Amtrak Initiates RFQ process for Texas High Speed Rail

[John Bredin]

I've had a couple of days to marinate on this. So here is my two cents. Elon is a technology guy. He has broad interests beyond cars, rockets, and boring tunnels. I think if anybody could help sell the idea of a Shinkansen to Trump, it's Elon at the moment. I think it would be wise for Train Daddy and a few other higher ups at Amtrak to start scheduling some so called three hour lunches with Elon and and the FRA to explain the possibilities. Initial meetings don't need to have every stake holder with an opinion present either. After spending a few weeks in thet beltway on non rail related stuff, I can assure you they are not interested in the noise of someone's romantic longing for the food and beverage options they had on trains in 1962. I don't think Amtrak is screwed for the next 4 years or beyond, it's just the salesmanship in justifying it's existence is going to have to be approached differently.

Elon hates trains, and has made that clear in various ways over the years. He came up with Hyperloop to sabotage or "steal the thunder" of California HSR. All his tunneling plans involve personal vehicles or capsules rather than trains, to the point that his one operating tunnel in Las Vegas uses chauffeured Teslas (can't even trust his own self-driving in a tunnel!) rather than the kinds of walk-on, roll-on-luggage cars an airport peoplemover uses.

 

[John Bredin]

This project should be killed and the focus should instead be restoring passenger service to the UP tracks the Dallas-Houston leg of the Texas Eagle used until 1995. In addition to restoration of LD service in the corridor, there should be a multi-frequency, higher-speed, state-supported corridor running with a 110 mph top speed. Even this service pattern would be better than what we have now for service in the DAL-HOU travel market (e.g. only automobile-based options) Doing it this way would dramatically cut the costs of the project and eliminate eminent domain issues associated with building new ROW that have slowed down the project to a trickle.

A new state-supported corridor in Texas ain't gonna happen absent a non-gerrymandered legislature. Meanwhile, money and effort has been expended on the HSR plan, including defending the eminent domain issue up to the Texas Supreme Court, where Texas Central won. Throwing that away now in hope that this Lege would vote a ha'penny for "multi-frequency, higher-speed, state-supported corridor running with a 110 mph top speed" seems unwise, with all due respect.

Not unlike the opponents of California HSR who emphasize misleadingly that no trains are running, when years of NIMBY fights have finally been won and many miles of massive infrastructure have already been built.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Yes, the Japanese are the big dogs but the rest of the statement strikes me as a bit over-baked.

I’ve experienced the TGV, ICE, HS1, etc. and talked to locals about their experiences and the one system that has consistently overshadowed the rest is the Shinkansen. The original is still the best and even today it’s not that close. Every country has their own situation that requires special workarounds but getting as close as possible to the Shinkansen experience is the ideal goal. The main difference with the US is that we separate every conveyance into isolated and disconnected silos rather than integrate each system into a greater whole and that makes traveling in the US as tedious and clumsy as possible. It’s a mess by design and always will be, CMV.

 

[George Harris]

I’ve experienced the TGV, ICE, HS1, etc. and talked to locals about their experiences and the one system that has consistently overshadowed the rest is the Shinkansen. The original is still the best and even today it’s not that close. Every country has their own situation that requires special workarounds but getting as close as possible to the Shinkansen experience is the ideal goal. The main difference with the US is that we separate every conveyance into isolated and disconnected silos rather than integrate each system into a greater whole and that makes traveling in the US as tedious and clumsy as possible. It’s a mess by design and always will be, CMV.

Thank you. You said it far better than I could. I have not had the fortune / misfortune of experiencing any of the European systems, but I did get to see up close and personal what the Europeans were proposing for Tiawan, and it was not that impressive when you raised the hood, so to speak. I did experience firsthand the Shinkansen in construction, testing, and operation in Taiwan, and riding multiple parts of the home country system in Japan. A week rail pass in Japan is close to Heaven for any train nut. One person I worked with during the planning stages for CAHSR took a week or so in Europe and came back highly under impressed with the TGV.

 

[Stevenz]

Thank you. You said it far better than I could. I have not had the fortune / misfortune of experiencing any of the European systems, but I did get to see up close and personal what the Europeans were proposing for Tiawan, and it was not that impressive when you raised the hood, so to speak. I did experience firsthand the Shinkansen in construction, testing, and operation in Taiwan, and riding multiple parts of the home country system in Japan. A week rail pass in Japan is close to Heaven for any train nut. One person I worked with during the planning stages for CAHSR took a week or so in Europe and came back highly under impressed with the TGV.

Sure. I don’t know anything about any of this but I’ve ridden European HSR and from a casual passenger’s perspective it’s not even on the same planet with anything in the US or is ever likely to be. If Japan is that much farther ahead, that doesn’t make the European system bad, it just means they’re second.

The most critical lesson the U.S. can learn from either of them is not technology it’s how to get things done, at least within a normal human lifetime, and making it work reliably. Those capabilities are no longer in the American DNA. (Remember the saying good ol’ American know-how? Now it’s about keeping things from happening.)

 

[cirdan]

The most critical lesson the U.S. can learn from either of them is not technology it’s how to get things done, at least within a normal human lifetime, and making it work reliably. Those capabilities are no longer in the American DNA. (Remember the saying good ol’ American know-how? Now it’s about keeping things from happening.)

Both the first Shinkansen and the first TGV were several decades in the making, decades during which they saw steps forward but also reversals of fortune. In the case of France this included several changes of government and swings between different political philosophies on the role and responsibilities of the state vs the private sector. In France the TGV was during its project stage furthermore competing head on against the Aerotrain, basically a fuel guzzling cross between a hovercraft and a monorail that was so insane that I'm sure Elon Musk would have supported it. And ironically in France too, the Aerotrain's main proponents came from the center-right side of the political spectrum (supported by the aerospace and defense industries) whereas the left preferred the TGV (supported by the rail industry). Yet in a great show of bipartisan pragmatism, and following up on prolonged indecision by left wing governments, it was a center right government that took the jump and committed the funds and launched the construction of the initial TGV line (thus pulling the plug on Aerotrain).

The earlier proposals for the TGV project were also quite different to what was finally delivered. For example the prototype train used gas turbines rather than electric traction. The oil crisis caused a re-think there. The TGV would never have become a thing if there had not been individuals both in government and in SNCF management who effectively put their careers and necks on the line by standing behind something that, had things not worked out as well as they did, would have destroyed their reputations and left them looking like snake oil salesmen.

In the perspective of history it is easy to look back and think, it was all so simple and they were following the logical course of action. But this was far from obvious at the time. It is this this type of visionary individual we need again, who can champion the project even across changing administrations and political directions.

The Japanese project went back even further, to pre-war proposals for a new faster rail system, which again had very little in common with what was finally built.

So it's maybe misleading to assume these things happened linearly or smoothly, and maybe the passage of time helps one forget some of the battles that had to be fought, and the near defeats that had to be survived.

Also, both projects served political purposes. France was recovering from a post war slump and re-emerging as a leading industrial nation, or at least trying to project this message to the world. Projects such as the TGV and the Concorde helped push that message, and no doubt also helped French industry get onto people's radars. Although the TGV itself was only moderately successful on the export market, French industry pushed large volumes of metros, freight locos and such, possibly on the back of the TGV's fame, including many exports to countries normally outside of France's normal sphere of influence. The Japanese were also interested in export, which was one of the reasons why they chose to go for standard gauge. Similarly to the French, they did not have any immediate export successes for the Shinkansen but managed to sell a lot of other stuff.

The TGV was by nature more complex than the Shinkansen, due to the need to be reverse compatible to the legacy rail network and islands of 1500V DC electrification, plus the need being recognized from the decision to go electric, to also provide for compatibility for 16.7Hz for international services. A feature that was not to be used on a significant scale until many years after. Not to forget the hotchpotch of incompatible legacy signaling systems that a TGV must deal with, especially the international ones.

Texas Central will be a standalone system that does not need to be compatible to anything else. This should hopefully simplify many decisions.

 

[John Bredin]

The most critical lesson the U.S. can learn from either of them is not technology it’s how to get things done, at least within a normal human lifetime, and making it work reliably. Those capabilities are no longer in the American DNA. (Remember the saying good ol’ American know-how? Now it’s about keeping things from happening.)

Our past ability and seeming present inability to build big has nothing to do with our DNA. As cirdan said so ably:

So it's maybe misleading to assume these things happened linearly or smoothly, and maybe the passage of time helps one forget some of the battles that had to be fought, and the near defeats that had to be survived.

The transcontinental railroad was first proposed in the 1840s and languished due to sectional rivalry (South wanted a southern route, North wanted a northern route) for well over a decade, then suddenly passed Congress only when most Southern states attended a different, short-lived, congress.

While the Hoover Dam famously shot up in record time, the Golden Gate Bridge was highly controversial in the same period. Meanwhile, a massive plan to dam the San Francisco Bay grabbed a lot of public support but was rightly killed when the Army Corps of Engineers modeled the Bay (with a physical model, as computers were very primitive) and realized the dams would not create a pleasant freshwater lake but a stagnant brackish dead-zone.

We dashed through the Interstate Highways, flattening many urban neighborhoods though Eisenhower's intent had been rural bypasses rather than expressways through cities. After several vibrant neighborhoods were obliterated, protests arose in various otherwise-doomed neighborhoods and kept the same from occurring in Manhattan and other places. In a similar vein, New York Penn Station was demolished for Madison Square Garden, but the uproar saved Grand Central Terminal.

Those protests led to the environmental impact laws, where studies would have to be performed and public input gathered before a large public-works project could proceed. While these laws have prevented more neighborhoods bulldozed by ill-designed projects, they have also allowed NIMBYs to fight projects where the only impact would be a perceived drop in property values or sensitive ruralists' disappointment that they no longer live in the middle of nowhere.

These laws created our present situation, and they can be reformed. Not eliminated, but reformed. For instance, exceptions to the impact-statement requirement for pre-approved transit projects, or transit-oriented development in already-urbanized neighborhoods, or intercity rail projects that use existing right-of-way and merely restore tracks removed in the past.

 

[cirdan]

These laws created our present situation, and they can be reformed. Not eliminated, but reformed. For instance, exceptions to the impact-statement requirement for pre-approved transit projects, or transit-oriented development in already-urbanized neighborhoods, or intercity rail projects that use existing right-of-way and merely restore tracks removed in the past.

So true. The history of human activity, at least in the modern period, is one of continuously over-shooting targets and then over-correcting the damage inflicted. This happens on the macro level with political swings from too much state control to too much free-for-all, always managing to overswing the sweet point where an ideal balance could have been achieved.

Environmental impact studies are a good thing as they prevent the wanton destruction of things we may hold dear. Not every NIMBY is purely selfish. Sometimes they may have a vaild point. Democracy is all about checks and balances, and as frustrating as they may be at times, we are still better off with them than without them - as we soon realize when we become the subjects of unwelcome changes that others want to force onto us.