# Atlanta to Chattanooga HSR keeps chugging on!



## MattW (Nov 14, 2010)

Yesterday, I was playing around with where a station in Chattanooga would go so I thought I'd look for any plans the governments might have generated and work from there. Instead, I found lots of news articles with current (within the month) progress on this HSR segment. In brief, it looks like they plan to connect the airports, Hartsfield and Lovell field while generally following I-75 (or exactly following it) and passing through Atlanta, Cartersville, and Dalton at least. It also appears like they aren't committed to maglev technology yet as other articles have led us to believe. As for speed, I've seen 180mph tossed around.

There's frankly too many articles to summarize individually, so I'll just post a list in reverse-chronological order (most recent first) with the homepage of the project posted first. If you want [lots] more, you can just search Chattanooga High Speed Rail or similar terms in Google News. Last night, I had over a hundred hits.

http://atl-chatt.org/

http://daltondailycitizen.com/local/x1364888708/High-speed-rail-project-moves-slowly-spawns-skeptics

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/nov/09/dalton-resident-hopeful-wary-of-bullet-train/

http://www.wrcbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13463469

http://romenews-tribune.com/view/full_story/10209075/article-Planners-cut-Rome-from-high-speed-rail-recommendations?instance=home_news_lead_story

http://romenews-tribune.com/view/full_story/10194296/article-High-speed-rail-update-set-for-Monday?instance=home_news

http://www.gpb.org/news/2010/11/05/high-speed-rail-plans-finalized

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/nov/05/chattanooga-atlanta-rail-plans-on-track/?local

http://www.gpb.org/news/2010/11/05/high-speed-rail-plans-finalized

http://www.gpb.org/news/2010/11/05/high-speed-rail-plans-fine-tuned


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## me_little_me (Nov 14, 2010)

It's a fantasy. Georgia couldn't even come up with a commuter rail, has not invested anything in rail (which is why they only got a few dollars of "study" money in the past year), and, in general believes in just paving everything.

Those articles are probably to show the taxpayers they have not wasted the study money - which is of course what they did.


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## Bill Haithcoat (Nov 14, 2010)

MattW said:


> Yesterday, I was playing around with where a station in Chattanooga would go so I thought I'd look for any plans the governments might have generated and work from there. Instead, I found lots of news articles with current (within the month) progress on this HSR segment. In brief, it looks like they plan to connect the airports, Hartsfield and Lovell field while generally following I-75 (or exactly following it) and passing through Atlanta, Cartersville, and Dalton at least. It also appears like they aren't committed to maglev technology yet as other articles have led us to believe. As for speed, I've seen 180mph tossed around.
> 
> There's frankly too many articles to summarize individually, so I'll just post a list in reverse-chronological order (most recent first) with the homepage of the project posted first. If you want [lots] more, you can just search Chattanooga High Speed Rail or similar terms in Google News. Last night, I had over a hundred hits.
> 
> ...



Matt, did you come up with any thoughts about where a station in Chattanooga might be?


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## George Harris (Nov 14, 2010)

With apologies to Mr. Haithcoat, this has always seemed like somewhat of a no where to no where scheme. Now, make it a link in a Chicago to Miami HSR, and it makes loads of sense. In fact, at Chattanooga you could go in at least three directions in additon to Nashville to Evansville and Chicago: Memphis and West, Cincinattti and north, Knoxville, Briston, and northeast, and a few more.

Before anybody jumps on the "Chicago to Miami is too long to be practical" bandwagon, let me say: We are not anticipating a huge number of end-to-end passengers, but a large number of off and on passengers at the cities in between. That is the primary beauty of a rail system. You can, for example, serve 1000 people with one run of a trainset without ever having more than about 500 on it at any given time.


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## AlanB (Nov 14, 2010)

George Harris said:


> Before anybody jumps on the "Chicago to Miami is too long to be practical" bandwagon, let me say: We are not anticipating a huge number of end-to-end passengers, but a large number of off and on passengers at the cities in between. That is the primary beauty of a rail system. You can, for example, serve 1000 people with one run of a trainset without ever having more than about 500 on it at any given time.


Which is one of the biggest things that anti-rail people/groups always miss. They focus on things like for example, Madison to Milwaukee. They never stop to consider the points in between. And of course in the case of the Madison-MKE train, the forgot that it keeps going past MKE and all the way to Chicago with a few more stops thrown in.


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## Eric S (Nov 15, 2010)

AlanB said:


> George Harris said:
> 
> 
> > Before anybody jumps on the "Chicago to Miami is too long to be practical" bandwagon, let me say: We are not anticipating a huge number of end-to-end passengers, but a large number of off and on passengers at the cities in between. That is the primary beauty of a rail system. You can, for example, serve 1000 people with one run of a trainset without ever having more than about 500 on it at any given time.
> ...


Exactly. Unfortunately, WisDOT didn't do rail advocates many favors by continually referring to the project as Milwaukee-Madison HSR, rather than a Milwaukee-Madison extension of the Chicago-Milwaukee _Hiawatha_.


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## Devil's Advocate (Nov 15, 2010)

Eric S said:


> Exactly. Unfortunately, WisDOT didn't do rail advocates many favors by continually referring to the project as Milwaukee-Madison HSR, rather than a Milwaukee-Madison extension of the Chicago-Milwaukee _Hiawatha_.


Sure, they could have spelled it out for people too lazy to think for themselves, but in the end don't the residents share some of that responsibility to become self-educated before speaking and voting?


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## Eric S (Nov 15, 2010)

daxomni said:


> Eric S said:
> 
> 
> > Exactly. Unfortunately, WisDOT didn't do rail advocates many favors by continually referring to the project as Milwaukee-Madison HSR, rather than a Milwaukee-Madison extension of the Chicago-Milwaukee _Hiawatha_.
> ...


Sure, except that by just calling it Milwaukee-Madison HSR, it plays right into the opponents claims that "no one will ride the train from Madison to Milwaukee" and such.


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