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Obama Proposes High-Speed Rail System For the US
fantomas writes "The BBC reports that 'US President Barack Obama has announced his "vision for high-speed rail" in the country, which would create jobs, ease congestion and save energy.' Can rail work in the land where the car is king? Would you travel on the new high speed lines?"
Yes.
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Nice idea, but it'll never happen. These kinds of projects are only ever successful when a government steps in and does them properly. The process of doing it with "private enterprise" or a "public-private partnership" always kills anything good that could come out of it. Compare the shinkansen in Japan and the TGV in France to the farce that is privatised railways in Australia for a good example.
If it is priced less than air travel and it provides service to places I need to go.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
High speed inter-city rail means that when I get to my destination I have to rely on public transportation (not very efficient in most US cities), or rent a car.
If I'm renting a car, this doesn't reduce congestion. The congestion is in the cities themselves, not between them. Also, the car rental costs money. I doubt it will be cheaper than driving.
I'd love to see rail as a replacement for flying, but I doubt it will be fast enough.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I think the point is that this will allow people to work MORE than an hour's drive away from home.
The only big highspeed I know of is the Acela, which goes from NYC to Boston or D.C.
The price: $90 each way, no wifi.
Or you can take a bus for $20 that has Wifi.
I hear the Acela is nice, but I'd rather buy a DS for my bus ride, and i'd still save money.
Remember Amtrack anyone? The giant government boondoggle that loses money every year?
What makes anyone think that Amtrack:TNG is going to be a better idea? It's going to be a huge buildout expense, disrupt many communities, and in the end will still be slower than airline travel.
If you want something visionary, how about supporting large scale consumer adoption of small regional airports and new, small advanced planes that take far fewer people but connect small airports all over with mass transit in each city? It's like the dream of the flying car but with practicality behind it and yields a lot more flexibility.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Amtrak has dragged it's feet on restoring the Sunset line east of New Orleans for over 3 years! Keep in mind that Amtrak now gets $2.6 BILLION annually.
CSX confirmed that all track repairs had been completed in mid-2006.
Believe me, I'm heading back to Houston from Tallahassee for Mother's Day and I'd love to grab a ride on sunset, but it looks like another airport shake-n-dance. Amtrak has 3 more months to offer a "plan" to restore service...wanna bet that no one ever asks for this plan?
A government controlled-business does not make it some magical, ne'er-do-bad business.
import system.cool.Sig;
You also have the distance problem.
When I used to travel a lot a train never would have been an option. The distances where all too great for rail or I doubt that the train would have gone to where I needed to go.
The only a few places in the US I can see it working.
The North East corridor. Boston/New York/Philly/DC, San Diego/LA/SF and maybe up to Portland and Seattle, Dallas/Houston, and maybe Miami up to Palm Beach, Orlando, Tampa and that is a big maybe.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Traveling by airplane already accomplishes that. The important distinction for high-speed rail is that it would need to be cheaper than airfare, and/or provide other benefits (e.g. the ability to take extra luggage, such as your car, with you).
The sad thing is, as much as I like trains and wish it would, I just don't see that being successful. Even the normal, slow Amtrak fares are often more expensive than discount airfare between the same two cities. I can't imagine any scenario, short of huge subsidies (which would be fine with me, but Congress would never approve it), that would allow an expensive, brand-new system to improve on that.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Well,
I don't know why you need to be so condescending but I can tell you that the railways in the US are pretty ridiculous in terms of speed and improving them could bring big benefits.
For instance, the ACELA between Boston and NY is very slow (more than 3 hours to cover half the distance that the TGV covers in less than 3 hours).
Such a train uses half the energy of a plane, can arrive in the center of the city etc.
The Japanese Shinkansen is even better in some respect as it runs on schedules that are very intense.
Also, you don't need to change everything to achieve that, just some money and political will. The ACELA express is inherently slower (150MPH max instead of 200MPH and more) but that's not the biggest problem. They need to adapt enough tracks along the road to improve the average speed.
This is clearly a very political and complex subject. And bringing it up in the US is really quite innovative and politically risky as your post amply shows.
Obama's plan simply will not work because he plans to mix freight and passenger rail routes. I would not call the examples in Japan and France a _financial_ success, but they are indeed impressive technologically. However, neither of those systems would work if they did not dedicate their tracks to passenger transportation. Freight would slow everything down dramatically.
While I like the efficiency of trains, the US moved freight traffic to the highways because it created more flexibility in placement of factories and retail outlets. We built our houses and our lifestyle in a manner that took advantage of individual transportation vehicles. We don't have the density or the lifestyle desire to move to a hub and spoke system of fast rail. Air traffic has a better ROI for moving people over large distances in a largely rural nation. For high speed rail to work it has to link urban cores where the flexibility of driving or the speed of flying are compromised. The northeast corridor can support rail inflexibility because it can be faster than flying and as flexible as driving because you are moving between urban cores with solid public transportation. It won't gain critical mass between NYC and Chicago because it is faster and cheaper to fly. It won't work between Atlanta and Birmingham because limited pubic transit in those cities make driving more flexible. Unless there is the willingness of the local communities to rezone around transit, invest in dense public transit, increase the cost of flying and decrease the flexibility of driving then high speed rail will only work where it works now. In other words you have to invest in more than the track to make high speed rail work. Effort, money and time have to be spend rebuilding the nation to fit the hub and spoke infrastructure of rail traffic.
Look at the map of planned routes in the TFA. They are not that long, and the whole network will be shorter than railway network in Germany or France.
So no, "USA is large" argument does not work here.
That's Bullshit.
Figure the percentage of federal dollars vs fare dollars for each and your head will explode. Even if you assume that the average flight costs ~$100, the 700 million annual passenger flights makes a nice big number:
http://www.bts.gov/programs/airline_information/air_carrier_traffic_statistics/airtraffic/annual/1981_present.html
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Do you not think that roads enjoy the same subsidt transit does? ALL transportation is subsidized and that's a necessary thing because it's a public good.
So if I look around the world, I will find a direct correlation between taxes and unemployment? Because I don't see it.
Perhaps if I pick a single country and look through history? There does seem to be one, but it's where government spending made jobs (such as the new deal and WWII).
On what planet does the presence of concentrated wealth mean that jobs will be made. I don't see it at all. Companies will continue to spend as little on employment as possible to make their revenue streams look as good as possible, because the people who make the decisions (executives and stock-holders) are directly tied, not even to the long-term survival of the company, but rather to the stock value... wich is from the earnings report... which is most effected in the sort-term by reducing costs (like employees).
Everyone here is talking about the northeast and midwest, what about the damned west coast? Linking San Francisco to LA is huge, by itself. Linking Seattle to Eugene or Southern Oregon would be amazing. The commuter possibilities are endless here. Take Portland to Seattle, for example. Many people hop that via plane even though it's only about a 3 hour drive. Turn that in to a 1.5 hour train trip, and guess what? You've linked two cities with amazingly effective public transportation, cut down on the pollution of a plane or many individual autos, and perhaps increased the number of people who are willing to commute between the two large cities and their metro areas.
When a flight takes about an hour, high speed rail will beat it in both real door-to-door speed and price. This doesn't just help the NE corridor, but allows for lines like Columbus-Chicago-St Louis-Kansas.
Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati are core cities in Ohio on the Chicago Hub line, not just Cleveland. Five dots in Ohio. People never seem to realize that Ohio is actually a pretty highly populated state with six metro areas greater than 650K people. This rail plan is going to be great for my home (but not current) state.
Done right, and for short haul travel, rail is way better than air travel. What you lose in sheer speed of the plane, is more than made up for, by the time saved by not getting to the airport, checkin, luggage screening, and that sort of thing.
I've found that going to Paris on the Eurostar (French TGV bullet train that links central London and central Paris) beats air travel in just about every way. I had my parents insist on catching the plane to Paris.
This is what happens when you go from London to Paris by air:
1. Catch bus or train to airport (1hr)
2. Allow three hours to check in, get through security, board the plane, and have your plane sit in a long queue to take off (2-3 hours)
3. Fly to Paris (50 minutes)
4. Disembark at Roissy, go through immigration, get to the RER train (30, 40mins)
5. Get an RER ticket, catch train to Gare du Nord, trying not to get robbed by pikies on the way (40, 50mins)
Compare with catching the Eurostar:
1. Go to Kings Cross St Pancras, go through French immigration on British side, security screening (20 minutes). Immigration is no more than waving an ID card or passport.
2. Train trip (a bit over two hours)
3. Train arrives in middle of Paris.
Price wise, you might save a few quid catching the plane, but if you factor in airport transfers, security screening hassle and all that rubbish, then train travel comes out way ahead.
In principle I think this is an awesome idea. Whether or not it works out in practice remains to be seen, especially with the way things are done in the US.
In Taiwan, just a few years ago, a high speed rail line was built from Taipei in the north to Kaohsiung in the south, nearly spanning the length of the island. It's done fairly well, almost meeting expectations. It's hurt the domestic airline industry somewhat mainly because the rail line only takes marginally longer to travel the entire distance; it takes a bit over 1 hour versus 45 minutes by plane.
The high speed rail line had a few advantage however. Nearly all of Taiwan's major cities run down the west side of the island where the land is flatter. It makes it easy to reach all the key population centers.
Secondly, unlike the US where Americans are used to having to drive long distances, Taiwan generally feel the 200+ distance is too long to drive. People do it all the time, but to them they might as well be driving from New York to California. And the cities are dense enough that it ends up being a hassle to drive around anyway. When I was in Taipei, for example, they had 2 or 3 cars for every parking spot. It's an exercise in frustration just finding a parking spot, let alone negotiating the dense, hectic traffic. The south is a bit better, but it's still a problem.
Third, many people already took buses or the existing, slower rail line, so the jump to high speed rail was a logical one. The question was if Taiwan, who generally are quite cheap, would be willing to pay a good deal more for a significantly reduced travel time. It turns out they are, but if I recall correctly the high speed rail company did lower rates at some point.
Construction was just beginning when I was living there between 2000 and 2002 and it was open to the public in 2007. The line itself runs just over 200 miles. The total cost was in excess of $15 billion. There's no way in hell we'd see a high speed rail line built that quickly and for that price in the United States.
Take the piece of garbage that passes for a high speed rail line in the northeast, the Acela. It runs on existing rail lines with slight upgrades and they still managed to finish it well behind schedule. The Wikipedia article claims it was a year late, but from my recollection of announcements at the time I'd say it was at least 2 or 3 years late. The Acela has to slow down at every single station it passes, so in my area it's barely going faster than traffic on the highway. All the trains on this line are consistently late, to the point that the scheduled times are more of an identification for the trains than an actual indication of when the trains will arrive. The best part is how every so often a train pulls down the power lines.
And I'm reminded of yet another issue, common courtesy. In Taiwan food isn't permitted on subways and most trains. And people respect those rules. In all the years of riding there I don't recall ever having seen graffiti more than a handful of times and very limited. I never had to worry about sitting in the mess someone left behind. Public bathrooms were always clean both because people weren't slobs but because they were also cleaned on a regular basis. If someone makes a significant mess someone will be by to clean it up in short order.
When is this ever the case in the US? People seem to have no respect for anything, like it's their duty to deface and vandalize. And imagine suggesting to any rider that they should wait 30 minutes, until they get off the train, before they eat. Instead they'll sit there slobbering over their food, making a mess and then have the audacity to leave the garbage sitting under the seat.
My point is that Americans turn public transportation into a miserable experience. Expect this money to be spend poorly and in the end still not provide the sort of experience that the European or Japanese high-speed rail lines provide. And just wait until every last town starts fighting for their own stop on the line. Or
Remember Amtrack anyone? The giant government boondoggle that loses money every year?
I suppose the Federal highway system makes money? No. It costs us several hundred billion dollars a year.
How about the airline industry, which has been a bailout baby for decades?
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