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Is a US High-Speed Railway Economically Feasible?
An anonymous reader writes "The federal government has committed at least $8-billion (and counting) for the development of a nationwide high-speed intercity passenger railway system in almost three-dozen states. Rail advocates have long dreamed of an extensive railway grid that will provide clean, speedy, energy-efficient travel. The high-speed rail program is also expected to create thousands of desperately needed jobs, while reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil and easing gridlocked highways and congested air-space. However, this noble, ambitious, multi-year plan faces a multitude of obstacles — including costs that will no doubt escalate as the years pass by; and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train."
Once they're paying as much as people in any other first-world country, "beloved" will give way to "practical". And it brings in some nice cash too.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
...In that you can sleep in them, lying down. In Sweden, there's a six-bunk pullman car model, and a more expensive two-bunk model that's more like a proper "fluffy" bed. It's not all that nice to sleep with your boots on in a closed compartment with complete strangers (and they never get the heating right), but it's better than sleeping in a seat.
Emotions! In your brain!
Cut subsidies for all forms of transportation. Then, tax in proportion to carbon emissions. Trains win in every densely populated region, hands down.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
A high speed rail network should be targeting air travel. There are many short haul air routes (e.g. New York to Washington) where high speed rail could provide an comparable door-to-door journey time (especially once you take check-in, security and all the other things into account). High speed rail has none of the big downsides of air travel like the need to get to the airport 2 hours before the flight to check in, the need to pass through 3 layers of security, bans on liquids and other things, cramped seats etc.
Now obviously trains cant compete with long-haul air travel such as New York to LA but for short haul, it could really work. (but only if its given proper high speed track and doesn't have to share that track with slow freight trains)
In some places yes, in other places no.
Next question?
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
A private consortium tried just that back in 1991 in Texas. Then Southwest Airlines called in a few favours and had the project destroyed (some details on Wikipedia here.). Free market capitalism may or may not have worked here (if it did then one could certainly expect other consortia to follow suit) but the Texas state government never gave us a chance to find out.
People love their automobiles because the great majority of them aren't given a choice in the matter.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to hop on a train to head to a concert, sporting event, famous restaurant, etc. a couple hundred miles away and back on the same day? That sort of casual impulse travel would be of new benefit to the economy (particularly of hub cities) even if the railway itself didn't pull in the cash.
Or they could design the train so that people could drive their cars onto it and park.
It'd kill the airlines in a week.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
If we just stopped subsidizing it, we wouldn't need to tax it, and we'd get the same revenue benefit without the infrastructure needed to enforce the tax. Bastiat has a lot of interesting things to say about both subsidies and taxes. I personally hate driving and flying, so I'd really enjoy a national rail system. I'd like a local transit system even more, but that is not something my city is even close to.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
My problem with trains in American isn't speed.
I'd rather have a train system that had a range of trains to different places at lots of different times, every day. But most importantly, I'd like to have a train system that actually follows the time table. Nobody wants to pay for public transportation when you have to arrive early, wait a long time, and then not leave on time... and probably not arrive at your destination on time.
Wait, we do that for airplanes. Nevermind. Go about your business.
http://www.tenjou.net/
Europe has certain zones where high speed rail makes sense. Those also exist here, such as the Acela route, also perhaps Miami to Orlando to Tampa Bay, LA to San Diego, and Dallas - Fort Worth. However, extending high speed rail across the US makes no economic sense now, and would place the government into direct competition with private commercial transport. It is unlikely that high speed rail will become economically viable on a nationwide basis given the huge costs of creating dedicated, isolated rails on such a broad spread basis. While I strongly support high speed rail in high density, closely located urban zones, especially where urban mass transit exists to get people to and from the train stations, it doesn't seem either economically viable or practicable in other locations.
I'm pretty sure that simply raising taxes isn't the cure to all that ails us. Keep in mind that everything you eat, wear and touch is delivered in one way or another on transportation of some kind, so literally everything would become more expensive. From experience, I can say that often a very large part of the price of goods is from transportation. When you double that cost, everything now costs 10% to 50% more overnight. That is called inflation, and it cuts demand dramatically, which is likely not the best solution considering we have the highest unemployment since the early 80s, and the most persistent unemployment since the Depression.
The problem is that the US is one giant suburb sprawl, and because our population densities are so much lower between cities, trains will never be viable all over. On the east coast, yes, and maybe even a few in fly over country. But to have trains in most of the rest of the country would take more carbon than driving cars. From building the trains cars that would only be partially full because of the lower density, to the fuel used for those smaller passenger loads, it doesn't make sense in the US for most areas, at least not for daily travel.
Also, you have to condemn land, lay tracks, uproot people and remove farm land and utilities, and in the end, most people here would still rather drive less than use the train. You can't turn America into Europe by simply taxing fuel at the same rate.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I want a monorail.
Monorail. Monorail. MONORAIL.
The US is not built to support high-speed rail, nor is there a need. Consider the Florida High Speed Rail program, part of which will run between Tampa and Orlando, a grand distance of 85 miles, or about 90 minutes driving. According to Wikipedia however, "bullet train would beat a car by only 30 minutes." Odds are even that advantage will be lost when the Lakeland stop is opened. Additionally, that doesn't even take into account that you're going to have to drive to the station, then when you get to your destination, you're going to have to drive wherever you need to get to!
High-speed rail can work in certain environments, but it's self-defeating the way it's being implemented here in the US, because it's just being used to buy votes, as the summary itself all but admitted.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
big oil is healthy and Ain't gonna let it happen
Why not? Trains run on diesel just like buses and VW TDI cars.
"and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train."
The automobile is far more of a ball-and-chain than an independence-granting device.
and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train.
Well, duh. Convenience and independence are huge. Public transportation isn't "when you want it" or "where you want it" and just doesn't have the trunk space. In many major american cities, the suburban sprawl is enormous, bordering on ridiculous. It's too late for the US. You'd need to throw in something like $100 TRILLION in order for (rail) mass transit to work. You'd need to interconnect each sprawling suburb with each other--not just with downtown, regrettably how its often done--in order to make it even feasible.
And it still won't be convenient to travel by mass transit if you have more than you can carry in your arms.
And then, at some point, it's still not the cheapest. For example, $5 a roundtrip ticket for me, my wife, and two others to travel downtown for a baseball game. Even with expensive event parking, that's already about even. If we had a van and squeezed in another couple, it'd be cheaper to carpool, perhaps even including the amortized costs of vehicle purchase & repair for that event, especially since we still needed a vehicle to get us to the rail station...
how about more inner city rail as well?
add buses, moving walk ways, more inter city rail and that will cut down on cars.
The reason trains haven't been very popular with Americans has a lot more to do with train scheduling than trains themselves. Basically, if you decide to take Amtrak, you have almost no idea when you're going to arrive at your destination. As I understand it, much of the problem is that Amtrak runs over railways owned by other entities; they aren't Amtrak's rails. So when a freight train comes rumbling along, the passenger train effectively yields to it. This rather complicates scheduling, so if you know you need to be in Springfield by 11:00 AM Tuesday, you can bet that you won't get there in time if you don't take the train scheduled to arrive on Monday. Even if Amtrak doesn't have to yield, the tracks are crap so the trains can't run at their design speeds.
Out here in the West, I don't think I've ever heard of the Coast Starlight being on time. Not even once.
In the Northeast, where Amtrak owns the rails, the trains are actually useful.
Dedicated rail lines would actually allow the trains to run more-or-less on time. Dedicated rails would also let them run fast. Then trains can be quite a nice way to get around, especially when weighed next to the bullshit you have to put up with when you fly. Realistically, it takes pretty much all day to fly anywhere, even for very short flights, given the lines, misery, and chaos at the airports. So if you can get a comfortable seat on an uncrowded train where you're not required to be photographed naked to get a seat, and you can walk around a bit, and maybe have some acceptably palatable food, you're not charged an extra $50 because you had the gall to bring your purse and a bag, and it costs 1/2 the price of an airplane ticket, trains could be pretty nice -- if only you could guess +/- half an hour when you might actually arrive.
Fixing rail service in the US means installing dedicated passenger rails.
I suggest you read this: Sewers and Storm Drains.
Yes, paying a million people to fix up our crumbling infrastructure (or in this case, to build a high-speed railroad) will be expensive. However, all those million people will no longer be unemployed, which means that they will go from being a drain on society to being a benefit to society. This sort of thing would lead to much faster economic recovery than your "everyone stop spending money right now" plan.
I fear the high speed rails will be deployed on the east and west, and those of us in "fly over" country will be left out in the cold.
Which is a shame, because in many ways the middle of the country is where high speed rail could really shine: the trains could get up to speed and stay there for a significant length of time.
However, a few random points:
1) France has a total of 1000 miles of high speed track. The Southwest Chief runs from Chicago to LA - about 2000 miles. That's just ONE of Amtrak's routes.
2) In Europe, they have auto-trains: put your car on, go, take your car off, drive. The only place this happens in the US is on the east coast, on one run. Again: were it possible to put your car on in New York, pull your car off in Flagstaff, and drive up to the Grand Canyon, I think it would be much more attractive to many people.
3) Were autotrain runs more common in the US, then driving an electric car with limited range wouldn't be the deal-breaker for long trips it is now: again, put the car in in NY, off in Flagstaff, with a fully charged battery courtesy of the train's power.
4) There is a great push on just to restore old-style rail service in the middle of the country: see the Heartland Flyer extension effort.
I routinely travel long distances: Wichita to Los Angeles for example. I'd love to be able to put my car on the train, roll overnight, and be able to make the trip in a day rather than two. I'd love to be able to hop on the train for my business trips to Kansas City and Austin. The idea that Americans won't take the train doesn't square with how many ride it now, when Amtrak seems to go out of their way to make it unattractive. Over 4000 people used the Amtrak station in Hutchison KS last year, and that is a little station in a town of about 40,000 people - the station isn't even manned, and the train gets there at 4 in the morning.
No, rail COULD work in the US - it's just that no big company will make $$$$ from it, so no CongressCritters are motivated to do anything about it.
www.eFax.com are spammers
It just doesn't make sense, and even politicians recognize that.
Now, what I have heard suggested is more routes for rail travel. When I lived near the Pocono's, there was a large number of people that traveled to New York City every day by bus for work. It was worth it for them to spend 3/4 hours on bus one way due to the lower living expenses and high wages. For them, having rail service(shorter travel time) would have been a god send. But, again. That was not high speed rail. Just new/additional rail service.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/24/uk.smoking.ban.cars/index.html
London, England (CNN) -- A British doctors group called Wednesday for a ban on all smoking in cars, saying the secondhand smoke inside a vehicle can cause severe health problems for children and adults.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The very fact that something is unprofitable, and that no private party has stepped up to do it for that reason, does not mean the thing is not worth doing and worth having the government do it.
Speaking of the military, just a small fraction of that $500B-$600B (more?) annual offense budget, currently being in great part wasted on failing attempts at nation-building, would buy us this rail service and a whole lotta other stuff besides, without adding to the deficit. The military is just a few (well, a hell of a lot) of people getting massive slush funds for their states that everyone else is expected to pay for.
I'm with you on telecommuting though. It's idiotic for most people to transport a sack of meat - themselves- in a one to two ton container just to sit at a desk and in all likelihood be no more, if not less, productive than they'd be at home. And then transport the same meat/steel back at the end of the day.
The man who dies rich dies disgraced. -- Andrew Carnegie
The choice is not between 'car' and 'rail'. The choice is between 'rail' and 'airplane'.
There is a nice Amtrak route from Seattle, WA to Portland, OR. It takes about 3 hours, and a plane flight is less than an hour. At least, until you factor in getting to the airport (way outside of town, and the Amtrak station is right downtown), going through security, the cramped seating, and the overall icky stupidity of the entire process of air travel nowadays. Then the Amtrak starts looking a heck of a lot more attractive than a plane flight.
I also travel to San Francisco from Seattle sometimes. My current choice is to take a plane. If there were a high-speed rail corridor to San Francisco that took less than 5 or 6 hours, I might well choose it instead. Sure, it's an hour or two longer than even the total time spent to travel there by air. But it's an hour or two of comfort, not an hour or two of not-quite uncomfortable enough to be unbearable that air travel is.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
That doesn't seem like a great reason to decide against using trains, but I think you have a point. If a government funded national system were developed it would only be fair to include some kind of smoking car or other reasonable accommodation.
You overstate the case. In Britain, fuel prices are vastly higher than they are in the USA, and driving is still usually cheaper than taking the train.
People travel by rail in Britain when it's more convenient. For commuters it makes sense because you can work or relax on the train; of course, many US cities already have popular commuter rail services. For other people, it often boils down to things like the very poor parking facilities at urban destinations and the poor roads at rural destinations -- an expensive train ticket looks a lot more attractive if you know the alternative is going to be six hours stationary in heavy traffic on a narrow road, or an extortionate charge for commercial car parking. These latter problems tend not to exist so much in the USA, where there's plenty of room for wide roads and large car parks.
If I didnt put down the railways first in Sim City, I was basically screwed.
Seriously, what the hell are you basing this on except your personal lack of vision?
And to clarify, for the haters. Government subsidized anything is not economically feasible. Privatized rail and you'll have competitive free market stuff to determine what's feasible and what's not, then the question won't matter except to Entrepreneurs and investors.
I hope you understand why that plan would be unpopular, is impractical, and no rational politician would actually vote for it.
Think about it: a good number of Americans are willing to go to war to keep gas prices low. Do you think they will appreciate it if gas prices rise double for no reason other than some people (you) don't like their cars? Not to mention there's a good portion of the country where people couldn't ride the train even if they wanted to.
Qxe4
Don't be silly. Building a rail link is essentially impossible unless you can use eminent domain to acquire the necessary land; there's no way a private company could realistically expect to persuade thousands of individual landowners to sell them land in a straight line from one city to another, possibly crossing several different states in the process.
The CCC did some wonderful things. And quite a bit of those things are up for repair or replacement. If we're in the 'worst recession since the great depression' then we need to treat it as such. Cancel 'handouts'. If you want welfare, you can work for it. Everyone gets a job and stuff gets built.
Bridges, Dams, Power lines, roads. Quite a bit of stuff was built during the great depression putting people to work. After the MN bridge collapse inspectors are coming out of the wood work going "Yeah, these could fail at any time now too."
Take all those 2.9M employees that are out of work and have them start building shiat. If they want to sit on their Union ass and do nothing, they get nothing. Turn off unemployment. There'll be no shortage of jobs. Pay them what they're actually worth as manual labor. Caterpillar & Deere, the big 2 domestic construction manufacturers would need to increase their workforce (Which is partially union). Truckers would get more work shipping construction supplies and equipment. Mobile home makers would need to up production for temporary housing. Concrete, asphalt, and steel industries would need to up employment to help keep up with demand.
Along every road and every bridge run fiber, it costs nothing compared to what a new road does, so run a fat pipe to every town in America. The next Wozniak or Linus could be sitting at a place that currently just has 14.4 dial up. Maybe the smartest of the high school students could take part in remote learning at MIT or some where where they'll not be kept behind with the rest of their class.
In addition, toss a rail line down the center of the interstates. Get a light rail connecting most large cities. Maybe even a 'ferry' service. Need to go to CA? Load your car up on a rail. Go sit in the comfortable seats and in a day. You're in CA.
Just like all those roads and bridges helped spark the auto boom a decade or so later, in 10-20 years we could really see the economy back on its feet doing something else productive.
The comment about air travel being the real competitor is right on the money.
Survey after survey has shown that people would much rather take a train (where they can get on easily, walk around during travel, not get slapped suddenly into their seats for an impromptu ride on the biggest roller coaster on the planet, drink a beer or eat a sandwich for a reasonable price, not have to wait in long lines for a restroom, and "land" within a short cab ride of their actual destination) than suffer through the growing indignities of air travel. Even adding in proper security screening, it's still no contest. But the obstacle to high speed rail is economic and political -- the extensive government subsidies to auto travel are dwarfed by those offered to private commercial air carriers (the whole TSA thing, but also the airports themselves and air traffic control, not to mention the weather service and other such incidentals that are nominally for other purposes). Investment in high speed rail directly undercuts the most lucrative air travel market: short haul trips. That's why the hub and spoke system all the air carriers use exists, and why you can hardly ever find a direct flight to where you're going if you aren't lucky enough to live in a hub (but also notice that if you leave directly from a hub, you'll pay a big mark-up compared to people who are simply transferring there).
So the bottom line is that there is a gigantic, lucrative industry whose whole existence depends on never having effective rail transportation (such as high-speed rail that connects urban areas as well as major airports and provides competitive, timely, cost-effective, weather-insensitive service for trips ranging from 200-500 miles). So you've got a bunch of noble idealists without a dime to their name lobbying for high speed rail, and you've got all the airlines hell-bent on preventing it from (so to speak) getting off the ground. It's a miracle the current administration thinks they can beat those odds, and I wish them all the best. But this is sort of like trying to outflank the medical industry with health care reform, and unfortunately there's probably just as little chance of substantial success.
This is precisely why rail is typically only added to the most population-dense areas. It doesn't make sense to use it unless you can walk everywhere else you go. It could possibly work in Los Angeles if you stationed a cop in every car, but only if they stopped hiring cops that taser or even shoot people at the least provocation. Most of the places it could work could be more cheaply (up front, anyway) served by adding lanes to existing roadways.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can't turn America into Europe by simply taxing fuel at the same rate.
There are many on the left who, out of a desire to see "good" things done quickly, reflexively support higher taxes and increased government spending, regardless of the prevailing economic circumstances. In response to their claims of concern for the plight of the common man, Milton Friedman once said, "I admire the softness of their hearts, but unfortunately it very often extends to their heads as well."
High Speed Rail as it exists in Europe or Japan will never work in the US. In the areas of the country where it is commercially viable, there would be too many railroad crossings. Imagine the cost of involving everyone's construction brother-in-law for making a bridge at every crossing. We already have "high speed rail" in this country it is called the Acela - fast for about 10 minutes, then slows down for the rest of the journey because of crossings. Besides, it's about 3 times cheaper to fly from Boston to New York City than it is to take the train. Much more of a pain, but cheaper. In the areas of the country where it would be possible to actually build a high-speed railroad, with a minimal of crossings, there wouldn't be a market to support it. How many people really want to take a high speed train from Fargo, North Dakota to Omaha, Nebraska? Enough to support the cost of building a decent railway? I don't think so.
In the US, when you arrive at a city, the first thing you need is a car. Otherwise, you can't get anywhere.
NYC is an exception. Almost anywhere else, you will need to get of the train and immediately rent a car. Without addressing this issue, this might as well be a train to nowhere.
On statistics: The train throughput numbers ( passengers per hour ) are often very deceiving. The numbers are based on trains being closely spaced ( very frequent ) and 100% full of passengers. Just look at Caltrans in CA. I've seen numbers showing how the train corridor carries a lot more people per hour than the same sized road. However, the assumption is that you can run one train every 6 minutes. Caltrans can't get anywhere near that rate of trains. Also, the Caltrans trains run virtually empty through the middle of the day. There are no passengers, but the engine is cranking out massive amounts of pollution from the big diesel engines. The pollution per person must be awful.
How true, how true. Of course, you bring up an interesting side point: Which organization stands to lose the most from a functional rail system with good routes and coverage? Greyhound Bus Lines, hands down.
And that's not an idle issue. For instance, at one point there was consideration of setting up passenger rail service between Boston and Concord NH, with stops at significant cities such as Manchester, NH and Nashua, NH, both of which have a lot of people who are commuting to Boston daily and clogging up the interstates during rush hour. The costs involved in creating such a route would have been relatively low, because there's already track laid for freight rail, and the cities which were likely stops conveniently had their public transit centers about 100 feet from the tracks.
It was shot down, primarily because of opposition by the bus line that is making good money running buses along that exact route. It doesn't matter that rail would have made things faster and more convenient for everybody.
I am officially gone from
High speed rail is not to replace cars. It is to replace regional airlines.
We have to stop sabotaging mass transit in the US.
Mass transit is made hard-to-use. Consider, for example, arriving in Chicago via train at Union Station. Chicago's got a good subway system, but to get on it, you've got to leave the station and walk several blocks outdoors. Metra? Somewhat better, if you're lucky enough to be leaving on a train from Union or maybe Ogilvie, but LaSalle and Van Buren are quite the hike. God forbid you want to take rail into Chicago so you can get to O'Hare for an international flight. If you come into Union, you're faced with hauling your luggage down a dingy concrete stairway to a subway station for a long el trip to the airport.
Mass transit is made second-class. Amtrak has for years struggled to be on-time, even though they're supposed to have priority over freight, they're using the rails of the freight railroads, and it's quite common to be waiting for some freight train to do its business before you can continue on your way. The tracks are poor and the trains wobble. People who suffer from motion sickness sometimes get sick from them, especially on the upper deck of a Superliner. Train speeds are low, meaning that a long haul trip is probably overnite, and if you want to be able to sleep in peace, that means paying for a roomette on the train, at substantial extra cost.
If we had high speed rail that was interconnected intelligently with subways, regional rail, buses, airports, etc., it'd be a great incentive to leave the car at home. I for one have driven enough miles that I'm happy to let someone else do the driving, but it also has to be convenient. For me, driving to O'Hare for an international flight and paying to park the car for several days is still more compelling than taking Amtrak, walking to the subway station, wrestling our luggage down the stairs and through the turnstiles, then taking the hour long trip to O'Hare.
I don't expect the current high speed rail proposals to address this sufficiently, so it isn't clear to me just how many people would start to take the train.
They tried that in Ontario, Canada, in the 1990's. Mike Harris pushed through legislation to cut welfare benefits to those who were not participating in workfare projects.
One million unemployed formed a mob outside the parliament (legislative) buildings, arguing that having to work for a living was slavery.
Surprisingly, 97% of those who's benefits would be cut "magically" found jobs suddenly.
Socialism creates some real weird la-la land illusions in some people's heads.
In Liberty, Rene
...is that it'll steal customers from the airlines, which are already hurting. What will we do then, bail them out?
We're spending too much and we need to stop.
- real hackers don't have sigs -
> If it was really cost effective some private company would have already built it.
No. At least, not unless it were possible to build today with the kind of free land grants that enabled the original railroad corridors to be constructed 150 years ago.
The fact is, without the authority to condemn land via eminent domain, it would be point blank impossible to build a rail line (or freeway, or even a sidewalk for that matter) of any useful length anywhere in America besides maybe the desert or Alaska -- REGARDLESS of how profitable it might otherwise be once constructed. The moment landowners along the way realized you were building something that needed a continuous path, every last one of them would instantly demand rent-seeking amounts of money for THEIR property. Even if Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Madonna pitched in everything they had to buy the necessary ROW to build a rail line heading north from downtown Miami, they'd collectively be bankrupt before they got to the county line 15 miles north.
Rail lines have an additional disadvantage when it comes to negotiating ROW purchases with individual landowners. Unlike a normal road, which increases the value of land it passes by, a rail line only hurts the property values of adjacent land unless there happens to literally be a station nearby. When stations are 25 miles apart, good luck convincing a landowner 15 miles away that just about anything you care to offer is worth considering, especially if the rail line's construction will effectively cut off access to property on the other side.
Germany is 1/2 the size of Texas: 357,022 sq. km. vs. 678,054 sq. km., into which they've jammed a little over a quarter of the population of the U.S. 82,282,988 vs. 310,232,863.
What are you smoking that makes you believe the same transportation economics will apply in the U.S. as in Europe?
-- Terry
All the posts talking about rail (hsr/intercity/commuter/LRT/RRT) vs other modes of transportation have got it wrong. It's not about supplanting one of the current modes with trains (although that may happen), it's about providing regional (and local) transportation options where it makes sense to. A HSR system linking a village in Wyoming with another village in Wyoming probably doesn't make much sense. A HSR system linking major metro areas in regional spots like CA, the midwest, the Pacific NW, New England, etc makes perfect sense given that those are spots with the density to support rail and who's highway and air infrastructure are overburdened.
Is it economically feasible? It's gonna be expensive, no doubt. However expanding our current roadway/air infrastructure will also be expensive. The other issue is that the longer we wait, the more expensive it will become. If you feel that our current transportation system is adequate for our current and future needs, then fine; if you don't than you have to accept that "pricey" rail is also going to be part of the mix.
If you are someone who loves your car, you should be backing rail wholeheartedly for one reason: every rail passenger means one less driver on the road, which will make driving easier for you. It only takes a couple percent reduction in traffic to go from level-of-service F (stop-and-go traffic) to LOS D (traffic slow but moving)
(ftr I'm someone who does consulting for the rail industry and I'm also a member of a rail advocacy group)
Now my understanding is the exact inverse. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16819-city-dwellers-harm-climate-less.html
Though I am open to a rational rebuttal.
Storm
There is absolutely NO DOUBT that a high speed rail system could be economically feasible. It's a matter of making it competitive with airlines, on price, and on convenience, and on speed. If that is done. You will replace the airlines almost over night.
I for one would much rather NOT stand in the homeland security line, and if the train doesn't have a 2 hour take off your shoes wait, well, I'll risk riding with the terrorists.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Greetings and Salutations....
I have always enjoyed traveling by train, and, would be on it like a duck on a June Bug if it were available. However, there are three things that will have to happen before it will become successful.
1) Whoever takes on this project (and I suspect it will have to be the Federal Government), will have to lay out a growth plan that will continue to add lines to areas in the USA where access does not exist. One of the massive fails of Amtrak was that the company built a few lines...then stopped, apparently expecting that this would be enough. For a model, look at the light rail systems in larger cities, such as Washington D.C., New York, or Atlanta. In all three cases the lines are laid out to minimize the distance that a passenger has to travel to get to a station.
2) Arrange for auto transport cars to be part of the long-distance lines. This would allow the passenger to drive up to the station, get their vehicle loaded, and, enjoy a pleasant and comfortable ride across country. Upon arriving, they would have their own transport immediately available, which would go a long way towards making the trip more enjoyable.
3) Ensure that the cost of a train ticket is no more than that of an airplane ticket. A few years ago, I was going to travel to Washington D.C. for an event. The cost of a round-trip train ticket was close to $400.00, and, in order to GET to Amtrak I would have had to drive to Atlanta. The airplane ticket (also round trip) was $175, and, I could fly out of Knoxville. Prices may be more at a parity now, but, there is still that long drive to get to a station.
I would love to see train travel come back, as it is a great way to see the countryside, especially if one is not in a huge hurry.
Regards
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
That would make sense, except that government size and the current scale of spending is the result of folks on the right, largely. It's always boggled my mind to hear people call for smaller government and then vote in favor of things like the patriot act and new government departments like the DHS and TSA. The left may be accused of tax and spend, but the right is definitely about spending *and* tax cuts. Pretty amazing stuff.
"Paying a million people a year say, $50000 (to cover their wage plus the usual overhead) is $50 BILLION"
And that's, what? about 10% of the defense budget? There you have your money.
Here's my main issue with the density argument: ever been to Japan? We've ridden all over the country on the rails. Much of it is incredibly rugged terrain. In a lot of the country, your train dives into a tunnel, then a couple minutes later emerges on the other side of the mountain and immediately onto a bridge over a ravine, then straight into another tunnel, and so forth. The cost per mile must be obscene -- at least an order of magnitude higher than the cost per mile across the Great Plains. Yet they've not only merely "managed", but they've built a wonderful system.
Here's another issue: air travel suffers equally to density problems. For example, last winter, we wanted to visit my grandfather's cousin in Cimarron, NM. We had to fly in to Amarillo and then drive 4 1/2 hours to Cimarron. We could have gotten the drive down to about 3 hours by flying in through Colorado Springs or Santa Fe. Either way, air serves these remote places poorly as well, even with our current air-focused infrastructure and rail neglect, so it's hardly an argument against rail.
If you can't connect the dots at this point, it's because the dots are too f***ing close together.
The US has a great rail system and we need to make sure that we do not ruin it by doing what Europeans have done.
"Europe's dependence on trucks stems from the failure of its vaunted passenger-rail network to provide a cheap, efficient alternative for cargo. Between 1995 and 2005, the percentage of European goods shipped by truck rose to 73% from 68%, while rail's share fell to 17% from 20%. The rest goes by canal or, in the case of oil and gas, pipelines. In the U.S. in 2005, 42% of freight was moved by train and 33% by truck."
"EU Looks to Cargo Trains To Ease Load on Trucking" by John W. Miller, in The Wall Street Journal on June 5, 2007 at p. A6
The US has optimized its rail system for freight, not passengers, and that is a good thing. Distances between population centers in the US are larger than in Europe, Americans will tend to prefer air travel for long distance intercity travel.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
people started to piling into cities. cities are the ideal for a social species
"Cities are in no way efficient, pretty much everything about them is inefficient."
uh... what? if you pile everyone together, all communication and transport is minimized between people. yes, you have to move food and water in... why do you believe this is the most important or the most intensive form of communication/ transportation? the obvious truth is that cities are the ideal for efficiency (what's inefficient is the suburbs, but this is a quirk of the last century when oil was cheap, the suburbs will die as energy becomes more expensive)
look: people prefer to live in cities. as of 2005, 81% of americans live in the city or the suburbs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
does that factoid mean anything to your bizarre anti-city bias?
cities are the ideal environment for mankind, by choice, and by design. we invented them, we overwhelmingly choose to live in them. all other species adapt to their environment, but homo sapiens adapts its environment to itself. and what we have chosen to make, and prefer to be born, to live, and to die in, are cities, as point of historical and contemporary objective fact
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It would be if we weren't spending 54% of our federal tax dollars fighting two wars and maintaining the second largest military in the world with more than 820 installations in at least 135 countries. After that maybe we could scale back on the 11% of federal spending that government bureaucracy gobbles up. Then we could lighten the tax load, so that more families could afford to have one income winner in the house. Which would drastically reduce social issues that lead to increased spending in the criminal justice system. This would free up even more money to start chipping away at the $ 13 trillion in national debt and the $110 Trillion in unfunded liabilities, which would let us spend money to bolster our education system, public services, research grants (including alternative energy sources) and finally some much needed infrastructure. Infrastructure that would include a nationwide rail system that will never pay for itself, but would be a great service for many Americans and allow me to sleep on my way to the office.
Jesus christ, I'm sick of trolls who claim that we went to war for oil. If we went to war for lower gas prices, then why the frak did gas prices double after the war started? Yes, some of it was due to price gouging on the parts of oil countries and speculators, but that's already been negated by the recession and gas STILL costs twice what it did before the war.
Yes, I get it, you hate Bush. So do I. I also think the war is pointless and unprovoked. However, you're only hurting your arguments with claims that we went to war over oil.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
rail makes sense in high density populated areas
therefore, the east coast: yes. the west coast: yes. the middle of the country: no
this is why the usa lags in high speed rail from countries like germany (dense), france (dense), japan (dense), china (dense), etc
on a national basis, rail makes no sense, due to our overall low population density
but in isolated sections, like the california coast and the northeast: its a no-brainer yes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Government subsidized rail is the most economically feasible solution.
Privatized rail is a waste of money, and has been proven not to work.
For the clueless that haven't figured it out yet, here is why:
1. There is no such thing as a competitive free market.
2. In capitalism, the whole point of "competition" is to eliminate competitors, and achieve a monopoly.
3. Why would you want a private monopoly to run your rail system?
The defining advantage of high speed rail, restaurant cars, when things go wrong generally things slow down rather than falling out of the sky, railway stations are far cheaper and simple affairs than airports and, no fucking 'TSA' ( the single most important defining point). No TSA will mean passengers swapping from flying to riding the rails is guaranteed.
No hassle at the train station, buy you ticket, dump your luggage and get on the train, no strip searches, no harassed children, no you name sounds like somebody else's name, no stolen notebooks and cameras, no disrespect of power freak numb nut means 24 hour detention and anal probes. Of course in the 21st century private cabin with high speed broadband and how much can yet get down on they way there and on the way back and still enjoy the restaurant car and of course the view.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I didn't have a car, but the only time I rode the train was when I was going from the town I lived in (Lueneburg) to Hamburg. If I was going anywhere more than about 3 hours hours away, I flew. The reason being was a flight from Hamburg to Muenchen was something like 120euro round trip with a single carry on and took about 3 hours to get to the airport, on the plane, and arrival at destination. I was often traveling on weekends and time was something I had limited amounts of while studying or working in the country. If I were taking a regional train, the fare was 140 Euro and the trip took like 13 hours one way. If you wanted to take a ICE (Fast) train, the ticket was like 400 Euro with 6 hour travel time. And that was back when they had a Junge fare.
400 euros is for a 1. class return ticket without any rebates. A standard ICE (fast 5 hour travel time) train ticket between Lüneburg and München is 127 euros, comparable with your 130 euro plane ticket. If you use a rebate card, the same train ticket can cost as little as 63 euros, half price of the air fare. Even larger rebates can be had if one is booking far in advance. On top of that is often way cheaper and faster to get from the train station (in the middle of the city) to your final destination, than paying a cab from the airport (usually located far from the city center).
AFAIK, airlines doesn't pay fuel tax in Germany while trains does.
--
Regards
One interesting aspect of American politics right now is that a branch of the Republican party has broken off to oppose that kind of thing. Look at the tea-party platform, and you'll see it's primarily economic: they've dropped the 'moral' aspect of the right and have focused mainly on cutting deficits by cutting spending. Surprisingly a good portion of their energy has gone towards opposing establishment Republicans, enough so that some pundits began commenting about the divide in the Republican party.
I think it's kind of similar to liberals who get upset when Democrats turn out to be beholden to the big corporate interests they are supposed to be fighting. Politicians are always hypocrites, don't expect otherwise.
Qxe4
California voters approved a high-speed rail ballot initiative recently that would build really high-speed trains from San Francisco to LA to San Diego, and also to points in between and Sacramento. The initiative approved $10Billion in bonds for construction - but the official estimated cost was about $30B, and the followup Oops-you-mean-the-WHOLE-Cost cost was about $40B, so they're depending on $30B of Federal money to magically fall from the sky. They've gotten approval for something like $2B of that $8B the Feds want to spend in the whole country, but they'll need a lot more. So the finances have been a total crock from the beginning.
By the way, the route from San Francisco to LA alone is longer than the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux, which is about the longest of the French TGV routes. (The highway distance would be a bit shorter, but the existing train routes across the mountains make the actual route zig-zag for a longer distance.)
I don't think you mean Marin County NIMBYs, though -that's across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and there's no obvious way to get a train across the bridge. There are lots of NIMBYs around Atherton and Menlo Park who don't want the train going down the Peninsula, or at least not near them, or hidden in underground tunnels.
There have also been arguments about whether the route from San Jose should go south first, or should go up the East Bay and east before heading south, but that's been people who want the train to go near them, not people who don't want it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Have you been on AMTRAK lately? They have made no secret of the fact that they want to eventually emulate the same security system as airports.
Since people around the world read this - is there an example of privately run national railroads that actually work, are mostly on time, and are comfortable, clean, etc. ?
The examples I know sound like evidence that a railroad system can not be run by private companies. Trains in the UK are famously dirty (and I was riding 1st class!) and late. Germany used to be famous for its punctual trains - on the minute, no matter the distance - and excellent service, but ever since they've made the train company private, both has been going downhill rapidly.
What seems to work are public railroads (Switzerland, as I recall, is now what Germany used to be) or local, private railroad companies (several good examples exist in Germany).
I wonder why that is, and I wonder if it's a general thing or just a problem with the countries I know.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
No, but you could get a single mom of 2-3 kids to run books. Do phone support. You still need people doing office work.
And John Henry was replaced by a machine just because we say he was replaced by a machine. Even if we did nothing I'd rather pay someone to dig a hole one day and fill it in the next than let them sit around doing nothing on unemployment & welfare. I bet you'd see a dramatic drop in crime because people were too tired to go gangbanging after a day of hard labor.
If drugs were legalized, it'd take away a huge cash incentive to go make or sell drugs. I don't remember hearing stories from my grandpa how his family was 'entertained' while he was away. It wasn't an easy situation for anyone, but it got America through.
If everything was 'machines machines machines' then why do we hear about people being laid off when production goes down? Shouldn't there just be stories about how Cat had to flip some breakers?
No, but you train them and they're a trucker or a pilot or a machine operator. I bet a majority of CCC workers weren't brick layers, or cement pourers, but somehow they managed to build the stuff that we've used for the last 70 years.
Have you ever seen the middle of an interstate? In 90% of the country there is a reason they're called 'divided highways'. Plenty of room to add a rail service Once you get to the city, you take it elevated or under ground, or just have main hubs outside of cities with commuter trains or subways actually going into the city.
And "on and off the train without dodging traffic", seriously? That's the best argument you have? You'd build overhead stairs. Just like trains in every other damn country have, or an elevated platform that the train goes up on.
Look at the tea-party platform, and you'll see it's primarily economic: they've dropped the 'moral' aspect of the right and have focused mainly on cutting deficits by cutting spending.
Hardly. The libertarian right views its form of meritocracy as a moral issue. It's immoral to give healthcare to the needy because you take money from those who "earned" it. I haven't seen any tea-partier actually support reducing the size of the government by cutting funding to the largest military in the world. I haven't seen a single tea-partier come out in favor of personal liberty through marijuana reform, or legalizing prostitution, or really any other actual limits on our liberty. The tea-party platform is total bunk. It's the same old conservative, right wing, republican platform dressed up in colorful rhetoric.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You mean there's not fucking TSA NOW. No fucking TSA until a few bullshit terrorism events happen. Do you think trains are immune from terrorism? On the contrary, blowing up trains is a prestigious line of work, with a long and glorious tradition. It seems to me, much easier to crash a high speed train than to take down an airplane, with all that vulnerable track laid out over hundreds of miles. One nicely placed mortor and, the results are not going to be pretty, especially in any populated area. Supposing the US builds a high speed rail network, I give it at most a decade before regulations are just as bad as TSA...baggage inspections, patdowns, naked xray viewers, no weapons allowed....
Huh? From where I'm sitting it looks exactly like the Republican talking points of "Get our country back for God-fearin white Americans", "Deport all the Mexicans", "Reduce taxes for the rich and it will trickle down on us like a golden shower", and "Reign in bad government" (where "government" means policies and court decisions they disagree with). They might not be talking specifically about marijuana, abortion, gays, etc, but given all the figureheads of the movement, it's obvious where they stand.
That's an artifact of the top 1% of income earners paying over 40% of all federal income tax.
The top 1% of income earners earn 23.5% of income. Note, however, that the top 1% of income earners ALSO pay very, very low tax rates on social security and investments, which is where their income comes from.
A middle-class person might pay a 28% marginal tax rate on money they earn by working. A rich person pays a 15% tax rate on money they make by already having money.
If anyone in the top 1% of earners thinks that's a bad deal, I would be happy to trade places with them.
paintball
I met a long-time Republican state legislative type. When he decided to do something else, he ran his campaign on legalization of prostitution and drugs! The result was predictable, but somehow I do not think your complaints apply to him! Anyway, saying tea party platform is ignoring reality. The rank and file are trying to deal with some critical issues, with no competent leadership. When you talk about platform, you are dealing with theater, and I figure pretty much a Republican coop attempt. Really the only thing the Republican economics policies have going for them is that Obama's economics policies make the Republican policies look good!. Just today, "respectable" people are talking about the real unemployment figures. Now you know how this works. Every since Nixon, every administration has tweaked the study protocol and it always somehow reduces the unemployment numbers. Now it turns out if you take the Reagan or even the Clinton protocol, the unemployment numbers are 22%. This is *nationally*, not Detroit! And is it not great!Timmy say we are getting a consensus to nationalize all the real estate mortgages to avoid foreclosures. Now it happens all the money would end up with the banks. We spent 2.3 trillion on bailout so far and here is another 3 trillion coming. Can you say "hyper-inflation". So tell me what the so-called "tea party platform does to employ another 20 million people? The rank and file know in their guts it does nothing.