# How much would it cost for Amtrak to build their own tracks nationwide?



## MIrailfan

I say $50 billion.


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## John Bobinyec

Since we're having a fun guessing game, I'd say you're low by two orders of magnitude.

jb


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## jiml

Too many variables. The number for doing so while preserving the existing route map would be quite different from that of a properly planned new network.


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## Skyline

jiml said:


> Too many variables. The number for doing so while preserving the existing route map would be quite different from that of a properly planned new network.



In some places, it might be possible for Amtrak to co-exist with other freight tracks and simply “lease” one track for its own use from the host railroad. And then lease back operating rights for freight on schedules that won’t interfere with passenger train operations. Amtrak dispatchers would decide.


This might mean upgrading track, if it already exists beside other tracks, for faster speeds that make the train a better option than private autos. It would not need to be “high-speed” tho.


Other places it would involve brand new tracks.


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## crescent-zephyr

MIRAILFAN said:


> I say $50 billion.



Umm.... even the low estimate for Los Angeles to San Francisco was over that and currently it’s over double. That’s not even the entire state of California. So yeah... at least 100 billion per state if you are starting from scratch.


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## MIrailfan

crescent-zephyr said:


> Umm.... even the low estimate for Los Angeles to San Francisco was over that and currently it’s over double. That’s not even the entire state of California. So yeah... at least 100 billion per state if you are starting from scratch.


That was high speed rail. But I'll up my estimate to $500 bi llion.


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## crescent-zephyr

MIRAILFAN said:


> That was high speed rail. But I'll up my estimate to $500 bi llion.



so you want amtrak to build low-speed rail?


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## NeueAmtrakCalifornia

crescent-zephyr said:


> so you want amtrak to build low-speed rail?



At the very least, 110-125 mph rail on corridor routes, and around 90 mph on non-corridor routes for a start


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## Qapla

The cost would be the only part of the problems. By the time they got done with the law suits that would try to stop the construction of new tracks, the cost of the litigation would supersede the cost of construction - not to mention the years such litigation would set back the construction process - and then the increased cost to the original price due to inflation and cost of living increases during all those years of delay.

This could potentially push the cost into the trillion dollar range


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## NeueAmtrakCalifornia

Qapla said:


> The cost would be the only part of the problems. By the time they got done with the law suits that would try to stop the construction of new tracks, the cost of the litigation would supersede the cost of construction - not to mention the years such litigation would set back the construction process - and then the increased cost to the original price due to inflation and cost of living increases during all those years of delay.
> 
> This could potentially push the cost into the trillion dollar range



Then you wonder why American infrastructure has been decaying and any actual necessary solutions to solve it ends up getting shot down and craven half-measures to appease the NIMBYs that ultimately don't do jack are passed.
It seems people like to call out high speed rail as being pharaonic yet they don't bat an eye when the country's wasting away more than a trillion dollars on unneeded wars that ultimately benefit no one but the arms companies and defense contractors (as if they didn't have enough money as is already)


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## MIrailfan

crescent-zephyr said:


> so you want amtrak to build low-speed rail?


High speed rail is 150+ mph. regular rail is 55-90.


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## MIrailfan

NeueAmtrakCalifornia said:


> Then you wonder why American infrastructure has been decaying and any actual necessary solutions to solve it ends up getting shot down and craven half-measures that ultimately don't do jack are passed.


Litigation happy society and redundant overreaching environmental regulations.


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## NeueAmtrakCalifornia

MIRAILFAN said:


> Litigation happy society and redundant overreaching environmental regulations.



It seems the only way out is for America to fundamentally change its politics, which is going to be borderline impossible unless a collapse to society, like something akin to the Great Depression hits America (it's not out of the possibility though).


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## crescent-zephyr

MIRAILFAN said:


> High speed rail is 150+ mph. regular rail is 55-90.



So you think Amtrak should build their own track so they can travel the exact same speeds??? I’m totally lost.


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## NeueAmtrakCalifornia

crescent-zephyr said:


> So you think Amtrak should build their own track so they can travel the exact same speeds??? I’m totally lost.



In numerous places, Amtrak is going to have to build their own tracks, especially in places that have heavy freight traffic. Case in point, the Cajon and Tejon pases.


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## MIrailfan

crescent-zephyr said:


> So you think Amtrak should build their own track so they can travel the exact same speeds??? I’m totally lost.


with their own track average speed would go Up because no freight traffic.


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## Philly Amtrak Fan

MIRAILFAN said:


> with their own track average speed would go Up because no freight traffic.



Forget the average speed, how about reduction of delays and not being lower priority to freight?


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## Hepcat66

crescent-zephyr said:


> So you think Amtrak should build their own track so they can travel the exact same speeds??? I’m totally lost.



I'd be happy with 80-90mph if they were usually on time, and operated in a more safe manner (i.e, not going into a 35mph curve, at 70mph).


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## zephyr17

NeueAmtrakCalifornia said:


> In numerous places, Amtrak is going to have to build their own tracks, especially in places that have heavy freight traffic. Case in point, the Cajon and Tejon pases.


That will generally be up to the states and the practice has generally been that states fund rail improvements in exchange for greater frequency or improved schedules. Washington paid for a third track through Kelso, Oregon paid for a new siding in Oregon City are two examples, but they aren't new lines and are not owned by the states or Amtrak but remain under the control of the RRs. With the Point Defiance Bypass, Washington did take ownership rehab a low speed industrial lead lead, but that is only like 20 miles (and engaged BNSF for dispatching services).

PS. The freight traffic over Tejon Pass consists solely of trucks. There is no rail line over Tejon Pass and there never has been. Even California's High Speed Rail isn't being planned to use Tejon. Santa Fe studied it in the 20s and did some preliminary engineering, but the Depression stopped it.


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## VAtrainfan




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## Dutchrailnut

and that is just top of iceberg , build new tracks means bridges, over or underpasses the 50 Billion would probably not be enough.


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## ehbowen

Keep in mind, also, that the present rail routes were chosen specifically because they were the "best" (read: shortest, lowest grades, and least curves) feasible routes between the chosen end points. And, for the most part, they were built during a time when right-of-way was essentially free...existing towns regularly offered bonuses to ensure that they wouldn't be bypassed. Contrast that to today!

There is one caveat to the above; essentially all lines were built with (and for) 19th century technology. Today we have more efficient and capable options for construction and the motive power we employ is more powerful and no longer tethered to the availability of a plentiful water source. Nevertheless, our options for new construction are very limited...unless you have limitless amounts of taxpayer money to throw at the problem, as when the Interstates were conceived....


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## philabos

Not to mention the capital requirements of maintaining such a system would be enormous.
The NEC costs expanded across the entire network.
As to construction, just look at the brickbats Amtrak endured for just studying the New London bypass. 
Never going to happen in the US.


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## west point

Forgetting real estate acquision costs. $6.0M per mille on land. $1B / mile bridges, $ 6 - 8B / mile for tunnels.


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## NeueAmtrakCalifornia

zephyr17 said:


> PS. The freight traffic over Tejon Pass consists solely of trucks. There is no rail line over Tejon Pass and there never has been. Even California's High Speed Rail isn't being planned to use Tejon. Santa Fe studied it in the 20s and did some preliminary engineering, but the Depression stopped it.



The only reason CAHSR went for Tehachapi over Tejon was bias in favor of the Antelope valley and that they deliberately made the Tejon route an inferior choice to make Tehachapi more desirable. Clem did a study debunking these claims and pointed out the many benefits with using Tejon over Tehachapi.
I would also like to point out that the Tejon rail line is primarily a passenger rail line and it designed to ease traffic on I-5, especially during the winters when extreme weather closes it several times


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## NeueAmtrakCalifornia

ehbowen said:


> Nevertheless, our options for new construction are very limited...unless you have limitless amounts of taxpayer money to throw at the problem, as when the Interstates were conceived....



I think we can get that larger amount of taxpayer money from taxing Wall Street and shifting all the money away from pointless wars to infrastructure and other critical needs


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## cirdan

If you want rail to be genuinely competitive on something like a coast to coast line, even HSR isn't fast enough to be a genuine alternative to airlines. You'd have to look at something like maglev or a hyperloop for that. The costs would be immense.

One of the strengths of Amtrak's LD trains is that they serve many smaller places and provide connections between them. The question with a maglev or hyperloop is whether they would also do that, or just go for the big city to big city connections. So even if there was a super fast train from coast to coast, I think there would still also be a case for an LD network. Updated of course with modern amenities and technology, but still essentially in today's format.


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## Bonser

cirdan said:


> If you want rail to be genuinely competitive on something like a coast to coast line, even HSR isn't fast enough to be a genuine alternative to airlines. You'd have to look at something like maglev or a hyperloop for that. The costs would be immense.
> 
> One of the strengths of Amtrak's LD trains is that they serve many smaller places and provide connections between them. The question with a maglev or hyperloop is whether they would also do that, or just go for the big city to big city connections. So even if there was a super fast train from coast to coast, I think there would still also be a case for an LD network. Updated of course with modern amenities and technology, but still essentially in today's format.



You make a good point. A lot of us end to end route people forget that Amtrak is vitally important to the sometimes scores of small towns enroute. Amtrak is their connection.


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## AGM.12

It would seem that there is a movement afoot in some states to provide Amtrak with its own trackage. Michigan has already done this for the Wolverine service. VA and NC are in the process of doing this as well. Even in states not receptive in supporting corridor trains Amtrak is taking the steps in this direction, such as Florida where they acquired a 50 some mile section of the CSX A line north of Deland to Palatka. I would not be suprised to see Florida unload the line through Orlando as well as the line Tri Rail uses from WPB to Miami onto Amtrak.


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## zephyr17

NeueAmtrakCalifornia said:


> The only reason CAHSR went for Tehachapi over Tejon was bias in favor of the Antelope valley and that they deliberately made the Tejon route an inferior choice to make Tehachapi more desirable. Clem did a study debunking these claims and pointed out the many benefits with using Tejon over Tehachapi.
> I would also like to point out that the Tejon rail line is primarily a passenger rail line and it designed to ease traffic on I-5, especially during the winters when extreme weather closes it several times


Never said it was impossible, Santa Fe was prepared to do it almost 100 years ago, and I agree, CAHSR not using a direct route over Tejon is one of many mistakes of CAHSR.

That does not change the fact that Tejon has no rails, and thus no rail freight congestion or interference over Tejon. Your post stated that Tejon was a busy point of rail freight congestion. It isn't. Either you fumbled the language in trying to make your point, or you are a fan of alternative facts.

PS, if the State of California isn't going to do it, no matter how poor the reasoning, Amtrak itself certainly will not.


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## NeueAmtrakCalifornia

zephyr17 said:


> Never said it was impossible, Santa Fe was prepared to do it almost 100 years ago, and I agree, CAHSR not using a direct route over Tejon is one of many mistakes of CAHSR.
> 
> That does not change the fact that Tejon has no rails, and thus no rail freight congestion or interference over Tejon. Your post stated that Tejon was a busy point of rail freight congestion. It isn't. Either you fumbled the language in trying to make your point, or you are a fan of alternative facts.



Seems I fumbled then. I know Tejon has no rails and thus no freight trains, but it is heavy with passenger automobile traffic. This, combined with Tehachapi being extremely heavy in freight traffic, was the reason I brought up building a Tejon rail line if Amtrak California wants to connect the San Joaquins to LA


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## zephyr17

AGM.12 said:


> It would seem that there is a movement afoot in some states to provide Amtrak with its own trackage. Michigan has already done this for the Wolverine service. VA and NC are in the process of doing this as well. Even in states not receptive in supporting corridor trains Amtrak is taking the steps in this direction, such as Florida where they acquired a 50 some mile section of the CSX A line north of Deland to Palatka. I would not be suprised to see Florida unload the line through Orlando as well as the line Tri Rail uses from WPB to Miami onto Amtrak.


Agree, it is up to the states and some are stepping up. And so it will be piecemeal, in sections that have Corridor service, good potential for Corridor service or commuter service that Amtrak piggybacks onto, like SCRRA's fairly extensive network of owned track in Southern California. 

But it isn't Amtrak that will be funding or building it, and it certainly will not be national.


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## Devil's Advocate

I'd imagine that $500 billion would go a long way toward duplicating many freight miles if it could be focused entirely on building infrastructure. Unfortunately you would probably need _another_ $500 billion just to fight endless legal battles and stalling tactics with airlines, vehicle manufacturers, trucking companies, anti-rail politicians, and NIMBY's.


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## MARC Rider

cirdan said:


> If you want rail to be genuinely competitive on something like a coast to coast line, even HSR isn't fast enough to be a genuine alternative to airlines. You'd have to look at something like maglev or a hyperloop for that. The costs would be immense.
> 
> One of the strengths of Amtrak's LD trains is that they serve many smaller places and provide connections between them. The question with a maglev or hyperloop is whether they would also do that, or just go for the big city to big city connections. So even if there was a super fast train from coast to coast, I think there would still also be a case for an LD network. Updated of course with modern amenities and technology, but still essentially in today's format.


While this is true, why would anyone ever want rail to be genuinely competitive with flying for long distance travel? If I'm going to be traveling hundreds of miles per hour, I'd rather be up at 30,000 ft. where it's less likely I'm going to run into anything. Long distance trains, as you point out, are for the 10% who can't fly for medical reasons and for people living in smaller places in between the major airports, and, yes, for those of us who enjoy the experiences of traveling long distances at slower speeds. If they can get the average station-to-station speeds of the trains up to 60 mph or so, it would be very competitive with driving, which is all you really need on the speed front. This wouldn't require 150 mph+ trains, it would just require better signaling and more capacity at chokepoints. Oh, and it might be nice to build some new right-of-way across mountainous terrain that doesn't twist and turn and require 300 rail miles to connect two cities that are 250 miles away by highway (I'm talking to you Washington, DC and Pittsburgh!).


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## MIrailfan

NeueAmtrakCalifornia said:


> I think we can get that larger amount of taxpayer money from taxing Wall Street and shifting all the money away from pointless wars to infrastructure and other critical needs


not even close. an wall street is already taxed. Cut bureaucrat jobs.


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## NeueAmtrakCalifornia

MIRAILFAN said:


> not even close. an wall street is already taxed. Cut bureaucrat jobs.



We haven't taxed Wall Street transactions since the 60s


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## ehbowen

While I'm against additional taxes on general principle, a per-transaction fee to place an order would go a long way towards curbing the abuses of high-frequency trading.


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## Thirdrail7

It cost Virginia almost 4 Billion for part of the RF&P, the Buckingham Branch and the S line, which is abandoned and almost half a billion dollars to add constant tension and new cat poles to 32 track miles of the NEC, build a substation and upgrade the signal system.

We're way past billions for this enterprise.


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## NeueAmtrakCalifornia

Thirdrail7 said:


> It cost Virginia almost 4 Billion for part of the RF&P, the Buckingham Branch and the S line, which is abandoned and almost half a billion dollars to add constant tension and new cat poles to 32 track miles of the NEC, build a substation and upgrade the signal system.
> 
> We're way past billions for this enterprise.



So I take it we're not gonna electrify between DC and Richmond for the time being.


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## jis

NeueAmtrakCalifornia said:


> So I take it we're not gonna electrify between DC and Richmond for the time being.



Not as part of the current $4+ Billion that VA has embarked upon.


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## Thirdrail7

NeueAmtrakCalifornia said:


> So I take it we're not gonna electrify between DC and Richmond for the time being.



I wonder if CSX made any provisions related to electrification in the sale. They definitely didn't allow it on the New York Empire sale (although that is a lease.)


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## adamj023

Cost wouldn’t differ much from the cost to build the interstate highway system.

https://www.whatitcosts.com/interstate-highway-system-construction-cost-history


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## Qapla

[satire]
Yes, but the Interstate Highway System doesn't operate at a loss. It always makes a profit and pays for itself. It is certainly NOT subsidized by tax dollars like Amtrak is
[/satire]


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## sttom

Well Amtrak runs on approximately 20,800 miles of track it doesn't own. The cost to build a mile of single track on flat land is $1 million. So for a single track Nationwide outside of the NEC would be at least $20.8 billion for conventional track. The more bridges, tunnels and hills you add, the higher the cost would be.


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## west point

Wonder what it will cost to re lay track on previously used ROW. Of course preparation of sub grade costs will depend on how long dormant. That is grubbing out vegetation and application of non pours cloth under sub grade.


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## neroden

Thirdrail7 said:


> I wonder if CSX made any provisions related to electrification in the sale. They definitely didn't allow it on the New York Empire sale (although that is a lease.)


That sort of restriction is against public policy, not to mention stupid, but I wouldn't worry about it; the restriction can be bought out whenever it is time to electrify. CSX's incompetence is notorious though.


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## neroden

jis said:


> Not as part of the current $4+ Billion that VA has embarked upon.


Long Bridge and L'Enfant design specifically left *space* for future electrification, last I checked. They do not want to have to redo concrete if they electrify later (which they will since everything has to electrify eventually)


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## west point

About electrification. It may be if MARC wants thru service to at least the Pentagon that Amtrak or Va cold add wire to past ALX station or thru MARC trains ?


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## neroden

west point said:


> About electrification. It may be if MARC wants thru service to at least the Pentagon that Amtrak or Va cold add wire to past ALX station or thru MARC trains ?


Sure. Once they have a new Long Bridge and passenger-exclusive tracks as far as Alexandria.  You're right that they should include them in engineering -- they're leaving space for it but not planning to build it so far.


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## jis

Are they adding any reversing siding(s) south/west of Alexandria? I doubt that they will turn a train on the main line tracks in Alexandria station. There is space available for uch around AF interlocking.


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## basketmaker

Look at the freight carriers that Amtrak utilizes assets. BNSF=$59B, UP=$59B, CSX=$36B, NS=$36B, CN=$29B, CP=$21B and AMTK=$22B comes to $266B. That was just with a very quick Google search.


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## ehbowen

basketmaker said:


> Look at the freight carriers that Amtrak utilizes assets. BNSF=$59B, UP=$59B, CSX=$36B, NS=$36B, CN=$29B, CP=$21B and AMTK=$22B comes to $266B. That was just with a very quick Google search.


And further keep in mind that much of that is depreciated. To build new from scratch...just wow.


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## Bob Dylan

Can you say "All the Money in the World and More!!"( Cost overruns are a sure thing!)


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## jis

In any case, lack of political will is the primary problem. If there is political will, money can always be found. Just curtailing a few of the fancy aircraft and sea craft programs of the DoD will be enough to fund a significant part of the basic network. LOL!


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## Bob Dylan

jis said:


> In any case, lack of political will is the primary problem. If there is [political will, money can always be found. Just curtailing a few of the fancy aircraft and sea craft programs of the DoD will be enough to fund a significant part of the basic network. LOL!


Paging Ryan!! lol


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## NightRose

cirdan said:


> If you want rail to be genuinely competitive on something like a coast to coast line, even HSR isn't fast enough to be a genuine alternative to airlines. You'd have to look at something like maglev or a hyperloop for that. The costs would be immense.



This is true in terms of speed, but speed isn't the only thing that matters when people are making transportation decisions. If a government seriously dedicated to GHG reductions built out then started heavily subsidizing rail because of environmental and social benefits, I suspect it would become a primary choice even for long distance transportation. Sure, people with extreme efficiency needs/time constraints might fly (sort of how private jets work today) but if it only costs $20 (or nothing!) to travel from LA to Chi, and $50 will upgrade you to a sleeper pod or roomette, then a lot of people would likely choose the slower, more leisurely option.


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## neroden

basketmaker said:


> Look at the freight carriers that Amtrak utilizes assets. BNSF=$59B, UP=$59B, CSX=$36B, NS=$36B, CN=$29B, CP=$21B and AMTK=$22B comes to $266B. That was just with a very quick Google search.



So, pretty cheap then. We spend roughly 3 times that much on the US military every *year*, and the US military appears to exist primarily to threaten our national security by angering and alienating foreign govenments and foreign citizens -- it certainly hasn't won any wars. At that price, we should just do it, nationalize the railroads, it's cheap. Of course, what prevents this is political -- we have a lot of Congressmen who like blowing money on completely counterproductive military spending (probably because they get kickbacks) but reject any spending which might actually make life better for Americans. (Yes, I am cynical.)


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## drdumont

Skyline said:


> In some places, it might be possible for Amtrak to co-exist with other freight tracks and simply “lease” one track for its own use from the host railroad. And then lease back operating rights for freight on schedules that won’t interfere with passenger train operations. Amtrak dispatchers would decide.
> 
> _Wow! Would that it could be the case! So many of the railroads have ripped up "surplus to needs" tracks that could have been turned into a revenue source._
> 
> 
> This might mean upgrading track, if it already exists beside other tracks, for faster speeds that make the train a better option than private autos. It would not need to be “high-speed” tho.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> Other places it would involve brand new tracks.


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## dogbert617

AGM.12 said:


> It would seem that there is a movement afoot in some states to provide Amtrak with its own trackage. Michigan has already done this for the Wolverine service. VA and NC are in the process of doing this as well. Even in states not receptive in supporting corridor trains Amtrak is taking the steps in this direction, such as Florida where they acquired a 50 some mile section of the CSX A line north of Deland to Palatka. I would not be suprised to see Florida unload the line through Orlando as well as the line Tri Rail uses from WPB to Miami onto Amtrak.



Speaking of Florida Amtrak routes, what was the reason Amtrak stopped running through Ocala, FL? It's too bad you no longer can take a train, to there. And also to a station (I think Waldo), which wasn't too far from Gainesville. Am I right in think Amtrak no longer doing train service to Ocala, was because of Amtrak no longer running the Silver Palm(IIRC now the Palmetto to only Savannah) through central Florida?

And of course, don't need to get started on the sadness about Sunset Ltd. no longer running through Pensacola, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, etc.


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## AGM.12

I believe that, in addition to state funded improvements to the ex SAL route to central Florida, CSX would part with the A line through Orlando on the condition that passenger service would be focused there and not on the S line, which will become freight only.


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## Qapla

Yes, the station in Waldo, Fl is just east of Gainesville.



It has been closed for many, many years although it is listed as a depot for the thruway bus

The building was built in 1963 to replace the old on - which had, at one time, been a divisional headquarters for the Seaboard Air Line Railway.


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## 20th Century Rider

It's simply too late for even thinking of building a rail network across private lands... not even worth speculation; land is simply too scarce and expensive. We need to think of negotiating and upgrading existing track and rights of way along already existing utilities, pipe lines, and interstate / federal highways.


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## pennyk

Qapla said:


> Yes, the station in Waldo, Fl is just east of Gainesville.
> View attachment 18250
> 
> 
> It has been closed for many, many years although it is listed as a depot for the thruway bus
> 
> The building was built in 1963 to replace the old on - which had, at one time, been a divisional headquarters for the Seaboard Air Line Railway.


Thanks for posting the photo. It brings back wonderful memories. I traveled to and from Waldo many times. In fact, when I first traveled to college, it was by train (pre Amtrak) to Waldo.


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## west point

Yes Waldo ~ 12 miles NNE of Gainesville. SAL once served Gainesville on a branch line from Waldo to Cedar Key that was abandoned by SCL. The University of Florida has a lot of potential passengers but being on a branch line it would never have been able to get Amtrak service. Now in the distant future a new HSR line ? ? I believe the "S" line missing the Orlando area was its death knell ?


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## Qapla

There are no longer tracks in Gainesville that would allow service to go anywhere ... rails-to-trails have claimed the connecting tracts that would link the Ocala area to Gainesville 

There are also NO direct tracks between Gainesville and Tallahassee - connecting the two Universities by rail


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## McIntyre2K7

Qapla said:


> There are no longer tracks in Gainesville that would allow service to go anywhere ... rails-to-trails have claimed the connecting tracts that would link the Ocala area to Gainesville
> 
> There are also NO direct tracks between Gainesville and Tallahassee - connecting the two Universities by rail



Which is strange considering the amount of open land in that part of the state. There should be a Florida west coast line that runs from Miami to Atlanta using the right of way on Interstate 75. You would have stops in Naples, Ft. Myers, Sarasota, Tampa, Ocala, Gainesville. Then once it crosses into Georgia it would stop in Valdosta, Macon before ending in Atlanta. You could crate a station near the I-75/I-10 interchange that would connect with a Jacksonville to New Orleans route using the right of way from Interstate 10.


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## MARC Rider

All new tracks just for passenger rail seems to be overkill. It seems that it might be better to purchase partial ownership arrangements and build an extra track and sidings on current right of way so that both passenger and freight can coexist peacefully. 

However, there are places where all-new right of way might be in order -- for both passenger and freight. Nearly all of the US rail network was laid out during the 19th century under technological constraints -- both in construction technology and the performance of rail vehicles -- that don't apply today. Most of the routes over mountainous areas twist and turn following stream valleys to be able to keep to the low grades needed by old time steam locos and the limitations of 19th century earthmoving capabilities. The network is thus not very direct in many places, and has difficulty competing with road traffic, given that the Interstate Highway network was designed and built from the mid 20th century on. Even though the highways don't cross the mountains in a straight line, they are a lot less twisty than the railroads. Imagine trying to drive a model year 2020 18-wheeler tractor trailer across the country using the highway network of, say, 1940. That's what the American railroad system is like.

The rail mileage between Washington and Pittsburgh, for example, is about 50 miles longer than the highway mileage. Furthermore, much of the rail mileage is so curvy the trains can't go much faster the 40-50 mph. On the other hand, once you merge on to the freeway in DC, you can drive nonstop at 60-70 mph (if you're the type to actually observe speed limits) all the way to Pittsburgh. (OK, there's a couple of traffic lights in Breezewood, and one might need to take a bathroom break, you get the idea.) From the perspective of passenger service, the NS main across Pennsylvania happens to bypass State College, one of the largest urban conglomeration between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. I could definitely see an advantage to building a new rail corridor that would serve State College along the Harrisburg - Pittsburgh line. We clearly need to take a closer look at our rail system and bring it up to date to better serve our total transportation system.


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## TheVig

Environmental law suits alone would make it cost prohibitive. After all we need to make sure the habitat of the rare speckled unicorn cockroach is not harmed.


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## Siegmund

MARC Rider said:


> Nearly all of the US rail network was laid out during the 19th century under technological constraints -- both in construction technology and the performance of rail vehicles -- that don't apply today. Most of the routes over mountainous areas twist and turn following stream valleys to be able to keep to the low grades needed by old time steam locos and the limitations of 19th century earthmoving capabilities.



Construction technology has improved, but physics hasn't changed. 19th century technology is NOT why railroads follow rivers rather than go straight over mountains.
The other constraints have gotten tighter, rather than looser: labor is much more expensive, land is much more expensive, and so are things like adding and removing helper engines.

It's not "low grades needed by old time steam locos," but "low grades needed in order to move any heavy mass without an insane amount of power." The trend is to lower grades, not steeper. In steam days there were many mainlines of more than 2% grade, temporary lines before tunnels were dug of 4% and more, and routine use of 6+% places like logging railroads with low speeds and short trains and extreme terrain. Such new routes as have been built in my lifetime have mostly been built to reduce grades to 1% or less. 

Railroads move freight across mountains with perhaps 2 horsepower per ton. "Overpowered" passenger trains may get up to 6 or 8 HP per ton (power they don't need for speed on level ground, but for quick acceleration, and to maintain speed on grades.)

Meanwhile semi trucks on the highway are in the 10-20 HP per ton range; your car is insanely overpowered at something north of 100 HP per ton, about the same as a piston airplane; jets are more like 500 HP/ton.

There are proposals to do things like run the LA to Vegas train along the I-15 median across Cajon Pass - and provide it with enough power to climb a 6% grade - and it can be done if cost is no object.

If cost were no object, though, we'd do better to flatten and straighten track, and imitate the tunnels under the Alps.


----------



## Ziv

There is one joker in play though. The Boring Company does seem to have reduced the cost of tunneling a great deal. Unfortunately, so far, their bore size is not adequate for rail traffic much larger than that used by the London Underground's deep tube operations. Probably not a train that would be of much use for Amtrak. ;-)
But the future is uncertain when it comes to cost per mile of tunneling.



Siegmund said:


> Construction technology has improved, but physics hasn't changed. 19th century technology is NOT why railroads follow rivers rather than go straight over mountains.
> The other constraints have gotten tighter, rather than looser: labor is much more expensive, land is much more expensive, and so are things like adding and removing helper engines.
> 
> It's not "low grades needed by old time steam locos," but "low grades needed in order to move any heavy mass without an insane amount of power." The trend is to lower grades, not steeper. In steam days there were many mainlines of more than 2% grade, temporary lines before tunnels were dug of 4% and more, and routine use of 6+% places like logging railroads with low speeds and short trains and extreme terrain. Such new routes as have been built in my lifetime have mostly been built to reduce grades to 1% or less.
> 
> ......
> 
> If cost were no object, though, we'd do better to flatten and straighten track, and imitate the tunnels under the Alps.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

TheVig said:


> Environmental law suits alone would make it cost prohibitive. After all we need to make sure the habitat of the rare speckled unicorn cockroach is not harmed.


The people funding environmental lawsuits against passenger rail do so because they're anti-rail rather than pro-environment. The vast majority of environmentalists are pro-rail. Environmentalists don't have enough power to fight more than a few battles at a time and their limited means are already tied up and spoken for in other lawsuits. Realizing this to be the case the current government has suspended enforcement of air and water pollution regulations, curtailed states' ability to block energy projects, and suspended requirements for environmental review and public input on new mines, pipelines, highways, and other projects. This could be done to help speed up and lower the cost of implementing more and faster passenger rail if we had the will to do so.


----------



## Nick Farr

20th Century Rider said:


> It's simply too late for even thinking of building a rail network across private lands... not even worth speculation; land is simply too scarce and expensive.



Well, with COVID and global warming, there's probably a lot of people who wouldn't mind selling off their brownfields.



20th Century Rider said:


> We need to think of negotiating and upgrading existing track and rights of way along already existing utilities, pipe lines, and interstate / federal highways.



Pretty much this. There's plenty of existing right of ways that, while not perfect, would be roughly adequate to build new rail lines. 

The main point of the OP was to declutter freight traffic from passenger trains. A lot of this can be accomplished by building a lot more sidings, flyovers and bypass routes along existing lines. 

We don't need to build new rail, we need to improve the mileage that we have, straightening curves, electrifing where possible, removing grade crossings and allowing for better dispatch planning. Amtrak doesn't need to own 100% of its rail


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## neroden

Nick Farr said:


> The main point of the OP was to declutter freight traffic from passenger trains. A lot of this can be accomplished by building a lot more sidings, flyovers and bypass routes along existing lines.



The Water Level Route (Lake Shore Limited) had at least four tracks the entire way from NY to Chicago. (Sometimes along different alignments, as in Syracuse, or approaching Grand Central via the Harlem or Hudson lines, or going via Indiana vs. via Canada). 

There are *plenty* of ROWs from NY to Chicago and only mild curve straightening would be needed to separate passenger and freight, if some politician was willing to buy half the right of way and build the track. 

As has happened from Richmond to DC, which Virginia inked a deal to buy half the ROW.



> We don't need to build new rail, we need to improve the mileage that we have, straightening curves, electrifing where possible, removing grade crossings and allowing for better dispatch planning. Amtrak doesn't need to own 100% of its rail


States and federal government need to be willing to buy exclusive passenger track; it really is just political will.


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## Michigan Mom

I find this a compelling topic and wish I had something to contribute.... 
Building infrastructure shouldn't be a pipe dream, unaffordable, etc... 
It was once achievable and should be today but even better.


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## caravanman

Would anyone build a whole brand new freeway across the country to allow one or two vehicles to drive along it each day?

Given the lack of passenger revenue, even allowing for ridership to increase by tenfold this just won't err, fly...


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## railiner

caravanman said:


> Would anyone build a whole brand new freeway across the country to allow one or two vehicles to drive along it each day?
> 
> Given the lack of passenger revenue, even allowing for ridership to increase by tenfold this just won't err, fly...


I get your meaning, but it's not really a good analogy...if a new freeway is built anywhere, it will very quickly be choked with traffic, as experience proves...


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## Qapla

railiner said:


> quickly be choked with traffic, as experience proves



A good example of that is the Buchman Bridge in Jacksonville, Fl. In 1963 it was decided a bridge joining Orange Park to Madarin should be built to make a way across from those two points that didn't require an hour round-about-trip. They built a 4-labe bridge comprised of two two-lane spans. I remember when the bridge was new in the early 1970's. It was like taking a bridge to nowhere. There was hardly any traffic on the bridge and, even though Orange Park was a "fair size", there was not much at the south end of the bridge.

People began to ponder the wisdom of spending "all that money" on a bridge that no one uses.

In 1995, the bridge was expanded from two lanes in each direction with partial breakdown lanes to four lanes in each direction with full breakdown lanes. Today, it is one of the most used bridges in Jacksonville with rush-hour traffic causing severe backups in both directions.

Like Kevin Costner's experience - "Build it and they will come ..."


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## caravanman

The point was that Amtrak only runs one train a day over much of America. Building your own new private freeway if you only have one vehicle a day to use it is bonkers, it only works if thousands can use it each day.
Amtrak can't utilise a new network profitably, as it can't run frequent enough services to make it pay.


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## Qapla

It doesn't have to pay ...

That road does not "pay" regardless if it has one car or bumper-to-bumper traffic - it does not collect any revenue unless it is a toll road.

There are thousands of paved county roads all over this country that cost millions to build that do not have hundreds of cars driving down them each day - many, many of them with way less people per day than a single LD Amtrak train carries - yet, no one expects them to "turn a profit" or complain because they were built ... in fact, just the opposite, they complain if they are not paved and kept repaired.


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## west point

We do not have to worry about passenger only one RT a day. But there is a great need in several locations for additional tracks. 
1. San Diego - LAX, 
2. Sacremento - San Jose = Some third track
3. SEA - PDX
4. CHI - STL
5. South of the Lake = a Big need probably 2 main tracks
6. Richmond - WASH = Third and some 4th trackk.
7. NYP - Albany - Buffalo = passenger only 1 and 2 additional
8. Some third track or fourth New Haven - Boston
9. And of course Brightline is doubling all tracks MIA- Cocoa. And if they are too sucessful will need more second track Cocoa - Orlando. At a price of what $2B+ ?


----------



## caravanman

Qapla said:


> It doesn't have to pay ...
> That road does not "pay" regardless if it has one car or bumper-to-bumper traffic - it does not collect any revenue unless it is a toll road.


By "pay" of course I meant repay the original and day to day costs in some way. My example of building a new road to benefit just one vehicle a day was hypothetical, to illustrate how silly the idea of building a new rail line across America to benefit one train a day is, which was the original topic of this thread.

In answer to the toll road comment, I would say there are other ways that a road "repays" it's costs, by allowing commerce to thrive, shops, businesses, communities all get benefit. This applies to train tracks too of course.


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## railiner

caravanman said:


> By "pay" of course I meant repay the original and day to day costs in some way. My example of building a new road to benefit just one vehicle a day was hypothetical, to illustrate how silly the idea of building a new rail line across America to benefit one train a day is, which was the original topic of this thread.
> 
> In answer to the toll road comment, I would say there are other ways that a road "repays" it's costs, by allowing commerce to thrive, shops, businesses, communities all get benefit. This applies to train tracks too of course.


I hadn't even thought of that, but how very true....when a new road is built, the property values (and taxes) in its vicinity skyrocket. Even in rural area's, every new Interstate Highway exit mushrooms into a 'town' of motel's, restaurants, gas station's, etc....


----------



## tgstubbs1

railiner said:


> I hadn't even thought of that, but how very true....when a new road is built, the property values (and taxes) in its vicinity skyrocket. Even in rural area's, every new Interstate Highway exit mushrooms into a 'town' of motel's, restaurants, gas station's, etc....


The same with rail, even more so. Housing developments, even towns result from light rail stations. Rail is excellent for helping real estate values and thus reducing price pressure in overcrowded cities.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

caravanman said:


> Would anyone build a whole brand new freeway across the country to allow one or two vehicles to drive along it each day? Given the lack of passenger revenue, even allowing for ridership to increase by tenfold this just won't err, fly...





caravanman said:


> The point was that Amtrak only runs one train a day over much of America. Building your own new private freeway if you only have one vehicle a day to use it is bonkers, it only works if thousands can use it each day. Amtrak can't utilise a new network profitably, as it can't run frequent enough services to make it pay.





caravanman said:


> My example of building a new road to benefit just one vehicle a day was hypothetical, to illustrate how silly the idea of building a new rail line across America to benefit one train a day is, which was the original topic of this thread.


I think most members realize that it would make no sense to build a nationwide rail network for one train per day.



railiner said:


> I hadn't even thought of that, but how very true....when a new road is built, the property values (and taxes) in its vicinity skyrocket. Even in rural area's, every new Interstate Highway exit mushrooms into a 'town' of motel's, restaurants, gas station's, etc....


I've seen plenty of towns that vanished into obscurity after a new highway bypassed main street.


----------



## caravanman

Devil's Advocate said:


> I think most members realize that it would make no sense to build a nationwide rail network for one train per day.


You might think so, but this thread has over 80 replies !


----------



## tgstubbs1

Before trains, people hardly traveled cross country at all. Now with jets going everywhere people travel more than ever (before the virus). The travel medium makes it market, to a degree.


----------



## jis

caravanman said:


> Would anyone build a whole brand new freeway across the country to allow one or two vehicles to drive along it each day?
> 
> Given the lack of passenger revenue, even allowing for ridership to increase by tenfold this just won't err, fly...


Frankly I think this is a strawman set up, and then knocked down several times.

Talking of building new ROWs in New York State or down the east coast is not about running a single train but enabling corridors running dozens of trains a day, and all of them not even necessarily end to end either. It is quite sad and counter-productive to try to characterize such efforts as mindless ones for building new ROW for a single train each day.

Yes there are other places where such a criticism is appropriate. But there are literally dozens of corridors, some of considerable length where that criticism does not hold water. Each corridor needs to be evaluated based on its potential, and not some sweeping general principle. Just IMHO of course.


----------



## railiner

tgstubbs1 said:


> The same with rail, even more so. Housing developments, even towns result from light rail stations. Rail is excellent for helping real estate values and thus reducing price pressure in overcrowded cities.


Isn't that pretty much what Brightline/FEC is counting on?


----------



## Qapla

Perhaps, instead of building a "separate passenger network" there could be some sort of "revision" where a "passenger first" set of rails could be laid along existing tracks. These could be used for passenger service first/primarily and allow freight when there is time and space for it - these passenger rails being controlled by Amtrak dispatch - not freight dispatch.

Shouldn't have to buy as much land if you are using existing ROW - and judges should refuse to hear cases of people who want to block "double tracking" when they have lived with a single track without bringing suit.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

caravanman said:


> You might think so, but this thread has over 80 replies !


You seem to have assumed the opening post expected everything besides the new tracks would be left exactly the same. Except that we're talking about a massive project that would likely cost hundreds of billions and take decades to finish. I agree that it's unclear precisely what the OP had in mind when they started the thread but I would imagine most replies assumed a whole new network costing so much time and money would come with several trains per day.


----------



## railiner

Just a slight 'divergence' here....

If our nation suddenly took rail transport more seriously, and decided to build an entire new network to allow high speed trains, etc...
Would it be a good idea to take that opportunity to build an entirely new broad gauge system, with commensurately larger loading gauge as well?

Think: "Supertrain", for those that recall that old NBC fantasy show....


----------



## Qapla

That would be an interesting idea.

Would it be possible to achieve a true high speed train if it were wider?

If you could use a gauge that would allow the cars to be 12'-16' wide that would certainly make for some interesting passenger car designs/ideas

Of course, designers would probably use that extra space to crowd more people into less space instead of making private rooms more spacious and comfortable.


----------



## tgstubbs1

west point said:


> We do not have to worry about passenger only one RT a day. But there is a great need in several locations for additional tracks.
> 1. San Diego - LAX,
> 2. Sacremento - San Jose = Some third track
> 3. SEA - PDX
> 4. CHI - STL
> 5. South of the Lake = a Big need probably 2 main tracks
> 6. Richmond - WASH = Third and some 4th trackk.
> 7. NYP - Albany - Buffalo = passenger only 1 and 2 additional
> 8. Some third track or fourth New Haven - Boston
> 9. And of course Brightline is doubling all tracks MIA- Cocoa. And if they are too sucessful will need more second track Cocoa - Orlando. At a price of what $2B+ ?


They should have sidings long enough for a super long freight train on all the lines.


----------



## caravanman

jis said:


> Frankly I think this is a strawman set up, and then knocked down several times.
> 
> Talking of building new ROWs in New York State or down the east coast is not about running a single train but enabling corridors running dozens of trains a day, and all of them not even necessarily end to end either. It is quite sad and counter-productive to try to characterize such efforts as mindless ones for building new ROW for a single train each day.
> 
> Yes there are other places where such a criticism is appropriate. But there are literally dozens of corridors, some of considerable length where that criticism does not hold water. Each corridor needs to be evaluated based on its potential, and not some sweeping general principle. Just IMHO of course.



I assumed that the original posters idea was to allow passenger trains to run freely without delay by freight trains.
I thought the N.E. passenger corridor was already predominantly used by Amtrak, do freight trains cause major delays here? 
I am all for more trains, goodness knows, but the current (pre-covid) long distance train timetable of one train a day on shared tracks seems unlikely to blossom into dozens of trains a day if new passenger only tracks were built. 
I agree that frequent shorter point to point routes covering a days travel seems a good direction to move in.


----------



## jiml

Qapla said:


> Perhaps, instead of building a "separate passenger network" there could be some sort of "revision" where a "passenger first" set of rails could be laid along existing tracks. These could be used for passenger service first/primarily and allow freight when there is time and space for it - these passenger rails being controlled by Amtrak dispatch - not freight dispatch.
> 
> Shouldn't have to buy as much land if you are using existing ROW - and judges should refuse to hear cases of people who want to block "double tracking" when they have lived with a single track without bringing suit.


The answer is actually buried in this post. It will take some significant investment in _existing_ infrastructure, whether that is additional passing sidings, double-tracking single lines or adding additional tracks to areas that already are (where space permits) such as some of those mentioned earlier - ex-NYC comes to mind. The key might be to enlist the affected freight railroads as partners rather than adversaries, selling them on their benefits derived from cooperation.


----------



## west point

The above post about passenger trains first new track has merit. Allowing freght trains may be allowed but there needs to be several changes to how it will be allowed. First let us look at No Cal operation of Sacremento to San Jose. The rail line for the most part is all 79 MPH except in the few places where topography prevents that speed with permanent speed restrictions. The 79 speeds are not having the occasional temporary speed reductions that often occurr on other rail lines. That is because CAL DOT pays for surfacing all the track at least once in between and in some places twice what UP would be doing to the track for just freight trains. Have read that there is a permanently assigned surfacing machhine on that track but have no independent confirmation.

A passenger train with its 159k# cars has much less wear and tear on track and surfacing than freight trains with many cars loaded to the 286k# car loads. Have not seen actual research but suspect that wear and tear is exponentially higher per pound of weight such as road loads to the 4th power. Only the passenger locos exceed those weights although for the most part they are only 4 wheel trucks. Also suspension of passenger cars are much more forgiving of track structures especially switches and frogs.

If a section of a passenger only track is used by a freight train there needs to be a charge for any car and loco over the weight of a passenger car using current weight in motion tech. As well wheel impact load detctors (WILDs) should be installed to bill any RR bringing a car with a flat wheel over the passenger track. Those impacts can do major damage to rails and may cause rail to be ground to eliminate the impact dents. All very costly to maintain smooth rail passenger trains.


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## Nick Farr

jis said:


> Talking of building new ROWs in New York State or down the east coast is not about running a single train but enabling corridors running dozens of trains a day, and all of them not even necessarily end to end either. It is quite sad and counter-productive to try to characterize such efforts as mindless ones for building new ROW for a single train each day.



There's two arguments here: 

1) Building (or realigning and refurbishing existing) ROWs that connect nearby cities. The idea is exactly that, corridors that can be used by high speed intercity trains and more local commuter rail. Straightening the NEC and making better rail + ballast systems along with express tracks could cut the travel time between WAS and BOS to around 2.5 hours--solidly beating any flight alternatives for time. These plans exist, have been well studied and could be in near constant use to try to replace car traffic and extend the practical life of freeway systems by driving down traffic.

2) Building a brand new High-Speed Rail network to connect every major city from coast to coast, including lines between cities over 400 miles apart that have very little potential for intermediate stops. 

Until the first is accomplished, there's really no point to building the second. I believe OP was advocating for #2.

In almost all cases, public coffers support the design and construction of the ROWs and subsidize maintenance, allowing for any qualified operator to run services on them. This is how airports work, after all.


----------



## jis

The problem is that we always get hung up in theoretical discussions of extreme positions instead of deploying the same energy in pragmatic evolution. Until we get out of that more there is little hope that rail advocates will manage to do anything really positive for the growth of passenger rail system. As it is over half the advocates spend all their time trying to recreate or restore the 1950s instead of dong any consolidatd planning to grow the system. The future of apssenger rail for these various reasons in the US still remains pretty bleak IMHO.


----------



## Nick Farr

jis said:


> The problem is that we always get hung up in theoretical discussions of extreme positions instead of deploying the same energy in pragmatic evolution.



Me: "Hey, maybe we could get service on the LD trains to improve if we sent some e-mails and surveys to help hold OBS accountable..."

Forum: "I NEVER READ JUNK EMAILZ WE NEED HIGH SPEED RAIL WITH TABLECLOTH DINING STEAKS AND DINNER SALADS OR IM NEVER RIDING AMTRAK AGAIIIIIIN".


----------



## jis

Nick Farr said:


> Me: "Hey, maybe we could get service on the LD trains to improve if we sent some e-mails and surveys to help hold OBS accountable..."
> 
> Forum: "I NEVER READ JUNK EMAILZ WE NEED HIGH SPEED RAIL WITH TABLECLOTH DINING STEAKS AND DINNER SALADS OR IM NEVER RIDING AMTRAK AGAIIIIIIN".


I guess you and I share certain frustrations 

The fact of the matter though is that the LD network will just futz along as is unless we are able to significantly improve timeliness, reliability and speed. I am not suggesting 320kph (200mph), but it would sure be nice to get to a 160kph (100mph) norm as a starter. We are just talking 30kph (~20mph) more, and it really is getting the system upto a marginally better shape than it was in almost a hundred years back.

I think Brightline in Florida is following an approach in terms of speed and dispatch reliability that should be repeatable elsewhere if unused real estate in existing ROWs were utilized to build passenger exclusive, or at least predominant passenger use, tracks to 160-200kph (100-125mph) standard of track quality and safety gear.


----------



## Nick Farr

jis said:


> The fact of the matter though is that the LD network will just futz along as is unless we are able to significantly improve timeliness, reliability and speed. I am not suggesting 320kph (200mph), but it would sure be nice to get to a 160kph (100mph) norm as a starter.



I'm fine with them just making their scheduled arrival times. I don't really think the CZ would be improved much if it turned into a 1 Day trip.

That being said, the DOJ has to enforce the law when it comes to freight railroads, as well as targeted improvement of the ROW so passenger trains can bypass freight more easily. 



jis said:


> I think Brightline in Florida is following an approach in terms of speed and dispatch reliability that should be repeatable elsewhere if unused real estate in existing ROWs were utilized to build passenger exclusive, or at least predominant passenger use, tracks to 160-200kph (100-125mph) standard of track quality and safety gear.



I think once Texas HSR comes on line it will start to inspire similar projects elsewhere. As far as redevelopment goes, building a comprehensive public transit system or leveraging existing public transit systems together is the way to rebuilding a national network.

Right now our LD trains are--as you said--limping along like it's 1970.


----------



## west point

This poster really wants to see these improvements for HrSR. How ever there is the real problem of grade crossing excursions. One solution is eliminate all grade crossings but that is very expensive on top of the expense of getting the tracks to those speeds. Until drivers have the fear of major fines and time in the pokey these speeds might mean the quick reduction of operative equipment until not enough to maintain schedules.


----------



## joelkfla

jis said:


> I think Brightline in Florida is following an approach in terms of speed and dispatch reliability that should be repeatable elsewhere if unused real estate in existing ROWs were utilized to build passenger exclusive, or at least predominant passenger use, tracks to 160-200kph (100-125mph) standard of track quality and safety gear.


And they wouldn't even need to string overhead.


west point said:


> How ever there is the real problem of grade crossing excursions.


Don't quiet-zone type improvements eliminate a lot of those? Can the gates be timed to come down when a train is sufficiently far from the crossing to stop safely, and incursion detection equipment initiate an automatic emergency stop if a vehicle is on the tracks at that time?


----------



## Qapla

joelkfla said:


> Can the gates be timed to come down when a train is sufficiently far from the crossing to stop safely,



A long timespan between the arms coming down and the train arriving is one of the reasons impatient drivers go around the arms. To be effective the arms need to completely block all lanes in all directions from all sides - even then, some would rush in when they see them coming down and get trapped in between the arms


----------



## joelkfla

Qapla said:


> A long timespan between the arms coming down and the train arriving is one of the reasons impatient drivers go around the arms. To be effective the arms need to completely block all lanes in all directions from all sides - even then, some would rush in when they see them coming down and get trapped in between the arms


Yes, you would need to have four-quadrant gates blocking all lanes in both directions. I've seen crossings where the gates on the outward side close a few seconds after the ones on the inward side, to reduce the chance of entrapment. 

A means of detecting a car on the tracks when the gates close, and triggering an emergency stop, would take care of the last minute racers who don't make it thru. It can also cause the outward gate to raise so the trapped vehicle can escape. The technology exists, and has been tested at some crossings on the NEC in Connecticut.


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## caravanman

I think one has to view Amtrak long distance trains from the freight railroads perspective too, to get an idea of what improvements could be made to the timeliness and reliability of services on existing tracks.
I assume none of us know how much income the freight trains generate, and how much that depends on "On time" pickup and delivery? 
Unless the costs to the freight railroad are more when they impede the passage of Amtrak, than the costs of their late freight trains, I guess things will not change much. 
Amtrak has a part to play too, by ensuring their trains arrive at mutually agreed times at mutually agreed locations to fit in with the traffic flow.
I appreciate that my interest in the long distance trains does not coincide with the wish for high speed rail that others have mentioned. For me the fun of rail travel is the slow pace, seeing the scenery outside. I have ridden the TGV trains in France, and to be honest, they are quick, but not much fun along the way!


----------



## Rover

Dutchrailnut said:


> and that is just top of iceberg , build new tracks means bridges, over or underpasses the 50 Billion would probably not be enough.


Not mention the "new" underground tunnel under the Sierras!!


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## Trogdor

caravanman said:


> I assume none of us know how much income the freight trains generate, and how much that depends on "On time" pickup and delivery?



A decade ago, a BNSF manager once told me that some of the higher revenue trains will pull in $250,000 revenue (not profit/net income, just sales revenue) per departure.

I did some digging a while back (and shame on me, I keep forgetting to bookmark the links where I find this info because I’d love to go back to it and get more information) that gave sample rates of freight train revenues. I want to say that the revenue is in the neighborhood of a couple hundred dollars per car-mile. Basically, they take in a ton of revenue. I seem to recall my calculations that if a long-distance Amtrak train were to match the revenue of a freight train on a per-mile basis, it would require several hundred passengers paying higher-bucket sleeper fares.

They money they get from Amtrak in track access charges is a drop in the bucket, in comparison. Even if delays (and associated penalties) brought their Amtrak income to zero, it still wouldn’t be more painful, financially, than having to reduce freight traffic to let Amtrak through on time. This, right here, is the crux of the issue for why freight railroads don’t like Amtrak. An Amtrak train can take up more than one freight train slot (because of higher speeds, plus, sometimes, the need to accommodate a train going the “wrong way” on a long, single-track railroad when the freights could otherwise fleet their trains), yet brings them very little revenue to do so. Amtrak OTP does okay when the railroad is not full, but when freight traffic picks up to the point where they need every possible slot, OTP goes down the toilet. And it doesn’t matter how “friendly” the railroad supposedly is, either.

Remember when the Empire Builder, running on “passenger-friendly” BNSF had the best OTP of any long-distance train (early to mid 2000s)? Then, suddenly, BNSF realized that their little-used freight line in northern North Dakota (so little used that they were ready to abandon a part of it through Devil’s Lake, and Amtrak was drafting up plans for a reroute) was useful for all of the oil fracking going on in North Dakota, and almost overnight, the Builder’s OTP dropped to nearly zero. It got to the point where Amtrak had to add an extra consist to the Seattle & Portland end because otherwise trains had no chance of departing the west coast on time.

Take a freight train pulling in $250,000 on a route half the length of the Empire Builder, and then try to see what a passenger train would have to earn in fares to even come close to that, and the math becomes very difficult to pencil out in favor of the passenger train in any scenario where both share the same tracks and you are facing potential traffic that is meeting or exceeding those capacity limits.


----------



## jiml

west point said:


> This poster really wants to see these improvements for HrSR. How ever there is the real problem of grade crossing excursions. One solution is eliminate all grade crossings but that is very expensive on top of the expense of getting the tracks to those speeds. Until drivers have the fear of major fines and time in the pokey these speeds might mean the quick reduction of operative equipment until not enough to maintain schedules.


Any time spent watching railcams across the continent will illustrate the number of near-misses, since most are positioned in sight of crossings.


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## Qapla

So ... which would overpass style cost more

Build the tracks to go over the roads
Build the roads to go over the tracks


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## 20th Century Rider

Beyond what priorities American tax dollars go towards. But OMG... we are so far behind other developed nations. China can average high speed rail construction at a draw dropping pace... roadbed and all. Watch this!


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## Qapla

Nice!

... but where is the piano on the equipment?



Did you also watch the videos of them laying the track ... very efficient! (and they had an entire orchestra with them)


----------



## 20th Century Rider

Qapla said:


> Nice!
> 
> ... but where is the piano on the equipment?
> 
> 
> 
> Did you also watch the videos of them laying the track ... very efficient! (and they had an entire orchestra with them)


yes... jaw dropping vid... should have put that one in above!


----------



## joelkfla

But the people in power in China can do whatever they darn well please -- no pesky voters or corporations trying to maximize profits to worry about. Not really a fair comparison to the USA.


----------



## railiner

Qapla said:


> So ... which would overpass style cost more
> 
> Build the tracks to go over the roads
> Build the roads to go over the tracks


Assuming they are crossing on flat land, with no other geographical or structural limitations, I would think that it would cost more to elevate the tracks. My reasoning is because trains would need a much longer overpass, due to their need for a more gradual grade. Again assuming that the roadway was roughly the same width as the railway. If a multi lane freeway was crossing a single track, that would alter the calculation....


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## Qapla

Sounds reasonable


----------



## 20th Century Rider

joelkfla said:


> But the people in power in China can do whatever they darn well please -- no pesky voters or corporations trying to maximize profits to worry about. Not really a fair comparison to the USA.


?????


----------



## 20th Century Rider

railiner said:


> Assuming they are crossing on flat land, with no other geographical or structural limitations, I would think that it would cost more to elevate the tracks. My reasoning is because trains would need a much longer overpass, due to their need for a more gradual grade. Again assuming that the roadway was roughly the same width as the railway. If a multi lane freeway was crossing a single track, that would alter the calculation....


With high speed rail... the right of way predominates as can be seen in Europe and Asia... the trackage is straight and true regardless of mountains, roads, even rivers.


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## toddinde

joelkfla said:


> But the people in power in China can do whatever they darn well please -- no pesky voters or corporations trying to maximize profits to worry about. Not really a fair comparison to the USA.


But all polls repeatedly show that people want rail. The maximizing profit thing is the problem. People have a right to have the kind of society they want. China is a repressive society, and that’s bad. But what they’ve done to create synergy between national policies and priorities and corporate action is impressive. Thus the fact that China’s economic growth rate has blown America’s away. It’s not only authoritarian regimes that get to have nice things. Europe as well. When you travel overseas, you realize that the US is teetering on the edge of the first world, with trains that run at speeds common in the 1930s, a homeless problem out of control, and a large percentage of Americans with a living standard that isn’t even close to the poor in other countries. We can go on celebrating corporate greed, worship profits over people, watch as the US continues to decline and have its lunch eaten by China, and become a country that’s backward, dirty, and poor, or we can demand better. We’re Americans, and it’s time we quit making excuses and did something, like have a respectable, national, passenger railroad.


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## MARC Rider

tgstubbs1 said:


> They should have sidings long enough for a super long freight train on all the lines.


For these corridors, especially if you want to run "dozens of trains per day," the extra track capacity is not just to bypass "super long freight trains," but also to allow room for the "dozens of [passenger] trains per day," which might not all be Amtrak trains.


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## MARC Rider

caravanman said:


> I thought the N.E. passenger corridor was already predominantly used by Amtrak, do freight trains cause major delays here?


No, but commuter trains sometimes block Amtrak trains (and vice versa.)


----------



## Barb Stout

20th Century Rider said:


> yes... jaw dropping vid... should have put that one in above!



Between this video and re-watching Inception last night, I sure have gotten my trombone jones taken care of.


----------



## MARC Rider

1. The North American rail system is so Third World that expecting to build 320 km/hr (200 mph) high speed rail is perhaps too much of a stretch for any known method of financing it. After all, you need to crawl before you can walk, and you need to walk before you can run marathons. If you can build a system that has 100 - 130 km/hr (60-80 mph) end to end average speed, it can be perfectly competitive with driving, and a lot less expensive to build. Most of this can probably be done by relatively minor expansion of existing infrastructure and additional track maintenance. In the real hinterlands where there are only one or two long-distance trains a day, what is mainly needed are more and longer sidings.

2. That said, there are a few places where the existing rail routes are either so curvy and have such high grades or have out of the way routes that bypass current population centers that some new tracks would be in order. I'm thinking mostly of the routes that cross the central Appalachians, particularly the old B&O main the Capitol Ltd. uses and the old PRR main used by the Pennsylvanian. The slow running over the mountains limits the potential for Baltimore/Washington - Pittsburgh corridor service and Philadelphia - Pittsburgh corridor service, and the old PRR route completely bypasses State College, PA, about the largest population concentration between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh and full of potentially train-riding students. Again, we don't need 160+ km/hr (100 mph) running, it just needs to be as fast or faster than driving.


----------



## west point

railiner said:


> Assuming they are crossing on flat land, with no other geographical or structural limitations, I would think that it would cost more to elevate the tracks. My reasoning is because trains would need a much longer overpass, due to their need for a more gradual grade. Again assuming that the roadway was roughly the same width as the railway. If a multi lane freeway was crossing a single track, that would alter the calculation....



A problem this poster did not realize is there is a requirement to notchange the grade of a HSR very quickly. That is a track climbing a 2% grade to cross over a highway and then immediately go to 2% down hill is verboten. Grade changes have to be changed slowly other wise a HSR train would fly off the tracks over a road.. Road bridge over a rail line is less expensive and operating expenses for the train is less.


----------



## railiner

railiner said:


> Assuming they are crossing on flat land, with no other geographical or structural limitations, I would think that it would cost more to elevate the tracks. My reasoning is because trains would need a much longer overpass, due to their need for a more gradual grade. Again assuming that the roadway was roughly the same width as the railway. If a multi lane freeway was crossing a single track, that would alter the calculation....





west point said:


> A problem this poster did not realize is there is a requirement to notchange the grade of a HSR very quickly. That is a track climbing a 2% grade to cross over a highway and then immediately go to 2% down hill is verboten. Grade changes have to be changed slowly other wise a HSR train would fly off the tracks over a road.. Road bridge over a rail line is less expensive and operating expenses for the train is less.


I believe that is what I have said...if you are referring to me as "this poster".....?


----------



## Qapla

Then again - since some of the HST that exist are entirely raised - building like that would solve the problem of grade crossings


----------



## Nick Farr

Qapla said:


> Then again - since some of the HST that exist are entirely raised - building like that would solve the problem of grade crossings



In Europe, they're actually sunk into the ground in many cases, making automotive overpasses easier.

In the US, the best case for a brand new build barring other better ROWs is the median of existing freeways. The biggest problem there is the changes in grade and/or curves which would probably lead to more elevated construction.


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## ehbowen

Depending on available drainage and the type of soil, it can be cheaper to build an underpass for the highway while the rail line stays at grade.


----------



## toddinde

MARC Rider said:


> 1. The North American rail system is so Third World that expecting to build 320 km/hr (200 mph) high speed rail is perhaps too much of a stretch for any known method of financing it. After all, you need to crawl before you can walk, and you need to walk before you can run marathons. If you can build a system that has 100 - 130 km/hr (60-80 mph) end to end average speed, it can be perfectly competitive with driving, and a lot less expensive to build. Most of this can probably be done by relatively minor expansion of existing infrastructure and additional track maintenance. In the real hinterlands where there are only one or two long-distance trains a day, what is mainly needed are more and longer sidings.
> 
> 2. That said, there are a few places where the existing rail routes are either so curvy and have such high grades or have out of the way routes that bypass current population centers that some new tracks would be in order. I'm thinking mostly of the routes that cross the central Appalachians, particularly the old B&O main the Capitol Ltd. uses and the old PRR main used by the Pennsylvanian. The slow running over the mountains limits the potential for Baltimore/Washington - Pittsburgh corridor service and Philadelphia - Pittsburgh corridor service, and the old PRR route completely bypasses State College, PA, about the largest population concentration between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh and full of potentially train-riding students. Again, we don't need 160+ km/hr (100 mph) running, it just needs to be as fast or faster than driving.


Great comment. In a recent discussion, a point was made of how much bang for the buck you could get by making 30 mph track 50 mph, and 50 mph 79. Much easier than being obsessed about 110. We can do this. Reasonable speed, reliable, multiple frequency trains are the answer.


----------



## neroden

Trogdor said:


> A decade ago, a BNSF manager once told me that some of the higher revenue trains will pull in $250,000 revenue (not profit/net income, just sales revenue) per departure.
> 
> I did some digging a while back (and shame on me, I keep forgetting to bookmark the links where I find this info because I’d love to go back to it and get more information) that gave sample rates of freight train revenues. I want to say that the revenue is in the neighborhood of a couple hundred dollars per car-mile. Basically, they take in a ton of revenue. I seem to recall my calculations that if a long-distance Amtrak train were to match the revenue of a freight train on a per-mile basis, it would require several hundred passengers paying higher-bucket sleeper fares.
> 
> They money they get from Amtrak in track access charges is a drop in the bucket, in comparison. Even if delays (and associated penalties) brought their Amtrak income to zero, it still wouldn’t be more painful, financially, than having to reduce freight traffic to let Amtrak through on time. This, right here, is the crux of the issue for why freight railroads don’t like Amtrak. An Amtrak train can take up more than one freight train slot (because of higher speeds, plus, sometimes, the need to accommodate a train going the “wrong way” on a long, single-track railroad when the freights could otherwise fleet their trains), yet brings them very little revenue to do so. Amtrak OTP does okay when the railroad is not full, but when freight traffic picks up to the point where they need every possible slot, OTP goes down the toilet. And it doesn’t matter how “friendly” the railroad supposedly is, either.
> 
> Remember when the Empire Builder, running on “passenger-friendly” BNSF had the best OTP of any long-distance train (early to mid 2000s)? Then, suddenly, BNSF realized that their little-used freight line in northern North Dakota (so little used that they were ready to abandon a part of it through Devil’s Lake, and Amtrak was drafting up plans for a reroute) was useful for all of the oil fracking going on in North Dakota, and almost overnight, the Builder’s OTP dropped to nearly zero. It got to the point where Amtrak had to add an extra consist to the Seattle & Portland end because otherwise trains had no chance of departing the west coast on time.
> 
> Take a freight train pulling in $250,000 on a route half the length of the Empire Builder, and then try to see what a passenger train would have to earn in fares to even come close to that, and the math becomes very difficult to pencil out in favor of the passenger train in any scenario where both share the same tracks and you are facing potential traffic that is meeting or exceeding those capacity limits.


So, $250,000 fines for each instance of delaying a passenger train would equalize that calculation pretty quickly. Seems advisable.


----------



## neroden

MARC Rider said:


> 2. That said, there are a few places where the existing rail routes are either so curvy and have such high grades or have out of the way routes that bypass current population centers that some new tracks would be in order. I'm thinking mostly of the routes that cross the central Appalachians, particularly the old B&O main the Capitol Ltd. uses and the old PRR main used by the Pennsylvanian. The slow running over the mountains limits the potential for Baltimore/Washington - Pittsburgh corridor service and Philadelphia - Pittsburgh corridor service, and the old PRR route completely bypasses State College, PA, about the largest population concentration between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh and full of potentially train-riding students. Again, we don't need 160+ km/hr (100 mph) running, it just needs to be as fast or faster than driving.


I've crayoned-out a route through State College -- basically requires a tunnel under State College proper (5-10 miles, probably cut and cover) and tunnels from there to Lewistown (5-10 miles to pass under Penn Roosevelt State Park), while the rest of it is easy. It would take much more work to straighten out the rest of the line (West of Altoona and the curves between Lewistown and Harrisburg) but I think the value of stopping at State College alone would be quite substantial. PA state government has not, so far, agreed. (*sigh*)


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## neroden

Siegmund said:


> Construction technology has improved, but physics hasn't changed. 19th century technology is NOT why railroads follow rivers rather than go straight over mountains.



If you substitute "straight under mountains" for "straight over", there is a famous tradeoff related to speed (and early-19th-century technology was slower, obviously). Early designs aggressively avoided grades in favor of curves, which is right for low speeds and heavy loads. 

But for high speeds, you have to aggressively avoid curves in favor of grades; high speed trains can handle steeper grades, but curves provide permanent speed limitations.

Some of those 1830s-1840s routes are *absurdly* curvy, following every bend in the river or the mountains to stay as close to flat as possible. (And to save money, of course.) Nobody would build it that way now; they'd put in a cut or a tunnel or a bridge or something, and would accept a small grade to eliminate extreme curves. Horseshoe Curve is an example of what designers avoid now, but not the most extreme example. By the 1890s,, railroad construction was already prioritizing straighter over flatter and a number of lines had numerous bypass tunnels built for exactly this reason; lots were done in the 1920s-1930s.


----------



## Trogdor

neroden said:


> So, $250,000 fines for each instance of delaying a passenger train would equalize that calculation pretty quickly. Seems advisable.



Good luck getting that one through the courts.


----------



## railiner

neroden said:


> I've crayoned-out a route through State College -- basically requires a tunnel under State College proper (5-10 miles, probably cut and cover) and tunnels from there to Lewistown (5-10 miles to pass under Penn Roosevelt State Park), while the rest of it is easy. It would take much more work to straighten out the rest of the line (West of Altoona and the curves between Lewistown and Harrisburg) but I think the value of stopping at State College alone would be quite substantial. PA state government has not, so far, agreed. (*sigh*)


Wonder what that would all cost? Might be cheaper to "move" Penn State to Altoona....


----------



## MARC Rider

neroden said:


> I've crayoned-out a route through State College -- basically requires a tunnel under State College proper (5-10 miles, probably cut and cover) and tunnels from there to Lewistown (5-10 miles to pass under Penn Roosevelt State Park), while the rest of it is easy. It would take much more work to straighten out the rest of the line (West of Altoona and the curves between Lewistown and Harrisburg) but I think the value of stopping at State College alone would be quite substantial. PA state government has not, so far, agreed. (*sigh*)


I've lined up a similar route myself, but you also need to deal with Bald Eagle Mountain on the northwest side of State College, unless the new line is run down the Nittany Valley to the water gap that leads into Tyrone. It might be better to run the line directly from State College to Port Mathilda, because there is an existing rail line between Port Mathilda and Tyrone that could be upgraded. Also, the terrain in the Nittany valley is pretty rolling, so any rail line placed through it would require a lot of cuts and fills. So it might be better to have another tunnel, under Bald Eagle Mountain, and a ~400 ft. elevation difference between State College and Port Mathilda.


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## MARC Rider

railiner said:


> Wonder what that would all cost? Might be cheaper to "move" Penn State to Altoona....


Well, Elon Musk's Boring Company will provide the revolutionary technology needed to make this project much cheaper! 

The costs could well be paid back by the generalized economic benefit of rail service to the entire region -- and we're talking about the possibility of a multiple-train-per-day Keystone West service between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, not the current one train per day. Of course, they would probably need to run one or two trains per day over the old line, so Huntingdon doesn't get totally shut out -- Huntingdon doesn't even have bus service, in fact, they don't even have taxicab service, which surprised me, as it's not that small a town.


----------



## jiml

MARC Rider said:


> I've lined up a similar route myself, but you also need to deal with Bald Eagle Mountain on the northwest side of State College, unless the new line is run down the Nittany Valley to the water gap that leads into Tyrone. It might be better to run the line directly from State College to Port Mathilda, because there is an existing rail line between Port Mathilda and Tyrone that could be upgraded. Also, the terrain in the Nittany valley is pretty rolling, so any rail line placed through it would require a lot of cuts and fills. So it might be better to have another tunnel, under Bald Eagle Mountain, and a ~400 ft. elevation difference between State College and Port Mathilda.


FYI








State College, PA - Rail Line Back in Use after Years of Sitting Dormant -


Maybe you’ve felt the rumble coming down the tracks out near the Nittany Mall and past Rockview state prison.




www.statecollege.com


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## neroden

Trogdor said:


> Good luck getting that one through the courts.


Courts? No, Congress would have to do it. The courts would happily enforce it, but it would have to be passed by Congress first.


----------



## neroden

MARC Rider said:


> I've lined up a similar route myself, but you also need to deal with Bald Eagle Mountain on the northwest side of State College, unless the new line is run down the Nittany Valley to the water gap that leads into Tyrone. It might be better to run the line directly from State College to Port Mathilda,


Yes, that was my route.  From west to east, Port Mathilda to State College, more or less following state route "Business 322" under State College. Then punch a base tunnel from Boalsburg (or maybe Tusseyville) to Woodland. One more tunnel and a few bridges gets you to Burnham, where the existing rail line from the east ends. Then you can run through from Harrisburg to Tyrone *via* State College. Huntingdon (and only Huntingdon) loses service.


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## Trogdor

neroden said:


> Courts? No, Congress would have to do it. The courts would happily enforce it, but it would have to be passed by Congress first.



No, I mean the courts. Even if congress assessed such a penalty (doubtful), it would definitely face many challenges as to the constitutionality of such a penalty.


----------



## jis

toddinde said:


> Great comment. In a recent discussion, a point was made of how much bang for the buck you could get by making 30 mph track 50 mph, and 50 mph 79. Much easier than being obsessed about 110. We can do this. Reasonable speed, reliable, multiple frequency trains are the answer.


The US could follow India's example and shoot primarily for 100moph on all trunk routes, with 125 on select segments. This is entirely separate from the HSR side of things which is handled by an entirely different organization, with entirely different sources of funding so as not to interfere with the more widespread service provision goal for the trunk routes. But that sort of thing is unlikely to come to pass. We are too used to haphazard wasteful course of action involving trying everything that does not work before chancing onto something that does.


----------



## neroden

Trogdor said:


> No, I mean the courts. Even if congress assessed such a penalty (doubtful), it would definitely face many challenges as to the constitutionality of such a penalty.


No, it wouldn't. Ever looked into Constitutional law? Crystal clear it's constitutional. Not debatable. Textbook regulation of interstate commerce.

I agree that it would be a very heavy lift to get Congress to pass such a law.


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## jruff001

neroden said:


> No, it wouldn't. Ever looked into Constitutional law? Crystal clear it's constitutional. Not debatable. Textbook regulation of interstate commerce.


Just because a federal law passes the interstate commerce constitutional hurdle doesn't mean it wouldn't pass other hurdles.


----------



## jruff001

neroden said:


> I've crayoned-out a route through State College -- basically requires *a tunnel under State College proper* (5-10 miles, probably cut and cover) and tunnels from there to Lewistown (5-10 miles to pass under Penn Roosevelt State Park), while the rest of it is easy.


A new HSR line shouldn't go straight through an established downtown of a city. In this case it would probably be most sensible to put the State College station somewhere south of downtown (PA26 / PA45 / Whitehall Rd. areas?) and encourage smart development around it. The university's campus transit could link up to it there.


----------



## Ass0c1ate

Recently, a rail company in China announced that it is now offering high-speed rail cars with bogies that can adjust to train tracks of different gauges. If these trains work as advertised, then rail travel between Asia & Europe via rail is more convenient as changing bogies between border crossings takes up to 3 hours.


----------



## MARC Rider

Ass0c1ate said:


> Recently, a rail company in China announced that it is now offering high-speed rail cars with bogies that can adjust to train tracks of different gauges. If these trains work as advertised, then rail travel between Asia & Europe via rail is more convenient as changing bogies between border crossings takes up to 3 hours.



Sounds like it would be a good plot point for an action-adventure movie involving a chase of a high speed train, a border crossing with a gauge change, and a bogie changer malfunction. (I guess you'd need a brake failure, too, so the train can't slow down for the customs check.) I mean, it's kind of inpractical to have fight scenes on the tops of moving railway cars, what with the trains going 300 km/hr and 25 kV catenary in the way, so I guess movie producers do need to find and alternative narrative.


----------



## dlagrua

The number that I read for installing new track is $1 million per mile so if you could even use the long abandoned Milwaukee road ROW West, and lay track, a dedicated Chicago to Seattle route would cost over $1 billion. Then add in the signaling and station costs. I do not see Amtrak ever owning more of its own track. That is also a reason why I say the big "corridor route" plan that Amtrak management is pushing is a pipe dream. The freight railroads, except perhaps for the small branch RR lines, do not want more passenger trains on their tracks.


----------



## sttom

There is a difference between opening new corridors and actually building a new right of way. A mile of track may cost about $1 million to build, but that's doesn't include the cost of buying the land. The biggest barrier to Amtrak getting it's on ROW is the cost of land in areas where train service is needed. Rebuilding an existing double track line to passenger standards would run between $2.5-$2.7 million per mile. Throw in a few sidings and the Class 1s would consider allowing more corridors trains in their tracks. Cause track improvements they don't have to pay for or very little for means a lot. Getting your average track speed up from 38 miles per hour to 55 or greater even over a 200 mile stretch is a game changer. And the cost would be what $600 million from the public not including stations? It's a win win for passenger trains and the railroads.


----------



## WWW

Correct this radical assumption:

Amtrak has Priority (right of way) if operating ON TIME on Freight tracks ?!?
If operating late the Priority is void -

Now however if the lateness is due to the Freight traffic causing the lateness then 
what kind of redress is made available ?

Passenger service railroads ALWAY had Priority right of way except during war time -
National Security movements of critical materials.

Of course passenger rail service is not what it used to be and Amtrak building it's own
trackage is not going to come into play until the country is wall to wall residences similar
to the NEC.

I think I would prefer throwing blindfolded darts at a revolving piñata dart board to resolve this !


----------



## west point

Track cost per mile is not considering the costs of bridges and tunnels. That really ups the costs. Just look at the CA HSR project. That project is having to build the many bridges and does not seem to be getting any road funds to prevent grade crossings.


----------



## neroden

jruff001 said:


> A new HSR line shouldn't go straight through an established downtown of a city. In this case it would probably be most sensible to put the State College station somewhere south of downtown (PA26 / PA45 / Whitehall Rd. areas?) and encourage smart development around it. The university's campus transit could link up to it there.


Why shouldn't it? It would definitely be much more popular with an underground station on campus. Many HSR lines, worldwide, have underground tunnels and stations right under established downtowns of cities. Spain loves these.

I looked at ways to go around campus... but none of them work. They all require *both* slow curves *and* expensive land acquisition, (and they'd all have to be mostly elevated or underground, too). At that point, what are you *doing*, spending time and money on land acquisition to make a slower route which is less convenient and gets fewer riders?!? It makes more sense to go straight under; this way you can line it up with the approaches from the east and from the west and avoid serious doglegs.


----------



## Qapla

Going under cities would most likely not work to good in Florida ... unless they were going to go in a waterproof tube


----------



## sttom

neroden said:


> I've crayoned-out a route through State College -- basically requires a tunnel under State College proper (5-10 miles, probably cut and cover)



Cut and cover tunneling would also require dealing with utility lines which is a whole other can of worms. Which may or may not be worth doing vs digging under, but that opens you up to geoengineering (or whatever field deals with figuring out the composition of the dirt and tunneling.) If you were to cut and cover through an established town, you would also need a fairly straight path since roads might be where there are fewer utility lines to deal with and private property rights pretty much go all the way to hell. So you would need a straight, public right of way, near a Downtown State College, PA....which, doesn't seem like adding a train station somewhere near the edge would be that big of a deal considering people will drive for an hour just to take a flight. 15 minutes isn't going to kill someone.


----------



## west point

To be perfectly safe no tunneling below 10 - 15 above mean sea level where ever possible. Actually surface as well. Any tunneling must be in good bed rock below that elevation.


----------



## neroden

sttom said:


> Cut and cover tunneling would also require dealing with utility lines which is a whole other can of worms. Which may or may not be worth doing vs digging under, but that opens you up to geoengineering (or whatever field deals with figuring out the composition of the dirt and tunneling.) If you were to cut and cover through an established town, you would also need a fairly straight path



There is one. Google "North Atherton Street" and "South Atherton Street", also known as "Business 322".

Bypass routes in State College would be stupidly detoury and curved and criss-cross numerous property lines. There is a direct under-the-street route through the middle of town!



> since roads might be where there are fewer utility lines to deal with and private property rights pretty much go all the way to hell. So you would need a straight, public right of way, near a Downtown State College, PA....



Dude, look at Google Maps. There is one. There isn't a straight public right of way around the town -- but there is one right through the middle of the town. Put the station next to the Penn State golf course, where the available diggable land spreads out substantially. Room for a parking lot or garage too, maybe on the location of the existing lot.

I mean, if you have never bothered to actually look at Google Maps, you might not realize this, but once you look at Google Maps, it starts being clear what makes the most sense.

Punching a tunnel under Penn Roosevelt State Park is going to be the expensive part, not going under downtown State College.


----------



## ehbowen

west point said:


> To be perfectly safe no tunneling below 10 - 15 above mean sea level where ever possible. Actually surface as well. Any tunneling must be in good bed rock below that elevation.


So, no tunnels under the Hudson River?


----------



## MARC Rider

west point said:


> To be perfectly safe no tunneling below 10 - 15 above mean sea level where ever possible. Actually surface as well. Any tunneling must be in good bed rock below that elevation.


Considering that State College is about 1100-1200 feet above sea level, that shouldn't be a problem. The geology, however, is "karst," that is limestone and dolomite which contains lots of caverns and sinkholes and such. I'm not sure whether tunneling in karst is especially problematic or not, but State College seems to have been able to install underground water and sewer lines, so I would expect that it's not impossible.


----------



## neroden

A cut-and-cover should be easy enough regardless of the karst, but the necessary tunnel under the mountains east of State College... would require a lot of analysis. Mmmph.


----------



## sttom

neroden said:


> There is one. Google "North Atherton Street" and "South Atherton Street", also known as "Business 322".
> 
> Bypass routes in State College would be stupidly detoury and curved and criss-cross numerous property lines. There is a direct under-the-street route through the middle of town!
> 
> 
> 
> Dude, look at Google Maps. There is one. There isn't a straight public right of way around the town -- but there is one right through the middle of the town. Put the station next to the Penn State golf course, where the available diggable land spreads out substantially. Room for a parking lot or garage too, maybe on the location of the existing lot.
> 
> I mean, if you have never bothered to actually look at Google Maps, you might not realize this, but once you look at Google Maps, it starts being clear what makes the most sense.
> 
> Punching a tunnel under Penn Roosevelt State Park is going to be the expensive part, not going under downtown State College.



I did "like totally look at a map". Saying something isn't snap your fingers easy isn't saying it's impossible.

What is more likely to kill cutting and covering a major street would be the disruption to every day life that people would have to endure to get a train. Which the local populace would probably not be willing to live with. There is enough on record and in the public consciousness about how bad highway construction was for existing neighborhoods (well former neighborhoods now).

As for going around State College, there are highways running around the town. Highway right of ways are sometimes used for rail lines in other countries. If the option is no line or a line following a highway around town, I'd vote a for the train line instead of dying on the hill of "perfect".

And if you're going to use Business Route 322, it's not perfectly straight. Which means the trains wouldn't be running anywhere near high speeds once you're in town. Which would add to the run time, which as far as your concerned rules out any possible alternative route. Such as following highway 322 from Lewiston to Port Matilda. If NIMBYs in State College didn't kill a rail line over a proposed downtown tunnel, I bet environmentalists would for needing to pass through a state forest.


----------



## MARC Rider

sttom said:


> What is more likely to kill cutting and covering a major street would be the disruption to every day life that people would have to endure to get a train. Which the local populace would probably not be willing to live with. There is enough on record and in the public consciousness about how bad highway construction was for existing neighborhoods (well former neighborhoods now).
> 
> And if you're going to use Business Route 322, it's not perfectly straight. Which means the trains wouldn't be running anywhere near high speeds once you're in town. Which would add to the run time, which as far as your concerned rules out any possible alternative route. Such as following highway 322 from Lewiston to Port Matilda. If NIMBYs in State College didn't kill a rail line over a proposed downtown tunnel, I bet environmentalists would for needing to pass through a state forest.


The disruption to traffic would only last while the tunnel was being constructed. The street grid in State College is robust enough that detours could be installed during the period of construction, and the construction could be managed so that only short sections of the street are closed off at any one time. They managed to built cut and cover subways in far larger cities with much more traffic. 

Perhaps Atherton Street isn't a straight shot to allow 200 mph running (and who says this line needs to be 200 mph HSR), bbut that really doesn't matter because the whole point of running a rail line through downtown State College is to have a station in downtown State College where the trains stop. Thus, the trains will not be running at high speeds in the tunnel.

Running a rail route through State College around the US 322 bypass defeats the point of running a rail route through State College. The place is, after all, a university town (when I lived there, about 30,000 students and 30,000 townies), and most of those students don't have cars (and the parking on campus sucks, too. The student parking lots were as far away from my grad student office as my apartment was, so naturally, I mostly walked or rode my bike. The place actually has a compact and dense downtown with a lot of people living withing walking distance. It clearly makes more sense to have the station in a central location, not out by the highway halfway to Bellefonte.

I can't speak about the nature of NIMBYism in State College, having left 40 years ago. I would think that a lot of the student body would relish the prospect of being able to get to Harrisburg/Philly or Pittsburgh (and places in between)without having to drive a car they might not own. And the "environmentalists" (whoever they are) may well be split abut construction of a base tunnel under the Seven Mountains. I suppose if a tunnel is constructed so that the forest lands on the mountain ridges aren't distured too much, most enviros wouldn't be too upset, because, after all, this is a rail line that has the potential to take cars off the road. Anyway, I think the portals of a Seven Mountains base tunnel would be outside the boundaries of the state forest.


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## sttom

MARC Rider said:


> The disruption to traffic would only last while the tunnel was being constructed. The street grid in State College is robust enough that detours could be installed during the period of construction, and the construction could be managed so that only short sections of the street are closed off at any one time. They managed to built cut and cover subways in far larger cities with much more traffic.
> 
> Perhaps Atherton Street isn't a straight shot to allow 200 mph running (and who says this line needs to be 200 mph HSR), bbut that really doesn't matter because the whole point of running a rail line through downtown State College is to have a station in downtown State College where the trains stop. Thus, the trains will not be running at high speeds in the tunnel.
> 
> Running a rail route through State College around the US 322 bypass defeats the point of running a rail route through State College. The place is, after all, a university town (when I lived there, about 30,000 students and 30,000 townies), and most of those students don't have cars (and the parking on campus sucks, too. The student parking lots were as far away from my grad student office as my apartment was, so naturally, I mostly walked or rode my bike. The place actually has a compact and dense downtown with a lot of people living withing walking distance. It clearly makes more sense to have the station in a central location, not out by the highway halfway to Bellefonte.
> 
> I can't speak about the nature of NIMBYism in State College, having left 40 years ago. I would think that a lot of the student body would relish the prospect of being able to get to Harrisburg/Philly or Pittsburgh (and places in between)without having to drive a car they might not own. And the "environmentalists" (whoever they are) may well be split abut construction of a base tunnel under the Seven Mountains. I suppose if a tunnel is constructed so that the forest lands on the mountain ridges aren't distured too much, most enviros wouldn't be too upset, because, after all, this is a rail line that has the potential to take cars off the road. Anyway, I think the portals of a Seven Mountains base tunnel would be outside the boundaries of the state forest.



NIMBYs are frankly not rational and once "the character of the neighborhood" comes up, all bets are off on rationality. And to them, any amount of disruption will be seen as a threat to their way of life which is worth an immeasurable amount. (If only we could tax an immeasurably valuable piece of property to pay for transit improvements). And seeing how the town becomes more "suburban" west of Park Ave, they will become a problem.

The distance between Business Route 322 and Highway 322 proper is about 3 miles. The last mile problem can be solved with a bus route that is paid for through student fees. My University ran a shuttle between it and the nearest BART station and a ~2.5 mile bus ride wasn't a hindrance to us taking BART. If anything, they couldn't run the shuttles often enough to meet demand. If 3 miles is enough to make someone drive instead of taking a train, that sort of person is just looking for an excuse to drive.

There is a small contingent of environmentalists that thinks any construction is destroying the Earth and modern life is a zero sum game as far as the environment goes. There are some near me that were holding up reopening an stretch of abandoned railroad because it didn't matter to them that truck trips would be replaced by a couple of freight trains per week. They have a habit of coming out of the woodwork when something ruffles their feathers.

I'm not saying these are insurmountable and can't be overcome (well maybe the NIMBYs), just that these issues and....insane constituencies need to be watched out for, should a plan get out of the train nerd level.


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## neroden

sttom said:


> I did "like totally look at a map". Saying something isn't snap your fingers easy isn't saying it's impossible.
> 
> What is more likely to kill cutting and covering a major street would be the disruption to every day life that people would have to endure to get a train.


True. We'll see; people have been surprisingly OK with that in some places, and a college town might be more likely to accept it. IMO, would be more likely to.



> Which the local populace would probably not be willing to live with. There is enough on record and in the public consciousness about how bad highway construction was for existing neighborhoods (well former neighborhoods now).
> 
> As for going around State College, there are highways running around the town. Highway right of ways are sometimes used for rail lines in other countries. If the option is no line or a line following a highway around town, I'd vote a for the train line instead of dying on the hill of "perfect".



Sure. I mean, a crappy rail line is better than no rail line. If necessary, you can have a really stupid route, like the one the South Shore Line currently uses to get to South Bend Airport. Have you looked at those highway routes around State College? :-( They're *baaaad*.

I figure a bypass route will be significantly slower than a downtown tunnel, the cost will end up being much larger than a downtown tunnel, and I know which station location will get student advocates supporting it (downtown) and which one won't (outskirts). So you choose: do you advocate for a bad route, or for a good one?
*
Don't pre-compromise your proposal.* If it turns out State College doesn't want a downtown station, you can compromise it then. But this is basic advocacy -- suggest a *good* proposal to start with, don't pre-compromise it to concede to objections which may not materialize at all. If the State College students -- who will be the major customers -- come out demanding that the line move to the outskirts, then fine.

But I fully expect those students to be demanding a downtown station on campus. I think they would be much less interested in disruption of the highway for a line which wouldn't serve them directly.



> And if you're going to use Business Route 322, it's not perfectly straight. Which means the trains wouldn't be running anywhere near high speeds once you're in town.


Well, they're going to have to stop for the downtown station anyway. Fast enough for that.



> Which would add to the run time, which as far as your concerned rules out any possible alternative route. Such as following highway 322 from Lewiston to Port Matilda. If NIMBYs in State College didn't kill a rail line over a proposed downtown tunnel, I bet environmentalists would for needing to pass through a state forest.



I actually think the problem of getting out of State College to the east is the big one. I don't think it would be easy to follow highway 322 over the mountains because it barely fits through the passes in the *first* place -- maybe an elevated railway over the median, at very low speed? At some point the benefits of tunnelling start being very large. But it's ugly geology.

Given the very expensive recent expansion of 322 in that area, it might be possible to use the median most of the way across the mountains (it'll have to be elevated most of the way though, to get over the road intersections) and only tunnel from the Triester Valley to Potlicker Flats. That would save a lot of trouble. Still needs a 2.5 mile tunnel. I don't think trying to follow the highway through that section is viable. I still think a 5-mile tunnel coming out near Boalsburg would have less NIMBYs but might be far more expensive and difficult.


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## WWW

And then that other factor the "SOUND factor" - trains running underground don't make much noise - maybe a rumble - but put it on stilts
elevated and the whoosh of air - the whine of metal wheels on metal track - quicker and faster perhaps more noisy than the Chicago "L" !
Either of these eliminates the train horn on level grade crossings with the gates and chiming signals ! 
Noise is one thing maybe perhaps you can get used to it !


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## IndyLions

neroden said:


> But I fully expect those students to be demanding a downtown station on campus. I think they would be much less interested in disruption of the highway for a line which wouldn't serve them directly.



Very small point to add to the above. It won’t likely be “students” who will be demanding anything.

The timescale of a project like this is just too long term. It would likely be someone at the university making the argument about what approach would promote increased enrollment.


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## MARC Rider

It should be noted that most of the student housing (and townie residential neighborhoods, for that matter) are nowhere near the US 322 bypass, which runs on the east side of town. Also, not all ridership will be students, there may be considerable ridership from people who have business with the university or the associated tech companies that sponge off the university. They built the bypass where it was for a reason -- to save money and avoid NIMBYs. There's probbly been some development around the exits, but, in general, most of Sate College is nowhere near that route, it's mainly to get the truck traffic out of the town.

And I don't think that building a cut and cover tunnel for a rail line under Atherton Street is going to "change the nature" of any neighborhoods. (Atherton is a commercial arterial, anyway, all the "neighborhoods" are off on side roads. And it's mostly student housing, anyway, here today, gone in 4 years.) The construction will be somewhat more disruptive than a repaving project, and I've never heard of any NIMBYs stopping repaving projects. The disrupton from the construction will be temporary, and when it's done, the roads will be more or less the same on the surface as they were before the works started.


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## sttom

MARC Rider said:


> I don't think that building a cut and cover tunnel for a rail line under Atherton Street is going to "change the nature" of any neighborhoods.


The "character of the neighborhood" argument is never a rational argument. It's a feel good appeal to nostalgia meant to short circuit people's ability to think cause home is where the heart is and any change is tearing out your heart. The only rational basis to this argument is construction *might* depress home values for a few years which is the worst thing in the world. 


neroden said:


> True. We'll see; people have been surprisingly OK with that in some places, and a college town might be more likely to accept it. IMO, would be more likely to.
> 
> 
> 
> Sure. I mean, a crappy rail line is better than no rail line. If necessary, you can have a really stupid route, like the one the South Shore Line currently uses to get to South Bend Airport. Have you looked at those highway routes around State College? :-( They're *baaaad*.
> 
> I figure a bypass route will be significantly slower than a downtown tunnel, the cost will end up being much larger than a downtown tunnel, and I know which station location will get student advocates supporting it (downtown) and which one won't (outskirts). So you choose: do you advocate for a bad route, or for a good one?
> 
> *Don't pre-compromise your proposal.* If it turns out State College doesn't want a downtown station, you can compromise it then. But this is basic advocacy -- suggest a *good* proposal to start with, don't pre-compromise it to concede to objections which may not materialize at all. If the State College students -- who will be the major customers -- come out demanding that the line move to the outskirts, then fine.



When advocating for things, you give people options and explain the pros and cons of each and figure out which one would gain the most support. When you say "this is the only option, there are no others" all it takes is one noisy person to torpedo your one proposal since you don't have anything to compare it to. If you can't even convince me with very mild criticisms, how can you talk to someone who comes to the discussion already wanting to vote no or someone who hasn't made up their mind? The answer is it will turn people off it the other person can poke enough holes in your 1 plan with no alternatives. 

Putting a station somewhere along Park Ave between the stadium and the highway wouldn't be a death blow to a rail line. We're talking 2-3 miles from the center of town, a couple shuttle routes to campus would handle the last mile problem. Acting like the ridership will be effectively 0 if the station isn't in the geographic center of town is an asinine assumption. Based on that perfectly rational logic, I should never take BART into San Francisco since I live about 5 miles from the nearest station, yet i and thousands of others before COVID regularly took the train despite not living within a mile of a station. The willingness people have to travel for a mode of transit varies. People aren't going to walk more than half a mile for a city bus line unless they have to and people are going to be willing to travel more than half a mile for a train. 

Also, it's generally the normal practice outside of North America to not plow major highways through the downtowns of every town a highway passes near. Us building highways like that has had horrible outcomes for towns and cities and there is a reason why people became resistant to destroying a swath of their city or town for a highway. This was originally done for classism and racism....I mean "urban renewal". Which people may rightly or wrongly view digging a cut and cover tunnel that way, which means giving them a comparable second option to make a choice instead of the option of train or no train cause no effectively costs nothing in most people's minds. 

Other costs that came with highway construction was taking valuable inner city and streetcar suburb land off the tax roles, the loss of housing and commerical space and swamping the rest of the city with more traffic than it was built for. Which wouldn't happen with a tunnel, but that is a thing someone people will have in the back of their minds.


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## AM_ROAD

Even if Amtrak moved out to State College, I know many who don't even know Amtrak runs to Pittsburgh. I was in Perry County PA with my boss who was born raised in Philly and lives out in Lancaster, and when the Pennsylvanian passed he was shocked that Amtrak went out there. 
Living in PA it always made more sense to drive the turnpike when heading west. I wouldn't even look State College until they can fix the current route, which will never happen. To much investment needed.


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## neroden

Bluntly, nobody is going to advocate for a rail line to some random location outside of town with buses connecting it to downtown.

Sure, suggest it as a backup plan, but if you want to actually get rail to State College built, you have to advocate for downtown, because that's where the advocacy IS.

State College is a DESTINATION, not an origin. You wouldn't take BART to San Francisco if it arrived at Hunters Point and you had to take a bus to get back to the Embarcadero. Admit it.


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## sttom

neroden said:


> State College is a DESTINATION, not an origin. You wouldn't take BART to San Francisco if it arrived at Hunters Point and you had to take a bus to get back to the Embarcadero. Admit it.


I've never driven on surface streets in San Francisco and before COVID, I was regularly making day trips there. Locations including Japan Town, Ocean Beach, Baker Beach, the Zoo. Hell one time I took the bus from San Francisco State to the Presidio after an interview. If I ever needed to go to Hunters Point I could very easily take the T 3rd Street and a bus to Hunter's Point. I've even used AC Transit in the East Bay which is way less convenient than Muni is. And I wouldn't call the area around Oakland Airport a "destination". When I lived in Reno I walked 3 blocks to take a bus to go to college, which is 2 blocks more than it sounds like you'd walk. So by the look of it, I'm more committed to using public transit in all forms than you are.


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## jruff001

neroden said:


> You wouldn't take BART to San Francisco if it arrived at Hunters Point and you had to take a bus to get back to the Embarcadero. Admit it.


That's a really, really bad example.

Check out how the California Zephyr and Coast Starlight serve San Francisco.


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## MARC Rider

jruff001 said:


> That's a really, really bad example.
> 
> Check out how the California Zephyr and Coast Starlight serve San Francisco.


But HSR, whenever it comes, is going to go into the city.


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## neroden

jruff001 said:


> That's a really, really bad example.
> 
> Check out how the California Zephyr and Coast Starlight serve San Francisco.


....and it hurts ridership, a lot. Your point?


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## Nick Farr

If we're talking about the LD network, vast improvements could be made simply by adding sidings or dual tracks to host railroads at key choke points, along with using old ROWs as suggested in this message:




west point said:


> Wonder what it will cost to re lay track on previously used ROW. Of course preparation of sub grade costs will depend on how long dormant. That is grubbing out vegetation and application of non pours cloth under sub grade.


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## Trogdor

neroden said:


> ....and it hurts ridership, a lot. Your point?



The Starlight/Zephyr bus connection to SF hurts ridership compared to what? A non-existent direct rail connection that doesn’t add 3.5 hours to a trip that can be done in 15 minutes?

In any event, the discussion is really comparing apples and oranges. BART (a commuter system that people ride multiple times daily on trips of 30 minutes to an hour or so) requiring a 20 to 30 minute bus connection for folks to get into the city center is an entirely different animal that someone needing a bus connection after riding several hours to several days on a trip they might make once a month or once a year.

An HSR route is going to be somewhere in between. It’s going to need to be convenient for people to use it regularly. Convenience isn’t just about a one-seat ride. It’s about getting from A to B in a quick and reliable manner. The one-seat ride solves some of that, but well-coordinated connections can also work. There will be a time penalty for a connection for the simple reason that it takes longer to get off of one vehicle and onto another than it does to stay on the same vehicle. If a train is truly “high-speed” it will almost certainly be a time loss for the bus transfer. At more conventional speeds, it often comes out to be a wash (unless you are dealing with significant traffic congestion). Then the question is whether or not such a connection can be economically made to be as seamless as possible.

The downtown station is beneficial because, besides eliminating the transfer from the passenger side, it eliminates a lot of costly and complicated logistics on the operations side (having a fleet of buses to meet a train for every trip gets expensive in its own right). Ultimately it comes down to a question of cost-benefit for the various alternatives.


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## Cal

I have seen so many comments on YouTube about people wanting Amtrak to build tracks for themselves nation wide, and I just can't believe how they think it's a valid option. I wish some of yall could (the ones who were talking about them boiling their own specifically) could talk some sense into them..


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## MIrailfan

Cal said:


> I have seen so many comments on YouTube about people wanting Amtrak to build tracks for themselves nation wide, and I just can't believe how they think it's a valid option. I wish some of yall could (the ones who were talking about them boiling their own specifically) could talk some sense into them..


Theres plentyof room for tracks.


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## west point

Looking at this proposal we need to figure where it would work first. All these need to be grade crossing free and curves suitable for at least 160 MPH operation which would mean leaving some current freight and passenger rail ROW to go straighter. 
1. South of the lake would appear the most pressing.
2. Washington to Richmond / Peterborough.
3. NYP - Albany where the leased CSX line is too slow and onto Hoffmans.
4. Parts of the CSX (ACL) "A LINE" that are loaded with slow sections .
5. Empire corridor to Erie.
Those 5 would take up to 10years to complete and any predictions beyond that date are futile as travel patterns change drastically beyond 10 years.


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## Cal

MIRAILFAN said:


> Theres plentyof room for tracks.


Yes, but the cost would be extreme. 

And we only have to make it competetible with driving, which does not require new tracks nation wide. A great start would be the rule that Amtrak get's priority being enforced...


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## toddinde

Cal said:


> I have seen so many comments on YouTube about people wanting Amtrak to build tracks for themselves nation wide, and I just can't believe how they think it's a valid option. I wish some of yall could (the ones who were talking about them boiling their own specifically) could talk some sense into them..


It’s not viable or necessary. In Europe, freight and conventional passenger coexist. They always coexisted here. The problem was deregulation and the railroads deciding all they wanted to haul was coal, cement and grain at 40 mph. The future is moving away from coal. Short, fast freights hauling just in time merchandise will be quite compatible with passenger trains. In many places, a second or third passenger track allowing higher speeds can be built slowly, over time as ridership grows. But a whole nationwide network is not realistic or necessary.


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## jis

I agree. Additional tracks will be needed only in select high traffic routes, provided we can get the freight railroads to behave and agree to do fair dispatching, which is not part of their genetic makeup at present unfortunately.


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## MIrailfan

Amtrak could switch over to Monorails. Very expensive start up costs but saves lots in the long run and no freight int erference.


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## Cal

MIRAILFAN said:


> Amtrak could switch over to Monorails. Very expensive start up costs but saves lots in the long run and no freight int erference.


That would also mean changing every single station they operate at. 

No.


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## AFS1970

There are a whole bunch of videos on the history of monorails, including one on why Disney has switched to busses in stead of expanding their monorail line. Short story is they are really expensive.


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## MIrailfan

Cal said:


> That would also mean changing every single station they operate at.
> 
> No.


I Said it would be expensive starting costs. But it would be worth it.


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## Cal

MIRAILFAN said:


> I Said it would be expensive starting costs. But it would be worth it.


It also means changing the stations that are used by so many other commuter rails such as Sounder, Metra, Metrolink, Caltrain, Rail Runner, and more. 

It also means getting a 100% new fleet for all trains. Even after they are in the process of putting new trains into service across the country. 

No way that is happening. 

And Amtrak does NOT need to own their tracks. They just need to get priority over freight. Which means enforcing the rule that Amtrak gets priority. That will solve MUCH of the problems. Building a whole new system is too expensive and unnecessary.


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## Devil's Advocate

MIRAILFAN said:


> Why shoud govt fundamtrak? Thats anunfair advantageover the airlines.





MIRAILFAN said:


> Amtrak could switch over to Monorails. Very expensive start up costs but saves lots in the long run and no freight int erference.


Amtrak should _not_ be subsidized but _should_ build a national monorail network at great expense? How does that work? Amtrak would have to charge _tens of thousands_ per ticket and sell out every train for decades to follow your advice.


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## MIrailfan

Devil's Advocate said:


> Amtrak should _not_ be subsidized but _should_ build a national monorail network at great expense? How does that work? Amtrak would have to charge _tens of thousands_ per ticket and sell out every train for decades to follow your advice.


billionares could fund it.


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## Cal

MIRAILFAN said:


> billionares could fund it.


Billionaires don't have enough money to fund it. 

And why would they fund something that will more than likely not make any of their money back? They could easily invest elsewhere and gain money.


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## MIrailfan

Cal said:


> Billionaires don't have enough money to fund it.
> 
> And why would they fund something that will more than likely not make any of their money back? They could easily invest elsewhere and gain money.


bEZOS alone could fund a monorail system with $30 billion. Thencharge high fares.


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## jiml




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## AmtrakBlue

MIRAILFAN said:


> bEZOS alone could fund a monorail system with $30 billion. Thencharge high fares.


And who wants to pay those high fares?


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## jis

One obvious conclusion from this thread is that @MIRAILFAN is basically a troll


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## Barb Stout

jis said:


> One obvious conclusion from this thread is that @MIRAILFAN is basically a troll


I was going to use the kinder and gentler word "button pusher", but yeah.


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## Qapla

A monorail would not be the desired choice for many who have a fear of heights and choose train travel over air due to this fear.

Keeping the wheels on the ground is a much better solution.


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## Ziv

Who will pay for those high fares? 
You will! 
After we restrict drilling for oil for a couple years and the price of oil goes up to $7 a gallon, high fares for Monorail travel will seem like a bargain. ;-)
Seriously, spending a little more on Amtrak makes so much sense. An additional couple hundred million a year for 10 years would allow Amtrak to buy a steady stream of new rolling stock, possibly allowing for a second daily train on routes that would profit from it. Or perhaps Amtrak could build their own tracks beside the existing Amtrak routes where the amount of traffic is highest and trade the use of the second tracks to the freight companies when Amtrak trains aren't using them. Finding a way to encourage the freight train companies to prioritize Amtrak trains even a bit more would be like getting biscuits with your beer. 



AmtrakBlue said:


> And who wants to pay those high fares?


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## MARC Rider

MIRAILFAN said:


> Amtrak could switch over to Monorails. Very expensive start up costs but saves lots in the long run and no freight int erference.


I believe that's what referred to as "gadgetbahnen."


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## Cal

MIRAILFAN said:


> bEZOS alone could fund a monorail system with $30 billion. Thencharge high fares.


I doubt 30 billion would be enough for a national wide monorail tracks, new trains for all routes, and changing 500 stations.


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## nferr

jis said:


> One obvious conclusion from this thread is that @MIRAILFAN is basically a troll



Exactly. Why people bother responding to the nonsense is beyond me.


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## Barb Stout

nferr said:


> Exactly. Why people bother responding to the nonsense is beyond me.


S/he's sort of fun.


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## Devil's Advocate

jis said:


> One obvious conclusion from this thread is that @MIRAILFAN is basically a troll


The first time I saw his slurred typing I figured maybe he was drunk but at this point trolling seems a lot more likely.


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## Cal

nferr said:


> Exactly. Why people bother responding to the nonsense is beyond me.


Why not? It's kinda fun, as Barb said. I enjoy discussing Amtrak, even if the topic is pretty absurd!


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## jebr

jis said:


> I agree. Additional tracks will be needed only in select high traffic routes, provided we can get the freight railroads to behave and agree to do fair dispatching, which is not part of their genetic makeup at present unfortunately.



Agreed. If we want trackage for passenger rail with government control, it makes more sense to buy the existing tracks that already exist from their current owners, rather than building all new trackage that's probably overkill for current and short-term future passenger rail needs. The government could then decide how much it wants to prioritize passenger over freight, how much it wants to subsidize rail vs. recover revenue from trackage rights/slot access, etc. - and since it owns the tracks, it could either keep dispatching in-house, similar to air traffic control, or contract it out but hold the contractor to performance metrics that reflect the desires that the government sets out for it.


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## MIrailfan

Excuse Me for having ideas.


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## Philly Amtrak Fan

You're assuming the host railroads want to sell them to Amtrak/the government.


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## Michigan Mom

MIRAILFAN said:


> bEZOS alone could fund a monorail system with $30 billion. Thencharge high fares.



Sure, he could. But he won't. 
I'd be happy if he was just taxed enough to cover construction costs on the roads his delivery fleet is constantly using.

There's no such thing as an altruistic billionaire. You'll wait a long time if you're hoping for that.


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## Michigan Mom

MIRAILFAN said:


> Excuse Me for having ideas.



It's OK to have ideas! My ideas get shot down all the time.


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## Cal

MIRAILFAN said:


> Excuse Me for having ideas.


But you are taking an irrational idea and trying to make it sound rational. 

You can have ideas, but keep them *somewhat* realistic, or tell us that it's not meant to be realistic.


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## MARC Rider

jebr said:


> Agreed. If we want trackage for passenger rail with government control, it makes more sense to buy the existing tracks that already exist from their current owners, rather than building all new trackage that's probably overkill for current and short-term future passenger rail needs. The government could then decide how much it wants to prioritize passenger over freight, how much it wants to subsidize rail vs. recover revenue from trackage rights/slot access, etc. - and since it owns the tracks, it could either keep dispatching in-house, similar to air traffic control, or contract it out but hold the contractor to performance metrics that reflect the desires that the government sets out for it.


In fact, we already have a well established policy tool that can help with that. It's called property taxes. They helped drive the Penn Central in bankruptcy, and it's part of the reason why there isn't a level playing field with rail and other transportation modes. Just raise property taxes, until they go bankrupt, and then nationalize the infrastructure to pay off the property taxes. I believe that's sort of what the British did in the 1940s.


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## west point

If you can solve the problem of monorails being dynamically unstable above 40 MPH then consideration might be given. But no engineer firm has solved the problem.


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