3 ms·

> To be more exact here, 63% of those surveyed stated an interests in utilizing high-speed rail service if it was available. That's asking the wrong question,

> To be more exact here, 63% of those surveyed stated an interests in utilizing high-speed rail service if it was available. That's asking the wrong question, though. The issue is not so much whether people would, in the abstract, have an interest in using high-speed rail as a hypothetical means of transportation. The first challenge is figuring out where to place the rail - trains can only travel on tracks, so the train routes need to connect highly-trafficked (source, dest) pairs in order to be useful. And the second challenge is figuring out how to do this for a price that justifies the costs. (Even if the project is taxpayer funded, the costs include the opportunity cost - what other projects that tax money could have been spent on). Two-thirds of Americans would use high-speed rail if it connected their home city with their most frequently-visited destination city. But that's not the same as saying that two-thirds would use high-speed rail if it connected, say, LA and SF, or NYC and DC. The question is, would enough people use those routes in order for the project to justify its costs? The question isn't entirely useless - for example, if only 1% of the country demonstrated an interest in using high-speed rail, we could probably stop there. (Even if it connected NYC and LA, the two largest cities, there's no way the traffic would cover the opportunity cost of the project). But as stated, this survey tells us pretty much nothing new - we already knew that there's an abstract interest in high-speed rail, but what we don't know is how to convince people that we have a cost-effective way of building out the tracks between the most-important destination hubs[0]. [0] We sort of do know what the most-important destination hubs are, because it's not that different from the most-trafficked Amtrak routes and flight routes in a given region. Yes, you can make the argument that high-speed rail rail should serve the areas that aren't currently well-served by other transportation means, but keep in mind that those also tend to be the less-populated areas to begin with, which means that the challenge of recouping the costs of the project is even greater.

ghaff 10y ago
I was going to write more or less the same thing. The headline is very misleading. Sure, I'd be interested in viable, reasonably cost effective high speed rail that connected cities I travel between. (Which doesn't really describe any of the routes on that map.) I like trains. I rarely travel between Boston and Manhattan any other way. But there just aren't a lot of routes in the US between high traffic city pairs where travel time at realistic high speed rail speeds with appropriate intermediate stops are going to get you to the 4 hour or so range that you have to hit to be viable. Few business travelers are going to take an 8 hour+ train trip when there's a 2 hour flight option.
imgabe 10y ago
DC-BAL-PHL-NYC-BOS is already a heavily trafficked rail and air route. If high speed rail showed up competitively priced with airfare and without the hassle of getting to/from the airport and going through security it would be used a lot. Some plans have quoted a time from BAL-DC of about 15-20 minutes. That would make it an extremely popular commuting option for people working in DC, but wanting the cheap housing in Baltimore, which would also help Baltimore (although at the cost of probably making it not-so-cheap anymore). Replacing short-hop flights would also be great for the environment, since most of the fuel is burned getting up to altitude and then back down again.
ctdonath 10y ago
This. Rail is great for roughly linear population distributions (like Japan or California coast), but understand the USA had a huge 2D spread - laying out a vast rail grid is a lot harder than roughly a line. Each terminal had the same problem, as travelers are moving to/from in all directions. My own case: 2 miles to the nearest bus, then 20 miles to the subway, then 15 miles to what would be the high speed long range rail terminal - then a similar reverse sequence to reach the destination, at which point I'd have minimal luggage and no personal transport. Way easier to just throw everyone & everything into the family SUV and drive, taking a similar travel time with what I want and have a vehicle when we arrive.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Which is one reason why the Northeast Corridor works even though it's only sorta high-speed rail. There are a few cities off the coast like Pittsburgh that miss out but you handle a lot of population with a single line. The only caveat is that, because it's not really high-speed, it works better as north and south segments than as one single line. But because it's NYC in the middle, even that works pretty well.

ghaff 10y ago

I was going to write more or less the same thing. The headline is very misleading. Sure, I'd be interested in viable, reasonably cost effective high speed rail that connected cities I travel between. (Which doesn't really describe any of the routes on that map.) I like trains. I rarely travel between Boston and Manhattan any other way. But there just aren't a lot of routes in the US between high traffic city pairs where travel time at realistic high speed rail speeds with appropriate intermediate stops are going to get you to the 4 hour or so range that you have to hit to be viable. Few business travelers are going to take an 8 hour+ train trip when there's a 2 hour flight option.

imgabe 10y ago

DC-BAL-PHL-NYC-BOS is already a heavily trafficked rail and air route. If high speed rail showed up competitively priced with airfare and without the hassle of getting to/from the airport and going through security it would be used a lot. Some plans have quoted a time from BAL-DC of about 15-20 minutes. That would make it an extremely popular commuting option for people working in DC, but wanting the cheap housing in Baltimore, which would also help Baltimore (although at the cost of probably making it not-so-cheap anymore). Replacing short-hop flights would also be great for the environment, since most of the fuel is burned getting up to altitude and then back down again.

ctdonath 10y ago

This. Rail is great for roughly linear population distributions (like Japan or California coast), but understand the USA had a huge 2D spread - laying out a vast rail grid is a lot harder than roughly a line. Each terminal had the same problem, as travelers are moving to/from in all directions. My own case: 2 miles to the nearest bus, then 20 miles to the subway, then 15 miles to what would be the high speed long range rail terminal - then a similar reverse sequence to reach the destination, at which point I'd have minimal luggage and no personal transport. Way easier to just throw everyone & everything into the family SUV and drive, taking a similar travel time with what I want and have a vehicle when we arrive.

ghaff 10y ago
Which is one reason why the Northeast Corridor works even though it's only sorta high-speed rail. There are a few cities off the coast like Pittsburgh that miss out but you handle a lot of population with a single line. The only caveat is that, because it's not really high-speed, it works better as north and south segments than as one single line. But because it's NYC in the middle, even that works pretty well.