi*?  ) want to suggest this?


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## transit54 (Aug 5, 2008)

jackal said:


> frj1983 said:
> 
> 
> > The average American isn't even aware that Amtrak exists as a travel option, let alone see it as a benefit! And most American's experience with trains has to do with waiting for one of those %*#[email protected] freight trains getting in my way and holding me up!! They have absolutely no perception of the need for any kind of train.
> ...


I think its an excellent idea, and something that I've thought about in the past myself. As a trial, perhaps they should start with just the NEC or just Acelas or something, and then branch it out to corridor services and ultimately LD services. I think the largest problem would be is that people tend to enter just airport codes (well, at least I do). JFK to BTV isn't going to pull up NYP to ESX. However, perhaps they could have a box that would say "include nearby rail itineraries" or that train trips would come up whenever one searched for nearby airports. Or, after one searches JFK to BTV, they'd be a link at the top of the page that says "Or, travel by train for $54" that one could click.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 5, 2008)

rnizlek said:


> I think its an excellent idea, and something that I've thought about in the past myself. As a trial, perhaps they should start with just the NEC or just Acelas or something, and then branch it out to corridor services and ultimately LD services. I think the largest problem would be is that people tend to enter just airport codes (well, at least I do). JFK to BTV isn't going to pull up NYP to ESX. However, perhaps they could have a box that would say "include nearby rail itineraries" or that train trips would come up whenever one searched for nearby airports. Or, after one searches JFK to BTV, they'd be a link at the top of the page that says "Or, travel by train for $54" that one could click.


And then there's the issue that sometimes there's a train station that's closer than the airport. If you want LAF and aren't used to thinking about trains, you're probably going to be looking for IND. On the other hand, if you're actually trying to get to LAF from BOS and don't feel like killing six hours in Chicago, you might want SOB if you can get a ride from there.

And the benefits of sleeping cars are also not obvious to the average airline traveler. About 119 months ago, I actually thought it was a good idea to take a bus instead of a train from BOS to LAF because the bus was faster, and took the bus. And then realized that 24 hour bus trips just aren't very desireable.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 9, 2008)

George Harris said:


> Considering that right now there are six trains daily that are reasonably full even though it take bus rides on both ends to get to either SF or LA, and about 10 hours downtown to downtown, once you can make the trip in under 3 hours in the same seat, the problem with the system will probably be insufficient capacity rather than lack of ridership.


What sort of capacity problems?

A failure to order enough trainsets?

Capacity on tracks shared with commuter rail services inside the populated area?

What are the tightest headways that can typically be achieved on 300 km/h + track? Does stopping distance end up meaning 3 minute headways can't be achieved?


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## Neil_M (Aug 9, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> What are the tightest headways that can typically be achieved on 300 km/h + track? Does stopping distance end up meaning 3 minute headways can't be achieved?


On TGV lines 3 minutes headway is about the norm. Stopping distance isn't normally a problem as everything is moving at the same speed and the in cab signalling is clever enough to let the driver know if he is being bought to a complete stand or just slowing down for a speed restriction.

At the few stations actually located on the LGV lines then high speed turnouts and lengthy passing loops for each platform means a train can come to a stand , be overtaken by a following train then carry on after its normal short station stop.

Few years ago I was on a TGV from Lyon to Lille and we stopped at Haute Picadie just north of Paris. We slowed for the stop , came to a stand in the platform, and before the doors could open, we were overtaken on the passing line by another TGV travelling at 300kph.

2 minutes for station work, doors closed then off we go!

All very impressive.


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## George Harris (Aug 9, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> What sort of capacity problems?
> A failure to order enough trainsets?
> 
> Capacity on tracks shared with commuter rail services inside the populated area?
> ...


Failure to order enough trainsets because ridership will exceed projections.

There will not be track capacity problems, as such. There may need to be station track changes if traffic gets too heavy. It is unlikely that 3 minute headways will ever be a necessity, given that 1000 passenger trains are reasonably possible.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2008)

On the East Coast, Amtrak should offer the following high speed services. NE and SE Regionals would serve all stations from MIA-ATL-WAS/NYP/BOS but not all travel the entire route. Long distance trains (Silver Service, Palmetto, Crescent) would travel the entire route, with less intermediate stops than Regionals as the long distance passengers could connect w/ frequent regionals. Some Acelas could run through service to MIA/ATL from WAS/NYP and others (Acela Southeast?) could run ATL-WAS w/ few stops. Stopping time should be reduced.

All services woul be on new, electric high speed(186MPH) trainsets w/ 320-400 seats and 3 classes. Seatback entertainment would be available. Travel times from MIA-NYP with Florida East Coast right-of way would be 7hrs 45 min on Acela services.

We need to contact our congressmen an LET THEM KNOW we want High Speed Rail and Amtrak. It is all doable. its been done in Japan and Europe and beats flying in travel time and comfort.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 10, 2008)

I really hope that once Amtrak starts to have trains that do less acceleration / deceleration than is required on the existing NEC, they find some way to market the trains that doesn't emphasize acceleration the way the name Acela does.

Local stops and high speed rail probably don't mix especially well. High speed track needs to be very straight. That means that you can't build it through the middle of a populated area unless you had the foresight to build very straight track through an area before that area became populated. Somewhere I have read criticism of the TGV system that there have been local stops built in the middle of nowhere, which I think is something we ought to try to avoid repeating in the US.

Having conventional speed commuter rail systems going into the same stations served by the high speed rail system makes lots of sense, though.

The existing long distance routes are running on freight tracks. There are certainly a few places where the freight tracks have some excess capacity that could allow more frequent passenger service, but the existing long distance routes probably cannot support pasenger service once an hour without a lot of investment in new track.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 10, 2008)

George Harris said:


> Failure to order enough trainsets because ridership will exceed projections.


That strikes me as not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I wouldn't be surprised if the needed trainsets that aren't included in the initial order will cost less than the cost overruns that will occur in building the right of way, and I wouldn't be surprised if unexpected delays in building the right of way end up delaying the project for longer than the time from when the extra trainsets are ordered to when they're delivered.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 29, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Local stops and high speed rail probably don't mix especially well. High speed track needs to be very straight. That means that you can't build it through the middle of a populated area unless you had the foresight to build very straight track through an area before that area became populated. Somewhere I have read criticism of the TGV system that there have been local stops built in the middle of nowhere, which I think is something we ought to try to avoid repeating in the US.


Then again, planning for local stops in what is now the middle of nowhere, and constructing those stops only as part of a transit oriented development project might be a very good idea.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 29, 2008)

This thread has some discussion of service to Allentown, with a population (for the primary census area) of about 0.8 million. If it turns out that only 20 miles or so of high speed track are required to connect Allentown to the high speed network, connecting Allentown might almost be as cost effective in terms of capital invested per passenger served as building 200 or so miles of high speed track from New York City to Hartford (1.3 million), Springfield (0.7 million), and Boston (7.5 million). For the smaller cities, population therefore is perhaps not the only metric that should be considered in deciding where to build high speed track.

Another interesting anomoly is that Alburquerque plus Santa Fe have a popluation of just over one million, but they're treated as separate primary census areas. This is in spite of significant commuter ties allegedly being a major factor in determining primary census areas, and commuter rail service between them being planned for the near future.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Aug 29, 2008)

It occured to me several hours ago that, while a 2000+ mile bridge from southern California to Oahu wouldn't be cheap, it may actually be cheaper per mile than the typical land-based high speed rail, since land based high speed rail can end up needing tunnels along a significant fraction of the length of the right of way, and tunnels seem to be many times more expensive per mile than bridges.

And if there were a similar bridge from Oahu to Japan and from there to China, it's possible that building those bridges with two 79 MPH heavy freight tracks and two 300 MPH passenger tracks would not come anywhere close to having enough cargo capacity if a goal of the bridges were to electrify freight that would otherwise come by oil-burning boat, given that we have at least one overfull double tracked transcon on the US mainland, and those bridges may need roughly the same capacity as the total of the US mainland transcons. That might suggest that six freight tracks and two passenger / high speed freight tracks might be about right.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 9, 2008)

I got thinking about how many different train routes might be possible along track between New York City and Chicago if several branches are in place. West of New York City, I'm thinking the set of branches might be something like:

Express to Chicago

Allentown

Pittsburgh, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati

(go past Pittsburgh, Columbus, Dayton without stopping) Indianapolis, St Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles

Toledo, Detroit

Cleveland, Erie

On the east end of the New York City to Chicago route, potential destinations might be something like

New York City

Albany, Montreal

Hartford (possibly continuing to New Haven)

Springfield

high speed track to the Massachusetts/Connectiut/Rhode Island border with trains continuing onto more conventional speed track, with one branch going into downtown Boston, another going along the Rhode Island portion of the existing NEC, and possibly a third to Hyannis.

That's potentially 6 routes to the west and 7 to the east, for 42 possible combinations; double track would likely not support 42 trains an hour in each direction. Then again, I suspect the number of people who want to go from Allentown to Hyannis does not justify direct service, and there are probably some more examples like that.


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## zoltan (Nov 9, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> On the other hand, most travelers who have a bit of experience with trains seem to find that if their trip happens to be doable in about 3 hours or less by train, the train is a better choice than the plane.


I could point out the examples of London to Manchester and London to Paris, where the markets for air travel dimished to the point of being almost entirely composed of the passengers connecting onto longer haul flights once the journey time was reduced to under three hours.

In terms of the direct costs of providing airports, the various hidden subsidies to airlines, and the external environmental costs - air quality, noise for local residents and long term climate change - a project that destroys a large air market should always make long term financial sense, and this understanding is what's finally won out for California High Speed Rail.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 9, 2008)

zoltan said:


> I could point out the examples of London to Manchester and London to Paris, where the markets for air travel dimished to the point of being almost entirely composed of the passengers connecting onto longer haul flights once the journey time was reduced to under three hours.


Would better rail connections to airports kill the demand for those connecting flights, or is part of the problem that you have to absorb the time to go through the security when you're on the long-haul flight anyway, and so the slightly slower time of the train then can't compete with the short haul flight? Or is the issue that a guaranteed connection booked through a single carrier is a win, and the airlines aren't working together with the railroads adequately?



zoltan said:


> In terms of the direct costs of providing airports, the various hidden subsidies to airlines, and the external environmental costs - air quality, noise for local residents and long term climate change - a project that destroys a large air market should always make long term financial sense, and this understanding is what's finally won out for California High Speed Rail.


There's also the foreign energy dependency. It's quite obvious that we know how to power electric trains from domestic energy. It's not obvious whether biofuels will ever be a pratical way to power airplanes, and I really doubt battery power will ever be a viable option for airplanes.


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## Chris J. (Nov 9, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> zoltan said:
> 
> 
> > I could point out the examples of London to Manchester and London to Paris, where the markets for air travel dimished to the point of being almost entirely composed of the passengers connecting onto longer haul flights once the journey time was reduced to under three hours.
> ...


The two main London airports (Heathrow and Gatwick) are pretty well rail connected, however to get to either from somewhere like Manchester or Leeds involves a train and then a long journey on the underground (for Heathrow), or a train, the underground and another train (for either airport). A connecting flight which is just a one-seat transfer. Usually one tries to reduce the number of changes, as it reduces the chances of things going wrong. If there are any delays en-route you could miss your boarding deadline (or you need to build in so much padding that it becomes an even longer jounrey).

It can also be cheaper to get a connecting flight, given that at certain times of day an open return ticket from Manchester to London can be in excess of £200 - a bargain airfare to NY isn't much more than that!


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 9, 2008)

Chris J. said:


> The two main London airports (Heathrow and Gatwick) are pretty well rail connected, however to get to either from somewhere like Manchester or Leeds involves a train and then a long journey on the underground (for Heathrow), or a train, the underground and another train (for either airport). A connecting flight which is just a one-seat transfer. Usually one tries to reduce the number of changes, as it reduces the chances of things going wrong. If there are any delays en-route you could miss your boarding deadline (or you need to build in so much padding that it becomes an even longer jounrey).


I'm trying to figure out how that compares to various airports along the NEC. The MBTA SL1 bus goes directly between South Station and the Logan Airport terminals (with an awkward mode shift between diesel and overhead electric power, and a handful of intermediate non-airport stops). T F Green Airport in Rhode Island is having a train station built about 1/4 mile from the terminal, probably with a moving sidewalk aka horizontal escalator to move people between the train and the terminal. Newark Airport has an Amtrak / NJT station which is connected to the terminals via a shuttle train. BWI has a shuttle bus from its train station to the terminals. Philadelphia's commuter rail train goes directly to the airport terminals, but there's no Amtrak service at the airport terminals, so one has to transfer to Amtrak in downtown Philadelphia.

It seems like all of these US airports are somewhat better than train + underground + train, but the shuttle services between the airport terminals and the train station everywhere except T F Green aren't ideal.

(Back before the SL1 bus existed, I've also done trips that were something like bus to Red Line to Green Line to Blue Line to airport shuttle bus, though there are enough combinations possible that I'm not sure if I've ever literally done that exact routing; on the other hand, that whole trip is well under an hour and a half one way from where I lived at the time.)


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## Chris J. (Nov 9, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> It seems like all of these US airports are somewhat better than train + underground + train, but the shuttle services between the airport terminals and the train station everywhere except T F Green aren't ideal.


I guess the equivalant would be Poughkeepsie to Newark Liberty International Airport. LIRR to Grand Central, NYC subway to Penn and then Amtrak to EWR.

Of course, it all depends where you start your journey. The way the rails into London are setup, there are at least 5 major terminal stations in the city, so if you need to make a transfer onto a train that depart from a different terminus, you usually need to get the underground between them.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 9, 2008)

Chris J. said:


> I guess the equivalant would be Poughkeepsie to Newark Liberty International Airport. LIRR to Grand Central, NYC subway to Penn and then Amtrak to EWR.


Maybe you mean Metro-North and not LIRR? I'm pretty sure that while half the tunnels to get LIRR to Grand Central were built three decades ago, LIRR only serves NYP.



Chris J. said:


> Of course, it all depends where you start your journey. The way the rails into London are setup, there are at least 5 major terminal stations in the city, so if you need to make a transfer onto a train that depart from a different terminus, you usually need to get the underground between them.


That sounds like a problem that would affect a lot more than just airport connections.

Chicago has multiple downtown commuter rail stations, but I gather that they're relatively close together.

Boston and New York City each have two major downtown terminals, and Philadephia used to also.

Do the trains in London serve the airport terminals directly, or is a separate shuttle train/bus involved?


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## zoltan (Nov 9, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Would better rail connections to airports kill the demand for those connecting flights, or is part of the problem that you have to absorb the time to go through the security when you're on the long-haul flight anyway, and so the slightly slower time of the train then can't compete with the short haul flight? Or is the issue that a guaranteed connection booked through a single carrier is a win, and the airlines aren't working together with the railroads adequately?


A connecting flight will always be more convenient for some passengers, and there's no getting around that. However, there will be many passengers like me who prefer that a long haul journey only involve taking off and landing once, getting seated on a plane and queuing to disembark once, and the other necessary pains of air travel once, and at the more extreme end of things, domestic flights may have to be legislated against if the government finally realisies that the reason that there isn't sufficient capacity at our airports for economically beneficial international flights is the unnecessary domestic flights in their way.

And so with both things in mind, the railway certainly could do a lot more, for instance working to provide through booking and guaranteed connections, in order to gain even more custom from short haul domestic flights.

For example, I was returning to my parents' house, 2 hours north of Leeds, from New York LaGuardia, and my flights were delayed considerably; and I had reservation on a connecting train from London King's Cross with a ticket that was non-transferable from the reserved train. I had the panic of what to say and do if the conductor got nasty about this, and I got the helpful staff at Toronto Pearson, where I had to change, to print out a copy of my check-in record so I could present it to the conductor as evidence to back me up on why he shouldn't require me to purchase another ticket. Thus I lacked the peace of mind that I would have had if I'd known they'd put me on a flight all the way back home free of charge, however long I might have to wait for it. A through-booked ticket onto the train would have given me that same peace of mind.

(As it happened, I simply showed the conductor my travel ticket and he never asked for my reservation; but had he asked for it, and seen I was on the wrong train, he would not have been happy).



Joel N. Weber II said:


> There's also the foreign energy dependency. It's quite obvious that we know how to power electric trains from domestic energy. It's not obvious whether biofuels will ever be a pratical way to power airplanes, and I really doubt battery power will ever be a viable option for airplanes.


That's also an extremely good point. In the long term, lessening foreign energy dependence could be a tangible benefit to national security, and if there already were more electric trains and fewer flights, and more commuter rail and fewer cars, perhaps several wars already need never have been fought. Also, let's remember that Biofuels are part of the reason for disastrous rises in food prices, and will never be a substitute for tried and tested, reliable electricity-through-overhead-wires technology.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> Do the trains in London serve the airport terminals directly, or is a separate shuttle train/bus involved?


That is one thing London does well. Gatwick, Stanstead and Heathrow are all directly connected by conventional rail, with both premium express services and cheaper, slower services, however all suffer from serving only one terminal, requiring a transfer from any of the others on the not very suitable for luggage London Underground.(I enjoy the chance to use the system, but others will see it as more of an inconvenience). In Heathrow's case, both conventional rail and underground trains stop right underneath the terminals.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 9, 2008)

zoltan said:


> A connecting flight will always be more convenient for some passengers, and there's no getting around that. However, there will be many passengers like me who prefer that a long haul journey only involve taking off and landing once, getting seated on a plane and queuing to disembark once, and the other necessary pains of air travel once, and at the more extreme end of things, domestic flights may have to be legislated against if the government finally realisies that the reason that there isn't sufficient capacity at our airports for economically beneficial international flights is the unnecessary domestic flights in their way.
> And so with both things in mind, the railway certainly could do a lot more, for instance working to provide through booking and guaranteed connections, in order to gain even more custom from short haul domestic flights.


I don't think explicit legislation against domestic flights makes sense.

However, I do favor trips which take over 3 hours by train having roomettes available for maybe 10% less than the cost of a coach plane ticket, so that people won't take the plane to save money. Anytime fares are higher than that, it's evidence that Congress isn't spending enough money buying sleepers.

Maybe it makes sense to have legislation that says that airports that have parallel runways or are looking to have federal funding to get a parallel runway added need to have credible rail access in place before more airport expansion will be funded with federal dollars.

Then you get into the question of whath counts as adequate rail access. For Logan Airport, does the MBTA SL1 bus count? What about the shuttle bus that runs between the terminals and the MBTA Blue Line station? Those mass transit options are both imperfect to my mind, but I'm also not sure it's possible to do much better at any price tag. Even with an infinite track, tunnel, and bridge construction budget, I'm not sure Amtrak would ever really want to have its regular trains stop at Logan, because doing that would be a bit of a detour from other stations of interest.

Airports not remotely close to any rail service also bring up some interesting problems. On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd object to telling Phoenix that if they don't want rail, they don't get federal dollars with which to grow their airport.

There should be legislation to require that passengers arriving via a delayed train get the same treatment as a passenger arriving via a delayed flight by the carrier the passenger is transfering to, at least to the extent of not being charged to be put on the next available flight. Likewise, boarding Amtrak (or any other train operator directly serving an airport station that has reservations, but I don't think there are any) when transfering from a plane, Amtrak should accomodate passengers of delayed flights by letting them board the next available train at no additional charge. Maybe this should require buying the train and plane tickets on a single reservation.

Checked luggage transfers between Amtrak and the airlines may also be possible, except that there's so little checked luggage service on the NEC where most of the airports of interest are that maybe this wouldn't work too well. A guaranteed plane to Amtrak connection certainly ought to allow the passengers time to collect checked luggage from the airline.

Then again, if high speed service ends up requiring EMU trainsets to get good adhesion at a sane overall weight, and if crashworthiness ends up making a good argument for keeping revenue passengers out of the lead car, maybe there will be lots of space for checked luggage in the cab car on every high speed train.

Some of the Essential Air Service destinations strike me as much more cost effectively served by airplane than by rail, so I think that maintaining some domestic air service makes sense. I also think America ought to be a place that offers people choices, and if people want to sit in a coach airline seat going from Boston to LA in half the time the trip would take by a sleeper that goes over 200 MPH or faster track for just about the whole route badly enough to pay 10% more and some airline wants to offer them the service, I don't think we should stop them with legislation.



zoltan said:


> That's also an extremely good point. In the long term, lessening foreign energy dependence could be a tangible benefit to national security, and if there already were more electric trains and fewer flights, and more commuter rail and fewer cars, perhaps several wars already need never have been fought. Also, let's remember that Biofuels are part of the reason for disastrous rises in food prices, and will never be a substitute for tried and tested, reliable electricity-through-overhead-wires technology.


I'm not quite that pessimistic about the potential of biofuels. IIRC, the current generation of biofuels causing problems for food prices involve corn being converted to ethanol. Corn is probably overproduced in the US if we weren't trying to use it for more things than it should perhaps be used for, and there's a theoretical argument that animals raised to produce beef would be better off eating grass than corn. (On the other hand, I don't really like the taste of the grass fed beef I have eaten on a few occasions; then again, my favorite beef seems to be that which carries the organic label, and I don't think I've ever seen beef that's described as both organic and grass fed.)

This article suggests that algae may require less land area, and that the area of Maryland would be sufficient to grow enough biofuel for the US; I haven't figured out whether there's one Maryland of unused land in the US that can be provided with sufficient water to make this work, and I really don't know whether there would be any other major problems with doing that. If this would require massive amounts of chemical fertilizer and pesticide, there might end up being some environmental damage from that.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 9, 2008)

I just came across this article which discusses the challenges with biofuels. Skimming it does not leave me with a clear understanding of whether biofuels will ever really make sense or not.


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## Kevin L. (Nov 9, 2008)

Some would say there's an unused maryland, and that it is Maryland itself  

Just _minutes_ from DC, the most atrocious ghetto on the earth that Maryland has the unfortunate burden of geographically containing, are acres upon acres of turf farms.

Turf farms are sadly common in the Midwest and East. They're nigh on ubiquitous in some areas. Thousands of acres of grass is rather worthless as a farm, but at least it is more appealing than a swamp of algae as far as the eye can see. If you start growing algae for profit, there will be algae farms everywhere. When it was announced that a startup in the midwest could make ethanol from sawgrass for a buck a gallon, there was interest in actually switching land to just growing that rot.

There would be some reason that the algae farm couldn't be shoved into the desert or the prairie, and I'd be surrounded by endless amounts of organisms that I spend large amounts of money on to kill in the pool.

Maybe the feds and green freaks should think about letting humble Maryland have her second nuclear reactor already--that's a far more viable and economic source of energy than some quagmire of algae the likes of which no one has seen before.

If there's algae to be farmed, we're going to have it over here, and we don't want it.

(**Remember that the Daniel Boone National Forest is one of the world's largest growers of marijuana, and produces the most potent strains to be found. Our "half" of the nation is already growing crap that we'd rather be without. 2 types of grass and then algae...the dominant crops of the most fertile part of our nation? Forget it.)


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 10, 2008)

Kevin L. said:


> Maybe the feds and green freaks should think about letting humble Maryland have her second nuclear reactor already--that's a far more viable and economic source of energy than some quagmire of algae the likes of which no one has seen before.


It's not clear how you power automobiles or airplanes from a nuclear reactor (or a wind farm or a coal plant).


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## zoltan (Nov 10, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> It's not clear how you power automobiles or airplanes from a nuclear reactor (or a wind farm or a coal plant).


...hence, to shoot dead the sort of insane ideas Kevin L. describes, and the madness of biofuels in general, there is only one solution: For America to set about prizing open the hands of its citizens, and removing from their firm grasp the inalienable right to drive and fly everywhere. And as fast a proliferation of high speed rail as is physically possible is a very good way of doing this.


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2008)

zoltan said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > Do the trains in London serve the airport terminals directly, or is a separate shuttle train/bus involved?
> ...


Err, trains serve all the terminals of Heathrow, but presumably you mean they only serve one London terminal rail station. Except in fact there are direct trains from Gatwick to St Pancras, Victoria, London Bridge, and Watford Junction. Points in the northeast can be reached by a single change at St Pancras, points in the northwest can be reached by a single change at Watford Junction, points in the southwest can be reached by a single change at Reading, and many points in the southeast can be reached directly, all of these with a frequency of at least once an hour. Gatwick is really one of the better-connected airports I have used. Heathrow's overpriced or slow connections are very poor by comparison (though perhaps not quite as bad as the shuttle bus required at Luton).


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## MrFSS (Nov 12, 2008)

zoltan said:


> ...hence, to shoot dead the sort of insane ideas Kevin L. describes, and the madness of biofuels in general, there is only one solution: For America to set about prizing open the hands of its citizens, and removing from their firm grasp the inalienable right to drive and fly everywhere. And as fast a proliferation of high speed rail as is physically possible is a very good way of doing this.


The other problem is - if we were to achieve some sort of high-speed service between major cities - what do you do for transportation once you get there with the limited intra-city service many larger cities now have. Couple that with many businesses not be located in city-center, it makes it almost necessary to rent a car when you get to the destination to then reach the final destination.

Example: I lived and worked in central Ohio for many years before retirement. I traveled sometime 3 times a week between Columbus and Cleveland or Columbus and Cincinnati. There was talk of rail service between those cities for years, and still is that talk. But my problem would have been - I lived 30 miles from the center of Columbus and the offices I traveled to in Cleveland and Cincinnati were 30 miles from city center in those places. I would have to get myself downtown Columbus to catch a train and then get myself from downtown Cleveland/Cincinnati to the office by renting a car.

Bottom line, unlike much of Europe, no local transportation defeats the entire process for many, not all, granted, but that needs to be fixed, too.

Many very large cities in the US don't have this problem. Taking a train to downtown Chicago, NYC, Boston, etc allows you to get local transportation to your final destination without a car rental.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 12, 2008)

MrFSS said:


> The other problem is - if we were to achieve some sort of high-speed service between major cities - what do you do for transportation once you get there with the limited intra-city service many larger cities now have. Couple that with many businesses not be located in city-center, it makes it almost necessary to rent a car when you get to the destination to then reach the final destination.


If you think of high speed rail as an airplane substitute (which it certainly is for daytime trips that happen to be under three hours by train for people who have been taking airplanes), it turns out that this is not a problem that is unique to the train that we didn't have before with the airplane.

I also think this makes an excellent argument for having Auto Train like service on the high speed tracks, at least where there is sufficient track capacity left over after establishing all the passenger only service anyone could want. The Chunnel demonstrates that this type of service can be workable at faster speeds than 79 MPH.

If the high speed tracks are built as only double track, it would be highly desireable to make the high speed auto trains go as fast as the passenger trains to maximize track capacity in an environment where passing isn't really pratical, but I suspect building rail cars that will hold at least one level of automobiles and that can go at 220 MPH or whatever speed we end up with for passenger service will probably be doable.

I suspect that high speed tracks from New York to Chicago, New York to St Louis or so, and New York to Boston may be full just carrying a variety of passenger trains, if we assume that each track can carry 18-25 trains per hour, and not providing Auto Train like service in those areas may make a lot of sense for that reason; on the other hand, that also tends to be the part of the country with better intracity rail service.

I'm also not sure if California will have enough high speed track capacity to enable everyone who currently likes to drive between San Francisco and Los Angeles on the highways to bring their very own car with them on the train. This may be an argument that if our goal is to reduce air polution and oil imports, the pricing structure on the train needs to make taking the train plus renting a car for a couple days cheaper than intercity driving. Maybe there ought to be a discount on railfare for people who rent cars, and discounts for parties of more than one person (since the cost of a five person party going by automobile equals the cost of a one person party going by automobile). Maybe a good price structure would be one that provided 80% of the cost of car rental for up to 3 days or so or a local mass transit pass for up to 7 days as a discount on the intercity ticket.



MrFSS said:


> Example: I lived and worked in central Ohio for many years before retirement. I traveled sometime 3 times a week between Columbus and Cleveland or Columbus and Cincinnati. There was talk of rail service between those cities for years, and still is that talk. But my problem would have been - I lived 30 miles from the center of Columbus and the offices I traveled to in Cleveland and Cincinnati were 30 miles from city center in those places. I would have to get myself downtown Columbus to catch a train and then get myself from downtown Cleveland/Cincinnati to the office by renting a car.


Even if there turns out to be enough track capacity for a high speed Auto Train like service from Cleveland to Cincinatti, I'm not sure if it would save time vs driving. Google Maps tells me that's 142 miles, and about 2.5 hours of driving. If loading the cars takes an hour, the train trip takes an hour, and unloading the cars takes another hour, that's going to be slower than driving. Maybe it's possible to get the train time including loading and unloading competitive with driving, though; I'm not sure.



MrFSS said:


> Bottom line, unlike much of Europe, no local transportation defeats the entire process for many, not all, granted, but that needs to be fixed, too.
> Many very large cities in the US don't have this problem. Taking a train to downtown Chicago, NYC, Boston, etc allows you to get local transportation to your final destination without a car rental.


Yes, we do need better local transportation.

Even in Boston, which is relatively good at rail transportation as US cities go, there's a lot of room for improvement.

The Green Line is going to be getting about 4 or 5 new stops in Somerville and Medford within the next decade or so. This is a relatively cheap thing; once the Lechmere tracks are rearranged to connect to the existing Commuter Rail rights of way, the rest of the new route is already fully grade separated (I think) and wide enough for the Green Line; no tunnels or bridges needed except at the inbound end of the new segment.

Some of us would like to see the two downtown commuter rail terminals connected so that commuter trains would be through routed.

The Red Line of the subway does not connect directly to the Blue Line; the downtown end of the Blue Line at Bowdoin is about a quarter mile from the Charles/MGH station on the Red Line, and there's a plan to design (but not necessarily build) a tunnel to connect them.

More frequent service would be good on just about all of the parts of the rail system; while the waiting time at rush hour for the subway is typically just fine, subway cars tend to be quite crowded at rush hour. (I went downtown for a medical appointment Monday morning, a bit after 9 AM, and the car I was in was packed full. This can't have been the peak commute time; I suspect there are lots of office workers who absolutely have to be at work by 9 AM who would have been late for work if they'd been on that train.)

There's talk of incrementally upgrading the Fairmount Line of the commuter rail system to have properties that would more resemble the service frequencies and station spacings of a subway line; I'm disappointed that the state is moving so slowly on that, and at the same time, I'm concerned about whether they're designing the stations with the idea that someday we will want quad track along that line, with two of the tracks not ever making station stops on that line (for express passenger trains, and to provide a route for freight trains from Conley Terminal where the container ships unload to the rest of the railroad system).

When the southern part of the current Orange Line was built in the mid to late 1980s, we lost rail service along two corridors. (The truncation of the E branch of the Green Line is ``temporary'', but it makes the whole Sunset Limited thing look like it hasn't been going on for long at all.) It turns out that the buses along at least part of those corridors are among the five most popular MBTA bus routes as weekday boardings go; I think we ought to be looking at building subway tunnels along those routes. (The E branch of the Green Line ran in the automobile lanes, and the removed Orange Line was elevated, so there are good reasons for not restoring service in exactly the same form it used to take.)

There's been talk of extending the Blue Line out to Lynn. The state government is claiming they want to make this happen in a decade or two, but they don't seem terribly anxious to come up with the money, which really would be key to actually making it happen.

Even if all of these things happen, if I want to visit a friend in Framingham, I may still find that renting a car would save me at least an hour of travel time in each direction vs taking the train and getting a ride from the Framingham commuter rail station.


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## zoltan (Nov 12, 2008)

Guest said:


> Except in fact there are direct trains from Gatwick to St Pancras, Victoria, London Bridge, and Watford Junction. Points in the northeast can be reached by a single change at St Pancras, points in the northwest can be reached by a single change at Watford Junction, points in the southwest can be reached by a single change at Reading, and many points in the southeast can be reached directly, all of these with a frequency of at least once an hour.


Ah, of course! Why did I forget that, when I actually try to fly from Gatwick instead of Heathrow whenever possible, for the very fact that I can travel from the north and change onto Thameslink at King's Cross?



Guest said:


> Gatwick is really one of the better-connected airports I have used. Heathrow's overpriced or slow connections are very poor by comparison (though perhaps not quite as bad as the shuttle bus required at Luton).


It's London's BWI, perhaps, with Heathrow being London's Dulles (except not, Dulles is even worse). In fact, why is there no Gatwick to BWI flight, so I could have good connections at both ends of my journey? I think there should be one. How much do planes cost these days?


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 12, 2008)

zoltan said:


> It's London's BWI, perhaps, with Heathrow being London's Dulles (except not, Dulles is even worse). In fact, why is there no Gatwick to BWI flight, so I could have good connections at both ends of my journey? I think there should be one. How much do planes cost these days?


Depends how big you want. You can probably get a decades old Cessna with seating for 2-4 people for under $50,000, but then you'd need ferry tanks to get it across the Atlantic with a noticably less direct route than what you probably have in mind, and in fact those ferry tanks would probably further limit the number of people who could be in the plane.


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## Chris J. (Nov 12, 2008)

zoltan said:


> Ah, of course! Why did I forget that, when I actually try to fly from Gatwick instead of Heathrow whenever possible, for the very fact that I can travel from the north and change onto Thameslink at King's Cross?


Well I think it's wednesdays and sundays from around now till christmas you can always fly from Leeds to Newark!


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## zoltan (Nov 12, 2008)

Chris J. said:


> Well I think it's wednesdays and sundays from around now till christmas you can always fly from Leeds to Newark!


Ah, that's right, for all the lawyer's wives in Harrogate to go Christmas shopping in New York!


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## sky12065 (Nov 12, 2008)

zoltan said:


> Chris J. said:
> 
> 
> > Well I think it's wednesdays and sundays from around now till christmas you can always fly from Leeds to Newark!
> ...


Does that include lawyers from the firm of Dewey, Cheetem & Howe? :lol:


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## zoltan (Nov 12, 2008)

sky12065 said:


> Does that include lawyers from the firm of Dewey, Cheetem & Howe? :lol:


It took me a good five minutes before that sank in! D:


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## Neil_M (Nov 12, 2008)

Chris J. said:


> Well I think it's wednesdays and sundays from around now till christmas you can always fly from Leeds to Newark!


Northgate or Castle? :lol:


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## Alice (Nov 12, 2008)

Regarding lack of local transportation as brought up by MrFSS, big airports have 24/7 car rentals, but train terminals do not have nighttime car rentals when the trains get in. Look at LA as an example: If the CS gets in at its usual time, I need to catch an airport shuttle to get a rental car.


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## zoltan (Nov 13, 2008)

Alice said:


> Regarding lack of local transportation as brought up by MrFSS, big airports have 24/7 car rentals, but train terminals do not have nighttime car rentals when the trains get in. Look at LA as an example: If the CS gets in at its usual time, I need to catch an airport shuttle to get a rental car.


Essentially, the more Amtrak invests and expands, the more potential car rental customers there are, the more the companies will be able to justify staying open at night!


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## frj1983 (Nov 13, 2008)

zoltan said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > It's not clear how you power automobiles or airplanes from a nuclear reactor (or a wind farm or a coal plant).
> ...


OK my blood is boiling but I've got to say this:

DRIVING IS NOT A RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is a priviledge granted to you by the state and the state can remove that priviledge anytime it wishes (e.g. drunk driving and license revocation)!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry Zoltan, I'm not necessarily dumping on you but I often hear people talk about certain things being "rights" which are simply not so; and by the way, I agree with your basic premise.

Rant over: Now back to our regularly scheduled program. :blink:


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 13, 2008)

zoltan said:


> Alice said:
> 
> 
> > Regarding lack of local transportation as brought up by MrFSS, big airports have 24/7 car rentals, but train terminals do not have nighttime car rentals when the trains get in. Look at LA as an example: If the CS gets in at its usual time, I need to catch an airport shuttle to get a rental car.
> ...


At some point in the future (no particular date currently scheduled) I'm going to visit the greater New London, CT area. (I lived in Waterford, right next to New London, for 9 years, and aside from riding trains along the NEC without getting off, I haven't been back since I moved away from there). The car rental options there, last I checked, were a little underwhelming: Enterprise is 1/2 to 1 mile away, and not open at all on Sundays, and not open all that late on Fridays or Saturdays.

Amtrak has reasonably frequent service along the NEC, but I'm wondering how many passengers the New London train station serves every day, vs the number of passengers the typical airport serves each day. It wouldn't surprise me if the airport brings the car rental companies a lot more business all in one place. When I lived in Waterford, we always had to travel via some sort of automobile or van to either Hartford or to T F Green Airport to catch an airplane (or maybe there was token commercial service at Groton on a few occasions, but I don't remember ever flying into or out of the Groton airport).

Then again, high speed rail has the potential to increase the number of places one can get to/from New London by train in a reasonable amount of time, which may help some.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 13, 2008)

MrFSS said:


> The other problem is - if we were to achieve some sort of high-speed service between major cities - what do you do for transportation once you get there with the limited intra-city service many larger cities now have. Couple that with many businesses not be located in city-center, it makes it almost necessary to rent a car when you get to the destination to then reach the final destination.


The deeper problem here is that most buildings in the US that have been built during the automobile era are built with a density that is not suitable for mass transit. That's probably not fixable without replacing the majority of the buildings.

Some businesses will choose to locate themselves near mass transit if good mass transit is available. Once there's high speed intercity rail service in the downtown center of a city, some businesses may be more inclined to locate themselves there, if there is also good transportation infrastructure to get the local employees into the downtown office.

It would be good to at least have enough rail infrastructure and to shift people's attitudes to the point where new construction will typically not happen in ways that are incompatible with mass transit.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 13, 2008)

I got thinking a few hours ago about what tracks might bring high speed trains into Penn Station in New York City. I'd sort of been assuming for months that the tunnels under the river shared with NJT could be used for high speed trains going towards Chicago and DC, and the Empire Connection could be used for high speed trains going towards Albany/Montreal, Springfield, Hartford, Boston, and Rhode Island, but a few hours ago I realized that taking capacity from NJT for the high speed trains is not really an ideal plan.

Is there enough space that the Empire Connection could be upgraded to double track, and all the new high speed trains (including those to Chicago and DC) run along it?


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## AlanB (Nov 13, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Amtrak has reasonably frequent service along the NEC, but I'm wondering how many passengers the New London train station serves every day, vs the number of passengers the typical airport serves each day. It wouldn't surprise me if the airport brings the car rental companies a lot more business all in one place. When I lived in Waterford, we always had to travel via some sort of automobile or van to either Hartford or to T F Green Airport to catch an airplane (or maybe there was token commercial service at Groton on a few occasions, but I don't remember ever flying into or out of the Groton airport).


In fiscal 2007 New London saw 161,658 Amtrak passengers. Contrast that with New Haven which saw 640,281 passengers. Note that Amtrak counts each boarding and each detraining, so in theory that number can be cut in half, since most people do take round trips.

Also, don't forget that Shore Line East also serves New London, so that does put additionaly pax through that station. However most are commuters and therefore not looking to rent cars.


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## Larry H. (Nov 13, 2008)

puck71 said:


> Something like this would be awesome and could take away (or at least lessen) one of the biggest downsides of long-distance train travel in the US - time. The best way to make it happen I think would be to start on one of the routes (probably LA to LV, but maybe east coast) and see how it does. If it does as well as I think it probably would, then expand from there.


I find one of the more enduring aspects of rail travel is a sense of going somewhere and being able to enjoy the scenery. I don't mind the 90 mile per hour pre amtrak speeds, but recently we took the Acela for the first time and in the few places where the train really got going we found viewing things to be very blurry. If a train is going to got as fast as a plane you may as well fly. Besides I find a slight bit of a safety factor even at 79 miles and hour, compared to a plane falling out of the sky or a train doing 300 miles an hour. Personally I think its too fast.

Sorry I see I made a similar post earlier and didn't remember it..


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 13, 2008)

AlanB said:


> In fiscal 2007 New London saw 161,658 Amtrak passengers. Contrast that with New Haven which saw 640,281 passengers. Note that Amtrak counts each boarding and each detraining, so in theory that number can be cut in half, since most people do take round trips.
> Also, don't forget that Shore Line East also serves New London, so that does put additionaly pax through that station. However most are commuters and therefore not looking to rent cars.


The statistics here indicate that Bradley in Hartford is the 56th busiest airport, at 3.2 million enplanements, and T F Green is the 62nd busiest airport, at nearly 2.5 million enplanements.

Does the Tyler, TX airport, at ranking 234 with about 78,482 enplanements a day, have 24 hour car rental? The looks like the largest airport in the 48 states with lower ridership than the New London, CT train station (if we ignore Shore Line East trips).


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 13, 2008)

I'm starting to think that the right design for 220 MPH and faster trainsets for the US may be an EMU set with the lead car being cab/baggage, and the last car being cab/coach, with the trainset normally being operated with the baggage car in front to act as a buffer in the event of a collision, and the cab controls at the back being there just in case they're needed on rare occasions (and depending on how crashworthiness is handled, possibly with the train operating at either lower maximum speeds or with no passengers in the cab/coach car when the cab/coach car is leading).


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## GG-1 (Nov 13, 2008)

frj1983 said:


> DRIVING IS NOT A RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> It is a priviledge granted to you by the state and the state can remove that priviledge anytime it wishes (e.g. drunk driving and license revocation)!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And why can't "We the People" have ..........

Aloha


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## George Harris (Nov 13, 2008)

Generally a high speed train set will be an EMU because adhesion goes down with speed. There is usually a control cab on both ends because the trains normally simply reverse instead of turn around. Some Japanese trainsets have a mechancal devise that rotates the seats in the entire car so that a crew member does not have to walk through rotating them individually. Since anything running over 110 mph will be on dedicated grade separated right of way, crashworthiness is a relatively small issue. Regardless, the whole crash thing is rediculously blown out of proportion. Seats up to right behind the operators cab is not a problem.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 13, 2008)

But the traditional TGV trainsets are not EMU.

And I thought the current practice on the Acela was normally to turn the trainset around via a loop.

Are there major American (or Canadian) cites where we're likely to want to have high speed routes terminate that don't already have loops or wyes? Isn't there a tendancy to want to move trainsets to yards for cleaning between runs anyway?

The tracks into downtown San Francisco are shared with freight, and I think in Boston we're likely to find that the Fairmount Line is both a logical place to run high speed trains (assuming the rail tunnel under the I-93 tunnel gets built) and the logical place to run container freight from Conley Terminal where it's unloaded from ships to various railroad destinations.


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## ralfp (Nov 13, 2008)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Our government is not in the financial position to finance anything like this, Joel. We can't even afford the war our idiot-in-office is putting us through. Upgrading Amtrak funding is easy, and should be done. But frankly, before they spend trillions on a system like you suggest, they need to get a positive cash flow.


And a good reason to build it in the first place. I imagine that a cross-country network of 200mph+ HSR would cost more than the moon landings (even adjusting for inflation). For what? Certainly not the environment. The resource expenditure to create the infrastructure would probably produce so much CO2 that you'd have a net increase in emissions for quite some time.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> But if you want to compare the US to France, you also have to remember that the US population is roughly 4.7 times the population of France, so if we need 4.7 times as many miles of track, that shouldn't discourage us at all. I do think we may want to end up with nearly twice as much high speed track per capita as the French, but I don't think that's impossible.


Miles of track per capita? That's a silly metric if I've ever seen one. A nationwide HSR network in Canada would require a similar amount of track (probably within a factor of 2 or 3) to one in the US. The track miles per capita metric suggests Canada would need only 10% or so of the US track mileage.

France, with 291 people mi^-2 and a natural hub (Paris), is a much more sensible location for a nationwide HSR network than the US (80 people/mi^2). Now if you take the parts of the US with a population density similar to that of France, you get the Mid-Atlantic, CA, etc. A HSR network in these places is a reasonable goal.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> It's not clear how you power automobiles or airplanes from a nuclear reactor (or a wind farm or a coal plant).


It's clear to me, at east for cars: batteries. There are other potential energy storage mechanisms, including hydrogen.

Then there's the Convair X-6.


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## ralfp (Nov 13, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> But the traditional TGV trainsets are not EMU.


Most new HSR designs, including the future TGV design, use EMUs. Even some existing TGV trainsets are moving towards pseudo EMU status: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TGV_duplex.png



Joel N. Weber II said:


> And I thought the current practice on the Acela was normally to turn the trainset around via a loop.


Why would Amtrak do this?


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## Alice (Nov 13, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Does the Tyler, TX airport, at ranking 234 with about 78,482 enplanements a day, have 24 hour car rental? The looks like the largest airport in the 48 states with lower ridership than the New London, CT train station (if we ignore Shore Line East trips).


Good question, I looked (http://www.cityoftyler.org/?TabId=78). Four brands, none are 24 hour, all have longer hours than LAUS.

Airports are usually built away from towns, where downtowns are often built around a rail station. So if there is good local transit (arguably more likely in a downtown area than suburbs), then fewer rail travelers would need a rental car than air travelers.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 13, 2008)

ralfp said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > But if you want to compare the US to France, you also have to remember that the US population is roughly 4.7 times the population of France, so if we need 4.7 times as many miles of track, that shouldn't discourage us at all. I do think we may want to end up with nearly twice as much high speed track per capita as the French, but I don't think that's impossible.
> ...


No, it's not a silly metric. If someone wants to argue that building high speed track is too expensive, it makes sense to look at who's going to pay for it: taxpayers. If we have five times as many taxpayers as France, that means if each person pays the same share, we should be able to end up with five times as much track.

Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver ought to have high speed track to US cities, and maybe there should be high speed track within Canada going from Montreal to Toronto. I don't think there are any other metro areas in Canada with more than a million people.

I don't think the land of the Empire Builder has sufficient population density to justify high speed track, at least once you get west of Minneapolis until you get close to the Pacific. I do think we should be able to get across the country by high speed track via St Louis, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas; those cities can be within 3 hours of the adjacent city by high speed rail (though you probably need 300 MPH track on both sides of Denver to make that work), and they each have 1.6 million and greater populations in their metro areas, and I think high speed sleepers from coast to coast make a lot of sense.



ralfp said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > It's not clear how you power automobiles or airplanes from a nuclear reactor (or a wind farm or a coal plant).
> ...


But the technology doesn't actually work for replacing fossil fuels at the prices people are typically willing to spend for cars. One cannot go to the local dealership and buy a non-government-subsidized car powered exclusively by batteries with a reasonable range at a cost anywhere near competitive with a gasoline or diesel powered car. (One can buy a government subsidized car that will run on batteries for a distance that I can comfortably walk, but that's not very exciting, especially when my comfortable walking distance generally exceeds that car's battery range.) There's the Tesla Roadster, but that's a $100,000 car. And it's not at all clear that they're going to be able to get the cost for something with a similar range down to $20,000 or so as production ramps up.

Even if Tesla can get their technology into a $20,000 car, does it make sense to widen our highways? Most major cities in the US don't really have enough transportation capacity.


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## ralfp (Nov 13, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> No, it's not a silly metric. If someone wants to argue that building high speed track is too expensive, it makes sense to look at who's going to pay for it: taxpayers. If we have five times as many taxpayers as France, that means if each person pays the same share, we should be able to end up with five times as much track.


No. That means the cost of five times as much track is similar. That just means we might be able to afford constructing five times as much track at a similar cost per person. Just as having twice the income of your neighbors does not support buying a TV that's twice as expensive, having five times the people of France in no way supports the idea that we SHOULD build five times as much HSR track.

To make that decision you have to look at the cost/benefit ratio.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> But the technology doesn't actually work for replacing fossil fuels at the prices people are typically willing to spend for cars.


But HSR doesn't actually work for replacing aircraft at the prices people are typically willing to spend for transcontinental travel.


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## George Harris (Nov 13, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> But the traditional TGV trainsets are not EMU.


Just because something is done a particular way does not mean that is the best way to do it.

The Japanese Shinkansen trains are ALL EMU with varying percentages of axles powered. Remember those guys have been running dedicated high speed trains for a generation before the French even thought about it, and when the Japanese choose to study something, it gets analyzed down to the last eyelash.

The curve of reduction of adhesion with speed combined with the curve for increased power to hold a steady speed with speed say that the faster you go the higher the percentage of axles needing to be powered to reliably operate the train while keeping the axle loads as low as practical. It is highly likely that the recent French speed record could not have been achieved had the rail been wet.

This stuff is from analysis and experimentation by people that do this stuff for real. It is not an opinion.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 13, 2008)

ralfp said:


> But HSR doesn't actually work for replacing aircraft at the prices people are typically willing to spend for transcontinental travel.


Once the high speed track is built, I'm pretty sure that ticket revenues at prices similar to airplane ticket prices will cover the operating costs just fine.

Passenger rail ticket sales may not pay for the track construction, but airline tickets also do not pay for the costs of the dollar being weakend by petroleum imports, for the costs of any wars we get involved in that we might not fight if we didn't ``need'' the petroleum, or even some of the physical infrastructure on airport property, so that's not really a fair comparison. Nor do gasoline taxes cover the entire cost of maintaining the road network.


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## ralfp (Nov 14, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> ralfp said:
> 
> 
> > But HSR doesn't actually work for replacing aircraft at the prices people are typically willing to spend for transcontinental travel.
> ...


People will still have to pay for the track, be it via fares or tax dollars. There's no track fairy, even in accounting. I repeat my previous statement: HSR doesn't actually work for replacing aircraft at the prices people are typically willing to spend for transcontinental travel.


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## Guest (Nov 14, 2008)

ralfp said:


> People will still have to pay for the track, be it via fares or tax dollars. There's no track fairy, even in accounting. I repeat my previous statement: HSR doesn't actually work for replacing aircraft at the prices people are typically willing to spend for transcontinental travel.


People in this thread appear to agree that building high-speed track solely for the purpose of transcontinental travel would not be at all worthwhile. What is being discussed is the fact that there are many intercity corridors in the US of 500 miles or less, where HSR would potentially be able to replace aircraft at the prices people are willing to spend. Once enough of these corridors were built, an added benefit might be the ability to run transcontinental sleeper trains over the track, for prices sufficient to cover their operating costs. This is of interest to the sort of people who read this forum, though it does not amount to a justification for building the track in the first place; air-competitive segments of less than 3-4 hours would justify that.


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## ralfp (Nov 14, 2008)

Guest said:


> People in this thread appear to agree that building high-speed track solely for the purpose of transcontinental travel would not be at all worthwhile. What is being discussed is the fact that there are many intercity corridors in the US of 500 miles or less, where HSR would potentially be able to replace aircraft at the prices people are willing to spend. Once enough of these corridors were built, an added benefit might be the ability to run transcontinental sleeper trains over the track, for prices sufficient to cover their operating costs. This is of interest to the sort of people who read this forum, though it does not amount to a justification for building the track in the first place; air-competitive segments of less than 3-4 hours would justify that.


Sure, that makes sense. I just doubt that a cross-country network could ever be established with a collection of reasonable intercity HSR networks. A network on the west coast (SAN-SEA) and one in the East, perhaps even to CHI. might make sense.

Crossing the Great Plains, the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevada and Cascades just won't happen. These are stretches of many hundreds of miles, through extraordinarily difficult terrain (well, not the Great Plains), and few population centers.

Would DEN-SLC, DEN-ABQ, ABQ-PHX, or SAT-ABQ ever make sense? These are 300-600 miles long, with few population centers, and mostly difficult terrain. Are there any reasonable routes crossing the Rockies that have significant population along the way and are practical for building 200mph track?


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 14, 2008)

Guest said:


> People in this thread appear to agree that building high-speed track solely for the purpose of transcontinental travel would not be at all worthwhile. What is being discussed is the fact that there are many intercity corridors in the US of 500 miles or less, where HSR would potentially be able to replace aircraft at the prices people are willing to spend. Once enough of these corridors were built, an added benefit might be the ability to run transcontinental sleeper trains over the track, for prices sufficient to cover their operating costs. This is of interest to the sort of people who read this forum, though it does not amount to a justification for building the track in the first place; air-competitive segments of less than 3-4 hours would justify that.


Yes.

And part of my point is that if you have a policy of building track from 1.6 million+ metro area to 1.6 million+ metro area everywhere where they are within three hours of each other at a 170 MPH average (easily doable with 25-30 year old French technology with a max speed of 186 MPH), you will almost accidentally end up with a high speed transcontinental route. Add Denver to Kansas City and Denver to Salt Lake City, and you've got a high speed transcontinental route (and those segments can be under 3 hours if your maximum track speed is 300 MPH instead of 186 MPH or 220 MPH). (There are also a handful of cities pairs that meet this criteria that I'm not sure should get direct track connections; Atlanta to Cincinnati may be one, and San Antonio to Houston another; tracks directly connecting those city pairs are not likely to be as useful to the overall network for longer trips as most other city pairs that are within 500 or so miles of each other.)

I suppose we could have a discussion of whether 500 miles of high speed track from a 1.6 million person metro area to another 1.6 million person metro area would be worthwhile if the only people who ever used that track were those 3.2 million people, and if not how big a population would be needed to justify 500 miles of track. The cost of 500 route miles of double track may be somewhere around $100 billion, which is very roughly $30,000 per person. Most segments would be serving larger metro areas on at least one end, though, so the cost goes down from there. Spread out that $30,000 per person over 10 years, and it's $3,000 a person a year. Not a trivial amount, but most of the segments I'm proposing are cheaper than that because they serve more populated areas.

(Las Vegas to Salt Lake City is barely shorter than 500 miles that and barely more populated than 1.6 million per metro area, though. Then again, the total population of the Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, Boston, and DC metro areas is over 61 million; if you could convince 10% of that population to take the high speed sleeper between those Los Angeles and Chicago/the east coast and Las Vegas to Salt Lake City was the last missing segment, those sleeper riders would tripple the ridership on that segment, and that doesn't even count a large number of smaller metro areas that could also benefit from that track for longer trips.)


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 14, 2008)

ralfp said:


> Crossing the Great Plains, the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevada and Cascades just won't happen. These are stretches of many hundreds of miles, through extraordinarily difficult terrain (well, not the Great Plains), and few population centers.


Why would there be any great need to cross the Sierra Nevada and Cascades? Maybe that would happen with a Salt Lake City to Reno to Sacamento route (which is not among the first routes that I think should be built), but it looks to me like Las Vegas to Los Angeles might go south of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

We've managed to cross the Rockies probably at least a half dozen times between the Interstate Highway system and the existing transcontinental railroads; I don't see why the Rockies can't be crossed again.


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## p&sr (Nov 14, 2008)

ralfp said:


> Crossing the Great Plains, the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevada and Cascades just won't happen. These are stretches of many hundreds of miles, through extraordinarily difficult terrain (well, not the Great Plains), and few population centers.


The Mountains don't have to be "difficult terrain" anymore. Just tunnel under the whole range, like they do in Switzerland! All the hi-speed Trains can go underground in the Dark, and leave the scenic routes on the surface for uncrowded enjoyment by those of us who like to look out the windows.


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## George Harris (Nov 14, 2008)

p&sr said:


> ralfp said:
> 
> 
> > Crossing the Great Plains, the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevada and Cascades just won't happen. These are stretches of many hundreds of miles, through extraordinarily difficult terrain (well, not the Great Plains), and few population centers.
> ...


It is still difficult terrain. Some of these Swiss tunnels have taken a LONG TIME to build and been hugely expensive. Not to mention that the elevations of these long tunnels in Europe are significantly lower than foot of the Rockies.


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## ralfp (Nov 14, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> I suppose we could have a discussion of whether 500 miles of high speed track from a 1.6 million person metro area to another 1.6 million person metro area would be worthwhile if the only people who ever used that track were those 3.2 million people, and if not how big a population would be needed to justify 500 miles of track. The cost of 500 route miles of double track may be somewhere around $100 billion, which is very roughly $30,000 per person. Most segments would be serving larger metro areas on at least one end, though, so the cost goes down from there. Spread out that $30,000 per person over 10 years, and it's $3,000 a person a year. Not a trivial amount, but most of the segments I'm proposing are cheaper than that because they serve more populated areas.


$30,000 per person is not $3,000 per person over 10 years. You have to account for things like inflation and interest, among others. It's a lot more than $3,000 per person, but that's not that important, as the numbers are made up, so I'll let it pass. 

Anyways the $3,000 is not even per traveler. SLC-DEN, for example, has about 652,000 air passengers a year. If _every single one of them_ took the train, over 10 years, ignoring inflation, etc., the track alone would cost almost $8,000 per trip _each way_. GIVE ME A BREAK.



p&sr said:


> The Mountains don't have to be "difficult terrain" anymore. Just tunnel under the whole range, like they do in Switzerland! All the hi-speed Trains can go underground in the Dark, and leave the scenic routes on the surface for uncrowded enjoyment by those of us who like to look out the windows.


Fine, mountains are 'expensive terrain.'



Joel N. Weber II said:


> We've managed to cross the Rockies probably at least a half dozen times between the Interstate Highway system and the existing transcontinental railroads; I don't see why the Rockies can't be crossed again.


Sure, they can be crossed, just not at high speed and less than outrageous cost. You can have one or the other, but not both. (We already have the second: so it's basically basically free.)


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## Guest (Nov 14, 2008)

The California High Speed Rail people think they can build 500 miles of track for $30 billion, over some pretty difficult terrain. $50 billion is probably a reasonable estimate, or $100 million per mile. Freeways, by contrast, cost an average of about $30 million per mile (of course varying greatly by area).



ralfp said:


> Anyways the $3,000 is not even per traveler. SLC-DEN, for example, has about 652,000 air passengers a year. If _every single one of them_ took the train, over 10 years, ignoring inflation, etc., the track alone would cost almost $8,000 per trip _each way_. GIVE ME A BREAK.


The traffic on I-80 between those two points is a good deal more than that; the whole discussion really only makes sense if most of those people switch to the train.

The rockies would indeed be expensive to cross, and substantial improvements in technology may be required before high speed rail is worthwhile on routes like DEN-SLC. That said, interstate highways across the rockies faced many of the same challenges, and several such have been built, often with less than 30% the potential traffic of DEN-SLC.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 27, 2008)

ralfp said:


> $30,000 per person is not $3,000 per person over 10 years. You have to account for things like inflation and interest, among others. It's a lot more than $3,000 per person, but that's not that important, as the numbers are made up, so I'll let it pass.


A one time $30,000 is probably really something more like $3,000 a year for thirty years. If you're concerned about the per-year cost, I'm not sure those numbers are all that far off, especially when you consider the amount of potential error in the $30,000.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 27, 2008)

I'm not sure if it was here or on another thread, but some discussion on this board made me realize that there is potential for high speed track in some areas to carry more sleeper passengers than passengers making three hour or shorter trips, even if the three hour and shorter trips capture 90%+ of the year 2008 airplane market, and the sleepers only capture 10% of the year 2008 airplane market, simply because New York City and Los Angeles and other cities are so much larger than some of the cities in the west.

And that might be a good argument for a first high speed transcon going from Fort Worth to Albuquerque to a bit north of Flagstaff to Los Angeles if I'm interpreting the data in Google Maps correctly in terms of what has the lowest terrain.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Nov 27, 2008)

I've been looking a bit at service to US Congressional districts, since having lots of supporters for any plan in the House of Representatives would be good, and it's best if each represetative sees how the plan would benefit their district.

I've been focused on New England so far (simply because 435 districts take a lot of time to sort through, and so I decided to pick somewhere to start), and have been assuming that the only new high speed track in New England would start right near the intersection of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, head west to pass between Springfield and Hartford, and then curve south towards New York City. I'm not quite sure if the terrain really makes that the best place to build, and geting a straight enough alignment between Hartford and Springfield for Boston trains heading west without stopping to not have to slow down might be difficult. But overall, that's a route that wouldn't require demolishing many buildings.

I'm not sure exactly what counts as enough service to get representatives to support any plan. I'm thinking somewhat tenatively that having existing rail service at some point in a representative's district with one hour travel time (one-way) to a downtown station that provides HSR service might count, but that definition needs a lot of refinement.

Maine has two Congressional districts, and Maine's second district currently has no Amtrak service at all. The first district's travel times to get to that intersection of MA, RI, and CT are well over an hour. So three hours to a major city that Maine doesn't currently have a three hour train to is not likely to be a possible selling point unless a lot more high speed track were added. Maybe funding conventional speed trains much farther north into Maine than the current Downeaster is the answer.

New Hampshire has two districts. There's a proposal to extend the MBTA Lowell Line to Concord and Manchester, which would offer service to both districts, but that may not quite be within an hour of the intersection of MA, RI, and CT, or even within an hour of downtown Boston. There is also existing Downeaster service in New Hampshire.

Vermont has only one district. If we had high speed track from New York City to ALB to Montreal, having a (not necessarily high speed) spur from that to Burlington, VT might be the easiest way to get Vermont improved rail service as part of the deal. The water just to the west of Burlington is several miles wide; Google Maps shows tracks going south to near Cedar Beach, and the outcropping just south of Cedar Beach might be a good place to cross into New York State.

Massachusetts has ten districts. I'm pretty sure disticts 3 through 10 each have at least one subway and/or MBTA Commuter Rail station offering trip times under one hour to BOS and/or BON. The second district includes Springfield, which I think should be directly served by the HSR trains. District 1 may be slightly challenging; it includes Pittsfield (which has a train station which is the only stop along #448/#449's route where the only rail service is #448/#449), but that's more than an hour to both Springfield and ALB. District 1 also includes Fitchburg, but I believe Fitchburg is currently more than an hour to BON; on the other hand, there is some desire to throw money at faster travel times on the MBTA Fitchburg Line to get that time down to about an hour. Filling in some more stops on the Springfield to ALB train might also help with having there be points in district 1 within an hour of high speed rail stations, except it's not clear to me that there are any places that are actually populated to put such stops.

Rhode Island has two districts; PVD appears to be in the first, and the rest of the Northeast Regional's Rhode Island stops appear to be in the second (but I need to check this geography more carefully at some point). Simply building track connections from the MA, RI, and CT intersection to the existing NEC and running trains into Rhode Island along that route ought to provide a good level of service to Rhode Island.

Connecticut has five districts. District 1 includes Hartford, which could easily be served by connecting the new high speed tracks to Amtrak's line from New Haven to Springfield. Those trains could continue from Hartford to New Haven, serving district 3. Perhaps the trains could continue beyond New Haven towards New London to serve district 2; this would not put district 2 within an hour of the high speed tracks, but on the other hand, my recollection from living in district 2 is that there's probably no significant commercial air service in district 2, and thus the rail connection wouldn't be any worse than the air connection. There are also tracks along the Thames River that someone mentioned had been used for passenger service in the past; I'm not sure if that would provide an attractive connection to the high speed tracks. Districts 4 and 5 are at least as challenging as district 2, plus there's probably not much spare capacity in Metro-North territory. Having trains from districts 4 and 5 that head into New York City and continue on high speed tracks to Washington DC and Pittsburgh might be a way to provide useful high speed service to those districts if the Metro-North capacity problems didn't exist.

I started looking a bit at New York State, and was reminded that some of the residents of eastern Long Island actually don't want good transporation to the rest of the country.


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## Neil_M (Nov 27, 2008)

ralfp said:


> Most new HSR designs, including the future TGV design, use EMUs. Even some existing TGV trainsets are moving towards pseudo EMU status: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TGV_duplex.png


That was/is a proposal to create extra long Duplex TGV sets by removing the power cars and having the powered bogie under a coach, so gaining 2 extra coaches per 2 unit formation. The original PSE 'Orange' TGVs had the same kind of layout, with 3 powered bogies each end. 2 under the power car and 1 under the outer end of the end trailer cars. Not heard any more about it, so maybe its not happening.


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## Neil_M (Nov 27, 2008)

George Harris said:


> It is highly likely that the recent French speed record could not have been achieved had the rail been wet.


That is a bit of a pointless statement. The speed record was just a bit of grandstanding, showing off what they could do after a long period of testing. No point in doing it if the weather was going to upset the plan , is there?

The whole point of LGV Est was to provide faster trips from Paris to Eastern France and beyond.

A reduction in journey time for Paris to Strasbourg (305 miles) from 4 hours to 2 hours 20 minutes (with further reductions to come) is the daily and hourly reality.

It even does that if its raining.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Dec 1, 2008)

Sometime in the last 18 hours, I started thinking that maybe the key to funding a high speed transcon is to convince California's federal legislators that a high speed transcon would be a great way for them to get between home and DC. Google Maps tells me that Los Angeles to DC is 2,671 miles by highway; if most of the track is 300 MPH, that might be achievable in 10 hours, barely enough for two meals and a good night's sleep. The legislators who have to travel to northern California might actually get a chance to also get a little bit of work done on the train in addition to sleeping and eating.


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## George Harris (Dec 1, 2008)

Neil_M said:


> George Harris said:
> 
> 
> > It is highly likely that the recent French speed record could not have been achieved had the rail been wet.
> ...


Having seen pictures of the insides of the cars and talked to one of the French engineers that was part of the process, these high speed runs were anything but grandstanding. These vehicles were instrumented to the eyeballs. Much of what they learned will probably be kept highly secret unless it is to their advantage to publish. There is a lot to be learned from pushing the envelope. Why do you think automobile manufactures, and automotive componenet manufacturers have always been so involved with automobile racing? There is a lot to be learned when you put your stuff into extreme conditions. I would love to get access to the data and analysis of these test runs.

The first French high speed run to 515 km/h several years back was pretty well limited by the length of track available. That is fairly obvious if you look at a speed/distance plot, which was published in the Railway Gazette not long after the run occurred. This one had a limit set by certain concerns that were not being evaluated in their tests. I think we can look for more high speed tests out of the French later after they get through chewing their way through the results of this one.

My statement on wet rail was merely a comment on the difference between wet rail and dry rail adhesion, and by extension a comment about the advantages of distributed application of traction power, that is multiple unit trains with, as speeds go up, a higher and higher proportion of the axles being powered.


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## TVRM610 (Dec 1, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Sometime in the last 18 hours, I started thinking that maybe the key to funding a high speed transcon is to convince California's federal legislators that a high speed transcon would be a great way for them to get between home and DC. Google Maps tells me that Los Angeles to DC is 2,671 miles by highway; if most of the track is 300 MPH, that might be achievable in 10 hours, barely enough for two meals and a good night's sleep. The legislators who have to travel to northern California might actually get a chance to also get a little bit of work done on the train in addition to sleeping and eating.


I'm as pro-rail as they come but why would you spend the money involved in this project when airplanes can make this treck already? Rail Travel is great... and I'm all for corridors of higher speed (90-110 is all we can realistically hope for right now) but a transontinental 300MPH railway just does not seem like a good idea to me.


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## George Harris (Dec 1, 2008)

TVRM610 said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > Sometime in the last 18 hours, I started thinking that maybe the key to funding a high speed transcon is to convince California's federal legislators that a high speed transcon would be a great way for them to get between home and DC. Google Maps tells me that Los Angeles to DC is 2,671 miles by highway; if most of the track is 300 MPH, that might be achievable in 10 hours, barely enough for two meals and a good night's sleep. The legislators who have to travel to northern California might actually get a chance to also get a little bit of work done on the train in addition to sleeping and eating.
> ...


You build it as a railway connecting beads on a string from coast to coast. Think Washington - Pittsburg - Columbus - Indianapolis - St. Louis - Kansas City - Topeka - Amarillo - Albuquerque - Los Angeles or Pittsburg - Cleveland - Chicago - Des Moines - Omaha - Salt Lake City - San Francisco, or any of several of several other variants for intermediate points. Say, maybe Washington - Charlotte NC - Atlanta - Montgomery AL - Jackson MS - Dallas - El Paso - Phoenix - Los Angeles


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## Joel N. Weber II (Dec 1, 2008)

TVRM610 said:


> I'm as pro-rail as they come but why would you spend the money involved in this project when airplanes can make this treck already?


High speed trains run on electricity. Airplanes run on petroleum.

The majority of petroleum consumed in the US needs to be imported, which is not ideal from a national security perspective. While there is probably something that can be done in the way of better intracity mass transit (more efficiently than building high speed intercity rail, even), we will eventually exhaust all those possibilities, and probably still want to be using less petroleum; far too many buildings in the US have been built in places and dimensions not compatible with mass transit.

Furthermore, electricity has the potential to use energy sources that are more environmentally friendly than burning fossil fuels.

Maybe biofuels will someday power airplanes, or maybe someday batteries will power enough automobiles to leave a plentiful supply of petroleum for the airplanes, but those technologies are unproven. Meanwhile, 220 MPH trains are a working technology, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the reason trains in other countries aren't going faster is a lack of imagination for how fast things might get when the curves were laid out on the existing high speed track.

Airport and highway capacity are also issues that can be addressed with high speed trains. I think Chicago, New York City, and Boston are all cities where the main airports are near capacity, and there isn't necessarily space readily available for expansion in ways that the neighbors are happy with. Moving some of those passengers to rail could help.

If high speed track is built along lesser-used routes, there's the potential for high speed Auto Train like services on those routes which could simultaneously save people time while reducing petroleum imports and reducing air polution.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Dec 1, 2008)

George Harris said:


> You build it as a railway connecting beads on a string from coast to coast. Think Washington - Pittsburg - Columbus - Indianapolis - St. Louis - Kansas City - Topeka - Amarillo - Albuquerque - Los Angeles or Pittsburg - Cleveland - Chicago - Des Moines - Omaha - Salt Lake City - San Francisco, or any of several of several other variants for intermediate points. Say, maybe Washington - Charlotte NC - Atlanta - Montgomery AL - Jackson MS - Dallas - El Paso - Phoenix - Los Angeles


This page has a list of populations of the primary census areas.

Some of those cities you mention have populations well under a million. The Amarillo metro area is roughly a quarter of a million people, as is Topeka. Des Moines is under three quarters of a million. Montgomery is well under half a million. Jackson, MS is a little over half a million. El Paso is a bit under three quarters of a million.

Is there any major terrain disadavange to Washington - Pittsburgh - Cleveland - Indianapolis - St Louis - Kansas City - Dallas/Ft Worth - Lubbock - Albuquerque - Las Vegas - Los Angeles? (Lubbock is only a bit over a quarter million people, but it looks to me like it's barely a detour at all along the Ft Worth to Albuquerque route.) It's probably not quite the most direct route across the country, which might require revising my 10 hour estimate upwards a bit.

But I think the right goal for an initial high speed rail network is to get one high speed transcon built and then worry about filling in more transcon routes if ridership is high enough that we need more track capacity or have people wanting to shave a few more hours off the travel times or want service to more western cities badly enough to spend lots of money. An initial network should also include San Diego to Vancouver, and various tracks involving Minneapolis/St Paul, Kansas City, Dallas/Ft Worth, San Antonio, and various major cities to the east of those.


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## jmbgeg (Dec 2, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> I would very much like to be able to get from Boston to California by sleeping car in about 24 hours or less. TGV technology ought to make something like this possible.
> However, it's unlikely that a high speed track all the way across the country is going to be funded purely to run sleepers. On the other hand, most travelers who have a bit of experience with trains seem to find that if their trip happens to be doable in about 3 hours or less by train, the train is a better choice than the plane. So I've been looking at the question of whether you can build a lot of these track segments which individually will make sense to the average airplane traveler, which will happen to connect to each other for the convenience of the long distance train traveler.
> 
> If we as a country were to collectively decide that where a major city is within about three hours or less by high speed train of another major city, that building TGV quality track makes sense, I believe it is possible to come up with a route that goes all the way across the country by high speed train. I'm assuming that the train will average 170 miles per hour from station to station, and that the major cities that can be considered are the top 30 US Combined Statistical Areas.
> ...


I just wish Amtrak had train service of any type into Las Vegas. Their current service is a Thruway bus from the Bakersfield, CA Amtrak station.


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## VentureForth (Dec 2, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Does the Tyler, TX airport, at ranking 234 with about 78,482 enplanements a day, have 24 hour car rental? The looks like the largest airport in the 48 states with lower ridership than the New London, CT train station (if we ignore Shore Line East trips).


(Psst: That's per _year_ not _day_.)


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## ralfp (Dec 2, 2008)

All this talk about Combined Statistical Areas full of people that would never go for this kind of project.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> High speed trains run on electricity. Airplanes run on petroleum.


Right, they both run on fossil fuels. After we're done paying for the trains you want, we won't be able to afford to change that reality.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> Maybe biofuels will someday power airplanes, or maybe someday batteries will power enough automobiles to leave a plentiful supply of petroleum for the airplanes, but those technologies are unproven. Meanwhile, 220 MPH trains are a working technology,


Turning the former into proven technologies would probably be cheaper than building a 220mph cross-country HSR network.

*If we're going to invest a good fraction of a trillion dollars on a project, let's make it **something that's not proven**.* Make it revolutionary, game changing, that sort of thing. Something that allows the US to lead in a new technology.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Dec 2, 2008)

ralfp said:


> Make it revolutionary, game changing, that sort of thing. Something that allows the US to lead in a new technology.


You mean, like long enough contiguous segments of high speed track for traveling 2000 miles by high speed sleeper in one night to be practical? Or leading the world in train speed by laying out our high speed track with gentler curves than France and Japan are stuck with on their older high speed routes?


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## ralfp (Dec 2, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> You mean, like long enough contiguous segments of high speed track for traveling 2000 miles by high speed sleeper in one night to be practical? Or leading the world in train speed by laying out our high speed track with gentler curves than France and Japan are stuck with on their older high speed routes?


You justify your idea by saying 220mph is a "working technology". You just seem to want slight improvements and huge distances, but nothing radically new or better.

Is your idea about something radically new and a major advance or or not? If it is, don't criticize other ideas for requiring radically new technology. If it is not, don't claim that we'll lead other countries in some way.

You can't have it both ways.


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## PRR 60 (Dec 2, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> ralfp said:
> 
> 
> > Make it revolutionary, game changing, that sort of thing. Something that allows the US to lead in a new technology.
> ...


The French TGV high-speed network is designed for what is just about the fastest possible conventional train operation. The practical limit to conventional train speed is not the degree of curvature of the alignment, but hard limitations involving wheel, rail and catenary dynamics. Those are not issues that can be mitigated by design. They are inherent to conventional technology. For those reasons, conventional rail will be limited in maximum operational speed to about 350kph (220mph). Even that speed is a technical stretch and pushes the conventional technology to the limit. LGV Est, for example, is designed for 350kph but is running at 320kph. LGV Est is the TGV line east from Paris to Germany. The first section opened last year.

For a one time shot it is possible to setup a special train and a section of line for a high speed record, but that type of setup requires a lot of work and just the right weather conditions. It is not repeatable day-in and day-out. It is in no way practical to actually operate a steel wheel on steel rail, overhead catenary line at more than 350kph in actual, day-to-day service. Speeds greater than 350kph requires something different, such as magnetic levitation. But mag-lev has all kind of other issues that, to date, have precluded any widespread adoption.


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## ralfp (Dec 2, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> You mean, like long enough contiguous segments of high speed track for traveling 2000 miles by high speed sleeper in one night to be practical?


I have a radical idea that would provide high capacity coast-to-coast sleeper service with far lower costs. Propeller aircraft. A red-eye without the red.


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## sky12065 (Dec 2, 2008)

ralfp said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > You mean, like long enough contiguous segments of high speed track for traveling 2000 miles by high speed sleeper in one night to be practical?
> ...


You wanna talk radical, let's get even more radical where the traveller would just say "beam me *over* Scotty" instead of "beam me up Scotty." :unsure:

On the down side you gotta hope that a fly doesn't land on you just as the beaming begins!  _"Help me... help me"_


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## Kramerica (Dec 2, 2008)

ralfp said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > High speed trains run on electricity. Airplanes run on petroleum.
> ...


Electricity is not neccesarily fossil fuels. Right now in the US we mostly use coal and natural gas, but that doesn't have to continue. And those aren't imported, which is half of the argument against petroleum. (the other half being pollution) In the future, we can get our electricity from clean & domestic sources such as nuclear, wind, hydro, and solar. Plus fusion when it is developed. And since we're building power plants all the time, don't say we won't be able to afford the changeover. It is going to happen (regardless of HSR) and will happen over many, many years.

Meanwhile, airplanes have no technology remotely close to near-term or mid-term future development which will get them off of petroleum. Trains can run on clean electricity NOW.


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## TVRM610 (Dec 2, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> TVRM610 said:
> 
> 
> > I'm as pro-rail as they come but why would you spend the money involved in this project when airplanes can make this treck already?
> ...


I don't think you understand my POV... I'm all for higher speed corridors (I'm sorry but I refuse to leave reality behind.. the USA is not going to get anything faster than 110ish on any sections of long distance trains, the cost is too high). But the idea of building a transcontinental 220mph corridor solves nothing except it spends a whole lot of money. Spending money on a New York to Chicago corridor where much of the travel can be done at 100-110mph is worth the money. This is not builind right of way from scratch... this is adding 2nd or 3rd rails where possible that are capable of this speed... and spending some money for general track and signalling upgrades on existing CSX and NS Right of way... this to me is possible. (Again let me stress the fact that I know that the entire route could not be this way.. but several portions could be).


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## George Harris (Dec 2, 2008)

110 mph limit now and forever in the US: NOPE

220 mph the practical limit for speed on rails? Don't think so.

Varying but ever increasing numbers have been trotted out as the maximum practical speed on rails since 1830 or thereabouts.

California High Speed is being designed for 220 mph operation, with the idea of ultimately being able to run at 250 mph. At this point it looks reasonably certain that it will be built.

Part of the French very high seed test runs were for the purpose of seeing what happens about 220 mph. The "standing wave" travel rate in the overhead line is stated as being somewhere above 320 mph, and may be able to be forced higher.

Adhesion does decrease with speed, hence the desirablity of 2/3 to all axles powered at very high speeds. horsepower per axle requirements are not unreasonable even at 250 mph.

Ballast being lifted by the aerodynamics does become a considreation at speeds above about 150 mph, but track at higher speeds should be on a concrete base. Maintenance is much easier. I know this is not French practice, but in reality their track practices for 220 mph are about the same as those that make sense at 80 mph, except obviously much closer tolerences on alignment defects. Obviously, they work, which says there is no real technological breakthroughs in getting to 220 mph. There are certain things that the French don't do that would be "nice to haves" at that speed which when done should enable the system to be carried to a significantly higher speed.

Tunnels are a major issue. If not done large enough and with quite a few extra features to deal with the aerodynamic issues, you will have the wonderful experience of feeling your eardrums slap each other in the middle of your head. There is also a hefty jolt if the track centers are too close.

I am quite willing to be in the first train to get to 250 mph or higher in California if they do it and I am still above ground and able.

As to building additional main tracks along the traditional New York Central Water Level Route between New York and Chicago: Up until post WW2 most of that line was 4 main tracks. It is now all 2 mains, with possible some sections of 3 mains. However, the track centers are very close, so simply replacing the tracks that have been removed would not permit 110 mph, but might permit 90 mph ON THE STRAIGHT PARTS. There are quite a few curves that would require speed reductions.


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## TVRM610 (Dec 2, 2008)

George Harris said:


> 110 mph limit now and forever in the US: NOPE220 mph the practical limit for speed on rails? Don't think so.
> 
> Varying but ever increasing numbers have been trotted out as the maximum practical speed on rails since 1830 or thereabouts.
> 
> ...


I'm all for 220 or more in California, but I will also believe it when i see construction start. I'm not saying that it won't happen, but I still think we are a long way off from that, but that is just IMHO.

As for your comments on the Lake Short Line... there are already portions of this line where the LSL runs 100... so the idea that speeds could not be above 90 is just not true. I'm not an expert on any of that right of way, but I am certain there could be some nice sections of track where an average speed of 90, top speed of 110 could be done. I never said the entire line was suitable for 110mph operation.

Also I was using the city pairs as an example, basically any of the NEC cities to Chicago could be considered once you get to DC, Philly, or NYC, the rest of the NEC is there as well. The Capitol right of way is much too windy through MD, as evidenced by the many sections of 30-35 speed limits. But the old Pennsylvanian could be a possbility... basically just keep extending the Keystone to Pittsburgh.. then take it from there step by step as is practical.


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## George Harris (Dec 2, 2008)

TVRM610 said:


> I'm all for 220 or more in California, but I will also believe it when i see construction start. I'm not saying that it won't happen, but I still think we are a long way off from that, but that is just IMHO.
> As for your comments on the Lake Short Line... there are already portions of this line where the LSL runs 100... so the idea that speeds could not be above 90 is just not true. I'm not an expert on any of that right of way, but I am certain there could be some nice sections of track where an average speed of 90, top speed of 110 could be done. I never said the entire line was suitable for 110mph operation.


If the Calif. HS does not happen, I will have spent the last few years of my working life generating useless paper, which is the sort of job I HATE.

I think all the high speed parts on the Lake Shore route are between New York City and Albany, but I would be happy to find out that I am wrong. About half the speed ups and additional track required to get the Lake Shore route to be made faster lie within the power of New York State to do if they should so choose. That it has not and seems to have no plan to do anything other than whine for federal money for rail just plays into the west coast opinion that New York is beoming a dying entity of historical interest only.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Dec 2, 2008)

George Harris said:


> Part of the French very high seed test runs were for the purpose of seeing what happens about 220 mph. The "standing wave" travel rate in the overhead line is stated as being somewhere above 320 mph, and may be able to be forced higher.


Is that approximately 320 MPH the limit for trainsets which have both a raised pantograph on the lead locomotive and a raised pantograph on the trailing locomotive, or is it the limit when there's only a single raised pantograph on the trainset?



George Harris said:


> Adhesion does decrease with speed, hence the desirablity of 2/3 to all axles powered at very high speeds. horsepower per axle requirements are not unreasonable even at 250 mph.


But I assume adhesion matters most when going uphill, and matters more for steeper grades than gentler grades, and is a bigger problem in rainy weather. (Do typical track maintenance standards keep leaves away from high speed tracks?) So in the worst case, maybe if all the axles are powered and you still don't have enough adhesion, maybe you take the uphill sections at slower speeds than the rest of the route on rainy days.

Does braking adhension ever become a major issue?


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## TVRM610 (Dec 3, 2008)

George Harris said:


> TVRM610 said:
> 
> 
> > I'm all for 220 or more in California, but I will also believe it when i see construction start. I'm not saying that it won't happen, but I still think we are a long way off from that, but that is just IMHO.
> ...


For California high speed... great, sounds like we are further along then I realized I would say I would be the first one to buy a ticket, but unfortunately I waited about 8 years until I finally took a ride on the Acela.. and loved it I might add (just a few weeks ago).

As for LSL... you are most likely right.. I have NO idea where the 100mph running is... is that not CSX track where they run 100?

Also perhaps you know... would a route on the old Pennsylvanian be a possible high speed corridor? Again the entire route would not need to be high speed... but enough to make a difference obviously. I'm extremely unfamiliar with that route and do not know if there are any windy/steep sections that would prohibit a basic extension of the Keystone route.


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## AlanB (Dec 3, 2008)

I've been told that there are one or two sections of 90MPH running west of Albany, but I'm not sure how long they are or just where they are.


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## Neil_M (Dec 3, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Is that approximately 320 MPH the limit for trainsets which have both a raised pantograph on the lead locomotive and a raised pantograph on the trailing locomotive, or is it the limit when there's only a single raised pantograph on the trainset?


TGVs on high speed lines only have 1 pantograph raised, normally on the rear power car.

There is a busline along the roof that supplies the other power car.

On Eurostar sets both pantographs are raised because they are spaced 18 vehicles away and there is no busline.


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## PRR 60 (Dec 3, 2008)

George Harris said:


> 220 mph the practical limit for speed on rails? Don't think so.


With all due respect, I think real-world operating practice suggests otherwise. Over the last 25 years or so we have seen a rather modest increase in the maximum speed of scheduled rail service from 300kph to 350kph. This despite multiple tests that showed that conventional trains could go faster. The reason, in my opinion, is simple. Speeds above that, although technically possible, are not practical or justified for everyday operation. As you stated, even California HSR, still in the preliminary engineering stage, is shooting for that same speed range.

The key word is practical, not possible. What is worth doing, not what can we possibly do if money were not an issue. My contention is that overcoming the technical challenges to moving speeds over the 350kph neighborhood are so great and so costly that, as things stand today, it is not going to happen for anything other then technical tests. I liken it to the supersonic transport. The Concorde was an enormous technical achievement. It was a marvelous transportation vehicle. But, in real world operation, it made little sense. An an engineer, I hated to see it retired. Also, as an engineer, I understood completely why it had to go. In 2008, and for the foreseeable future, forcing steel wheel on steel rail with overhead catenary to speeds above the 350kph range falls into that same category. At least that is my opinion.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Dec 3, 2008)

For trains whose top speed is 185 MPH or faster, what is the longest running time from downtown to downtown anywhere in the world for the full length of the high speed routes?


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## ralfp (Dec 3, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> For trains whose top speed is 185 MPH or faster, what is the longest running time from downtown to downtown anywhere in the world for the full length of the high speed routes?


I think you're looking for the longest distance, not time. For a single train journey, my guess is the that Tōkaidō and Sanyō lines together would be up there (over 1060km from Tokyo to Hakata), though the Tōkaidō line is limited to 270kph. That's over half the total distance of France's TGV network.

As for the longest non-stop trip, I'm too lazy to look, but the Nagoya-Shin-Yokohama trip (316km) that I took a few years back was pretty long, though Paris-London is probably longer.


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## VT Hokie (Dec 3, 2008)

AlanB said:


> I've been told that there are one or two sections of 90MPH running west of Albany, but I'm not sure how long they are or just where they are.


There's about 15 miles of 110 mph track between Hudson and Albany, several more miles between Albany and Schenectady, and then some 100 mph track between Schenectady and Amsterdam.


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## spacecadet (Dec 3, 2008)

ralfp said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > For trains whose top speed is 185 MPH or faster, what is the longest running time from downtown to downtown anywhere in the world for the full length of the high speed routes?
> ...


And if he really does want time, that's about 4.75 hours to go that distance.

Why are there no "through" Shinkansen connecting Tokaido and Tohoku lines at Tokyo? Is Tokyo like Chicago, where it's pretty much impossible to run through trains without major maneuvering? It seems like you should be able to ride one shinkansen pretty much the full length of Japan.


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## ralfp (Dec 3, 2008)

spacecadet said:


> Why are there no "through" Shinkansen connecting Tokaido and Tohoku lines at Tokyo? Is Tokyo like Chicago, where it's pretty much impossible to run through trains without major maneuvering? It seems like you should be able to ride one shinkansen pretty much the full length of Japan.


I don't think it's the layout; the tracks are adjacent. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Station

The trains are run by different companies. The Sanyo trains ran to Tokyo before the breakup of JNR. The Tōhoku line started Tokyo service after the breakup.


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## spacecadet (Dec 3, 2008)

ralfp said:


> spacecadet said:
> 
> 
> > Why are there no "through" Shinkansen connecting Tokaido and Tohoku lines at Tokyo? Is Tokyo like Chicago, where it's pretty much impossible to run through trains without major maneuvering? It seems like you should be able to ride one shinkansen pretty much the full length of Japan.
> ...


So every line requires a transfer? There's no sharing of track rights? (I thought the government actually still owned the tracks.) The JR web site makes it seem like you can ride one train from Tokyo to Hakata, if you go to "hyperdia" and actually look up the itinerary. (There's also just one JR web site, so they must share some things.)

I have been to Tokyo station many times but just have never ridden anything other than Tokaido line trains.


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## VentureForth (Dec 3, 2008)

spacecadet said:


> ralfp said:
> 
> 
> > spacecadet said:
> ...


Actually, the Tokaido and Tohoku shinkansens were both JNR companies. Tohoku started 1985 between Omiya in the North and Ueno (a ward within Tokyo). Initially, the Tohoku ran South to Ueno station. Tokyo station was added in 1991. The platforms are adjacent, and I think they are even connected by train. But again, the Tohoku is run by JR East, the Tokaido run by JR Central and the Sanyo by JR West. Some trains run on Tohoku and Sanyo, ie: some Nozomi trains run from Tokyo to Hakata (Note: term to term time is 5:03, with a travel time average speed of 144 MPH). Many of the JR East trains share trackage, but it's been 18 years since I've lived there, and I couldn't map my way around JR East (with regards to Shinkansen anyway).

It's possible for the JR East trains to get on the JR Central tracks, but it doesn't happen. Tokyo Station is a terminal station for many many trains, and it is the common point to change trains. To go from the far North to the far South without changing trains requires a night train (which are slowly fading away).


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## ralfp (Dec 3, 2008)

spacecadet said:


> So every line requires a transfer? There's no sharing of track rights? (I thought the government actually still owned the tracks.) The JR web site makes it seem like you can ride one train from Tokyo to Hakata, if you go to "hyperdia" and actually look up the itinerary. (There's also just one JR web site, so they must share some things.)
> I have been to Tokyo station many times but just have never ridden anything other than Tokaido line trains.


One can take a single train on both the Sanyo and Tokaido lines (eg. Tokyo to Hakata). One can take a JR West train solely on the Tokaido line (my first Shinkansen ride was on a JR West 500 series from Nagoya to Shin-Yokohama).

I was suggesting that this relationship might exist because it predated the JNR breakup, whereas there obviously was no through train on the Tokaido and Tohoku lines before the split. It's just a guess, but I'm suggesting it's a historical artifact.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Dec 3, 2008)

ralfp said:


> I think you're looking for the longest distance, not time.


I accurately stated what I thought I was looking for, but now that I'm seeing the answers,. I think you probably are right about this.



ralfp said:


> For a single train journey, my guess is the that Tōkaidō and Sanyō lines together would be up there (over 1060km from Tokyo to Hakata), though the Tōkaidō line is limited to 270kph. That's over half the total distance of France's TGV network.
> As for the longest non-stop trip, I'm too lazy to look, but the Nagoya-Shin-Yokohama trip (316km) that I took a few years back was pretty long, though Paris-London is probably longer.


1060 km is about 659 miles. Paris to London appears to be about 283 miles.

If Paris to London is the longest trip you care about at all, there's a decent argument that 110 MPH as the top speed, if you really don't ever have to slow down for curves, would get you the magic three hours that would prevent the typical non-railfan from taking the plane. So it may very well be the case that in France, the travel times are already fast enough that there's little benefit to greater speed, in much the same way that some of us are saying that upgrading the 135 MPH sections of the NEC between NYP and WAS to 150 MPH is not terribly exciting once you realize how little time really might be saved.

New York City to Chicago is a bit more than that 659 miles, and New York City to Chicago ought to be an extremely popular city pair. I am thinking that the US being more spread out than other parts of the world that have high speed rail experience probably argues for using faster speeds to make our times between major city pairs more competitive in spite of the greater physical distances involved.


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## ralfp (Dec 3, 2008)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> ralfp said:
> 
> 
> > As for the longest non-stop trip, I'm too lazy to look, but the Nagoya-Shin-Yokohama trip (316km) that I took a few years back was pretty long, though Paris-London is probably longer.
> ...


I was talking about the longest NON-STOP trip (regularly scheduled). Paris-London is done non-stop on the Eurostar. 283 miles is definitely longer than Nagoya to [shin]-Yokohama. There are no non-stop trains between Tokyo and Hakata, though there are direct trains without change of gauge.


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## Guest (Dec 3, 2008)

"ICE-Sprinter" trains take 3:24 for the nonstop run between Berlin Spandau and Frankfurt, though I am not sure of the track mileage. The nonstop Madrid-Barcelona AVE services cover 621km in 2:38. Both are beaten by the CRH trains that travel nonstop from Shenyang to Beijing, covering the 703km in 3:99.


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## Mike S. (Dec 4, 2008)

VT Hokie said:


> AlanB said:
> 
> 
> > I've been told that there are one or two sections of 90MPH running west of Albany, but I'm not sure how long they are or just where they are.
> ...



Yea...VT's right. On my last LSL trip from Buffalo to NYP, my garmin Etrek GPS showed us hitting 95-96mph BEFORE albany.

See page 13 of this document: http://www.cdta.org/hsr/Executive_Summary-...Res-1-11-06.pdf

Excellent visual of track usage/speed/owership.

My question is..how long will it take to get some PTC up and running? There are lots of areas that could see 90mph service assuming it is Class 5 track (which I think it is). 10mph is not a big deal when you're already going 135+ like the acela, but IS a big deal when you top out at 80mph. Sure..some of NYS mainline is curvy, but there are plenty of stretches of straight to slight turned running. BUF to Batavia, NY (halfway to rochester) is practically a straight line...thats some 20+ miles.

Faster times would mean more ridership and more money to add to future enhancements...I firmly belive its like a snowball effect.

Mike S.


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