# Why Isn't the U.S. Investing In High-Speed Trains?



## CHamilton (Dec 3, 2013)

A Better Way To Travel: Why Isn’t the U.S. Investing In High-Speed Trains?


> The U.S. government can no longer delay investing in high-speed rail. Aside from the benefits far outweighing the costs, most of the criticisms against HSR are based upon misconstrued facts. As the U.S. economy is slowly starting to emerge from its recessional shell, now is the perfect opportunity to invest in the future. When facing a disintegrating infrastructure, the United States has two choices that Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania, articulated to an audience in Jacksonville: “Pay now or pay later.”


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## John Bredin (Dec 3, 2013)

Absolutely loved the animation with the article!


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## Shawn Ryu (Dec 5, 2013)

Uneducated voters, selfish NIMBYs, the list goes on and on.

I do think airlines will benefit from high speed rail, though. By code sharing they dont have to use their own plane to serve markets thats too small to fly too.


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## me_little_me (Dec 6, 2013)

CHamilton said:


> A Better Way To Travel: Why Isn’t the U.S. Investing In High-Speed Trains?
> 
> 
> > The U.S. government can no longer delay investing in high-speed rail. Aside from the benefits far outweighing the costs, most of the criticisms against HSR are based upon misconstrued facts. As the U.S. economy is slowly starting to emerge from its recessional shell, now is the perfect opportunity to invest in the future. When facing a disintegrating infrastructure, the United States has two choices that Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania, articulated to an audience in Jacksonville: “Pay now or pay later.”


Could be that even many of us that support rail believe that running trains at, say, 120mph consistently would be far better bang for the buck than HSR (200+ ?) everywhere except possibly the NE corridor. Pick any long distance or intermediate distance train and change its speed to mostly do 100mph and see what it means. Just spending money on removing urban RR crossings, straightening some curves and improving the roadbed so the train is not doing 30 would make a dramatic improvement at much lower cost. Enforcing Amtrak priority would cost a lot less and would help quite a bit.

I wonder if anyone has done a nationwide Amtrak study analyzing the cost benefit of every potential small improvement (i.e. based on number of passengers and how much time they would save to get to their destination). So removing a specific grade crossing on the Crescent based on how many passenger minutes are saved would be rated against all the others on the same route and all the other routes. Then invest starting with the most cost effective ones.

But then "I won't vote for spending money in Ohio unless we get equal spending here in Alaska" would be the cry heard from Congress.


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## coldan (Jun 22, 2014)

1 money has to come from some ware, Highway and airport funding

2. Not invented her syndrome


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## cirdan (Jun 23, 2014)

me_little_me said:


> Could be that even many of us that support rail believe that running trains at, say, 120mph consistently would be far better bang for the buck than HSR (200+ ?) everywhere except possibly the NE corridor. Pick any long distance or intermediate distance train and change its speed to mostly do 100mph and see what it means. Just spending money on removing urban RR crossings, straightening some curves and improving the roadbed so the train is not doing 30 would make a dramatic improvement at much lower cost. Enforcing Amtrak priority would cost a lot less and would help quite a bit.


I can't remember who it was, but somebody once said "the best way to go fast is to not go slow". You don't need to develop expensive new hardware if you're just raising speeds to use the present equipment at speeds it was actually designed for.

One problem though is getting freight RR support and cooperation on this. Another is track capacity, especially on single track lines.

At the end of the day, it boils down to, do you hand a truckload of cash to a freight RR for doing improvements, and when its finished they still own the line and run it their way and get more benefit out of your improvements than you do while restricting future additional trains etc, or do you spend a bit more and get a line you actually own yourself and can run as you see fit? It doesn't have to be a real high speed line, but in cases there may be abandoned lines parallel to the lines the trainms presently use that may actually be worth bringing back into service and running speeds of 80mph plus on.


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## George Harris (Jun 23, 2014)

cirdan said:


> me_little_me said:
> 
> 
> > Could be that even many of us that support rail believe that running trains at, say, 120mph consistently would be far better bang for the buck than HSR (200+ ?) everywhere except possibly the NE corridor. Pick any long distance or intermediate distance train and change its speed to mostly do 100mph and see what it means. Just spending money on removing urban RR crossings, straightening some curves and improving the roadbed so the train is not doing 30 would make a dramatic improvement at much lower cost. Enforcing Amtrak priority would cost a lot less and would help quite a bit.
> ...


If you are giving money to a freight railroad to increase speeds, it better be with a contract that requires the train priorities and speeds you are wanting.

I think I may have been the one you have heard to say "the best way to go fast is to avoid going slow", but I did not originate the saying. I read it in a Railway Gazette article some 20 or more years ago.

As an extrapolation on that, if you can take 1 mile with a speed limit of 25 mph and raise the speed limit to 79 mph, you rerduce you run time by 1 minute 38 seconds, plus time taken to brake and accelerate rather than running through at the higher speed. To get the same benefit (1min 38sec) out of a raised speed limt, you would have to raise 4.6 miles from 79 mph ot 125 mph, and that is not counting that much of this distance would be spent in acceleration and braking, acceleration in particular being a very slow rates at the higher speeds, such that the real distance with the higher speed limit would have to be something on the order of an unbroken 10 miles.


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## William W. (Jun 23, 2014)

In my opinion, the best application for true high speed rail would be in places such as the NE Corridor, the Illinois/Michigan Service areas, and the West Coast. The time savings on LD trains just doesn't seem to be worth the cost to me. If a trip can't be kept to within one day, there doesn't seem to be much point in making the route high speed (they could potentially convert the CL to a day train, with high-speed rail, however). Now, they definitely can make improvements to help the LD trains run on time, and potentially at their designed max speeds. They could also do well to eliminate most at-grade crossings on passenger routes.


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## jis (Jun 23, 2014)

Yeah, but making the current CL route high speed will take many trick ponies and many $$$$$ as a starter.


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## William W. (Jun 23, 2014)

jis said:


> Yeah, but making the current CL route high speed will take many trick ponies and many $$$$$ as a starter.


Indeed it would. I merely pointed out that the CL would be the only LD train that could truly benefit from high-speed rail.


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## Eric S (Jun 23, 2014)

Um, wouldn't plenty of other LD trains benefit from upgraded tracks? (Like the Texas Eagle in IL, the Lake Shore Limited in NY, etc.)


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## William W. (Jun 23, 2014)

Eric S said:


> Um, wouldn't plenty of other LD trains benefit from upgraded tracks? (Like the Texas Eagle in IL, the Lake Shore Limited in NY, etc.)


They would indeed benefit from track upgrades (every route would).

The point that has been made previously is that there is a difference between higher-speed rail, and "true" high-speed rail.

Higher speed rail can be found on portions of the Illinois and Michigan Service, parts of the Empire Corridor, and parts of the SWC route.

There is a debate as to whether the NE Corridor (and specifically the Acela Express) is truly high speed or not, but when you consider the average speeds along the route, the most that can be said is that the corridor is higher speed.

I would point to these Wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-speed_rail#Definitions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_speed_rail#Definitions


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## Eric S (Jun 23, 2014)

Well aware of the distinction between HSR and HrSR. How do you come to the conclusion that the Capitol Limited is the only LD train that would benefit from high speed rail? I guess I don't understand what distinction you are making between the CL and all other LD trains.


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## William W. (Jun 23, 2014)

Eric S said:


> Well aware of the distinction between HSR and HrSR. How do you come to the conclusion that the Capitol Limited is the only LD train that would benefit from high speed rail? I guess I don't understand what distinction you are making between the CL and all other LD trains.


If a train has to go overnight, with large amounts of daylight on the day of departure or arrival (even with a conversion to high speed rail), it doesn't really make much sense (at least to me) to make it so. If the idea of high speed rail is to speed up trips, it makes better sense to use the technology on routes where the travel time would be cut from ~8 hours to 3 or 4 hours.

At the end of the day, a long distance train will never be able to beat air travel in terms of time traveled. Even if a train can go 220 MPH, an airplane is still going ~500 MPH. The reason why the Acela does so well is that it offers faster point to point travel than the airlines can (between WAS and NYP). Even though a plane is technically faster, when the fixed time period between getting to the gate, and getting from the gate to your final destination is factored in, the Acela wins due to the relatively short distance between DC and NYC. It can't win though if you are traveling between BOS and WAS, because the total travel time by plane can still beat the total travel time by rail.

If a high speed train still can't beat an airplane for total travel time (including ground transportation, security, etc) it doesn't really make sense to upgrade it to high speed status. It would be a better application of limited resources to make all short and medium distance trains high speed, and upgrade long distance trains to increase reliability, with some smaller speed increases where the benefit is appreciable.

I would personally love to see every train be high speed, but one must consider the benefits (boost in ridership, etc) gained from spending the required hundreds of billions of dollars. High speed conversion carries a very high cost per mile, and just doesn't seem cost effective on routes as long as the ones that go from Chicago to the west coast.

The reason I singled out the Capitol Limited is that (catch me if I'm wrong) it is the shortest and more direct LD train in the entire system. It would seem to me that it would be the best candidate if we were to upgrade a LD to high speed. It could either take the form of a day train, or a later evening to earlier morning train. The latter option could be billed as a combined hotel/transportation means to business travelers. As it stands, the departure time from DC (4PM) and the arrival time into CHI (9AM) are too early and too late, respectively, to be able to market the train in this way. If the departure time could be made 7 or 8 PM, with an arrival time of 6 or 7 AM, the high speed upgrade would be worth it, and with the right business plan, the route could become very successful.


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## Eric S (Jun 23, 2014)

Ah, now I see where you are coming from.

I wonder if the Lake Shore Limited might represent a better option, though (at least among NEC-to-Chicago trains), as it, more than the Capitol Limited, is essentially a long string of interconnected corridors with HrSR (not true HSR, I know) upgrades talked of/proposed/planned/discussed over most of the route.


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## William W. (Jun 23, 2014)

Eric S said:


> Ah, now I see where you are coming from.
> 
> I wonder if the Lake Shore Limited might represent a better option, though (at least among NEC-to-Chicago trains), as it, more than the Capitol Limited, is essentially a long string of interconnected corridors with HrSR (not true HSR, I know) upgrades talked of/proposed/planned/discussed over most of the route.


The issue that I see with the LSL is that it is a longer route (300 miles more) and takes 19 hours as opposed to 17 hours. Since it also has to break off into two sections (to Boston and NYC), that adds even more miles of track that would have to be upgraded. It could be helped with track improvements, but I think that the CL is still a better candidate.


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## George Harris (Jun 24, 2014)

From somewhere in the 1940's or early 1950's up until the early 1960's the fastest train on both the current Lake Shore Limited route, the Twentieth Century Limited, which was the main line of the New York Central and the Broadway Limited which ran on the Pennsylvania Railroad mainline which includes the current Philadelphia to Pittsburg mainline did New York to Chicago in 16 hours 30 minutes. I often wondered why neither line ever ran a fast "daylight" train like the 7:45 to 12:25 Chicago to New Orleans City of Miami of the 1950's and 60's.

It should be relatively low cost to reinstate a 16 hour train on the Lake Shore Limited route. I would suspect that if the route was to have four trains each way appropriately spread through the day with one being approximate 20th Century Limited schedule, and another being a "daylight" train that each train would carry far more people than the LSL does now. Given upgrades to 110 mph and elimination of slow areas where practical, it should be possible to reduce the end to end time to under 15 hours. There are many other places in the northeast, and I mean everything east of the Mississippi River and north of the Mason-Dixon line as northeast, that could be and should be linked by medium speed train until higher speed lines can be built between the points with the heaviest traffic demand.


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## me_little_me (Jun 24, 2014)

cirdan said:


> me_little_me said:
> 
> 
> > Could be that even many of us that support rail believe that running trains at, say, 120mph consistently would be far better bang for the buck than HSR (200+ ?) everywhere except possibly the NE corridor. Pick any long distance or intermediate distance train and change its speed to mostly do 100mph and see what it means. Just spending money on removing urban RR crossings, straightening some curves and improving the roadbed so the train is not doing 30 would make a dramatic improvement at much lower cost. Enforcing Amtrak priority would cost a lot less and would help quite a bit.
> ...


There are alternatives. Take the tracks using eminent domain, improve them then let the RRs use them for a fee. Might be cheaper than creating all new track and its associated problems. I don't know if it would be cheaper buying existing property or finding new but it is a third option to finding new or just giving RR tons of cash. More likely an option such as this would work best where there is sufficient passenger service to justify it (like Washington to Richmond, Raleigh to Charlotte, Illinois, ?) rather than say along route of Sunset Limited.


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## jis (Jun 24, 2014)

You cannot "take the tracks using eminent domain". You can pay market value for them and buy them using eminent domain. The only thing you get to do is force such a sale at market price even if the owner is not in a mood to sell. And then of course the question is, who is going to come up with the money, and from where?

Just as a case, what do you suppose the market value is of what remains of the Potomac Yard part of the RF&P? It is a pretty complex question to answer, but the number is unlikely to be a nice small manageable one.


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## afigg (Jun 24, 2014)

William W. said:


> The reason I singled out the Capitol Limited is that (catch me if I'm wrong) it is the shortest and more direct LD train in the entire system. It would seem to me that it would be the best candidate if we were to upgrade a LD to high speed.


The issue with upgrading the Capitol Limited route to HSR is there is challenging terrain between DC and Pittsburgh. It would be an expensive HSR corridor to construct and I don't think there is a particularly strong demand for travel over that route. There would be more support and interest in building an HSR corridor from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and then Pittsburgh through a TBD route through Ohio to Chicago. The other logical HSR route from NYC to Chicago is mostly via the route chosen by NY Central long ago. Once those HSR corridors are built, along with many 100s of miles of other HSR corridors, then a DC to Pittsburgh or DC to Ohio HSR corridor can be considered as a fill-in HSR connection line.
You can't use the surviving LD routes as guides to where to build HSR lines. The decisions should be driven by city size and wealth, distance, cost of building the HSR line, market demand, political support and so on.

There are several threads and posts on this forum that have discussed using eminent domain or forcing CSX and NS to sell or turn over tracks to give priority for higher speed passenger trains. I think it should be pointed out that the current market capitalization for CSX is $30.6 billion and NS $31.8 billion. If a consortium of states wanted to obtain control of lines for passenger service, it would not really take that much money to buy up CSX and NS, carefully peel off the assets desired for passenger routes while preserving a robust freight network, and then sell the parceled out freight portion of the company back to the private market. The minority shareholders would have to be fully compensated of course for the assets divided off for passenger train service. Of course, any such attempt to do this by the states would be politically impossible, but when one is talking about investing many billions in HSR and HrSR lines, buying the land and ROW by buying up the companies first may be cheaper.


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## Ispolkom (Jun 24, 2014)

jis said:


> You cannot "take the tracks using eminent domain". You can pay market value for them and buy them using eminent domain. The only thing you get to do is force such a sale at market price even if the owner is not in a mood to sell. And then of course the question is, who is going to come up with the money, and from where?


There's also the claim that local governments can't use eminent domain to gain railroad tracks, under 49 USC 10501. See Soo Line Railroad v City of St. Paul. In that case St. Paul want to condemn part of a right-of-way for a bicycle path, and CP told them to pound sand. A district court agreed. I don't know if this reasoning would have been upheld on appeal, but there you have it.


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## Eric S (Jun 24, 2014)

George Harris said:


> There are many other places in the northeast, and I mean everything east of the Mississippi River and north of the Mason-Dixon line as northeast, that could be and should be linked by medium speed train until higher speed lines can be built between the points with the heaviest traffic demand.


This right here. Again and again.


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## jis (Jun 25, 2014)

Ispolkom said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > You cannot "take the tracks using eminent domain". You can pay market value for them and buy them using eminent domain. The only thing you get to do is force such a sale at market price even if the owner is not in a mood to sell. And then of course the question is, who is going to come up with the money, and from where?
> ...


I don't know the specifics of this case. However, I am thinking that if someone proposed to try to use eminent domain to grab CSX's ROW in NY State, it is not a given that the courts would allow it, based on CSX's argument that it is the lifeline of their business or some such. I have seen eminent domain attempts denied on similar grounds before. I have also seen such being allowed in the face of similar arguments where the courts decided that the argument was specious.


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## William W. (Jun 25, 2014)

I'm generally opposed to the use of eminent domain, unless there are no other options. It doesn't seem right to me to use force to seize the long-held property of a company, and in the process, destroy that company. It seems rather Un-American. It would be one thing if they weren't using the tracks, and at the same time were refusing to sell them, but to seize the core of any railway's business, it just seems wrong.

I was under the impression that true high speed rail would need new tracks anyway. Why bother starting messy fight with the railroads?


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## jis (Jun 25, 2014)

William W. said:


> I was under the impression that true high speed rail would need new tracks anyway. Why bother starting messy fight with the railroads?


To construct an ROW where none exists will require application of eminent domain on someone else to create the easement. So are you just partial to eminent domains not being used against railroads or would your rather that eminent domain was not used at all and no new ROWs were created? Gotta make up your mind.


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## William W. (Jun 25, 2014)

jis said:


> William W. said:
> 
> 
> > I was under the impression that true high speed rail would need new tracks anyway. Why bother starting messy fight with the railroads?
> ...


There is a difference between taking land to create a ROW, and taking existing, in-service track that is essential for a company's operation. In general, taking land to create new ROW is not overly injurious because the loss in property is spread out among many, and won't overly hurt an individual. To take existing ROW (that isn't abandoned or not used) directly harms a single person/organization. If a company puts tons of money, time, and effort into something, it doesn't seem right for the government to then come in a and force a sale (monopoly conditions excluded, of course). This is especially true if the property loss would result in a large loss in revenue.

Perhaps I'm making a bit of a straw man argument, but I'm pretty sure that exactly that has been suggested in previous posts.


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## George Harris (Jun 25, 2014)

At least market value has to be paid under emminet domain. Eminent domain is also a last resort after negotiations to reach a reasonable price for the needed land fails. There are exceptions. There are some corporations (one corporate owner of large tracks of timber and mineral lands in central Alabama comes to mind) that by corporate policy) informs all that we require that the taking go through the eminent domain process, as that way there can be no quibble about either side not getting or being given a fair price for the land. The specific issue with which I am familiar involved an underground telephone cable. For this particular facility (the telephone cable) something like 95% of the right of way needed was purchased through negotiation, not eminent domain. Sometimes when doing the survey of the proposed taking necessary for the eiminent domain process, it must be done in the company of an armed deputy sherrif to protect you from an armed property owner. By the way, quite often survey parties working in remote areas have one or more members armed to protect themselves from unfriendly critters, the most common of concern being rattlesnakes and water moccosins. Going down this same road, there are 22 caliber shells called snake shot that have small pellets instead of a single slug. Doesn't carry very far, but is quite effective in the 6 to 10 feet or so range where the critter is that you are trying to stop.


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## MattW (Jun 25, 2014)

I've often wondered if eminent domain has to be applied to the entirety of the property, or whether it could be applied to the "slots" needed for the passenger trains. Anyone know if this can be the case? I want to say I read somewhere that a government entity wanting to run passenger service over a line would constitute a "taking" as far as the law is concerned which is when I started thinking about this.


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## William W. (Jun 25, 2014)

MattW said:


> I've often wondered if eminent domain has to be applied to the entirety of the property, or whether it could be applied to the "slots" needed for the passenger trains. Anyone know if this can be the case? I want to say I read somewhere that a government entity wanting to run passenger service over a line would constitute a "taking" as far as the law is concerned which is when I started thinking about this.


I wouldn't imagine that they would need to take all the property, just the land needed for the ROW. I'm not sure what the legal history is though around ROW eminent domain.


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## Shawn Ryu (Jun 28, 2014)

William W. said:


> I'm generally opposed to the use of eminent domain, unless there are no other options. It doesn't seem right to me to use force to seize the long-held property of a company, and in the process, destroy that company. It seems rather Un-American. It would be one thing if they weren't using the tracks, and at the same time were refusing to sell them, but to seize the core of any railway's business, it just seems wrong.
> 
> I was under the impression that true high speed rail would need new tracks anyway. Why bother starting messy fight with the railroads?



Chances are most railraoids were funded and built by the government.


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## George Harris (Jun 28, 2014)

> Chances are most railroads were funded and built by the government.


NO. This subject could go on and on for a long time to discuss the various ways by which the different railroad lines were built, but only a small proportion of railroad lines were built with government money. This was particularly true for lines east of the Mississippi River.


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## Green Maned Lion (Jun 28, 2014)

But almost all were built on easements given freely or at low cost by the government.


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## William W. (Jun 28, 2014)

I'm OK with the use of public money to fund rail infrastructure improvements. In fact, without public investment, high speed rail is unlikely to happen.

I just stated that I was opposed to the use of eminent domain to take rail lines that are currently maintained and in use. I am OK with using eminent domain to take land for new ROW. Unless you could get every property owner along a proposed route to cooperate, this seems like the only option to me.


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## George Harris (Jun 29, 2014)

> But all were built on easements given freely or at low cost by the government.


NO. Suggest that some research be performed before making such statements. There are many miles of railroads built on land purchased from private landowners. I think you are thinking about the western "land grant" railroads. These do not even represent the majority of the railroad mileage west of the Mississippi, much less east of it where much of the land was settled and in private ownership before railroad building started.


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## jis (Jun 29, 2014)

People also mistakenly think that the granting of a government charter to build a line means giving money or other assets like land too. That in General has not been the case. Government charter is to form the company and issue stock and such for a purpose of delivering a public good. Of course the political support that usually comes with it is very useful too.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


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## Anderson (Jun 29, 2014)

Ispolkom said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > You cannot "take the tracks using eminent domain". You can pay market value for them and buy them using eminent domain. The only thing you get to do is force such a sale at market price even if the owner is not in a mood to sell. And then of course the question is, who is going to come up with the money, and from where?
> ...


My guess is also that the bicycle path probably didn't cut it for a "public purpose" in some regard.

As to the point about buying out the freight railroads, the worst part of the point you make is that doing so would be _incredibly_ cheap compared to some HSR plans out there. Come to think of it, it would probably be worth the time of California and Illinois to get into a down-and-dirty control fight with UP in the long run. Even if they couldn't completely take control, a medium-term investment of $20-40bn (which could likely be resold at a profit) should be able to let them "greenmail" UP into a set of covenants on certain lines. Back east, doing so would be even cheaper...and VA and NY would be the candidates for _that_ fight, alongside MD.

Politically, of course, this is almost impossible to see happening. I could see it with a Class II/III road somewhere, perhaps, but not one of the Class Is.


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## George Harris (Jul 2, 2014)

MattW said:


> I've often wondered if eminent domain has to be applied to the entirety of the property, or whether it could be applied to the "slots" needed for the passenger trains. Anyone know if this can be the case? I want to say I read somewhere that a government entity wanting to run passenger service over a line would constitute a "taking" as far as the law is concerned which is when I started thinking about this.


Just to the needed portion. If you even tried to take more it would not get past a court fight. Of this I know whereof I speak, having been involved in title search to determine ownership of property out of which a right of way easement was needed. (Generally underground and overhead facilities are on easements, not fee simple purchase.) The taking will consist only of the portion necessary for the facility. Sometimes an "orphan" portion may be purchased with the right of way. "Orphan" means a portion of the property rendered inaccessible by the facility. t is either that or provide access. Usually orphan is only factor in roads and railroads as underground/overhead easements or even outright purchases do not eliminate the ability to cross, although if an outright purchase the seller must be given a right to cross to eliminate the orphan portion issue.


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## Tokkyu40 (Jul 3, 2014)

MattW said:


> I've often wondered if eminent domain has to be applied to the entirety of the property, or whether it could be applied to the "slots" needed for the passenger trains. Anyone know if this can be the case? I want to say I read somewhere that a government entity wanting to run passenger service over a line would constitute a "taking" as far as the law is concerned which is when I started thinking about this.


Paul Weyrich mentioned the possibility of condemning access to a railroad rather than the track itself, in cases where the rail company made unreasonable and excessive demands for track rights. In that case the taking would be limited to the hours of operation of a light rail line, with the rails reverting to the freight line during off hours.

I do believe that high speed is vital to the success of long distance service. For rail fans, the train itself can be the destination, but as serious transportation it has to reach destinations as quickly as possible so customers can maximize their time before the return journey. Spending a day and a half each way in a train that only runs three times a week is poor utilization of scarce vacation time.

I've read that most long distance trips average about 700 miles, so a train that averages 80 mph, or 125 mph cruising speed (basic hsr; 200 kph) would make a practical 9 hour trip of the journey, which could be done as an overnight trip. This makes trains more practical and appealing to a larger customer base. The Eagle is basically a series of overlapping corridors, with only a few making the full trip end to end.

While I agree that the first step should be to open up the bottle necks and keep the trains moving at top cruising speed as much as possible, the upgrades should be planned with an eventual 125mph speed in mind. If Amtrak is to survive long term, it has to be a serious transportation option. And high speed is an important part of that.


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## William W. (Jul 3, 2014)

Tokkyu40 said:


> MattW said:
> 
> 
> > I've often wondered if eminent domain has to be applied to the entirety of the property, or whether it could be applied to the "slots" needed for the passenger trains. Anyone know if this can be the case? I want to say I read somewhere that a government entity wanting to run passenger service over a line would constitute a "taking" as far as the law is concerned which is when I started thinking about this.
> ...


I could potentially see this happening, in certain circumstances. The rail companies have a somewhat different relationship with the government due to the fact that they are a critical infrastructure component. In addition, since almost all of their business is considered to be "Interstate Commerce," they are more able to be regulated than other sectors.

I do see practical problems with the situation that you describe though. Who would dispatch and run operations during the time period that the track is under government control? How would maintenance costs be divided up? How would wear and tear be accounted for? What if a train, controlled by either party, was late and cut into the other's timetable?

It just seems to me that an arrangement such as this may be more trouble than it's worth. Then again, I've been known to be wrong before.


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## Tokkyu40 (Jul 3, 2014)

William W. said:


> Tokkyu40 said:
> 
> 
> > MattW said:
> ...


It's actually not that uncommon. How costs and responsibilities are divided up are open to negotiation during the final settlement, but the time separation is how the San Diego Trolley and the North County Sprinter operate in San Diego County. Passenger rail during the day and freight in the middle of the night, segregated by time rather than separate tracks.

I think the mainline is time segregated as well, with Amtrak and Coasters running during the day. They use overweight FRA equipment, so freight could also use the tracks during the day if they needed to.

I'm sure there are other places where a similar arrangement is used, although I haven't heard of anyone forcing it through imminent domain.


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## jis (Jul 3, 2014)

Tokkyu40 said:


> I'm sure there are other places where a similar arrangement is used, although I haven't heard of anyone forcing it through imminent domain.


The phrase is "eminent domain".
The first use of time separation was on the NJT RiverLINE (between Conrail Shared Asset freights and NJT Stadler DLRTs) where the concept was pioneered. The rest came after that. It was through an amicable agreement without any use of force AFAIR.

Rules have changed since then which would probably make the Stadlers OK to operate with freight without time separation, with a few minor modifications to meet the modified Tier I rules. But so far nothing has been done to move in that direction on the RiverLINE since in general freight traffic is quite sparse anyway.


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## neroden (Jul 4, 2014)

afigg said:


> There are several threads and posts on this forum that have discussed using eminent domain or forcing CSX and NS to sell or turn over tracks to give priority for higher speed passenger trains. I think it should be pointed out that the current market capitalization for CSX is $30.6 billion and NS $31.8 billion. If a consortium of states wanted to obtain control of lines for passenger service, it would not really take that much money to buy up CSX and NS, carefully peel off the assets desired for passenger routes while preserving a robust freight network, and then sell the parceled out freight portion of the company back to the private market. The minority shareholders would have to be fully compensated of course for the assets divided off for passenger train service. Of course, any such attempt to do this by the states would be politically impossible, but when one is talking about investing many billions in HSR and HrSR lines, buying the land and ROW by buying up the companies first may be cheaper.


I don't know. It sounds like the sort of audacious move Nelson Rockefeller would have done without blinking. I never say "politically impossible" except about structural problems designed into the election system -- because often it turns out that a tiny shift in the wind makes things politically possible.
It really ought be easier to buy out specific strips of unused right-of-way currently occupied by dirt paths. But if obstructions are being raised to that by, for example, CSX management, it may well be cheaper and quicker to buy the whole company, strip out the bits the states need and then auction off the remainder. It's been done before by corporations, why not have the states do it?

States who could benefit fairly quickly from a CSX buyout in particular are FL, GA, SC, NC, VA, WV, MA, NY, OH, IN, MI, LA, MS, AL... which is honestly a lot of states, and a buyout could be financed by just a couple of those states. At the moment, none of their governments are serious enough about rail to try, though. (Except possibly Massachusetts, which is already buying up all the CSX lines in the state piecemeal anyway).


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## Anderson (Jul 4, 2014)

VA is getting there, but the state isn't in a situation money-wise. Even if we mortgaged the whole of our expected rail revenue for the next 30 years, we'd raise a fraction of what a buyout would take.

VA, FL, NC, and NY could probably manage it together, and those states at least have a chance of getting serious in the long run. The main question by the time everyone would be on board would be whether there was enough the state was doing on its own to still make it worthwhile...after all, if VA has passenger-dedicated tracks RVR-WAS along the RF&P and SEHSR from there south, is it _really_ going to be worth the hassle over the Cardinal and a few Regionals into NPN? This goes double if FEC has decent service going to all four major metro areas...what's the point of upsetting the apple cart with CSX when it would, at that point, probably be cheaper to just get off CSX territory and run sections to ORL/TPA and MIA via the FEC?


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