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Comment section will bring out the foamers, but consider: There's demand for service from mpls to Chicago, but it would have to be much faster- at 3 hours it wo

Comment section will bring out the foamers, but consider: There's demand for service from mpls to Chicago, but it would have to be much faster- at 3 hours it would be competitive. That would require massive rail investment, and would basically create a new railroad next to the existing one, as fast passenger and slow freight don't mix. This is probably not cost effective. A nice bus gets you better service with lower capital expenditures. West of mpls, the train drags 200k lb sleeping cars along with lounge and diner cars for only a handful of passengers. Swedish and Russian railways pack 6 to a compartment; Amtrak struggles with 2. No way this is cost effective or a good use of capital. Deregulate the fra rules, allow electric buses on the rails (and eliminate the crazily overbuilt rail standards), and you might get real innovation and a competitive product...

mschuster91 6y ago
> and would basically create a new railroad next to the existing one, as fast passenger and slow freight don't mix Why not make freight fast, too? > A nice bus gets you better service with lower capital expenditures A bus can accomodate 80 people per driver, a train (German ICE) 750 seats+750 people standing. Sure, a bus is cheaper in upfront investment, but has higher operation expenses, is way slower and is worse for the environment. Additionally, buses get caught in traffic jams while railways are generally separate. > allow electric buses on the rails What? Why? And how should this be secured?! > and eliminate the crazily overbuilt rail standards These standards were written in the blood of thousands of people who died or were severely maimed in accidents.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >Why not make freight fast, too? Money. Most goods need to be on schedule, not fast. More speed costs more money. >These standards were written in the blood of thousands of people who died or were severely maimed in accidents. The standards were also written for a world who's conditions were very different from those of today. I know that you can score easy virtue points by pretending like any rollback of regulation that is intended to protect something is a bad thing but let's be real here. With modern signaling infrastructure there's no reason that dedicated passenger rail can't be equally safe or safer than legacy passenger rail that has to be interoperable with legacy signaling systems and freight rail.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > These standards were written in the blood of thousands of people who died or were severely maimed in accidents. So were the European standards. They just tackled accident prevention more than accident survivability as the engineering goal. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally-legalizes-modern-european-style-train-cars/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally-legalizes... > But FRA rules had required significant design changes. Most important, American train cars had to be built to withstand 800,000 pounds of frontal impact. Former Amtrak CEO David Gunn complained U.S. trains had to be designed like “high-velocity bank vaults.” Rather than just bulk up, European and Asian trains instead are designed to absorb impacts and avoid collisions in the first place. And they have better safety records.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > Rather than just bulk up, European and Asian trains instead are designed to absorb impacts and avoid collisions in the first place. And they have better safety records. There is a total lack of information why that route was taken in the 1920s, so I'm going to take a wild guess... in Europe, the train routes, especially for fast trains, are completely separated, often outright walled off, and level crossings with streets totally eliminated. In the US, you have a country that is many, many times bigger and widely un- or sparsely populated, which means that there is a lot more danger to trains from stuff that ends up on the tracks as it's infeasible to build a wall that long. Herds of animals, heavy trucks/tractors ending up on the tracks of a crossing - that is something that I expect to be pretty much routine in the US, and it makes sense to build trains that can simply plow through such impediments.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      While that may be true, I think there is another cultural and/or regulatory issue at play here, though I can't put my finger at it exactly. In the USA everything on rails is Danger! Danger! and has to be signaled as such, even if it's only a tram servicing downtown. It has to Ring! Ding! Ding! all the times. I'd go crazy if having to live near anything like that.
- gbronner 6y ago
  >Why not make freight fast, too? Physics. Running a freight train at 150 mph requires serious engineering to make sure it can go around the curves well, and wear and tear is immense.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Fast freight --- say, a unit train of coal or clinker at 110 * 200 tonne cars --- has kinetic energy at the square of speed, posing increased risks to the freight service itself, any shared-road or adjacent-road traffic, level crossings, and structures, property, or natural features boardering tracks, as well as wear and tear on track and rolling stock. These are part of those safety standards you note, among other factors. High-speed rail demands fully separated rights of way for reasons of route and destination, safety, predictable scheduling, minimum turning radius, and more. Unfortunately in a world of strong land-property rights and interests, this makes it extraordinarily politically vulnerable. A few years ago I realised that virtually every successful large-scale rail system (both high-speed and earlier "conventional" services) emerged in a largely uncontested land-rights regime. For the 19th century US and British systems, a pre-industrial or pioneer domain in which land owners were few, poor, or both. On completion, the US transcontinental railroad was seen as a boondoggle "road to nowhere", though various "wheres" began springing up along its route nearly immediately. (Famously, Denver, Colorado, saw a 10x population growth in the decade after a spur line was built to the transcontinental route.) For Japan and Europe, planning for high-speed fail began following the physical and economic devastation of WWII. Landholders couldn't put up much of a fight. China's HSR growth resembles that of frontier America and early-industrial Britain, benefitting by a different land-ownership regime. The most pernicious obstacle to California high-speed rail is Atherton.
DominikPeters 6y ago
> Swedish and Russian railways pack 6 to a compartment; Amtrak struggles with 2. But there are two roommettes side by side. Both European and Amtrak cars have a length of ~26m. An Amtrak Superliner sleeping car can sleep up to 44 people. A sleeper as used by Austria’s ÖBB can sleep 12*3=36 people. A 3rd class Russian sleeping car holds 54 [https://www.vagonweb.cz/razeni/vlak.php?zeme=%D0%91%D0%A7&kategorie=&cislo=18&nazev=&rok=2020 https://www.vagonweb.cz/razeni/vlak.php?zeme=%D0%91%D0%A7&ka...]. Comparable.
- gbronner 6y ago
  54 sleeper car actually can be full. Basically no way to fill the Amtrak car, as people don't like to share the bedrooms. Russian trains used to have 3 bunks, which improved the economics.
- herbstein 6y ago
  I used an older generation of that third class Russian carriage design last year. Biggest problem is the length of the benches and the noise. It's not like it was _great_ but for a dirt-cheap cross-country train ticket in Ukraine I expected a whole lot worse.

mschuster91 6y ago

> and would basically create a new railroad next to the existing one, as fast passenger and slow freight don't mix Why not make freight fast, too? > A nice bus gets you better service with lower capital expenditures A bus can accomodate 80 people per driver, a train (German ICE) 750 seats+750 people standing. Sure, a bus is cheaper in upfront investment, but has higher operation expenses, is way slower and is worse for the environment. Additionally, buses get caught in traffic jams while railways are generally separate. > allow electric buses on the rails What? Why? And how should this be secured?! > and eliminate the crazily overbuilt rail standards These standards were written in the blood of thousands of people who died or were severely maimed in accidents.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Why not make freight fast, too? Money. Most goods need to be on schedule, not fast. More speed costs more money. >These standards were written in the blood of thousands of people who died or were severely maimed in accidents. The standards were also written for a world who's conditions were very different from those of today. I know that you can score easy virtue points by pretending like any rollback of regulation that is intended to protect something is a bad thing but let's be real here. With modern signaling infrastructure there's no reason that dedicated passenger rail can't be equally safe or safer than legacy passenger rail that has to be interoperable with legacy signaling systems and freight rail.
ceejayoz 6y ago
> These standards were written in the blood of thousands of people who died or were severely maimed in accidents. So were the European standards. They just tackled accident prevention more than accident survivability as the engineering goal. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally-legalizes-modern-european-style-train-cars/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally-legalizes... > But FRA rules had required significant design changes. Most important, American train cars had to be built to withstand 800,000 pounds of frontal impact. Former Amtrak CEO David Gunn complained U.S. trains had to be designed like “high-velocity bank vaults.” Rather than just bulk up, European and Asian trains instead are designed to absorb impacts and avoid collisions in the first place. And they have better safety records.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > Rather than just bulk up, European and Asian trains instead are designed to absorb impacts and avoid collisions in the first place. And they have better safety records. There is a total lack of information why that route was taken in the 1920s, so I'm going to take a wild guess... in Europe, the train routes, especially for fast trains, are completely separated, often outright walled off, and level crossings with streets totally eliminated. In the US, you have a country that is many, many times bigger and widely un- or sparsely populated, which means that there is a lot more danger to trains from stuff that ends up on the tracks as it's infeasible to build a wall that long. Herds of animals, heavy trucks/tractors ending up on the tracks of a crossing - that is something that I expect to be pretty much routine in the US, and it makes sense to build trains that can simply plow through such impediments.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    While that may be true, I think there is another cultural and/or regulatory issue at play here, though I can't put my finger at it exactly. In the USA everything on rails is Danger! Danger! and has to be signaled as such, even if it's only a tram servicing downtown. It has to Ring! Ding! Ding! all the times. I'd go crazy if having to live near anything like that.
gbronner 6y ago
>Why not make freight fast, too? Physics. Running a freight train at 150 mph requires serious engineering to make sure it can go around the curves well, and wear and tear is immense.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Fast freight --- say, a unit train of coal or clinker at 110 * 200 tonne cars --- has kinetic energy at the square of speed, posing increased risks to the freight service itself, any shared-road or adjacent-road traffic, level crossings, and structures, property, or natural features boardering tracks, as well as wear and tear on track and rolling stock. These are part of those safety standards you note, among other factors. High-speed rail demands fully separated rights of way for reasons of route and destination, safety, predictable scheduling, minimum turning radius, and more. Unfortunately in a world of strong land-property rights and interests, this makes it extraordinarily politically vulnerable. A few years ago I realised that virtually every successful large-scale rail system (both high-speed and earlier "conventional" services) emerged in a largely uncontested land-rights regime. For the 19th century US and British systems, a pre-industrial or pioneer domain in which land owners were few, poor, or both. On completion, the US transcontinental railroad was seen as a boondoggle "road to nowhere", though various "wheres" began springing up along its route nearly immediately. (Famously, Denver, Colorado, saw a 10x population growth in the decade after a spur line was built to the transcontinental route.) For Japan and Europe, planning for high-speed fail began following the physical and economic devastation of WWII. Landholders couldn't put up much of a fight. China's HSR growth resembles that of frontier America and early-industrial Britain, benefitting by a different land-ownership regime. The most pernicious obstacle to California high-speed rail is Atherton.

DominikPeters 6y ago

> Swedish and Russian railways pack 6 to a compartment; Amtrak struggles with 2. But there are two roommettes side by side. Both European and Amtrak cars have a length of ~26m. An Amtrak Superliner sleeping car can sleep up to 44 people. A sleeper as used by Austria’s ÖBB can sleep 12*3=36 people. A 3rd class Russian sleeping car holds 54 [https://www.vagonweb.cz/razeni/vlak.php?zeme=%D0%91%D0%A7&kategorie=&cislo=18&nazev=&rok=2020 https://www.vagonweb.cz/razeni/vlak.php?zeme=%D0%91%D0%A7&ka...]. Comparable.

gbronner 6y ago
54 sleeper car actually can be full. Basically no way to fill the Amtrak car, as people don't like to share the bedrooms. Russian trains used to have 3 bunks, which improved the economics.
herbstein 6y ago
I used an older generation of that third class Russian carriage design last year. Biggest problem is the length of the benches and the noise. It's not like it was _great_ but for a dirt-cheap cross-country train ticket in Ukraine I expected a whole lot worse.