220-mph Solar-Powered Train Proposed In Arizona

Mike writes "An ambitious Arizona company has recently revealed plans for a solar powered bullet train that will streak across the desert at 220 mph, traveling from Tuscon to Phoenix in 30 minutes flat. Proposed by Solar Bullet LLC, the system comprises a series of tracks that would serve stations including Chandler, Casa Grande, Red Rock, and Marana, and may one day be extended to Flagstaff and Nogales. The train would require 110 megawatts of electricity, which would be generated by solar panels mounted above the tracks." Local coverage of the plan takes a harder look, noting that Solar Bullet LLC is two guys who are now asking local governments in the towns at which such a train would potentially stop for $35K for a legal and feasibility study. Total cost is estimated at $27B.

Comments

Interesting

[stoolpigeon]

Whether or not this would fly will all come down to cost. I've made the drive from Tucson to Phoenix when it is bumper to bumper the entire way and going the speed limit is physically impossible. A half hour train ride sounds very nice in light of that. But the reality is the ride and the electric car rental on the other end have to be cheaper than driving down there in one's own car. Arizona cities are textbook cases of sprawl. It is almost impossible to get around in them without a vehicle, especially in the summer. It's unlikely too many people would want to just ride the train and not need a car on the other end.
 
Then there is that time thing. It's not making the trip in 30 minutes if it stops 5 times between the two cities. Maybe they are thinking of express trips interspersed with trips that stop? The article doesn't say. Of course the way things are going, eventually this would run right up the middle of one big metro area.

Re:Interesting

[flyingsquid]

Am I the only person who read the summary and instantly thought of the Simpsons episode "Marge vs. the Monorail" where a fast-talking salesman sells a malfunctioning solar-powered monorail to Springfield?

Re:Interesting

[dfm3]

Whether or not this would fly will all come down to cost.

I bet that regardless of cost, it won't. Because, well, it's a train, and last time I checked trains couldn't fly. :-P

Re:Interesting

[Red Flayer]

Whether or not this would fly will all come down to cost.

And aerodynamics. And gravity.

Seriously, though, strict monetary cost is a misleading metric for mass transit. There are other costs, like inconvenience, time, etc that make a big difference to potential users.

One thing I'd like to note about areas that still have a large potential for development... The trains can (and should) be planned and/or built first. Proper growth planning and direction can then help mitigate the uniform sprawl that makes mass transit so ineffective for much of the US.

I'd question the utility of building out expensive infrastructure in the southwest of the US anyway... if it takes 30 years to pay off, will there even be enough water in those areas to support the dense population required for mass transit effectiveness?

Re:Interesting

[Killer Orca]

For 27 Billion I would rather have robot cars that drive themselves.

Re:Interesting

[clong83]

No, it was my thought as well. But as a once long-time resident of Tucson, I can say that a functioning, efficient, high-speed passenger train service between these two cities is an excellent idea. These guys might be snake-oil salesmen, but even so, hopefully it wakes some other more serious people up.

Re:Interesting

[vivin]

A Phoenix-Tucson train would be nice.

I think what would also be nice is bullet-train service to San Diego or Los Angeles.

Re:Interesting

[Chris Burke]

Ha! Shows what you know. Bet you'll tell me next that trains can't travel through time!

Re:Interesting

[EvilBudMan]

We'll maybe if this is feasible then we can line both sides of the interstates with PV cells. That covers a lot.

Maybe you could also power automobiles this way by induction for safety reasons this way. You still would have to have some extra power from somewhere when the sun doesn't shine.

This would lead to hybrid designs which I don't like because of the extra weight. Imagine what a car would weigh if it only needed electric motors without batteries or an internal combustion engine?

But...for right now this would only be feasible for the interstate highways.

Trains are cool and all for distances between large cities, but it wont work for everywhere in the US. A pure electric vehicle seems to be the solution. With short range batteries that can be standardized like gas pumps are today and can be changed out on the fly at a battery station instead of a gas station and charged at home when you have the time.

The thing for the government to do would be to line all it's roads with PV cells to charge these batteries.

Standardization is the key to make something like this or some of the other good ideas work. So I propose we spend $34,000 on a study to find out which way is best and I will study it by paying an expert $10,000. Then we will know.

Re:Interesting

[stoolpigeon]

I agree - and that's why I say the cost has to be lower. When I still lived in Phoenix a few years ago I was tired of driving my commute so I looked into public transit. It had the other costs you mention, plus it cost more monetarily. It just didn't make sense. For people to put up with the other issues they must either have no other choice, or it has to be cheaper.
 
That's a good point about the water. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of the people living in places like Las Vegas or Phoenix don't even realize that they live in an artificial environment. The day the water stops coming from up north, they either move or die. PBS did a great documentary based on Reisner's Cadillac Desert that does a great job highlighting some of these issues. That's a whole other can of worms.
 
But as of right now the growth between Phoenix and Tucson is unreal. My sister lives in Casa Grande now and last time I visited I was just stunned. When I was a kid there was nothing down there. Now, thousands of homes, the strip malls, all of it. It's bizarre to see. I'm not sure what all the people do down there. In Tucson there is the University, Raytheon and a few others. In between there's the prison and I don't know what else.

Re:Interesting

[Firethorn]

I remember it being defective, but not solar powered.

Re:Interesting

[stoolpigeon]

A train to San Diego or LA would be interesting purely from an engineering perspective as I'm guessing it would mean some rather large tunnels.

Re:Interesting

[Chabil Ha']

No, but it got me thinking of the feasibility of a solar powered warp drive!

Re:Interesting

[WillAffleckUW]

That's called an ion sail, actually. They work quite well.

Re:Interesting

[ImYourVirus]

A Phoenix-Tucson train would be nice.

I think what would also be nice is bullet-train service to San Diego or Los Angeles.

For 100 trillion dollars I can make that happen, hell we'll make one from the west to east coast. Let me know when the check is in the mail.

Re:Interesting

[Peeet]

Then there is that time thing. It's not making the trip in 30 minutes if it stops 5 times between the two cities. Maybe they are thinking of express trips interspersed with trips that stop? The article doesn't say.

But, the article DOES say. Did you mistake the summary for the article? What you're reading now is a comment if you're still confused.

From said article:

With four tracks, the innermost two would be reserved for nonstop travel, going 116 miles in a half hour. The outer two tracks would allow a one-hour trip, with stops slated for Chandler, Maricopa, Casa Grande, Eloy, Red Rock and Marana.

Re:Interesting

[ByOhTek]

The problem with the snake oil salesmen, is they make the honest people with similar appearing ideas look bad when they finally show up.

Re:Interesting

[AndrewNeo]

So how fast do they go? Warp 2?

Re:Interesting

[bigjarom]

Well, it's 2009 and Phoenix just now finally got a light rail system (that goes about 40 mph). I'll expect this to be running by 2109 or so.

Re:Interesting

[An ominous Cow art]

Well, sir, there's nothing like a bona fide, electrified, warp-six, ion sail!

What'd I say?

Ion Sail!

What's it called?

Ion Sail!

That's right! Ion Sail!

Re:Interesting

[LotsOfPhil]

I've made the drive from Tucson to Phoenix when it is bumper to bumper the entire way and going the speed limit is physically impossible.

"The entire way" is a massive exaggeration. This is a very sparsely populated 100 mile stretch of highway.

It should be noted that "Marana to Chandler" is not quite the same as "Tucson to Phoenix". Marana is far northern Tucson and Chandler is far southern Phx. Tucson to Phoenix is 114 miles, Marana to Chandler is 74.

Re:Interesting

[pfleming]

The second article stated there would be 4 sets of tracks. The inner two would be dedicated to express type service whereas the outer two would be all stops.

Re:Interesting

[Red Flayer]

re: the cost... if high-speed rail is *faster* than commuting by car, then it could be more expensive than driving, and still be feasible. The problem is that neither jobs, nor homes, are centrally concentrated. This makes the inconvenience of mass transit one of the primary costs, from a rider's perspective. I'm a firm believer in sound growth policy that factors in future need for mass transit; Arizona, by and large, has no such policy.

I've a sister in Boise ID -- they are undergoing massive growth also. Because of poor planning, they have a nasty rush hour, and no ability to put in mass transit. They had planned a light rail system, but the NIMBYs shot it down. It amazes me how high-growth areas in the west have ignored the lessons other cities learned too late.

At any rate, I'm glad you picked up on the water issue -- it is, I think, going to be the driving issue re: growth in the west for decades to come. Between the water table dropping (and being contaminated to boot), and increasing demand for agricultural, residential, and industrial usage of water, the west is pretty much fucked in the long term. Big changes will have to come in our usage.

I know you already understand all this... I'm just writing it out in case other people are interested in the basic details.

I do disagree with you, however, on your statement that "it's a whole other can of worms" :). Water demand is tied into all issues in much of the west. It pervades agriculture, industry, lifestyle, growth planning, etc. Any capital expenditure needs to consider the impact of water shortages (or risk of) on long-term utilization, revenue, and cost. I wish people would begin to think about water conservation in all facets of their life, and not sideline it.

FYI, I live in the northeast, and even here water use becomes an issue (due to droughts, and due to storage capacity and flooding -- high demand for storage capacity for NYC has resulted in several deadly floods of the Delaware river; the water authority refuses to allow for a buffer in resevoir capacity to mitigate flooding).

Re:Interesting

[gentlemen_loser]

For 27 Billion I would rather have robot cars that drive themselves.

Great! For safety reasons, we'll just make them bigger, longer, sit multiple people, and ride on tracks. Will that work for you?

Re:Interesting

[Dan Ost]

How realistic is it to build desalination plants on the coast and pipe the resulting water to the desert communities?

Re:Interesting

[FrameRotBlues]

I'm not sure what all the people do down there.

Snow birds from the upper Midwest are absorbing the heat and spending their retirement money.

Re:Interesting

[nsayer]

Then there is that time thing. It's not making the trip in 30 minutes if it stops 5 times between the two cities.

CalTrain baby bullets make a ~45 mile trip in an hour with 5 stops or so at a cruising speed of 79 mi/hr, but since the service is driven with diesel-electric locomotives, the acceleration and stopping is a non-trivial percentage of the dwell time. I could imagine a CalTrain express service with EMUs could make that same trip in 45 minutes. That's not 30, but then the CalTrain EMUs would have a maximum top speed less than half of what is quoted for these trains.

Tucson to Phoenix is twice as many miles, but the trains will be more than twice as fast, and since the stops will be further apart than CalTrains, the acceleration/stopping time will be less of a percentage of the travel time.

Whether they could do it in a half hour or not would largely depend on how quickly they can get people on and off the train at the stations.

Of course the way things are going, eventually this would run right up the middle of one big metro area.

Aren't there Indian reservations that would ostensibly prevent that sort of thing? Aren't they the reason there aren't more highway lanes in that corridor?

Maybe I'm thinking of New Mexico.

Re:Interesting

[Red Flayer]

Because, well, it's a train, and last time I checked trains couldn't fly.

Oh, so just because you *say* they can't fly, that means we can't try to use technology to make it so? Why do you so rudely stand in the way of technological progress?

All we need to do is add some aerodynamically shaped projections (we can call them wings), onboard fuel tanks and engines, and some takeoff&landing equipment. And if we add a navigation and guidance system, we could even ditch the whole track requirement -- so the train stations could have big paved areas for the trains to land on and take off from, instead of long stretches of track. Not only would this reduce the requirement for expensive steel, think how much easier it would be to turn trains around if they weren't on tracks!

Actually, this sounds like a pretty good idea. I think I may have to contact a lawyer to file a patent or two...

Re:Interesting

[SwordsmanLuke]

At 220 mph, I'll bet if you put a ramp at the end of the tracks it would.

Re:Interesting

[Hatta]

Am I the only person who read the summary and instantly thought of the Simpsons episode "Marge vs. the Monorail" where a fast-talking salesman sells a malfunctioning solar-powered monorail to Springfield?

#27925567
#27925609
#27925625
#27925865
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#27926173

Apparently not.

Re:Interesting

[pleappleappleap]

They really should have an express stop in Maricopa to allow easy transfer to Amtrak.

Re:Interesting

[stoolpigeon]

You're right - it is all tied together. And it is an issue everywhere. I live in Florida now, after spending most of my life in Arizona. I've never seen so much water - and yet we have real issues because drinking water is short for a lot of the reasons you discuss.

The can of worms part was just my thinking about drifting off-topic of the train.

I think the poor planning in the West is because people just don't seem to think long term in a realistic fashion. I can think of a lot of reasons for the way things have turned out, but that seems almost irrelevant. The truth is it all doesn't seem too sustainable.

I think America in general is going to see a shift in the way people live. The general opulence that we take for granted is just not going to work unless we overcome current limits on energy and resources.

I had a conversation just the other day with my kids- my daughter had just been talking with a family friend that was visiting but lives in Indonesia. He told her that there the land area is roughly the same as Florida but the population is the same as the entire US. (This isn't exactly true but close enough for the purpose.)

She asked me, "How do they fit all the houses?" I had to explain to her that most people don't live in huge houses like Americans do. Our home isn't big by US standards, but it's still larger than most homes I've been in when I travel outside the US. And most people I know here aren't even aware of that.

Re:Interesting

[WillAffleckUW]

Define "warp".

Then show me a functional warp drive.

Then realize that sails "warp".

Maybe you should have learned how to sail as a kid, then you'd take a different tack.

Re:Interesting

[COMON$]

I think the article mentioned the middle rails being reserved for non-stop travel. Also for me the trip is more than about the money, but adding 2-3 hours of time to my day (30 minute trip vs 2 hour trip) really sounds appealing. Of course what do I know, I live 5 minutes from where I work, 7 if I bike...

Re:Interesting

[kkwst2]

Missed that episode. Sounds like a spoof of The Music Man.

Re:Interesting

[twiddlingbits]

based at 1000W/M solar intensity and 20% conversion factor it would take about 550,000 sq Meters of panels. Thats going to be a panel about 2 meters wide the whole PHX to Tucson distance without factoring in inversion losses, power line losses, etc so add 15% for that. It would be easier and cheaper to build the solar farm halfway and just transmit the power via lines to the tracks and use standard electric train infrastructure. Since cost per unit goes down with scalability you should build more panels than you need and sell the rest back to the electic system. Plus that gives you spare panels. As long as the sun is shining on 100% of the cells you have that 110MW power available every second the sun is shining. Since the train isn't 100% duty factor the rest is profit!! Now finding 110MW of power available to run the train at night is not easy so you need to provide storage batteries which takes more solar panels

Re:Interesting

[stoolpigeon]

Yeah - you're probably right. Got a lot of that too here in FL. Seeing that comment cut away made me laugh because I guess from where I am right now Casa Grande is 'up there' but my lifelong orientation is thinking of it as south. Not on topic - but just struck me as funny.

Re:Interesting

[JWSmythe]

    I think you got not only the Simpsons episode, but the plan. :) Milk the cities for some cash, make some drama, and then ... nothing. Or maybe a magic collapsing monorail driven by Homer.

    I know those same ideas have come and gone here in Florida too.

    In the late 80's, there was a proposed St. Petersburg -> Tampa -> Orlando -> Miami high speed train idea.

    In 2001, it included Pensacola, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Bradenton, and "other larger cities". It was voted on and approved in 2000. It was dropped in 2004.

    In April 2009, Obama mentioned new high speed train systems for improving the economy (bring construction jobs, and the rest will follow).

    People like this will come up with ideas, make a few bucks from the local governments, and then run away quietly. Some may even start construction, but few will ever happen.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, though, strict monetary cost is a misleading metric for mass transit. There are other costs, like inconvenience, time, etc that make a big difference to potential users.

What you're talking about is covered by the economics concept of utility. It takes into account that different things have different values to different people and helps explain why someone would pay $1 for a 1 in 10 million chance to win a $1MM but won't pay $250K for a 1 in 2 chance to win $1MM (excepting possibly gamblers who tend to view money with absolute utility regardless of amount). The $1MM has more utility than the odds indicate when compared to $1 but less when compared to $250K.

When applied to things like you're talking about the convenience factor for instance adds to utility while not affecting the cost or intrinsic value of the service.

Re:Interesting

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Maybe you should have learned how to sail as a kid, then you'd take a different tack.

Perhaps he just needed to buy a clew...

Re:Interesting

[fooslacker]

I assume when you say "gamblers" you are specifically referring to professional gamblers who are good at what they do...not your average Las Vegas tourist. =)

Re:Interesting

[rock_climbing_guy]

Suppose that they propose to do just what you propose.
Then, along comes Algore and company complaining that the project will result in global desalination... Of course, humanity's contribution to changes in the salination of the ocean will be very small, but that very small change will doom the earth to ecological disaster...

Re:Interesting

[MobyDisk]

To make that work, you would need to have tracks on the roads.

Re:Interesting

[jmorris42]

> The problem with the snake oil salesmen,...

You see it as a negative, I see it as a positive. We need con men like these guys to remind folks to not believe every smooth talking hustler who comes along selling something that sounds too good to be true... if you will only make a token investment today. Two guys asking for $35K a pop expecting sane people to believe they are going to pull off a 27B project that pushes every politically correct button one can imagine.

And if they DO collect any money, that is also great because as the wise man said, "It is immoral to let a sucker keep his money."

Has anyone sat down and run the numbers on just the 110 megawatts worth of photovoltaics? Then add in the infrastructure to store and transport that kind of power up and down the track. Now consider this would be among the fastest trains ever put into service and it is going to be solar powered electric? I guess it will have super size batteries to run at night? No, either the train is a good idea regardless of power source or it isn't. And the solar power station is a good idea on it's own or it isn't. The attempt to sell them as a package is just an appeal to emotion amongst the greens who these guys (rightly) figure will be the key decision makers on giving them the cash they are asking for.

Con job.

Re:Interesting

[drinkypoo]

You forgot Los Angeles. One of the world's most populated regions runs almost entirely on water pumped from Northern California. One day, something will happen to that system and there will be tens of millions of people without drinking water. Already it is being threatened heavily by overuse up here in NoCal — ag allotments are WAY overallocated and a lot of vineyards whose grapes were killed off by this crazy early heat/late frost cycle have been pumping out their allotment and then some, loading it into trucks, and shipping it in some cases halfway across the damn state. Normally a percentage of the water pumped for irrigation goes back into the ground...

Re:Interesting

[Nethead]

Don't go overboard with the analogies. Try to keep an even keel here.

Re:Interesting

[KingPin27]

Cave ne ante ulles catapultas ambulas (SP)

Re:Interesting

[hldn]

Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

Re:Interesting

[Red Flayer]

Yes, I'm aware of the terms. Since most people on slashdot are not, I tend not to use economic terms here. It just adds confusion to the discussion, and draws out the randroids and self-"educated" economists who spend too much time failing to really understand mises.org and too little time studying the foundations of economic theory.

Re:Interesting

[Killer Orca]

I believe that you should take a read here: http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/

Re:Interesting

[LandDolphin]

Can it be done? yes. But the cost would be very high; might be cheaper to pour bottled water from Circle K on your head to shower and to drink.

Re:Interesting

[nuckfuts]

I realize that not reading TFA is a standing joke around here, but seriously, do we need to mod comments "+5 Informative" for merely quoting a line from the article?

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if it was 1.4 billion dollars useful, but those trains look pretty full to me most times of the day, so I don't think it's as useless as you think it is.

Re:Interesting

[Penguinoflight]

I'm sure this wouldn't stop him, but I'm pretty sure that taking water out of sea water would leave it more salinated.

Re:Interesting

[Tarlus]

Then there is that time thing. It's not making the trip in 30 minutes if it stops 5 times between the two cities. Maybe they are thinking of express trips interspersed with trips that stop?

Either way, it's a major convenience and safety factor. I've been hoping for many years that they'd proceed to build a train of some sort for public transit. I-10 is an absolute nightmare at times (particularly the bottlenecks as it enters Phoenix) and just not having to deal with the stop-and-go driving would be worth sitting on a stop-and-go train ride. I'd say it's pretty much a given that Tucson and Phoenix are eventually going to become one big connected metropolis but by that point in time I'm sure they'd devise additional methods of public transit (perhaps another train). But that's still pretty far out.

Re:Interesting

[WillAffleckUW]

There isn't a lot from Tuscon to Phoenix, and thus little need to have a high-speed train stop in between its destination, other than say "commute" trips that would be slightly slower. That can be accomplished by using the same high-speed rail line but with multiple train sets, which alternate between express (no stops except end points) and rural (stops at each point on side tracks, clearing the way for the express). The express would go the 220 mph, the rural would probably be half as fast due to the stops.

Depends on dwell times at stations.

Re:Interesting

[Will2k_is_here]

Why not build a high speed train that transports cars (electric or otherwise)? Kind of like a ferry. That way people don't need to worry about renting a car once they've reached their destination.

Cars should be for cities only. City to city transportation could use high speed bullet trains/"ferries", not freeways.

Re:Interesting

[pfleming]

Florida still has the Tri-County rail don't they? Not all ideas are feasible, but we will continue to need transportation (unless the transporter becomes fact, and even then Kirk, et al use shuttle craft) especially as we live further and further from work.

Re:Interesting

[vux984]

I remember it being defective, but not solar powered.

It was solar powered. They couldn't cut its power because 'it was solar powered'.

"Solar Power!? When will people learn!?"

Ironically, the out of control monorail stopped briefly because Springfield had a solar eclipse, and then sped off again when the eclipse ended.

Re:Interesting

[pfleming]

They also serve to take out stupid people who can't pay attention to the "no turn" lights.

Re:Interesting

[pfleming]

There was an interview on NPR where the guest stated that states like NV were paying to install desalination plants in CA in exchange for a bigger cut of the water CA gets from places like the Salt River.

Re:Interesting

[jameskojiro]

I would hate to cross the two non-stop tracks to take the train on the far track,
==== Regular - North
==== Express - North
==== Express - South
==== Regular - South

Having to cross a track to get tot he regular train at a station in between would be hell!

SPLAT!

Re:Interesting

[JWSmythe]

    That's still Southeast Florida only (Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach county). The rest of the state doesn't get it. According to their map, they have 22 stops in 3 counties, along a single line.

    It's a far cry from a real transit system

    If you could even say that the tri-rail "services" 3 counties, that leaves 64 counties without service, and even the counties that are serviced are only on the one line.

   

Re:Interesting

[MaxwellEdison]

You have to watch Blaine all the time, Blaine is a pain, and that is the truth.

Re:Interesting

[timbck2]

I guess I have solar on the brain - I read this as "This has thin film written all over it."

Re:Interesting

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

It's far too late for that now guy, we're underway. Best to batten down the hatches. Hold tight, we've cast off, entered the place where nobody is going to bale you out. Yawl are at the bitter end of your rope, buoy, while I'm just getting started - follow my lead if you want to make it through, else I'll rake you over the shoals.

"How cuddy do that," you ask yourself, and the answer is simple: I am a mere traveler along the rode, it's a fluke that I've arrived but none shall thwart me. I'm a stern man, aft all is said and done, and I love to screw with your head.

Re:Interesting

[An ominous Cow art]

Don't go overboard with the analogies. Try to keep an even keel here.

Oar knot.

Re:Interesting

[johnmat]

Are you proposing a catapult instead of a train? Might be faster...

Re:Interesting

[billius]

It's unlikely too many people would want to just ride the train and not need a car on the other end.

While I agree with the general sentiment of this statement, I think the number of people not needing a car at the other end would be greater than one would initially think. Take people going to Sky Harbor (the airport in Phoenix), for example. Tucson does have its own airport but it's generally cheaper to fly out of Phoenix. I once flew from Tucson to Salt Lake City. The first thing we did? Fly to Phoenix and switch planes. When we got to Phoenix we all joked about how we probably could have driven to Phoenix and gotten there faster, since we wouldn't have had to deal with airport security, etc.

My point is, a lot of travelers (including, for example, out of state college students, of which there are many in Tucson because of U of A) would jump at the chance to take a reasonably-priced 30 minute train ride to the airport. Even in-state students like me would find it handy for occasions where you have to run home for the weekend but really don't need your car.

Arizona cities are generally pretty heinous examples of urban sprawl, but we're getting better about it. For example, Phoenix just got a light rail system back in December. If I could take this train to a station within walking distance of the light rail, I could go all the way from Tucson to about 15 minutes away from my parent's house without a car. Not bad, eh?

Re:Interesting

[MichaelSmith]

As long a Leonard Nimoy is still around to make insightful comments we should be okay.

BTW does it ever get dark in Arizona?

Re:Interesting

[secolactico]

So long as it's pump is primed backwards...

Re:Interesting

[fiannaFailMan]

But the reality is the ride and the electric car rental on the other end have to be cheaper than driving down there in one's own car. Arizona cities are textbook cases of sprawl. It is almost impossible to get around in them without a vehicle, especially in the summer.

True. But over time, cities tend to densify around transit hubs like train stations so that more people can take advantage of them. Transit should certainly meet the needs of the city, but the city can eventually change to take advantage of transit and hence make it more efficient.

Re:Interesting

[xaxa]

Why not build a high speed train that transports cars (electric or otherwise)? Kind of like a ferry.

With current car trains, loading the cars up take ages (relative to loading people on a passenger train anyway). You can comfortably seat 800+ people on a high speed train and the train weighs about 800 tonnes (including first class seats, buffet car etc).
800 European cars weigh 800 * 1500 = 1200 tonnes, plus you need 65 car wagons to carry them (2000 tonnes?) and some more locomotives to pull all that. And you still need the 800 tonnes worth of passenger train to carry the people.

That way people don't need to worry about renting a car once they've reached their destination.

If the city had a decent public transport system they wouldn't need to worry either. (Or failing that, a low-cost way of quickly renting a car, like StreetCar or ZipCar.)

Re:Interesting

[fiannaFailMan]

Whether or not this would fly will all come down to cost.

I bet that regardless of cost, it won't. Because, well, it's a train, and last time I checked trains couldn't fly. :-P

Au contraire.

Re:Interesting

[jd2112]

I bet that regardless of cost, it won't. Because, well, it's a train, and last time I checked trains couldn't fly. :-P

Ever heard of a maglev?

Re:Interesting

[Nom du Keyboard]

I've made the drive from Tucson to Phoenix when it is bumper to bumper the entire way and going the speed limit is physically impossible.

I know this drive very well as well, although I can usually manage 80MPH on the cruise control with very few slowdowns -- especially now that they're widening the 2-lanes each direction to 3. I like the idea of the solar panels over the tracks because in addition to power they would provide necessary shade to improve the efficiency of keeping the trains cool.

It's just that I thought all new bullet trains had to go to Las Vegas first to keep Harry Reid elected and spending my money.

Re:Interesting

[fireheadca]

My first thought was of Blaine the Mono... but good call.

Re:Interesting

[Scott Kevill]

A solar eclipse. The cosmic ballet goes on...

Re:Interesting

[Cimexus]

American houses are big even by the standards of other huge countries with sprawling suburbs (i.e. my home country of Australia).

Australia has even more space per person than the US, but American houses are bigger on average, and by a fair margin. To clarify, I mean the physical size of suburban houses, not the blocks of land they sit on (I'd say Australian blocks are similar to or larger than US blocks ... but the houses sure aren't).

I see it's common for new dwellings in the US to now have three or more bathrooms (I've seen even five or more advertised in what are really just standard family suburban homes). There are almost as many bathrooms as bedrooms, in fact.

That seems rather insane to me. Unless you had a whole family all needing to take a shower at exactly the same time, I can't see how you'd even use them all. By comparison, here in Australia even expensive houses would usually only have two, at most (more typically one 'full' bathroom, and an ensuite containing just a shower, basin and toilet).

Mind you, our smaller houses don't make us particularly environmentally friendly. From memory we are third (behind the US and Canada) when it comes to energy consumption per capita. We'd probably be first if we had cold winters like North America does. And talking of water, Australians actually use the MOST water per capita of ANY country. Which is bad, when one considers Australia is 90% desert and is by far the driest inhabited continent...

Re:Interesting

[Phoghat]

You're looking at the cost of travel and not the cost versus convenience and time saved. Time, after all, is money. If some trains are express and go point to point in 30 minutes and some trains are locals going point to point making 5 stops, averaging 1 minute per each stop, you get a 35 minute trip and I don't see a problem with that.

Re:Interesting

[Phoghat]

Operative word here is "might"

Re:Interesting

[Eivind]

I don't quite see the point of this.

Electric bullet-trains are old technology, nothing new or exciting about them, they may or may not make sense, depending on traffic, distance, terrain and other well-known factors.

Producing electricity with solar-cells is also no new idea, it works perfectly fine, but the drawback has up until now been that the cost is higher than electricity from other sources.

This idea propose combining the two. Build a solar-cell-roof over the rails, and use the power from that to power the train.

While fine in principle, I don't quite see the advantage over seeing the two projects as separate. If the train makes sense, it makes sense independent of where it gets its power from. If the solar-cells can produce power at a price comparable to that from other sources, then they make sense, independently of if the power is used for running a train underneath, or just plain sold.

There's -one- advantage I guess, namely that you get to use the same land-area for two things, thus you don't need to purchase extra land to put the solar-cells on. This advantage is pretty limited though, given that a square-km of desert isn't exactly expensive, and I imagine the added cost of mounting the cells as a roof over a rail, rather than on standard racks would subtract more from the idea than the free-land adds to it.

So what's the advantage ?

Re:Interesting

[Hucko]

Wouldn't it be smarter to pump the saltwater into the desert and utilize the abundant space, sun and heat? The salts left over would of course need to be purified and sold.

Re:Interesting

[ByOhTek]

And if they DO collect any money, that is also great because as the wise man said, "It is immoral to let a sucker keep his money."

He wasn't a wise man, he was a greedy man. Everyone who cons people, could instead be doing something productive an making the world a better place for all. Everything is interrelated, and directly or indirectly, things will come back to bite the stammers in the butt (legal issues, worsened economy if there are enough scammers, etc.) the overall pain caused by these things is usually in excess of the overall benefit to the one or few receiving from the scam. Also, people hit by such scams rarely learn. So, no, getting scammed now, is unlikely to prevent it later.

And, of course, the previous reply to your post made a good point too.

Re:Interesting

[stdarg]

When he realizes that he'll just start calling it Global Salinity Change.

Re:Interesting

[anexium]

...It's unlikely too many people would want to just ride the train and not need a car on the other end.

Then why not just make some (most?) of the carridges like they are on the Eurostar (see http://www.eurostar.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurostar) and allow people to just drive straight onto the train? If it's only a 30 minute trip then people can stay in their cars. Just need to stick a couple of toilets in each carridge.

Re:Interesting

[EvilBudMan]

Yes there has to be either storage or base power when the sun don't shine, the wind don't blow, etc.

Geothermal looks promising for this in some areas. So does tidal. There ARE ways to store power from wind and solar, and I know the US could have much more wind power for sure. Probably without subsidies.

Solar is coming along, but those silicon wafers need to get cheaper. There are promising new technologies there that eventually would drive the price down, but for right now solar would have to be subsidized for that to work and you can't sell excess power back to the grid everywhere in the US. Where you can do that you might get a 5 year payback.

Even bio fuels are not as bad as what we use now. Corn takes a lot of subsidies to get that 10% ethanol that we use now in our gasoline. Sugar cane would be much cheaper. Look at Brazil.

We need to make some decisions to tear down one infrastructure and build another to power our homes and get place to place. Going totally with wind and solar seems doable but you may still need a few nukes for your base power.

Someone here is smart enough to figure this out. If we could do without the nukes too that would be better if it is possible.

Re:Interesting

[Joey Vegetables]

Of course the way things are going, eventually this would run right up the middle of one big metro area.

American-style suburban development (aka "sprawl") depends on, among other things, plentiful energy and real personal incomes and wealth far (2-5x) above the world median. These conditions do not exist now and are unlikely to recur anytime soon. "Sprawl" thus is probably near or at an end.

On the other hand, this does not guarantee a mass flight back to the cities either. Suburbanization was, in large part, a reaction to the problems of U.S. urban centers - corruption, violence, high taxes, racial tensions, pollution, overcrowding, schools that are bad even by U.S. standards, and so forth. I for one have no wish to return to city living while these problems continue to worsen, but I'd do so in a heartbeat if it became reasonably safe and affordable to live and raise children there.

Re:Interesting

[stoolpigeon]

It's funny that you bring up the bathroom thing. My four bedroom townhouse has 3.5 bathrooms. (It was built in 2006) This is primarily due to the fact that the master and guest bedrooms have their own bathroom. That's 2 right there, the full 3rd is upstairs near the other 2 bedrooms and the half is downstairs. We wouldn't have planned it that way - just means more cleaning and such, but that's the way they built it.

This is what the "new green economy" is all about.

[sageres]

This is what the green economy is all about. Get rich on the government handouts or by imposing government requirements of consumers' energy consumption.

Simpsons did it

[SlappyBastard]

Two guys pitching a feasibility study? Sounds like the monorail episode of the Simpsons.

Great concept

[kcfoxie]

Par the link:

"And so the project principals are looking to city officials at each of the intermediate stations, seven in total, and asking them to put up $5,000 toward the $35,000 study cost."

I'm not convinced that solar panels alone can power the train at all times, but I really do like the idea. The concept of having electric cars with a 50mi range for rent at the stations is also novel, reminds me of ZipCar and TriMet's MAX Lightrail in Portland Oregon.

Re:Great concept

[Firethorn]

I'm not convinced that solar panels alone can power the train at all times, but I really do like the idea.

Eh, too much power? Feed it to the grid. Too Little? Pull some from the grid.

Not a real issue.

Whether the solar panels would be able to support the train's operation, at least on a net basis, would require a lot of information that's just too variable at this point - How much electricity will the various train options take? How many routes a day? What efficiency solar panels are they using? Have they planned for vandalism/theft? How wide of a install are we looking at, and how long? How many square meters of panel per kilometer, and so on...

Re:Great concept

[vertinox]

I'm not convinced that solar panels alone can power the train at all times, but I really do like the idea.

If they put solar panels along the entire length of the track it might be feasible. The area around the tracks are generally wasted space as it is.

How much for the 60 mph version?

[DoofusOfDeath]

I don't really feel like paying $27B so that people in Arizona can have super-duper-fast commute. That's a lot of our cash or the riders' luxury.

Can't they just get a 60 mph version for a lot less money?

Re:How much for the 60 mph version?

[ArsonSmith]

We've got a 75MPH version. We call it I10.

Re:How much for the 60 mph version?

[pfleming]

I don't really feel like paying $27B so that people in Arizona can have super-duper-fast commute. That's a lot of our cash or the riders' luxury.

Can't they just get a 60 mph version for a lot less money?

I'm sure Americans* thought the same when the national highway system was conjured up.

*Citizens of the United States who think they are the only ones who live in the hemisphere.

Re:How much for the 60 mph version?

[amliebsch]

To be fair, the actual users of those interstates pay a great deal for them in form of fuel taxes and tolls.

Re:How much for the 60 mph version?

[AK Marc]

Citizens of the United States who think they are the only ones who live in the hemisphere.

People from The United States of Mexico call themselves Mexicans. People from the United States of America call themselves Americans. It's consistent. And it's unambiguous. There is no continent of "America." So there are other North Americans. And even South Americans. But "Americans" is consistent with other naming conventions and unambiguous. So I am always confused why asses complain. What do you think they should be called? United Statesiens? Just call them United States of Americans and shorten it by leaving out all the words other than the last...

Re:How much for the 60 mph version?

[CodeBuster]

Maybe they could save a few million by building the passenger cars out of plexiglass and eliminating the air-conditioning?

You've gotta love solar power...

[DavidChristopher]

... as long as you live in the desert. This is a great idea, if they pull it off. Clean, reliable, and fast as hell. While it's not (well, probably not) feasible in 'regular' climates (like Ontario, or the prairies, or even the mid west) where sunshine isn't a guarantee - it could be a step in the right direction for self-sufficient transportation infrastructure. When you push the technology envelope, everyone wins.

Now, how long before bureaucracy clouds over this idea?

Re:You've gotta love solar power...

[gentlemen_loser]

... as long as you live in the desert. This is a great idea, if they pull it off. Clean, reliable, and fast as hell. While it's not (well, probably not) feasible in 'regular' climates (like Ontario, or the prairies, or even the mid west) where sunshine isn't a guarantee - it could be a step in the right direction for self-sufficient transportation infrastructure. When you push the technology envelope, everyone wins. Now, how long before bureaucracy clouds over this idea?

Define "regular" climates? Deserts make up between 20% (hot) to 35% (hot and cold) percent of the worlds land mass. I would consider either of those numbers to be pretty "regular". Having lived in both climates myself, we need to stop thinking as either of them being the "norm". "Think globally, act locally" has never meant more.

Re:You've gotta love solar power...

[FooAtWFU]

I'm thinking, "solar train? why? Electricity is fungible. Why not build the electric train, if it's a good idea, and worry about making that work, and then add solar power? I guess there is some advantage to not having construction gear in the way of operating trains for the "over the track" deal, but that part sounds stupid anyway- build a few real solar thermal-concentrator style plants next to the track a few miles out in the desert and you'll probably do better than a series of photovoltaics-on-a-stick.

Re:You've gotta love solar power...

[davidphogan74]

Portland's MAX is powered in part by wind and hydro sources. I don't think it's all renewable, but I know TriMet buys a significant amount of renewable electric from the dams up the Columbia.

I'm sure other areas have wind or water moving they could use for similar projects. Just use whatever applies in your climate.

Monorail, Monorail, Monorail

[rshol]

(np)

Re:Monorail, Monorail, Monorail

[digitalgiblet]

Solar powered train is more of a Shelbyville idea...

Re:Monorail, Monorail, Monorail

[dontmakemethink]

or was it North Haverbrook...

Re:Monorail, Monorail, Monorail

[Colonel Korn]

Or perhaps Ogdenville?

Solar!

[Smivs]

traveling from Tuscon to Phoenix in 30 minutes flat

It is estimated that the journey at night could take up to 12 hours.

Re:Solar!

[AndrewNeo]

Not if everyone has to get out and push the train!

Re:Solar!

[dontmakemethink]

and it does occasionally get cloudy in AZ...

Re:Solar!

[EchaniDrgn]

Yeah, but you can call in sick both of those days.

Monorail!

[bughunter]

Lyle Lanley:  Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
              Like a genuine,
              Bona fide,
              Electrified,
              Six-car
              Monorail! ...
              What'd I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley:  What's it called?
Patty+Selma:  Monorail!
Lyle Lanley:  That's right!  Monorail!

[http://www.snpp.com/episodes/9F10.html]

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[Archangel Michael]

Why yes. Yes it is! Welcome to the Obamanation

Scam

[Anonymous Coward]

This just smells like a scam trying to make money off of bailout money.

From the Wikipedia page:

Extensive trials using the Fastech 360 test trains has shown that operation at 360 km/h (224 mph) is not currently feasible due to problems of noise pollution, overhead wire wear, and braking distances. This may indicate the limits to railed Shinkansen technology, and eventually maglev or another technology will need to replace it.

So forget about the solar panel aspect (that's probably just there to get the tax breaks & incentives in the new budget). The train tech itself is not going to go that fast. Something tells me they also don't account for emabrkment/disembarkment of passengers & luggage in that 30 minute time estimate.

Yes it would be faster than by car. However, the complete overselling of this & that it's two guys asking for large sums of money up front for "feasability" studies just smells like a scam.

Just get Lyle Lanley to build you a monorail instead - it'll give you the same result.

Re:Scam

[debrain]

So forget about the solar panel aspect (that's probably just there to get the tax breaks & incentives in the new budget). The train tech itself is not going to go that fast. Something tells me they also don't account for emabrkment/disembarkment of passengers & luggage in that 30 minute time estimate.

I agree that solar panel estimates are unlikely to power this train, at least with present-day solar panel technology. I don't see any evidence that the train technology isn't available, and I don't think train stop-time is an enormous consideration (though I doubt it was not a factor when they said "30 minutes" to from departure to arrival).

As the link you provided indicates, the biggest complaint about train speed in Japan is the noise generated. This noise is generated predominantly when the trains exit the tunnels. There are no mountains in Arizona on this route (as far as I can see), and certainly none with habitation around them, ergo no tunnel-exit noise.

A better comparison may be the TGV. From Wikipedia: TGV

A TGV test train set the record for the fastest wheeled train, reaching 574.8 km/h (357 mph) on 3 April 2007,[1][2] and a TGV service holds the record for the fastest scheduled rail journey with a start to stop average speed of 279.4 km/h.

In my experiences traveling by train in both Japan and France, neither generally has wait times of over 30 minutes at the major terminals. Alighting and boarding rarely take more than a couple minutes each, even if the train empties - there are many doors. I suppose the obesity in the southern USA is a relevant factor in considering stop times for the trains. Japan and France don't have anything even remotely close to the same number of morbidly obese potential passengers as the southern USA has. Even so, how much would that affect the time to get on and off of a train? I couldn't say.

I'd say the train technology is certainly available, and the alighting and board time really isn't an enormous concern. I agree with concerns about the efficacy of solar panels, though. A secondary concern is the availability of local transit upon arrival, either "per diem" cars or public transit. Hopefully train terminals would spur high density destinations with good public transit.

Re:Scam

[pfleming]

This just smells like a scam trying to make money off of bailout money.

From the Wikipedia page:

Extensive trials using the Fastech 360 test trains has shown that operation at 360 km/h (224 mph) is not currently feasible due to problems of noise pollution, overhead wire wear, and braking distances. This may indicate the limits to railed Shinkansen technology, and eventually maglev or another technology will need to replace it.

So forget about the solar panel aspect (that's probably just there to get the tax breaks & incentives in the new budget). The train tech itself is not going to go that fast. Something tells me they also don't account for emabrkment/disembarkment of passengers & luggage in that 30 minute time estimate.

Yes it would be faster than by car. However, the complete overselling of this & that it's two guys asking for large sums of money up front for "feasability" studies just smells like a scam.

Just get Lyle Lanley to build you a monorail instead - it'll give you the same result.

Have you seen the Arizona desert? There is plenty of braking distance out here.

How much?!?!

[AKAImBatman]

1.21 gigawatts?!?! What?!?!?

The train would require 110 megawatts of electricity

Oh. Well that makes tons more sense. In fact, let me just get out these multi-megawatt solar panels I have sitting around...

Seriously, this is a rather larger undertaking. Generating 110 megawatts (per train, I imagine?) is no small feat. Especially for solar paneling. That's usually the type of thing you need your own power plant for. It's a nice idea, but you'll forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical of:

a) Solar Power only above the rails being effective
b) The practicality of any design that relied only on the rail footprint
c) The realistic cost benefits of this idea
d) That maintenance costs won't be overwhelming
e) That consumer demand for service won't result in the train operating during periods where it will be forced to pull from the grid. Frustratingly, very likely during the hours when demand is high for home lighting/heating/etc.

Re:How much?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a stab in the dark, but I'm guessing Arizona houses won't be neededing a lot of heating power.

Re:How much?!?!

[canajin56]

Don't worry, it's just a scam. It's in the summary ;) This "corporation" is two guys asking the cities involved for $35K each to do a "feasibility study" that will almost certainly end in a result of "not feasible, sorry" ;)

Re:How much?!?!

[skeptikos]

110 MW per train sounds like too much. The typical power output for a locomotive seems to be roughly 5000 HP (http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/2008/05/23/ges-4500-hp-locomotive/). Even if we double that number, since it a high speed train, 10 000 HP = 7 456 998 watts. It is only 7.5 MW. You could power more than 10 of these suckers with 110MW

Re:How much?!?!

[rAiNsT0rm]

I work for a train company, and not only are most of your concerns accurate there are quite a few *more* even.

f) Infrastructure. To get to those speeds you need to replace the entire rail system. Concrete railroad ties, carefully planned/banked track, etc.
g) HVAC on the trains themselves. Cooling is massive.
h-z) If I wanted to go on.

Maintenence costs would be prohibitive. Guaranteed. But if they can manage federal funding (they won't) they will soak up a never-ending stream of cash for upkeep.

This is one of the dumber ideas I have seen make this much press this quickly. People are so blindly interested in anything billed as "eco" or "green or "solar" that common sense goes right out the window. Trains are about as efficient a means of transportation as possible *right now*, how about going after the real areas of waste and inefficiency?

Re:How much?!?!

[Chris Burke]

Seriously, this is a rather larger undertaking. Generating 110 megawatts (per train, I imagine?) is no small feat. Especially for solar paneling. That's usually the type of thing you need your own power plant for. It's a nice idea, but you'll forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical of:

a) Solar Power only above the rails being effective
b) The practicality of any design that relied only on the rail footprint

Hmm, well let's do a little napkin engineering here and guestimate the footprint needed. Let's start with standard 1000 W/m^2 solar irradiance, and assume 2m wide cells over the rails. With that you'd need solar panels over 55km of track. Easy-peasy. Now assume inexpensive thin film cells at about 10% efficiency -- then you need 550km of over-rail cells. Which is longer than the rail from Phoenix to Tuscon would be.

If they could afford 30% efficient cells, then it'd be 183km, which is about the distance from Tuscon to Phoenix. For one car. If they have a pair of tracks, then they could have one going in both directions at all times. Is one train every 30 mins, for a 30 min trip, reasonable? Doesn't seem any worse than normal trains today. So I'm going to call this one barely feasible, physically. Economically? That's a whole 'nother ball of wax.

Re:How much?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The TGV (french electric high speed train) runs 199mph in passenger service on many routes as of 2009 (some older routes are limited to only 186mph, like in the dark ages, sheesh!).

The trains used there pull somewhere around 9MW to do 200mph, and because to go faster the force required increases as a square of the speed, I'd imagine that the last 20mph being proposed could bump the required figure up to about 12MW per trainset. 100MW would allow for a couple of trains in the station, and a couple en route, so the number looks about right to me when transmission losses are taken into account.

C

Re:How much?!?!

[pleappleappleap]

Watts are a measure of POWER, not ENERGY. Watts/train is a meaningless unit. Watts indicate CONTINUOUS CONSUMPTION, or at least AVERAGE CONSUMPTION.

Re:How much?!?!

[BikeHelmet]

Don't forget, there's four tracks going the whole way!

Re:How much?!?!

[dontmakemethink]

b) The practicality of any design that relied only on the rail footprint

This is an odd thing they propose. To my knowledge the only solar power plant type that generates over 100MW cost-effectively is steam turbine driven solar-thermal, which depends on a field of mirrors directing sunlight to a central collector/boiler and is about 7x more efficient than PV panels, with yields in excess of 500MW. Unless the train does a tight spiral, I can't see such a system fitting onto the typical land allotted to train rails.

It would make much more sense to build one or more solar thermal plants to power the trains. There's no need to tie power generation to consumption so closely, there's these things called wires that conduct electricity real well. It would also help to network the trains together to minimize concurrent heavy loads, i.e. don't let all trains accelerate at once, and there would likely be spare juice to pump into the grid.

It's a freekin desert, why they're not full of solar thermal generators baffles me.

Re:How much?!?!

[$1uck]

You didn't read the article did you? They're asking 7 cities for $5k each. Which sounds a lot more reasonable than what you implied from the summary, but don't let that stop you from reaching your predetermined conclusion.

Re:How much?!?!

[Chris Burke]

I'm assuming they will want at least one train per track running concurrently (why have multiple tracks otherwise), so that doesn't change the per-track coverage needed. 3m wide cells does, thank you -- the new napkin number is ~367 km.

Re:How much?!?!

[init100]

The panels need to be generating 110MW whenever a train is running

No train requires 110 MW. Divide that figure by 10 and you'll get a reasonable number for a current high-speed train.

Re:How much?!?!

[mikechant]

As per my previous commment, a four track rail formation is about 14m wide, not 2m so you can potentially multiply your power output by seven.
See http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1230751&cid=27928367

Re:How much?!?!

[Chris Burke]

I also assumed (but didn't state -- bad napkin engineer!) that the 110 MW figure was per train. Which would put each tracks cell width at about 3m. But if that was the total power for however many trains on four tracks, then this is vastly more feasible as that lowers not just the length, but the total surface area and thus cost by a lot.

Re:How much?!?!

[moore.dustin]

Ummm... it has been over 100 degrees here for a week already. We more than make up for our lack of heating in the winter with all the cooling we do in the summer. During the months of June, July and August, my electric bill is triple (or more) the cost of a winter month.

Re:How much?!?!

[Omestes]

?People are so blindly interested in anything billed as "eco" or "green or "solar" that common sense goes right out the window.

Or, people are genuinely interested in a fast train to replace a tedious, long, boring, and often slow drive, that some people have to do very often (my step-brother is a pilot, he lives in Maricopa, and commutes to Tuscon 3x a week, for example).

As you stated, trains are more efficient than cars, and can run faster, "green" or not, THAT might be why people are interested, or at least its why I'm interested.

Re:How much?!?!

[rAiNsT0rm]

Yes, but see the reason I stated it the way I did is because there are companies... REAL companies not like these two dickheads that exist right now in America, in these cities, that can create whole rail systems traditionally that are ridiculously efficient and no funding is put towards it. Yet, some nutjobs with no actual experience make some wild claims about a "solar" rail system and people are willing to throw money at it by the bucketfuls and it will go nowhere and waste a lot of tax dollars.

How about removing this stupid eco crap and just invest in regular railways, not high-speed which our infrastructure cannot support? They are still very fast, and with as many stops as they will be making this proposed train or any other will never get above 40-60MPH which is what we have now!

Once we get the basic infrastructure and lines worked out, THEN, make the second phase be boosting speeds and infrastructure where it makes sense based on the data from the number of years in phase 1.

Re:How much?!?!

[Omestes]

One quick point, the infrastructure doesn't actually exist in this case, so I'd see no problem with an updated design, or some sort of Japanese style bullet.

That said, I agree with you completely.

Re:How much?!?!

[OAB_X]

Because they have all been foreclosed!

State foreclosure rate is 1 in 54 for Q1 09

Re:How much?!?!

[bap]

... the force required increases as a square of the speed

The force required scales as the cube of the speed. When you go twice as fast the air has to move twice as fast to get out of the way, and square that for kinetic energy, but you also have to move twice as much air, giving a factor of eight. (On the other hand you only have to do the pushing for half as long, so the *total* work, which is the integral of the force, goes as the square of the speed.)

Re:How much?!?!

[rAiNsT0rm]

I do understand that, I actually work for the maker of the Shinkansen (Japanese bullet train), it still is not feasible in most parts of the U.S. and this would be one of those cases.

See you need a train that is covering vast distances with few to no extra stops to make it even close to worthwhile. Otherwise you will never get to top speeds and it is all a waste.

The current trains can get you to those same locations in about an hour/hour and a half. To spend $27B to save an hour (not even really) when the average motorist sits in traffic for at least that now is silly. I'm not saying we shouldn't build NEW rails or when repairs are done to existing systems with an eye towards higher speeds... but honestly we don't need 200+MPH trains in America right now, we just need solid commuter lines throughout America.

Re:How much?!?!

[Omestes]

Correct me if I'm wrong (which isn't rare); but the Japanese style trains sound expensive airplanes the way you describe them. What application do these have in Japan then, last time I checked Japan was pretty small, and dense. How do they over come these problems?

Personally I think we should have a intercontinental commuter rail system, at least linking major cities. Sure we have Amtrack, but as it currently stands they are full of fail in most places that isn't the North East. I don't know anything about the technology involved, so I'll leave that up to those who do, I also would be rabidly opposed to it if it involved taking funding from fixing up our existent bits of decaying infrastructure.

Re:How much?!?!

[rAiNsT0rm]

I agree on the inter-continental idea myself. This is the kind of thing that would connect this country and create new opportunities.

http://www.bullet-train.jp/route/route_22.html

That is a route map for Shinkansen. As you can see while Japan is relatively small it is fairly linear and that allows for nice long straightaways with few stops. America is not laid out this way for the most part, so that is where things get tricky and while logically on the surface it all seems plausible it really isn't in 90% of the cases here.

Hopefully that helps clarify a bit... I could go on for paragraphs but in the interest of brevity and time I'll stop here. A good discussion, and one I wish these local municipalities would have with the existing train manufacturers and transit authorities before even sending a dime to these leeches.

How long would it take if it left from...

[Palmateer]

Chicago?

Solar Bullet LLC??

[Joe Snipe]

Solar Bullet LLC has already built trains in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by golly it put them on the map!

Same idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same idea a few years ago, except mine was along the lines of a highway, with the power going to cars. The road would be set up like a giant slot car track and the pannels would provide power to it. As a bonus the solar panels would provide shade to reduce AC use and the structure would be useable for running data lines between cities.

Canada came to similiar conclusions in research

[WillAffleckUW]

In some recent scientific papers on the subject of energy and transportation, Canada - which gets less solar radiation - found that using wind power to power large fuel cell train engine plants (thru stored H2O broken by electrolysis) was the most cost-effective in a 30-100 year time frame.

But in Arizona, the cost factors and yields for solar make a solar train a far more economical method.

Trains use surprisingly little energy to move large masses medium to long distances.

Re:Canada came to similiar conclusions in research

[ausekilis]

All they really need to do is say the technology is already in use and widely accepted in Japan. That gets them every time.

Dumb idea.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Arizona is not fit for human habitation. Best plan for Arizona is for all the people of Arizona to move to places like Pittsburgh, where there is plenty of water and nice homes for dirt cheap prices. That will be lot more green, enviro friendly etc etc than this nonsense about 220 mph train that connects two points in the desert.

Re:Dumb idea.

[Gryle]

I'm fairly certain the local Native American population is all for shipping out the white folks to Pittsburgh.

Re:Dumb idea.

[GodfatherofSoul]

Did you watch the Superbowl this year? I don't see that happening.

Re:Dumb idea.

[nausea_malvarma]

And lets see how clean and green Pittsburgh becomes after the entire population of Arizona moves in. There wont be plenty of drinking water - there will be a water shortage. Pittsburgh can't support that many people.

Besides, Pittsburg PA is a cold, dull, and thoroughly miserable city. Few would want to live there.

Re:Dumb idea.

[earlymon]

Arizona is not fit for human habitation. Best plan for Arizona is for all the people of Arizona to move to places like Pittsburgh, where there is plenty of water and nice homes for dirt cheap prices.

Odd - one of the two guys trying to get this rolling is a native Philadelphian.

Perhaps he knows something about Arizona that you don't - or something about Pennsylvania. Either that, or you're probably an Arizonian yourself, tired of the Eastern transplants....

Re:Dumb idea.

[rwiggers]

Interesting?
I would think funny, since overcrowding is as far from eco-friendly as possible.

Re:Dumb idea.

[kc5deb]

Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that the more a person presents themselves to be "green", the more they enjoy the idea of suppressing the freedoms of others? Ya know, something like "I'm so green, that I believe that people shouldn't be allowed to live in Arizona by their own free will."

Re:Dumb idea.

[Ogive17]

Arizona is like Los Angeles, no one is a native, everyone is a transplant.

Re:Dumb idea.

[jbeaupre]

As you imply, they won't live long under those conditions. Yet another reason to oppose this Arizona lebensraum idea.

Re:Dumb idea.

[Ogive17]

Well the GP has a point. Stop artifically funneling water into the desert and suddenly no one will want to live there any more.

Re:Dumb idea.

[kc5deb]

So artificially diverting water to areas without a substantial amount is a bad thing?

Re:Dumb idea.

[Omestes]

And some of us hate trees, snow, and a somewhat boring culture. Some of us LIKE the desert, and would wish that all the people from the midwest would go home (as should the Californians), and then we wouldn't have much of a water problem either.

Re:Dumb idea.

[CodeBuster]

No, you are not the only one to make the connection. The greens realize that the changes they want to make will never occur, or at least not in their lifetimes, without some sort of coercion which means force (aka violence) because not many people will altruistically choose to alter their lifestyles (i.e. make do with less) for the benefit of others. The more honest greens acknowledge and own that position (aka the "hair shirt" mentality), whereas the less honest ones attempt to trick the people into believing that the bear shit is better than the buckwheat (i.e. we are your intellectual betters and we know what is best for you common people). You often hear the left talking about "collective responsibility" and "sharing the wealth" because they don't want to be seen pointing the dirty finger at those who are actually responsible for making the mess (perhaps because there would be three fingers on that hand pointing right back at themselves). Anyone who studies history should really not be surprised by this. The left has always been necessarily against freedom or unwilling to sacrifice other political objectives in order to obtain it (i.e. freedom as long as nobody has to do without, which effectively means little or no meaningful freedom).

Re:Dumb idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Arizona was quite fit for human habitation before the twentieth century. The protected "bowl" in which Tucson sits has been continuously inhabited (documented) longer than any other place in North America.

Humans have driven the average daytime surface temperature up about ten degrees in the valley where Phoenix sits, much of the increase attributed to covering the ground with concrete and eliminating natural water.

Economists who, some decades ago, took oral histories of people living in Southern Arizona around a hundred years ago suggest adequate water and lower temperatures so that life was pleasant before air conditioning.

So, you're right. Everyone, get the hell out of Arizona and maybe nature will make everything right again in another hundred years.

Re:Dumb idea.

[colinrichardday]

Who pays for the artificial diversion?

Re:Dumb idea.

[4D6963]

Put in a different way : like all hippies, the greens think their propositions are so fucking important to enact that everybody should interrupt their life to to do what they think we should do until it's been done to satisfaction.

And no, it's not specific to the left, actually it's not even characteristic of the left as a whole, it's characteristic and typical of groups at the fringes of the political and ideological spectrum. Green loonies chain themselves to trees, anti-abortion loonies chain themselves to clinic beds, communist loonies put a bomb in your parliament, Islamo-fascist loonies put a bomb in your subway.

Funny you should say that "the left has always been necessarily against freedom or unwilling to sacrifice other political objectives in order to obtain it" when the most of the American right's argument after 9/11 was pretty much a freedom vs. security tradeoff.

Re:Dumb idea.

[CodeBuster]

when the most of the American right's argument after 9/11 was pretty much a freedom vs. security tradeoff.

That is true yes, and they were wrong to trade security for freedom, but that does not make the anti-freedom lefties right, pardon the pun. I would characterize my personal views as mostly libertarian (with a lower case "l") and thus for maximizing both personal and economic freedom. Indeed, these are the values that the United States was founded upon, but many people today, including some here on Slashdot, are unware that such a position is even possible and become confused when you agree with some of the positions of the left, generally regarding personal choices demonized by the religious right (i.e. gay marriage, legalization of marijuana, burning the flag, etc), while at the same time agreeing with the economic freedoms which are often advocated by those on the right and coming out against the socialist claptrap which is often peddled by those on the left. If they would understand that libertarians are first and foremost pro freedom then they would see that such positions are entirely consistent and NOT mutually exclusive.

Re:Dumb idea.

[CodeBuster]

That is true yes, and they were wrong to trade security for freedom

Had that one backwards, they were wrong to trade freedom for security (been a long day).

Re:Dumb idea.

[4D6963]

That is true yes, and they were wrong to trade security for freedom, but that does not make the anti-freedom lefties right, pardon the pun.

That makes them both wrong, which should be a hint that it whether you're right or wrong isn't determined by whether you're in the left or the right.

But of course you're a libertarian, so instead of acknowledging that and judging what people do for their merits you'd rather use it to say "See? Both democrats and republicans are wrong! That makes us by process of elimination the best!".

But you're right, freedom is a great thing indeed, if not the greatest! Hobos may be dying of cold in the streets, poor people may die from curable diseases, but hey, at least they've got freedom! Fuck the weak, only the strong shall survive!

Re:Dumb idea.

[CodeBuster]

Hobos may be dying of cold in the streets, poor people may die from curable diseases, but hey, at least they've got freedom! Fuck the weak, only the strong shall survive!

Is it the job of the government to see to it that they don't? What about helping out one's fellow man because he is in need? Being generous is not incompatible with freedom or libertarianism and most people have some level of sympathy and moral scruples and would choose to help those who needed it or support private groups that did. However, there is a difference between the government forcing us to give and choosing to give of our own accord. So I don't buy the, "if you let people do as they wish then the world will turn into 'fuck the weak' and 'screw the poor'" argument often put forth by the left as a rebutal to the sort of freedom proposed by us libertarians. Have you ever noticed that those on the left, who insist on government seizure through taxes to support programs, are often amongst the least generous in their private giving? They must believe that just because they won't give anything unless the government forces them to that neither will anyone else.

Re:Dumb idea.

[4D6963]

I could point out everything that's wrong about the idea that you can have a country functioning based on donations, how hypocritical it is to say you don't want to pay taxes but rather what you give to, explain why in detail why in the real world you can't possibly expect it to work, then detail how you benefited in a million ways from what taxes paid for, even point out that if it wasn't for tax funded DARPA research we wouldn't be having this conversation, or I could just call you and anyone who agrees with you a moron.

You're a fucking moron. Pay your taxes and shut up, or enjoy your jail time. Optionally, learn how the economy works.

Re:Dumb idea.

[CodeBuster]

You're a fucking moron. Pay your taxes and shut up, or enjoy your jail time.

Ah yes, ad-hominem, the last redoubt of the intellectually desperate. You must be one of those younger Liberals, the type with more anger and less sense, who becomes completely insane when anyone with the temerity to view the world differently dares to speak. I presume also, by your irate response, that you are among those who earns less, pays less, and generally benefits more from my taxes? I find it interesting that those who support high taxes often pay little or none of them and yet complain with righteous indignation when I object to them helping themselves to a larger share of my property.

Optionally, learn how the economy works.

Indeed, perhaps you should take your own advice. However, if you are looking for a socialist utopia, Cuba or Venezuela are only one plane ride south...

Re:Dumb idea.

[4D6963]

Good point, I do indeed make little and pay little, but I can infer from that that your ideology derives from the fact that you're pissed to pay as much as you do, and not from principles. That doesn't change anything to the fact that the richer must pay more because I mean come on you're not going to make the poorer pay more. For one thing it'd only make them poorer and then they have less money we can tap into.

You're obviously one of the Americans who has no fucking clue what socialism means. So here's a clue, 'socialism' actually doesn't mean much, as it's quite an umbrella term, which covers anything from pure Marxism to modern Norther or Western European capitalist socialism. I'm from "socialist France", and let me tell you that socialism as it is (was) in France works just fine. Our national train company was doing absolutely great, our national telephone company was a leader, our national electricity company is doing so great it exports its excesses of nuclear produced power to neighbouring European countries, we have one of the best universal healthcare systems in the world, so much better than in the UK that the English would come to France to get a surgery or a root canal, our education system is so leaps and bounds better than the American one that American high school students are typically considered to be a couple of years behind French ones (could you imagine writing in a foreign language as flawlessly and fluently as I'm writing in English?), our literacy levels are so much better than yours it's not even funny, we have 10 times less teen pregnancies than you do, so yes, socialism very much works (well, worked, Sarkozy is fucking it up very nicely).

Just look at hospitals, in France, they're paid by taxes, and your healthcare is paid by taxes too. The result? Great free healthcare for anyone, you can treat your brain cancer or get a heart transplant without paying a dime that won't be refunded to you. In America? Poor people can't pay for an healthcare, and hospitals have to look for donations and stuff like that to keep running, resulting in god-awful hospital service in the poorer parts of the country. Libertarianism doesn't work, stop lying to yourself. You're relatively rich anyways, instead of being angry all of your life that you're slightly less rich than you could be if they were less taxes, enjoy your relative comfort and be happy to be a valuable contributor to society.

By the way, where's your libertarian utopia? The USA? The UK? Both are deep in the crapper thanks to what in Europe we call "ultra libertarianism" right now, yeah, this thing just fucking works, let's just have more of it.

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[Red Flayer]

As opposed to the standard non-green economy, which is all about externalizing environmental costs, so that others can pay for it, while you rub your hands in anticipation of quarterly profits?

Lack of environmental regulation and incentives is a handout to companies that pollute; the cost is born by the general public (or, even worse, by a small segment of the public who are negatively impacted in a massive way (flooding, disease, loss of livelihood, etc).

Yes, people will take advantage of incentives -- this is true of any incentive. On the other hand, I consider people who bitch about environmental incentives and regulations to be selfish bastards who choose not to, or cannot, comprehend that there are true costs to environmental damages, and that these externalized costs must either be internalized by the parties responsible, or matched by incentives to be environmentally responsible.

World of tomorrow

[wjousts]

Regardless of the idea, I loved the 1950's style "World of Tomorow" style rendering they did. Take that you kids and your fancy CAD packages and 3D modeling.

Re:World of tomorrow

[need4mospd]

Sometimes a hand drawing can convey so much more than a fancy photo-realistic rendering. I wouldn't dare show my client a photo-realistic rendering in an early design phase. It makes the design look "concrete" and final, as if no more changes are to be made. A hand drawing can convey the concept much easier to most people.

Some basic economics

[tjstork]

Assume that the cost of the thing is financed like a 30 year mortgage. Just as a rule of thumb, with interest we're talking about a total of 54 billion. Just to satisfy construction costs, a need to make a payment of 150 million a month, every month. To make that payment, we need to have 5 million dollars a day, ever day. To get that, assuming a $10 a day per person spend, you'll have to have 500,000 riders a day, every day, traveling across Arizona. Is that economical? Are there THAT many people riding back and forth? I think this project is a stretch.

Re:Some basic economics

[doctorcisco]

It's not that simple, because your analysis ignores the public cost of people driving.

Already now, I-10 is apparently gridlocked much of the time. This is a high-growth area. Assume that the number of people wanting to make this trip doubles over the next 30 years.

Without rail or some kind of public transit, taxpayers will need to more than double the carrying capacity of I-10 (presumably the goal isn't to have twice as many people in the same gridlock as today.)

What's the PUBLIC cost of doubling the size of I-10, compared to the PUBLIC cost of the train?

The cost-benefit analysis is much different when you stop assuming that the I-10 you need in 30 years will be free, just because a smaller-than-needed version already exists.

doctorcisco

Re:Some basic economics

[Overzeetop]

And it's worse - you've got 30 days in your month, but there are only 20 workdays so you'll need special weekend incentives to make people want to make the trip. So you're closer to needing 3/4 million a day, and that's just to break even on debt service. Operational expenses, maintenance, overhead and profit aren't even counted.

Re:Some basic economics

[DerekLyons]

C'mon - they're bracing the goverment for funds to write a study. This is nothing but a complicated and very public way to apply for welfare.

Re:Some basic economics

[nsayer]

Just some supporting evidence...

CalTrain links San Jose and San Francisco, both of which are metropolitan areas somewhat larger than Tucson and Phoenix. And the points between them are just a bit more densely populated than places like Chandler.

CalTrain's 2008 average weekday ridership was about 37,000.

Re:Some basic economics

[MobyDisk]

And since solar panels degrade after time, and have a lifespan of about 20 years, that makes it even more difficult.

Re:Some basic economics

[prockcore]

Why are you assuming $10 a day per person?

This doesn't need to be cheaper than driving. Anyone who's made the drive can tell you that they'd pay double not to have to make that drive.

The Arizona Shuttle is probably the cheapest way to get from Tucson to Phoenix without driving yourself. It costs $32.99 a person if you book early, $42.99 same day.. and that's only one way.

Average car gets 20 mpg, which means it costs about 18 bucks to make that drive, one way.

Charge $30 a person and you'd still have people lining up.

Re:Some basic economics

[prockcore]

That's not really a fair comparison. SF and San Jose are in the *same* metro area.

Not only that, but SF and San Jose can fit inside Phoenix. Might as well compare CalTrain with Phoenix's bus system.

You're talking about a single metro area with 7 million people. You can't compare that with a 4.5 million person metro area and a 1.2 million person metro area with 100 miles of nothing in between them.

Re:Some basic economics

[LandDolphin]

You do know that Phoenix is larger then San Jose or San Francisco, right?

/no other purpose to this post

Re:Some basic economics

[davidphogan74]

Why does all infrastructure need to pay for itself? Does PHX cover all its costs from passenger revenues?

There's other benefits to having a system like this beyond making it strictly a business venture.

Re:Some basic economics

[nsayer]

Not in terms of population.

In fact, the San Francisco Bay Area at large has a slightly larger population than the entire state of Arizona.

Re:Some basic economics

[nsayer]

Might as well compare CalTrain with Phoenix's bus system.

Ok. Do you think Phoenix's bus system's weekday daily ridership is closer to 37,000 or half a million daily riders, which was the daily ridership number the GP was talking about in his thought exercise?

You're talking about a single metro area with 7 million people. You can't compare that with a 4.5 million person metro area and a 1.2 million person metro area with 100 miles of nothing in between them.

Ok. How about the Capitol Corridor, which goes between San Jose and Sacramento? For the last 3 years, it has had a daily ridership of about 3,500. I'm thinking that's not making a better case.

Re:Some basic economics

[nsayer]

Might as well compare CalTrain with Phoenix's bus system.

In retrospect, perhaps it's less fair to compare CalTrain to Phoenix' bus system (since that consists of a fairly large number of routes) as it is to compare it to Phoenix' METRO light rail system - which has a daily ridership of.... about 37,000 riders per day.

Re:Some basic economics

[Ichijo]

Not in terms of population.

Phoenix population: 1,552,259
San Francisco population: 808,976

In fact, the San Francisco Bay Area at large has a slightly larger population than the entire state of Arizona.

Caltrain runs down only one side of the bay, so we can ignore the entire east bay for population comparison.

Re:Some basic economics

[nsayer]

San Francisco and San Mateo county populations added together exceed the population of Phoenix.

And that leaves out the population of Northern Santa Clara county.

Checkmate.

Re:Some basic economics

[LandDolphin]

So, does Phoenix get to count its suburbs too? Can they Add in Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale, Glendale and the long list of other cities that are just part of "phoneix" too? I mean, you talking about a County, can we do all of Maricopa County?

I mean, weak argument. San Francisco is bigger then phoenix. No it isn't. Yes it is if you add these other cities populations to San Francisco's population. Umm ok?

Re:Some basic economics

[nsayer]

Except I never said anything at all about the actual city of San Francisco and San Jose, I talked about their metropolitan areas.

The city of San Francisco is, due to its history and surrounding terrain, much smaller than its footprint suggests it to be, when compared to comparable cities elsewhere.

As I have said elsewhere, the population of the San Francisco bay area at large exceeds that of the entire state of Arizona. Since Caltrain doesn't visit all of the Bay Area counties, it's fair enough to limit discussion to the counties it *does* visit, in which case you still wind up with a comparable (but larger) population than the combination of the two places that are under discussion in the article.

And that's really the whole point I was trying to make, lo those many, many posts ago. You've succeeded in getting lost in the minutiae rather than grasping the actual point, which was to lend support to the fellow who was suggesting that it would take a half million daily riders by pointing out that a very respectable, established commuter railroad operating in a comparable corridor didn't quite get a tenth of that traffic.

I will admit that I misspoke when I said "size" rather than "population" in the original posting way, way back. But the rest, I stand by.

Does it need to be solar?

[mdm-adph]

Couldn't we just built regular trains with present technology? I think that would make a big difference by itself, aye?

Re:Does it need to be solar?

[thebheffect]

Maybe has something to do with a piece of that clean-energy money pie.

Not quite...

[rAiNsT0rm]

I work for one of the larger light-rail/commuter train companies and we already have a line in PHX... I think this idea is a total pie-in-the-sky dream only. Now maybe working in conjunction with what we already have in place to supply all or most of the energy running the existing system from solar would be a better use of money and resources.

Trains are already efficient and the sheer amount of subsystems they are not accounting for is staggering. Best of luck to them, I'm not fearing for my job.

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[WillAffleckUW]

Thank you for sending our US dollars to your comrades in al-Qaeda-financing Saudi Arabia, "patriot".

I can see the ads

[elashish14]

30 Minutes Tuscon to Phoenix*!

*Depends on forecast. Results not guaranteed. 45 Minutes in overcast. 60 during eclipse

Re:I can see the ads

[PPH]

I'm taking the midnight train to Georgia. NOT!

Monorail, monorail, MONORAIL! *jazz hands*

[moniker127]

But what if the track could bend?

Re:Great concept...AND the math works!

[clonan]

The math seems to work out for me:

Known
Need: 110 MW
Distance Traveled: ~117 KM
Hours of full sun / day: 5.5
total solar flux: 1000 W / m^2

Assumed:
Width of the whole system (track plus side buffer): 10 M
Efficiency of panels used: 30%

So:

117 KM = 117000 M x 10 M = 1,170,000 m^2 x 30% = 531,000 Watts x 5.5 = 2,920,500 Watts/day = 2.9 Megawatts / day

This means you could use 15% efficiency panels and still do it. Plus 10 M width is probably on the low side.

Trains faster than the car? You're kidding right?

[Colin Smith]

Yes it would be faster than by car.

It would? From where to where?

Last time I looked, trains could only travel on tracks.

Trains run to schedules, which means you have to wait for them.
Trains only stop at stations which means you have to travel to and from the station.

Trains are only faster than a car under the conditions that

1: you live near a station and
2: want to travel near to another station,
3: without having to change between lines or other modes of transport.

There's a very good reason people have embraced the car with open arms.

Are these guys for real?

[cptdondo]

Lessee. We have 2 guys who want to build a $27B railroad, and they don't have the $35K for a feasibility study?

WTF?

All they have is an idea. There is no way that they can be for real. I don't doubt they're sincere, but it is going to take some real money to get moving.

This is needed.

[Spacepup]

Living in Tucson...
This train NEEDS to happen. Phoenix has most of the tech jobs but (if you want to buy) little housing that is affordable. Many of my friends live in places like Casa Grande, Tucson, or little stops in between. The interstate between Tucson and Phoenix is always crowded, even late at night, and very dangerous during the monsoon season. While I don't see half a million people riding this train a day, I could easily see 250,000 a day making trips on it. Especially if it went to the phoenix airport and especially during tourist season.

Re:This is needed.

[colinrichardday]

Let's say that each train can take a thousand passengers. To carry 250,000 passengers would require 250 trips, about one every six minutes. Of course the commuters will be packed in at densities that the Nazis never achieved in shipping Jews to Auschwitz.

For 27 billion dollars, perhaps some tech companies might transfer from Phoenix to Tucson.

Wrong route - Vegas baby!

[markdowling]

Flagstaff and Tucson will get zero publicity but a HS line with an ending in Vegas will get the newspapermen slavering over the chance to ride the first train - for the good of their readership, obviously...

More seriously, if it was planned as an extension of the SoCal-Vegas train maybe the idea might go somewhere (like the Phoenix Coyotes, real soon now)

Re:Wrong route - Vegas baby!

[wjousts]

You know there is no proposed SoCal-Vegas HS rail line right? Look at the plan. It's a myth that Republicans are trying to use to bash Harry Reid with.

Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[Space cowboy]

Hmm. Perhaps.

I have 48 solar panels on my roof in northern CA. Yesterday they generated 45 kWH between them. Figure that the middle of the desert is actually a better solar energy source and bump that to (say) 60, and the multiplier becomes 110,000 / 60 = ~1800 times as many panels or 86,400.

There's ~116 miles between Tucson and Phoenix. That's ~750 panels per mile. It's a lot, but it's not unfeasible.

I'm not saying your concerns aren't valid, I think some of them are, but the energy side could be made to work. They ought to get a significant discount on the price (~ $1k/panel) if they're ordering circa 90,000 of them, which should help their cost-benefit analysis :)

Simon.

Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[CrimsonAvenger]

I have 48 solar panels on my roof in northern CA. Yesterday they generated 45 kWH between them. Figure that the middle of the desert is actually a better solar energy source and bump that to (say) 60, and the multiplier becomes 110,000 / 60 = ~1800 times as many panels or 86,400.

There's ~116 miles between Tucson and Phoenix. That's ~750 panels per mile. It's a lot, but it's not unfeasible.

You're magically converting from MW to kWh. Your 48 panels generated 45 kWh in about 12 hours, which is a lot closer to 3kW than it is to 60 kW. 110,000 / 3 = ~36000 times as many panels, or 1,728,000 of the things.

Note also that you need to be able to handle generating that power in winter also, when you have rather fewer than 12 hours of sunlight per day, even ignoring weather.

It's not infeasible. Not even close. But it's not a trivial investment, and unless there are going to be enough customers to pay for the thing, it'll never be built.

Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[skeptikos]

I'm going to review your physics.

If you installation produced 45 KWH of ENERGY during a 5 hour period (being conservative here), it's average output POWER was 9KW. Let's say 10KW to simplify the math.
Now, you will need 11000 times as many panels to reach 110MW. The total number of panels per mile you need is 48*11000/116=4551. That is one panel every 14 inches (if i got the units right, not used to imperial).

Feasible? I would say it still is, but not as much as your calculations suggested

Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[hackerjoe]

Running the figures through Google math, starting with a 60"x42" panel generating 55W at peak, I calculate a 116 mile x 2 meter strip of solar panels would generate ~12MW. That's an order of magnitude short... I don't know what kind of duty cycle the 110MW is required at, but if that's continuous to run the train line, it's only going to be able to operate for an hour a day.

It's enough to make one suspicious about feasibility, anyway.

Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[prockcore]

Note also that you need to be able to handle generating that power in winter also, when you have rather fewer than 12 hours of sunlight per day, even ignoring weather.

It's not that bad. We're talking about Arizona here. There are more than 12 hours of sunlight 194 days of the year. The shortest day is 9 hours, 55 minutes. The longest day is 14 hours, 22 minutes.

Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[mikechant]

It would be a lot more than 2m wide. Four tracks plus the space between them and beside them comes out at about 14m wide for the whole formation (tracks 4 x 4'8.5" wide, gaps between tracks 3 x 6' approx, 4' each side = 45' approx = 13.5m approx)

This gives a much more reasonable 84MW - easily in the same ballpark as 110 MW

Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[Anti_Climax]

You need to multiply your 2 meter strip by at least 4 (if not more) as the site mentions having 4 sets of tracks- the outer carrying multi-stop trains and the inner set carrying express trains.

Now we're talking ~48MW. As another poster mentioned, other similar high speed locomotives consume about 9MW continuously but go slightly slower - we'll say they need a continuous 12MW. Looks like we have enough power to cover all 4 sets of tracks operating at the same time. Figure in down time for stops at each end for express, and stops in between on the regular lines and we have an excess of power during fully generating times of day.

It's almost certainly just going to pump back into the grid to offset usage and I doubt they'd bother with 24 hour service so it seems pretty feasible from a power balance perspective. Trying to run them at 100% duty cycle will certainly outstrip solar power output along the line but 33% seems possible for half the year and 25% for the other half.

Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[damasterwc]

anyone know how much power maglevs require? it seems like 27 billion should buy me a lot more train... also for a power source, sustaining generation for 110MW trains by solar or wind or anything like that is rather expensive and inefficient... how about a small pebble bed type reactor instead? that way the train can transport freight by night...

Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[hackerjoe]

Okay, and factor in that they'll probably use more efficient cells than the random (foldable) ones I picked off the internet -- maybe, then. That's a damn expensive lot of track, if we're talking 3 or 4 million square meters of cells, but maybe.

Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[CrimsonAvenger]

There are more than 12 hours of sunlight 194 days of the year.

That's pretty incredible, since the times when the days are the same length as the nights (we call the equinoxes where I come from, not sure what they're called in Arizona) are only 182 days apart, traditionally.

Re:Well $27B buys you a lot of panels...

[prockcore]

That's pretty incredible, since the times when the days are the same length as the nights (we call the equinoxes where I come from, not sure what they're called in Arizona) are only 182 days apart, traditionally.

Atmospheric refraction means that, even on the equator, day is 14 minutes longer than night during the equinoxes. The difference is even greater as you move toward the poles.

Re:Great concept...AND the math works!

[kcfoxie]

Then that's fantastic. I'd hope they'd have a battery backup option for partially cloudy days, or days when it does indeed rain.

A few minor things on the money

[earlymon]

From TFS, I was thinking these guys were porksters doing a small town shakedown for "studies" - not uncommon in Western states. However, as it turns out (from TFA), what they're up against is that the corridor in question is not yet approved for high-speed rail transit - so, asking each whistle-stop to kick in $5k now doesn't sound so bad.

Also - TFS says the project will cost $27B - TFA notes that that is only for the initial phase. The idea that transportation across a desert with a few whistle stops is going to cost a significant portion-equivalent of our B-2 fleet is quite unnerving.

Anyone think of Brockway...

[nweaver]

Anyone think of Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haberbrook's monorails?!?

If it doesn't have a catchy "Monorail" song, its not worth public funds...

Barely, just, feasible.

[Ioldanach]

I'm a little unclear on the requirements of the train, it says it needs 110 megawatts but not for how long, how many trains, etc. At its most conservative, I'll specify that the trains will each require 110 megawatts per run, and 11 runs are made per day. (Because that means I get to work with the magic 1.21 gigawatts number, which is just funny.) Ok, so, we need 1.21 GWH/day. Solar insolation in the Phoenix area averages 5.78 at its minimum, so we'll need about 210 MW of solar panels.

Taking a reasonably competitive Kyocera KD180GX-LP 180W panel as an example, at $688 each, retail, we'd need about 1.2 million of them. They're 52.8"x39", stringing them 6 wide on their long length we need a swath of land 27 feet wide, and we have a swath to work with 116 miles long. That will fit 1.13 million panels, generating a total of 1.18 GWH/day, at a cost of $778 million.

Though, I should point out, if you're already building the infrastructure to suspend the panels and you have a swath of land like that, you're probably much better off going with a thermal solar system. Incidentally I don't see the point in suspending the panels in the air. They should just be on the ground, and the tracks should poke up between them. You're not going to get much loss from the train going over the panel because the train is tiny compared to the size of your aggregate panels. Much less installation cost, too. For the thermal solar design, you can make mirror strips in a fresnel arrangement all aimed at a common heat sink containing your circulating fluid. You'd only need to suspend your heat sink, then.

Re:Barely, just, feasible.

[Geoffrey.landis]

I'm a little unclear on the requirements of the train, it says it needs 110 megawatts but not for how long, how many trains, etc. At its most conservative, I'll specify that the trains will each require 110 megawatts per run, and 11 runs are made per day. (Because that means I get to work with the magic 1.21 gigawatts number, which is just funny.) Ok, so, we need 1.21 GWH/day.

You just switched from power units (MW) to energy units (MW-hours) and then back to different power units (MW-hours per day).

If one train requires 110 MW, it requires 110 MW regardless of how many times that train runs per day.

And MW hours per day is simply equal to power in MW times hours of operation per day.

Re:Barely, just, feasible.

[Ioldanach]

The article wasn't clear to me whether the operation of the track required 110 MW continuously for all trains, or 110MW per train while the trains were running. I've also seen a lot of articles that lose things, like writing MW when they mean MWH. Also, GWH/day (or MWH/day) is an important number when converting to solar because you don't get a continuous feed of energy, you have to take the energy you get for the day and spread it out to meet your needs. If you're consuming 110MW for 11 hours per day, you'll need 12100MWH/day, which you can then convert into the size of your solar installation by dividing by your region's solar insolation.

The real key to all of this is exactly how much they intend on consuming. Throwing 110MW out there isn't very helpful without more conditions. How long is that drain for, how many times per day does that drain exist, etc. With two tracks running express and a 30 minute run consuming power at 110MW, the express trains alone could consume upwards of 3080GWH/day if they run continuously for 14 hours (6am-8pm). They'll need a wider footprint than I specified to keep up with that (70 feet for plain solar panels), and would certainly be better off with a thermal solar installation than solar panels.

Re:Barely, just, feasible.

[wjousts]

Incidentally I don't see the point in suspending the panels in the air. They should just be on the ground, and the tracks should poke up between them. You're not going to get much loss from the train going over the panel because the train is tiny compared to the size of your aggregate panels. Much less installation cost, too.

But with panels on the ground, you don't get to run your train in the shade!

Re:Barely, just, feasible.

[Ioldanach]

Oh noes! And the architectural drawings are so much less pretty!

Re:Barely, just, feasible.

[FrameRotBlues]

I'm not sure how you'd make a thermal solar system actually function to move a vehicle along a track. Converting heat expansion into motion is much more limited than using electricity. A stationary electrical supply is easily transferred to a moving vehicle, stationary heated fluids are not. Air will block electricity from escaping a bare wire (to a certain extent), but air will not block liquid from escaping an open pipe. Steam trains operated on the principle that you take your fuel along and heat the fluid as it's needed. Stationary heated fluids would require that the propulsion system remain stationary as well, so now you're building a thermal solar collector AND steam turbines/expansion pumps along 110 miles of track. Then you have to determine a way to transfer the energy into smooth motion applied to the vehicle. (Roller-coaster chain?)

Not saying it can't be done, but it would be really, really inefficient.

Re:Barely, just, feasible.

[Ioldanach]

I'm not saying don't make the train electric, just that generating the electricity with thermal solar is more efficient than solar panels in this application.

Re:Barely, just, feasible.

[init100]

Throwing 110MW out there isn't very helpful without more conditions.

A simple fact check shows that this measure cannot reasonable mean the requirements for one train. Current high-speed trains have a maximum power output of about 1/10th of that per trainset.

Re:Barely, just, feasible.

[Ioldanach]

Which means we seem to have even less data that it at first appeared. 110MW means something, but we have no idea what. My best guess is that they either need 110MW to run as many trains as they want on all tracks (4 tracks could probably support 10 trains with switching), OR they need 110MWH per train per day.

Why so much?

[superdana]

I'm puzzled by the 110 megawatts figure. Shinkansen run at comparable speeds (180 MPH) and use less than 20 megawatts. Surely the 22% increase in speed doesn't account for the 550% increase in power!

Re:Why so much?

[rAiNsT0rm]

Which is why this is such a farce to anyone familiar with trains. I just wish places like /. could resist "news" like this that hits all the other less intelligent sites on teh toobz.

Let us do the math.

[LWATCDR]

They claim the cost will be 27 billion dollars. If they make 100 dollars per rider it will take how many riders?
If they build it using bond money you will have to pay the interest as well. It would take 270,000,000 riders and that is without interest. So if you had a million riders a year it would only take 270 years to pay it off.
So I would say that it is insane. Yes you could charge more for the ticket but I was using $100 as the profit on the ticket. You will still have to pay for up keep and other operating expenses.

Re:Let us do the math.

[vlm]

If they build it using bond money you will have to pay the interest as well. It would take 270,000,000 riders and that is without interest. So if you had a million riders a year it would only take 270 years to pay it off.

Does that count the cost of the real estate? They could put the stations near a major attraction, downtown center, etc, but that would be inconveniently noisy for the non-riders and the land would be really expensive. So, lets put the track and stations in the middle of nowhere. Weirdly, many mass transit projects are designed this way.

Re:Let us do the math.

[WrongMonkey]

That's fair enough. Let's apply the same math to highways. Billions of dollars for highway construction and maintenance. A million drivers a year times $0 per driver and that will paid off when? Help me out, I'm fuzzy on the math here.

Re:Let us do the math.

[LWATCDR]

Yea you are. The highways are supported by the Tax on gas. The Highway will be used by not just passangers but also cargo. Also the highway will be used not just for travel between those two cities but also for people and cargo going through the state. So yea your really fuzzy on the math.
Also I would be willing to bet that the highway cost a lot less than 27 billion.

Re:Let us do the math.

[Bruiser80]

+ registration fees: fee - DMV operating cost
+ gas tax: $/gallon purchased
+ tolls (if any): $/driver
> $0/driver

granted, it doesn't cover the cost of building and maintaining, but it's a more convenient and decentralized alternative.

Re:Let us do the math.

[uncqual]

Those million drivers who have figured out how to avoid gas taxes are doing a remarkable job of keeping their trick secret. Or, are you suggesting that there are a million people who drive only alternative fuel powered (electric for example) cars and therefore avoid paying their fair share of road construction and maintenance?

Re:Let us do the math.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

exactly. you deserve a mod up on insightful.

This has boondoggle written all over it.

Oddly enough, a rail line already exists in tuscon. they just need to cut a link down to that line from Phoenix.

Frankly, I think the better idea is to simply abandon all of those cities. They are completely dependent on resources outside themselves they really don't stand much of a long term chance at their present size. But if that isn't going to happen, then they need to leverage their present infrastructure in such a way that they can get food, clothing, water, and similar goods to these cities in an efficient manner.

Solar power is a good idea, even for trains, but building all new lines is stupid. The future of mass transport is electric trains. Getting them across the desert will be a challenge, but not impossible.

RS

Re:Let us do the math.

[Dan Ost]

Well, it's a little more complicated than that.

First off, even if the ticket sales only cover operating costs with no profit, if the existence of the trains causes the local economies to grow faster than the interest on the bonds used to finance the trains, then assuming the cities don't go bankrupt paying for construction, the trains will have been a net positive for the cities over its lifetime.

Second, if the solar panels are installed first, then the proceeds from selling the solar power can start to offset the construction costs long before the first train ever carries passengers, so the final debt incurred during construction may be far less than the total $27B that the construction required.

That's just off the top of my head. There's a reason why evaluating proposals like this costs a lot of money ($35k from the article sounds reasonable to me).

Re:Let us do the math.

[WrongMonkey]

Wow, you and at least two people are still laboring under the delusion that highways are paid for exclusively by gas tax. Check out this $42 billion Arizona transportation plan that is paid for by an increase in SALES tax. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0504transpo-projects0504.html

Re:Let us do the math.

[kent_eh]

Edmonton international is just as "middle of nowhere". It's about 40 min to downtown in a cab.

Re:Let us do the math.

[fermion]

One expects public finance,otherwise these guts would just do it. For example, the florida marlins ball park is expected to cost close to 3/4 of a billion dollars. One expects with cost overruns and added costs, that this might cost an even billion. Interest alone would might be 1 million a week. If they were to play an average of once a week, and if they could use $5 of ticket price to pay interest, and they had 20,0000 tickets sold for every event, i.e. more than 50% of seating, then they could pay the interest. At this point they could start looking at the principle. Of course they want the taxpayers to fund most of the cost because it will be so pretty and attract tourists.

Reasonable this is an infrastructure plan, and is likely timed to take advantage of any forthcoming stimulus money. There is some reasonable expectation for an inordinate amount of money to go to Arizona because Arizona ranks 21 out of 50 for being of the dole. One hopes that this money will be spent on long term public infrastructure rather than providing increasing expensive real estate to individuals.

if people do need to get from one place to another, and if the freeways are full, and if gas in are a is expensive, it might be better to build rail instead of freeway at 30 million per mile. I know people tend to be hostile to public transportation, but sometimes it makes sense. The reality we are living in is that we cannot afford everything we want. This may be a way of making a no so stressful sacrifice, and build some technology in the process.

Re:Let us do the math.

[Tarlus]

Those are commercial shipment railways, not for public transit.

Re:Let us do the math.

[Grishnakh]

People trash Phoenix a lot as being too sprawling, etc., but this is actually something Phoenix has in its favor over many other large American cities: the main airport is quite close to downtown, and pretty much in the middle of everything. From my house in Chandler, it's at most a 15-minute drive to the airport, usually more like 10 minutes. From Tempe, it's just a few minutes. From Scottsdale, it's no more than 20 minutes. From Glendale, probably 15-20 minutes.

If you want to have a lot of air traffic in your city (such as business travelers coming for conventions), you need to put the airport close to the city and to places air travelers want to go, not in the middle of farm land.

Re:Let us do the math.

[LWATCDR]

Not at all but the gas tax is used for highway funds. It may not foot the entire bill but it is used for that.
But then take a look at that Arizona transportation plan. This high speed boondoggle would be cost more than half of that total plan and would only move passengers in that corridor.

Re:Let us do the math.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

rails are rails. The NE corridor does both - there is no reason those lines can't do both, either.

Re:Let us do the math.

[rdoger6424]

Yes they are.
Although that train only runs 3x/week.

Re:Let us do the math.

[xaxa]

If you want to have a lot of air traffic in your city (such as business travelers coming for conventions), you need to put the airport close to the city and to places air travelers want to go, not in the middle of farm land.

Airports are noisy. I used to live (and still work) under the flightpath to London Heathrow airport -- there's a flight about every 60-90 seconds for most of the day. The airport is still a decent distance from the centre of London, so it's not even useful.

Far better to position the airport so most flights don't go over populated areas, and build a fast railway to where people want to go. This also gives room for expansion.

Re:Let us do the math.

[Grishnakh]

I disagree. Unless you stick the thing really far from the city, flight paths are probably going to go over some populated areas somewhere. And even if you do stick it far from the city, development will eventually catch up with it. Someone's always going to be complaining about the noise.

Instead, just tell city-dwellers that noise is part of living in the city, along with all the honking horns, gunshots, loud stereos in cars, loud car engines, unmuffled motorcycles, police and fire sirens, car alarms, and other such noise.

As for railways, those cost too much money to be feasible. You're looking at tens of millions of dollars per mile. How much is that going to translate to in ticket fares? It doesn't cost me anything to drive to the airport.

Re:Let us do the math.

[xaxa]

I disagree. Unless you stick the thing really far from the city, flight paths are probably going to go over some populated areas somewhere.

The noisy bit is the takeoff and approach/landing. The planes landing at Heathrow arrive from the east and take off west. Heathrow is west of London. Arrivals get a nice view on clear days, but over 2 million people hear the plane.
Gatwick (second biggest London airport) is south of London. Planes still take off and land east/west, but they don't fly over London.

And even if you do stick it far from the city, development will eventually catch up with it.

Development has been restricted all round London, and many other European cities, for years if not decades (Wiki: green belt) to stop the city spreading into an endless suburbia.
Also, development catching up with the airport knows what it's in for -- noise and pollution.

Instead, just tell city-dwellers that noise is part of living in the city, along with all the honking horns, gunshots, loud stereos in cars, loud car engines, unmuffled motorcycles, police and fire sirens, car alarms, and other such noise.

I hear hardly any of that. Cities aren't all main roads and red light districts ;-)

It doesn't cost me anything to drive to the airport.

It doesn't cost my brother anything to go to the airport on the subway. He's 15, so he can go there for free -- the taxpayer pays for it, just like we pay for the roads you drive on.

Also, the railways don't pollute the air I breath (power station sorts that out), hardly any passengers are killed by trains, almost zero non-users are killed by them, and they're quieter, which IMO are all worth a higher price (if it is higher).

Re:Let us do the math.

[Grishnakh]

Also, the railways don't pollute the air I breath (power station sorts that out), hardly any passengers are killed by trains, almost zero non-users are killed by them, and they're quieter, which IMO are all worth a higher price (if it is higher).

Trains kill all kinds of people over here. Here in Phoenix, they just put in a light rail system, and it hits a car at least every week (or the car hits it). Maybe over there, your government is smart enough to put rail and cars on different grades, but here, they put the light rail right between the two lanes of traffic, so it even has to follow the stop lights. People turning across the tracks are constantly hitting the train. On top of that, the thing cost an absolute fortune to build. Why it costs tens of millions per mile to lay a couple tracks, I have no idea.

Of course, in other parts of the country, people getting killed by trains is commonplace: they get killed at crossings, because they drive around the crossing gates (which automatically lower when a train is approaching), and then get hit and killed by the oncoming train. After that, their families sue the train company.

>Instead, just tell city-dwellers that noise is part of living in the city, along with all the honking horns, gunshots, loud
>stereos in cars, loud car engines, unmuffled motorcycles, police and fire sirens, car alarms, and other such noise.

I hear hardly any of that. Cities aren't all main roads and red light districts ;-)

You obviously haven't lived in an American city (especially one of the crappier ones).

Also, development catching up with the airport knows what it's in for -- noise and pollution.

Wrong again, at least in America. Over here, people commonly build new subdivisions right next to airports (and even air force bases). Then people move in, and start complaining to the government about the noise. We have a bunch of people here in the Phoenix area that decided to move right next to Luke Air Force Base on the west side of the city (actually, well outside the city, at least until development caught up with it). Now they're all complaining because of the noise from the F-16s that fly training missions out of that base.

Re:Let us do the math.

[LWATCDR]

I am not anti public transport. I am anti stupid wastes of money.
If you want to reduce carbon then use the solar power as part of the grid and reduce use of Coal.
If you want to spend money on mass transit use it to improve mass transit in the cities.
This is just a huge waste of money. It will never be built but they will waste money on studies and the money will flow in a lot of suits pockets.

Re:Let us do the math.

[xaxa]

Does that count the cost of the real estate? They could put the stations near a major attraction, downtown center, etc, but that would be inconveniently noisy for the non-riders and the land would be really expensive.

Having a station close by increases the value of the surrounding land. Almost anywhere where the public transport is decent, you could work out where the stations are by making a map of land value (in rich or poor areas, the places near the station will still be more desirable).

If you have electric trains and good quality (and well maintained) track the noise isn't really an issue.

Unfortunately...

[agnosticanarch]

If you want the train to take you past Topeka, you have to beat it in a riddle contest. One sure-fire winning riddle:

How did the dead baby cross the road?

Answer: It was stapled to the chicken!!

Now who wants to ride on Blaine, the insane train? I know I do!

~AA

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[pfleming]

Rush, is that you?

Wait, What?

[Icegryphon]

It would only be one way traffic, There is nothing in Tuscon to begin with worth dirt.

Re:Wait, What?

[prockcore]

It has one of Playboy's top 10 party schools....

Re:Wait, What?

[Icegryphon]

When you have nothing better to do you tend to drink. That, a party, does not make.

Re:Paging Lyle Lanley...

[pfleming]

Put Chandler on the map? A stop in Chandler means Intel employees can commute from Mexico - or Flagstaff.

It will never happen...

[MaWeiTao]

People keep talking about urban sprawl like it's an insurmountable issue. As I've said recently, Japanese cities have massive sprawl and they manage just fine.

As cool as high speed rail lines are the big problem is that they're a huge waste of money if there isn't some sort of infrastructure for getting people around each city without cars. What American cities and suburbs need are extensive rail systems which service outlying areas in addition to the city core.

And this doesn't just mean a spoke and hub layout, this means that those outlying areas should be directly connected as well. Take a look at this map of the rail lines owned by a single company around Tokyo.

Want to be really impressed? Check out this PDF. In that map, Shibukawa, tucked away in the upper left corner of that map is 120km from Tokyo. That should give you a sense of how extensive their rail system is.

If you want people to take rail seriously this is the sort of extensive service you need to provide. I'd take the train to work if it provided me this level of accessibility. Hell, I wouldn't even need a car.

This is the embarrassment that passes for a rail system in the New York area. Just imagine trying to get from somewhere like Poughkeepsie to New Haven.

Of course, there's another issue. The rail system in Japan runs like clockwork. With far fewer lines Metronorth is incapable of ever being punctual. Every year they send out press releases stating, with pride, that their trains are on average only 5 or 10 minutes late. I rode the New Haven line for years and I can't recall it ever being on time. Hell, it was even late departing the very first station.

Every so often the train manages to pull down power lines or at least damage them sufficiently to cause significant delays as has been happening the past week or so. The bathrooms are a cesspool and unfortunately a lot of riders are slobs who leave their crap on the train when they get off. And then there's the vandalism.

Despite increased ridership the MTA, which runs the rail system around New York, can barely stay afloat without drastically raising fees or getting bailouts from the government. Years ago they began ordering new trains. I've yet to see one. But the bigger joke is that some of these new cars are being pulled by diesel locomotives. On an electric line! It's crap from the bottom up.

These are all important issues that need to be taken seriously if anyone expects a rail line to be successful. But an extensive rail system does make far more sense than any high speed rail line.

Unfortunately, in the US there are far too many obstacles for any such system to ever see fruition. First, are all the environmentalists who piss and moan about everything even if it were to provide real long-term advantages. Just as bad are all the residents who have this irrational fear of any perceived threat to their idyllic communities. They're all wrapped up in their selfish desire to preserve their little communities even if these projects would ultimately benefit everyone. In the Northeast there are a number of extremely helpful projects which have been blocked by just these sort of people.

I'm quite pessimistic about the whole thing. American's have lost that can-do attitude a long time ago and I think have grown quite self-centered. I mean self-centered from the standpoint of wanting to be sheltered by the government from all the little challenges of life. Although, I don't doubt that the government will spend untold billions on some boondoggle.

Re:It will never happen...

[lobiusmoop]

List of countries and dependencies by population density

Japan - 31 - 337 people/sq km
USA - 177 - 31 people/sq km

This is why mass transit works so well in Japan, and not so much in the USA.

Re:It will never happen...

[MaWeiTao]

I thought I'd add to my rant... I rode this metro system for several years. That article is correct. The trains were always pristine and always punctual. The announcements were clear, even if not necessary because the trains were frequent and on time.

I think the first line opened a bit over 12 years ago. And it's already reasonably extensive, and they're working aggressively to expand service. I know of two or three lines currently under construction and pretty far along. And looking at the map of what they have planned it's very ambitious. And this is in addition to conventional rail lines and a high speed rail line which service the rest of the country.

One thing I admired was how clean everything was and how good passengers were about keeping things clean. I never saw some slob munching on some sloppy sandwich, dripping juices everywhere and then dropping the empty bag on the floor under his seat, putting down a coffee cup so that it inevitably falls over when the train lurches spilling it's contents all over the train. But in the US that's routine.

Just try telling Americans that they shouldn't be eating on the train. They'd get all indignant. How dare anyone tell them what to do. God forbid they wait half an hour to eat.

And those are the people who make a mess of public transportation unintentionally. Then there are the mental defectives who have this obsession with writing gibberish all over every flat surface they see. Or otherwise they have this compulsion to tear at seat cushions and pull on trim. All because their parents couldn't be bothered to teach them to respect public property.

It goes back to what I see as fundamental cultural problems in the US. All this stuff is inter-related. This is yet another thing that has turned me off from public transportation. Why should I have to wait for trains that can't arrive on time and then have to be wary about where I sit when I can just drive anywhere I want where ever I want.

Re:It will never happen...

[wjousts]

Population density of New York City - 2,181.6/sq mi

Sure it doesn't work in Wyoming, but there are parts of the US with much higher population densities (like the area that the MTA serves) that are still mostly shit.

Re:It will never happen...

[FooAtWFU]

The New York rail system is fantastic at takes people where they're actually going: from their homes to their jobs. And, recessions notwithstanding, their jobs are mostly in New York City. If you built a rail line from Poughkeepsie to New Haven, nobody would care.

If you need to get from Poughkeepsie to New Haven without cars, consider installing a bus. There's already a perfectly good road system along the way there.

Re:It will never happen...

[mysticalreaper]

When you say that Japanese cities have massive sprawl, i think what you are trying to say is that their cities are very large, which is true. But that's not the same thing as sprawl. Sprawl is single-story retail business, detached, single-family residences, and more roads, parking lots and unused land than buildings. I have seen Japan, and they DOÂNOTÂWASTEÂSPACE. In North america, only the dense cores of the biggest cities compare to Japan, and even then, we use double the space for the same store, or gas station, or whatever.

So Tokyo is a massive city, but it has 30 million people. That's why it's big, it's not cause of sprawl.

Other than that though, i heartily agree with your post.

Re:It will never happen...

[wjousts]

Whoops! You are correct, of course. My bad.

Re:Great concept...AND the math works!

[amliebsch]

I must be missing something. If the train requires 110 megawatts to operate, then to operate the train for 1 hour would require 110 megawatt hours, no? So to operate - say - four hours per day would require 440 megawatt hours of electrical generation, or about 18 megawatt days, far more than the optimistic 2.9 you calculated. That seems ridiculously high to run a train, but I can't think of what else that 110 megawatt figure is supposed to mean.

There must be something obvious I'm missing. Can someone point it out?

Consideration

[certain death]

There are more scam artists in Arizona per sq. mile than any country, let alone state I have ever lived in!

"Entirely by the sun"?

[kheldan]

TFA is more than a little light on details, likely because there aren't any yet, but an obvious question: What do they do at night? Is this a daytime-only train service? Or do they plan on building power-storage as part of the system?

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[rev_sanchez]

High speed rail is pretty efficient at moving people when compared to cars or planes even without the solar angle but I'd prioritize work on the existing projects and extend deployment to link the Midwest to the East Coast.

Regardless of expense, I'm excited

[GodfatherofSoul]

One thing that's been missing from this country is the willingness to do big, daring things out of national pride. For example, the Europeans had the Concorde and Japan has their high-speed rail. I'd love to see this happen just to show that we can. Develop the technology and let others follow.

Re:Regardless of expense, I'm excited

[jcnnghm]

the Europeans had the Concorde and Japan has their high-speed rail

And we landed a man on the moon, sent rovers to Mars, built a global positioning satellite system, built a canal across Panama, and constructed ARPANET, which became the Internet. Undertaking large complex projects that make no financial sense for the sake of nationalism is ill-advised, just like the Concorde was.

Re:Regardless of expense, I'm excited

[aaaantoine]

The Titanic was built in the UK, by a British shipping company.

Re:Regardless of expense, I'm excited

[Blakey Rat]

I think in the long run, we're much better off because we said "no thanks" to supersonic transport. The Concorde was nothing but a huge a waste of money and time to make a toy for the already-wealthy. Give me American Airlines' hundreds of Super-80s that everybody in the country can afford to ride in any day.

(Well, ok, maybe not Super-80s specifically-- those things suck-- but you get the point.)

Re:Regardless of expense, I'm excited

[GodfatherofSoul]

That's precisely the point I'm NOT trying to make. I'm talking about the prestige projects that have upfront costs and potential long-term benefits. As your sibling lists, projects like the moon landing, ARPANET, and GPS that were initially on expenses that became technology drivers.

Re:Regardless of expense, I'm excited

[colinrichardday]

But you listed the Concorde in your original post. What were the long-term benefits?

Re:Regardless of expense, I'm excited

[drizek]

What about the war in Iraq?

Big, expensive, daring. It will put us in the history books.

Re:Regardless of expense, I'm excited

[mako1138]

The problem is, with high-speed rail we'd be buying our track technology and rolling stock from Japan or Germany, since it makes no sense to start from scratch. So much for national pride.

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[n6kuy]

You must be addressing the idiots that don't want us to use our own gas and oil natural resources, of which we have plenty, if only we were allowed to get it.

Good idea, bad project

[Bureaucromancer]

Without having RTFA everyone needs to read this: http://cahsr.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-difference-10-years-make-arizona.html In short, this project is way too expensive (inexplicably so) for its size and is no where near as important as a number of other rail projects.

DEAR SIRS AND MADAM

[EEBaum]

I AM CONTACTING WITH YOU ON BEHALF OF THE RAILS CONSTRUCTION PLANING CORPORATION SOLAR BULLET LLC. I HOPE THIS DAY FINDS YOU WELL. MY ASSOCIATES AND I ARE PREPARED TO START THE MOVING FORWARD ON CONSTRUCTIONS OF A 220MPH SOLAR-POWERED BULLET TRAIN TO MAJOR CITIES IN ARIZONA AND ALSO TO BE PASSING THROUGH THE SMALLER CITIES SUCH AS YOURS. THIS WILL BE A TWENTY-SEVEN BILLION US DOLLARS PROJECT ( $27 000 000 000 US ) WHICH WE ARE PREPARED TO MAKE LARGE INVESTMENTS IN AT NO COST TO YOUR TOWNSHIP. IN ORDER TO RELEASE FUNDS WE WILL BE REQUIRED TO DO A VERY SMALL ENVIRONMENTAL STUDY AT THE COST OF THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND US DOLLARS ( $35 000 US ) TO SECURE THE TWENTY-SEVEN BILLION. THIS STUDY COSTS WILL BE SPLIT BETWEEN THE CITIES OF ARIZONA ON THE PATHS OF THE SOLAR-POWERED BULLET TRAIN AT THE COST OF FIVE-THOUSAND US DOLLARS ( $5 000 US ) PER CITY. PLEASE SEND IN HASTE THE FIVE-THOUSAND US DOLLARS TO OUR ASSOCIATES SO WE CAN BE MADE ABLE TO SECURE THE TWENTY-SEVEN BILLION US DOLLARS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! WARMEST REGARDS, BILL GAITHER, CO-PRESIDENT, SOLAR BULLET LLC RAYMOND WRIGHT, CO-PRESIDENT, SOLAR BULLET LLC

Government Financing

[pleappleappleap]

Government financing rarely resembles a mortgage.

California is way ahead...

[californication]

Already approved $10 billion in funding. Routes selected. EIR done. This thing is shovel ready, just need the federal funding and private funding to add to it. Plus, it can run at night and on cloudy days. http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/

In addition there is the Desert Xpress, which is a route from Victorville to Vegas built by the private sector with $0 public tax dollars. When California's High Speed Rail is given the green light, this will be a huge boost to the Desert Xpress project. Extending the route to Palmdale/Lancaster and thus California's high speed rail will be a no brainer. http://www.desertxpress.com/

110MW == 150000hp

[mangu]

One "horsepower", the obsolete power unit normally used for cars, equals 736 watts. This means that 110 MW is equal to 150,000 horsepower. I don't know exactly what would be the power needed to run that train, but I know that trains are at least five times more efficient than cars. So, lets assume that 500 hp would be needed to run a train at 220 mph. This means that with 110 MW they could run 300 trains at the same time.

Re:110MW == 150000hp

[vlm]

One "horsepower", the obsolete power unit normally used for cars, equals 736 watts. This means that 110 MW is equal to 150,000 horsepower. I don't know exactly what would be the power needed to run that train

Giant diesel electrics generally run around a couple thousand HP per unit. More power just spins the wheels, or uses unrealistic quantities of sand for traction. The solution, is more driven wheels. Lets say we have a 5000 HP loco that is capable of spinning its 12 driven wheels. That seems realistic. So, you can push about 400 HP thru a steel wheel on steel rails without spinning, if you put a dozen tons of weight pressing down on each wheel. So, a 150000 HP total train draw only requires 375 driven wheels. Now putting 375 driven wheels on a train is going to be mighty tricky. 368 wheels (92 4 wheeled trucks) sounds much more realistic. I'm just not seeing it.

Another way of looking at it, is to get that power density out of steel wheels on steel rails, a quarter million pound engine with 5000 HP needs 20000 pounds of stuff on each driven wheel to push 400 HP out each wheel without spinning. So, that means with 368 driven wheels, the train will have to weigh at least 7.5 million pounds or the wheels will spin. Lets say 10 million pounds for some safety. Around a 15th the weight of the QE2, I think. I hope they have strong bridges there in AZ.

It's gotta be journalistic engineering. Confusing energy per trip and confusing energy vs power.

Re:110MW == 150000hp

[init100]

So, lets assume that 500 hp would be needed to run a train at 220 mph.

If 368 kW (500 hp) is enough to run a train at 220 mph, why does every high-speed train that runs at that speed have a power output of at least 8 MW?

Re:110MW == 150000hp

[polar red]

http://blog.seattlepi.com/energy/archives/113584.asp
That's 25000 Hp. and I think it only has 48 wheels. So your calculations must be wrong.

Re:110MW == 150000hp

[xaxa]

Wikipedia is usually useful. I tend to use this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_373 but feel free to substitute a high-speed train from your own country. That train is 12MW, and isn't especially fast any more.

I don't know, but presumably the full 12MW is only drawn at full power, while accelerating etc.

Amtrak already services these areas

[bigtrike]

The trip costs $19 and takes a little over an hour.

I don't think halving the trip time is a compelling reason to spend $27B, apparently people are willing to spend far more than an hour in traffic to avoid the existing train route.

Re:Amtrak already services these areas

[Fuzzlekits]

There are amtrak subsidiaries servicing phoenix - But they all go NORTH out of town, according to the route atlas on the amtrak site. There is no such link between Tucson and Phoenix that I can find.

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[WillAffleckUW]

Next time you go to the Post Office, look up at the pictures on the wall.

You'll see your comrades in the Wanted posters and President Obama in the place of honor.

Deal with it.

Good point

[Space cowboy]

Actually at peak, they register ~7kW between them all (as read off the converter directly). Figure the desert boosting that to ~10 and we end up somewhere in-between at 86,400 * 6 or half a million panels.

That's 4460/mile, or roughly 1 every 14 inches as the guy below said. Figure 5 lengthwise across the track and it's easily possible, but you'd have to use those new-fangled light-concentrating panels to make it even vaguely financially viable, rather than my old-fashioned ones :)

Simon.

Throwing my hat in the ring...

[sneakyimp]

I would hereby like to officially propose to each of those potential train stops that they pay me a mere pittance of $25,000 for a legal and feasibility study to examine the possibility of a TELEPORTATION MACHINE at each stop which would provide *instantaneous* travel to any of the other stops.

Re:Throwing my hat in the ring...

[$1uck]

Yay, another person who didn't read the actual article but is going to jump to conclusions based on the poorly written summary. Reduce the price of your study to 3 grand and find someone too stupid to figure out your TELEPORTATION MACHINE isn't feasible and you're in business.

How much does a road cost?

[mangu]

Your calculations are correct, but they only look at a project that pays for itself. How much did the US interstate road system cost? Who paid for it?

Let's say car drivers should pay for the roads they use. Let's say each of the cars going through the I-10 in Phoenix paid $10. That would be $3 million a day. Charge each of those cars arriving at Tucson another $10, that's $1.8 million a day. And charge $10 to each of those going through Casa Grande, in between Phoenix and Tucson, that's another $440 thousand.

There, you have $5 million a day paid by people travelling between Phoenix and Tucson every day. If only car drivers actually paid for the roads they use, instead of depending on government handouts for building the roads.

Re:Great concept...AND the math works! NOT.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

As some one above noted: Do the math:

$27 billion.

Charge $100 a trip.

That's 270 million trips.

At 1 million trips a year, it will take 270 years, with 2739 people paying $100 a pop. Every day. Seven days a week.

Phoenix has a population of about 1.5 million.

Tuscon has a population of about 500k, so call it 2 million for both.

So, you need 1.36% of the combined population of both Tuscon and Phoenix to ride this thing EVERY DAY, seven days a week for 270 years.

Sorry - isn't going to happen. This is a pseudoGreen boondoggle of epic proportions. What they should do is put in a rail link form Phoenix to the rail line that goes into Tuscon and electrify it so both cities can get food, clothing, and water and similar necessities. High speed passenger rail service for $27B is totally stupid.

RS

I'm Reminded Of....

[Virtucon]

Humm,200+ MPH Train... You'll poke your eye out kid!

Besides, it's solar powered. It'll only work in the daytime!

from the gonna-soak-up-the-sun dept.

[HTH NE1]

from the gonna-soak-up-the-sun dept.

I'm... gonna soak up the sun...
I'm gonna tell everyone... to... lighten... up
I'm gonna tell 'em that I've... got no one to blame...
For every time I feel lame... I'm... looking... up

I'm gonna soak up the sun
While it's still free
I'm gonna soak up the sun
Before it goes out on me

No.

[PowermonkeySquared]

That is not correct. Amtrak does not service Phoenix at all. Take a look at their route map. The closest Amtrak station is 35 miles south of downtown Phoenix in Maricopa.

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[WillAffleckUW]

How many of the 19 highjackers were from Canada? Mexico? Because that's where the US gets its oil from, "patriot".

You forgot Venezuela.

And I served, even if you didn't.

That said, this country was built by rail, so what's your damage?

Given Enough Thrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Even trains can fly.

Very much like the swine flew.

Special incentive...

[denzacar]

Monthly, bi-monthly etc. tickets.

How do you sell it? Simple - just compare the price of a 300$ ticket to the price of gas for a daily two-way ride at that same distance.
Then, on top of that, compare the time spent driving a car to time spent reading, sleeping, working etc. on the train.

People who would be making those trips would jump right on it.
Many others would probably be lured in by the notion of making a bargain.

Anyway... money is not really the problem. If anything, this crisis has shown us that all you need to do is just ask for A LOT of it.
Can they get enough of power from just solar (and provide it regularly) - that is the question here.

Why solar cells mounted above the tracks?

[WillAffleckUW]

Some people may look at this and wonder why you would have solar cells mounted above the tracks.

The primary reason would be right of way - since you already have it. But the cooling aspect of shade from the cells protects the tracks from warping under intense sunlight, as well as makes it easier to maintain during non-service hours in remote locations, since they would be reachable from a track-mounted repair/replacement vehicle, and allow for easier electrical repairs as well.

Right idea, wrong location

[shaitand]

Nice idea but wrong location. Arizona is already heavily sprawled. To justify that kind of price tag it needs to enable people to spread out. A rail like this running from NYC to upstate NY that could relieve the load on the seriously overcrowded city and allow people to live in more affordable areas in the largely empty upstate... that has benefits that are hard to quantify but massive.

Re:Right idea, wrong location

[moosesocks]

What about Metro North?

We've also got NJTransit to the south, which has a number of ambitious system expansion projects on the board.

There's also the LIRR to the east.

NYC's arguably the only city in the US with adequate public transportation options. The only issue is that many of these lines are already at capacity.

Mod parent down

[ulysses38]

You're wrong. They avoid the "existing train route" because it only exists in your imagination.

Re:Great concept...AND the math works!

[init100]

Your math is far off. 1,170,000 m^2 means 1,170,000 kW solar flux. 30% of that is 351,000 kW, which gives 1930 MWh per day.

Re:Great concept...AND the math works!

[init100]

far more than the optimistic 2.9 you calculated.

Try to do his calculation, and you'll find out he made a typo (531 instead of 351), used this erroneous result for his further calculations, as well as used Watts instead of kilowatts.

That seems ridiculously high to run a train

No train system is designed to carry just one train set. Current high-speed trains have power outputs in the 5-15 MW range. 110 MW is thus likely an estimated total power required to run an entire fleet of trains.

It's called the gasoline tax.

[tjstork]

here, you have $5 million a day paid by people travelling between Phoenix and Tucson every day. If only car drivers actually paid for the roads they use, instead of depending on government handouts for building the roads.

The tax on gasoline pays for the roads. People drive cars. They use gasolines. Roads get built.

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[moosesocks]

How about linking the East Coast to the East Coast?

The Northeast Corridor is basically at capacity. We're eventually going to need to add another mainline.

South of DC, the NEC is f-ing terrible. Amtrak don't own the tracks, and on a bad day, it can take 6-8 hours to make it from DC to Hampton Roads. The line from Richmond to Newport News is particularly bad, given that it's single-tracked, carries lots of freight, and only runs 2 Amtrak trains per day in each direction.

(While I'm complaining about Hampton Roads, I might as well add that our other public transportation options appear to have been designed to intentionally suck. The area's geography makes it a *great* candidate for commuter rail, given that you could effectively reach most of the population with one rail line, and a few well-placed buses.)

High-speed rail in the US is also made unnecessarily difficult by the fact that the FRA judges the safety of rail vehicles based upon their weight. This makes most European rolling stock impossible to use on US tracks -- the Acela has been compared to a tank on rails, due to its weight.

Arizona Overcast would make a good band name.

[Chris Burke]

Not so much of a concern for solar rail, I wouldn't think.

Every stop could be an express stop

[lazarusdishwasher]

I have probably seen too many movies, but how feasible would it be to have the last car on the train be the one that stops in each city?

When you board your train you will select the car that stops at your destination and it will decouple and coast to the station like a roller coaster.

To account for people wanting to get on half way, I can envision two different scenarios. The first method would involve the original train never slowing down, only losing cars. New trains getting up to speed would create enough of a buffer to alleviate safety concerns.

My other thought would be to have the trains recouple at speed like refueling aircraft at altitude. If the cars departing the station leave before the train reaches the station it could be up to speed and The train could separate so the new cars could join in the right spots to fall off of the end at the appropriate stops. Otherwise the cars could be added at the end and the passengers could relocate between stops.

Regenerative Braking could be used to add power back to the system at the stations if other trains are leaving, reducing load on the rest of the system while one train is accelerating.

In other news....

[XB-70]

...Man hooks $16,000.00 worth of solar panels to his ass and a solar powered monkey flies out of his butt.

Re:Great concept...AND the math works! NOT.

[Omestes]

The Phoenix Metro area has around 4.2 million, Tuscon Metro has around 1 million, so call it 5 million. And now your math is wrong.

Phoenix, like almost every other town in the world is surrounded by tons and tons of suburbs (though Phoenix is pretty much a suburb of itself). The Phoenix Metro area is generally also the #2 or #3 fastest growing population centers in the U.S. as well.

That said, this is a scam, its a great idea, but still a complete scam. I would love a decent high speed rail system running from Flagstaff to Tuscon, via Phoenix. Phoenix suffers from some of the worst road planning I've ever seen, sometimes it actually takes longer to LEAVE Phoenix, than drive to Flagstaff (around 2 hours). It once took me three hours to get from the I-17 and the 101, to the Carefree Highway (which is about 5 miles). Our planners are building roads based on REALLY old population projections from the 90s, and our TERRIBLE politicians are so hardcore about their anti-pork mumbo-jumbo that Arizona languishes when it comes to fedral funds, meaning our roads suffer even more.

Add to that our rampant corruption, and HUGE amounts of needless sprawl...

If this happens, it will be a massive joke, just like the "light rail", which doesn't serve any purpose (they removed bus routes to run a really slow train down the same central corridors, but with the buses cars could at least turn left and the buses were faster), and is functionally free (no ticket enforcement). /rant

Train? Power plant?

[funkboy]

How about just make a nice high-speed electric train that people will want to use that costs far far less than $US27B and buy the electricity at market rate, which will certainly be cheaper than coating the whole length of track with solar panels? It's still much "greener" in the public eye than the current Amtrak fleet of diesel locomotives, even without the photovoltaics.

If you're really dead-set on the whole closed-loop thing, create a sister company in parallel to generate power by whatever means is most cost-effective, which will conventiently be completed about the same time as said train project.

Then, when the excess draw of your train drives up the cost of electricity in the area, your power plant comes online and gets a profitability boost until the market corrects for the new supply of electricity.

Because without that power plant, the train proposed in TFA will cause brownouts when the solar panels can't handle the load, which will be fairly often. Frankly, given the efficiency & cost of current photovoltaics and the heat/solar coverage of Arizona, you're probably better off just using thermal solar collection to generate steam & run the damn train off that instead. If you just need to convert solar energy to mechanical energy there are a lot more efficient & cheaper ways to do it than by generating electricity with photovoltaics and running an electric motor with the juice.

Hell, maybe just install a set of pedals at every seat and offer a discount to people that take the "pedal train" instead of going to the gym.

Re:Great concept...AND the math works! NOT.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

The Phoenix Metro area has around 4.2 million, Tuscon Metro has around 1 million, so call it 5 million. And now your math is wrong.

OK, let's use metro areas. I was off by 1.5. So, cross multiply and divide and you get 108 years. Wooptie doo.

I can assure you that once the oil crunch really hits later next decade, Phoenix will not be such a booming destination.

You certainly have my sympathy about the political and material planning situation there. If I were you, I'd move the hell out of there. This presumes that you can, and you may have a number of really good reasons why you can't.

If you can, get out ASAP. And here's to hoping this boondoggle doesn't happen.

good luck, and kind regards.

RS

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[n6kuy]

Well, somebody's lying.
It's either the people you've been listening to, or it's the ones telling us that we have LOTS of natural resources.

Could be you're right. But so what?

If the people who think we have plentiful natural resources want to sink money into extracting it, why shouldn't they be allowed to?

Re:Trains faster than the car? You're kidding righ

[__aarzwb9394]

Trains are only faster than a car under the conditions that 1: you live near a station and 2: want to travel near to another station, 3: without having to change between lines or other modes of transport.

a: taking a train is usually cheaper than purchasing a car.

b: it is certainly faster than a car if you travel at peak time.

c: cars are only fast for non-local journeys if you live near a highway/motorway/freeway

d: you don't have to search for a non-free parking space when you reach the end of your train journey.

to sum up: swings, roundabouts.

As far as I know, there is very little public transport in the US, so why don't you try some. It might turn out to be useful.

Shade-Grown Train-Killed Solar-Grilled BBQ

[Edgewood]

Gee, I love the idea of the solar cells being "above the track". Wild animals from lizards on up are smart enough to seek out the shade, as are vagrant livestock. So, with the tracks in the shade for a good part of the day, I expect we could have a chain of Momma's Train-Killt Bar-B-Q stands all the way from Tucson to Phoenix (Cook them in solar ovens, come to think of it.) Or maybe DARPA could fund a next-generation cow catcher on the front of the engine, one that works at 200mph...

Environmental costs

[GPS Pilot]

there are true costs to environmental damages

Yes, there are. The problem is, estimates of those costs can and do vary by orders of magnitude, depending on who's doing the estimating. Thus, many a project that should have gotten a green light, because it would have been a great boon to our economy, instead got deep-sixed because authorities listened to people whose radical agenda led them to exaggerate environmental costs.

And it occasionally works the other way: a project that should have been deep-sixed instead gets a green light because authorities listened to people who, knowingly or unknowingly, underestimated the environmental costs.

So naturally, policymakers should be very skeptical of these estimates -- proceeding with caution, and deciding to not proceed with even more caution.

(The preceding comment applies to U.S. policymakers, and obviously not to PRC policymakers, who have screwed up royally. On the whole, the U.S. is doing well environmentally. Thanks to improved engine technology, the air is much cleaner than it was 30 years ago. The EPA Superfund sites are slowly but surely being remediated -- even during the evil Bush Administration, imagine that! -- and sites are being delisted at a much faster rate than they are being added.)

Re:Environmental costs

[Red Flayer]

The EPA Superfund sites are slowly but surely being remediated -- even during the evil Bush Administration, imagine that! -- and sites are being delisted at a much faster rate than they are being added.)

There have been many complaints that the EPA is being deficient in adding sites that should qualify as Superfund sites. Also, the "polluter pays" policy attached to Superfund is being under-enforced. Cleanup of Superfund sites is lagging far behind schedule due to underfunding.

Rush hour

[GPS Pilot]

the train operating during periods where it will be forced to pull from the grid.

You're spot-on, Batman. In the summer, the sun angle is poor during the early-morning and late-afternoon commuting times; in the winter, erm, what sun?

That's Phoenix

[bbk]

Phoenix is as you describe. Other parts of Arizona have a greater percentage of multi-generational residents.

Typo In Summary

[Ryzzen]

traveling from Tuscon to Phoenix in 30 minutes flat.

I believe it's Tucson, not Tuscon.

Re:Great concept...AND the math works! NOT.

[Omestes]

If I were you, I'd move the hell out of there. This presumes that you can, and you may have a number of really good reasons why you can't.

Move where? Its not like much of the US (world) is running on any sustainable level. Sure, we don't have enough water, neither does many places where you think it wouldn't be an issue (the NE for example). We're at least smarter than the people in Southern California and Nevada, since we require developers to guarantee 100 years of water before developing any land, something those other idiotic desert boom towns don't do. We at least got somewhat lucky and managed to grab the CAP canal (running from the Colorado river, to Phoenix/Tuscon), and some counties have been smart enough to stockpile that water like mad (not the most populous one, though)

If we ever got smart on our agricultural lobby, and stopped growing cotton (a highly water intensive crop), our water fears would lessen a bit. Something like 80% of our water use, like everywhere else, is agricultural and industrial, meaning we can legislate, or regulate their use to force up some extra water for real people (if we boot the pro-business republican carpet baggers out). We also live in an odd oasis that for some reason looks like a cross between Florida, southern California, and the Midwest, with sprawling green lawns, water hungry trees, more idiotic gold courses than you can shake a hose at. For some reason we've never heard of xeroscaping, even if Tuscon down south is known for it.

As for climate change, I don't think we're going to get the worst of it. Sure, we're in year 15 of a hundred year drought, but we're the desert, we might end up learning this fact. The Anasazi did, not that they are a hopeful example.

Large portions of the worlds population live in deserts, they adapt to it. Something we, for some dumb reason, seem unwilling to do. Let the people who don't like the desert move to cooler climates, let the desert rats (like me) have it.

I doubt, to be more ontopic, that this is going to happen. Arizona is somewhat dumb when it comes to things like this, but I don't think (or at least pray) that we're not this dumb. I'd be happy with a conventional rail portal, preferably if Amtrack actually manned up to the task, and moved their depot someplace useful, and allowed access to Tuscon. They already are a money bleeding, paritally public funded, rail boondoggle, and one is enough.

Re:Big White Elephant - MODÂUP

[mysticalreaper]

Excellent post. I agree, and worry about these problems too much, probably as you do too. I worry about our future, us short-sighted, greedy humans.

Blaine? (Shudders) I remember that story...

[ShadowSystems]

Great, JUST what we need - a sentient, insane, NUCLEAR POWERED, suicidal monorail with homicidal tendencies!
"Solve my riddle or I'll kill us all! MUH HA HA HA HAAAAaaaaaa"
*cough*

No thanks, I think I'll walk...
=)P

Mag-Lev anyone?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Technically it flies. Ok, not very high, but still.

I've been in the german built (Siemens I think) one to the Shanghai airport. It runs next to a highway ... at 430 km/h. Looks like the cars are going backwards, really strange effect.

Let us do ALL the math

[bzipitidoo]

I'm skeptical too. $27 billion seems like too much for this. But there are other costs and benefits that should be factored in.

How much does it cost in CO2, and what is that worth? 0 to run, perhaps. It won't be quite 0 if people use combustion engine cars to get to train stations. The cost of manufacturing the cars and rails, and of maintenance might be more but is probably less than those same costs for cars and highways. Suppose the rail saves $1 billion worth of CO2 emissions annually, then what? Paid off in less than 27 years!

Next, governments could make money back in the extra tax revenue from the rising property values such development would cause.

Just doing a project like this could spur research. The costs of manufacturing may dramatically drop, and future projects might become feasible. Hard to say what that might be worth. Maybe nothing-- maybe that same money could and would have spurred other research just as valuable.

I have observed that most traffic is fairly local. Much of the traffic on interstates is near large cities, and is not traveling between cities but only within the area. Connecting distant cities with passenger rail sounds sexy, but isn't terribly useful. For years, Texas has had talk of high speed rail from Dallas to Houston, but it's never gone further than that. Better to concentrate on light rail within cities first.

The solar cells must be what makes this so expensive. Change that part of this project, and then perhaps it would be worth doing.

Re:Let us do ALL the math

[LWATCDR]

"Suppose the rail saves $1 billion worth of CO2 emissions annually, then what? Paid off in less than 27 years! "
It will not. That is the issue there just isn't enough traffic.
You want use that money to reduce carbon? Use it to replace coal plants with nuclear, solar, and maybe wind.
Use it for as you said light rail.
It is so funny that when you show that a high speed rail system is a stupid waste people think you are anti mass transit. Not at all I love light rail, subways, and trolleys/streetcars " the original light rail". Even high speed rail where it makes sense but this is just a scam. It really is the Simpsons Monorail.

Re:Let us do the math

[mspohr]

You must not realize that it costs you $100 to drive that distance if you include all of the costs of owning and maintaining your car.

Train stations have a tendency to encourage growth

[spineboy]

Pretty much anytime a train station is built, be it metro, or longer commuter trains, local business and housing growth ensues. - Why? - because people want to live by trains/metros. Building a train station there wil decrease sprawl.

Re:Let us do the math

[LWATCDR]

You must not realize that I put $100 as the profit per ticket and not the cost.
It is a guess and is probably generous. Right now Amtrack charges around $210 for "high speed rail" between Boston and New York. That service is a lot slower than proposed system and a heck of a lot cheaper to run and maintain.
So I will guess that the ticket will run you around $200.
Now once you get there if the city doesn't have great public transport then you will need to rent a car or take take a taxi which adds to the cost.
Even if they do have good public transport if you destination isn't in the city center you may have to rent a car.
The big question is "how many people fly between these two cities". High speed rail really competes with airlines and not cars. I don't think there is enough traffic to justify this gold plated fantasy.
Reduce the speed down and drop the cost and you may have workable system but this is just a stupid waste of money for even for the study since anybody with a calculator can see that it is a waste.
 

Will it be on a monorail?

[docwatson223]

I am amazed at how accurate Fallen Earth is starting to become...

Re:Let us do the math

[mspohr]

I was replying to the AC who said he regularly drove this route and would not pay $100 for a ticket. I merely made the point that it was probably already costing him about $100 to drive.

Your calculations and logic are interesting but irrelevant to his complaint.

Re:Train? Power plant?

[jrade]

Why not Mag Lev?
--
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something - Plato

Uh

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Vaporail?

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[didroe84]

I would say that's a pretty wise way to go about acquiring resources. Why would you use up your own resources while there are still other people willing to sell you theirs? You're better of leaving what you've got until there is no choice but to use it.

Re:This is what the "new green economy" is all abo

[toddestan]

Well, for one thing there is the environmental impact of the exploration. Then there is the fact that the government subsidizes it, so we (the taxpayers) foot the bill anyway. And from a strategic point of view, we shouldn't use the limited resources we have up so long as others are willing to sell us theirs relatively cheaply.

Re:Let us do the math

[LWATCDR]

Ahh I didn't see his post.
I can see his logic because I honestly think that if you don't count time then driving will still be cheaper than the train. I see high speed rail competing with airlines and not cars. Light rail and Commuter rail competes with cars.

Re:Let us do the math

[mspohr]

According to AAA, the cost per mile varies between about 55 and 79 cents a mile depending on car size and number of miles driven per year.

This would give a cost to drive the 133 mile distance of between $73 and $105. So he is already spending about $100 to drive the distance but just doesn't realize it. He must be insane for paying that to drive. The train would also save him time.

Re:Let us do the math

[LWATCDR]

Except.
It would probably cost around $200 per trip.
Unless he is having a meeting in the train station he will then probably have to add in the cost of in city transportation.
So the train would still cost more not counting the time. And if the train would really cost 27 billion to build even if the tickets cost $200 and $100 just went to the debt it still wouldn't be practical to build.