11 ms·

European Urbanism and High-Speed Rail

82 points by luu 6y ago

rootusrootus 6y ago
I like the analysis. But rail is unpopular in US for political reasons, not practical ones.
- barbazoo 6y ago
  What do you mean by that? Is there a point where if you're on the left of it on the political spectrum you're in favor, and otherwise against?
  - geogra4 6y ago
    Somewhat true. Passenger rail is not seen as part of "infrastructure" on the right.
    - labster 6y ago
      Indeed. People on the right wing are saying that Biden’s new infrastructure bill is nearly all pork because only 5% is dedicated to roads. Really only roads and dams count.
    - _delirium 6y ago
      I think generally true, but it can vary by geography. There are a number of Republicans from small to medium-sized towns that either have Amtrak stations, or would like to have them, who are supportive of passenger rail in some form, and some of that support bubbles up to Republican Senators in some states. That's one reason the Amtrak national network continues to hobble along. If its fate rested on purely party-line votes, it would've been killed years ago. For example, Kansas's senators joined with Democrats to keep the Southwest Chief route from getting axed. Texas and Oklahoma, both pretty red states, co-fund a "state-supported route", the Heartland Flyer, from Ft. Worth to Oklahoma City. For somewhat different reasons, Utah has also invested in commuter rail (FrontRunner).
  - azernik 6y ago
    Yes. e.g. the California High Speed Rail is a partisan issue in California politics, and generally Republicans are suspicious of commuter and high-speed rail as wasteful environmentalism.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    In general terms, yes. It is just another one of the tribal issues in US politics that gets argued starting from ideology and not debated on the merits.
    - wallacoloo 6y ago
      I think in this case the demographic split actually is correlated to the merits. As in, if you’re in a dense city, you’re probably more pro-rail, because you’ll be the one actually using that rail. If you’re in a culdesac suburb or even further from the city, you’re likely to not be pro-rail because you won’t be using it. You could call that tribal, or you could just call it “voting for your interests”. It feels slightly different from the tribal issues I see more frequently (policing, healthcare, schooling), but maybe I’m fooling myself.
- Fern_Blossom 6y ago
  The widening of I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs, about a 60 mile stretch, is a great example as to why you're wrong. To add an extra lane to help the load of roughly 20% of Colorado Springs residents (~50k people) that commute between the cities, costs $350 million. To build an HSR would be around $1.8 billion. There was a push to put in a rail as this seemed like a perfect use case (spoiler alert, it showed how niche HSR actually is and how it was a bad idea for lots of places) Even if you charged $10 for a day pass and you had a 100% usage rate by those commuters on every work day (22 workdays a month) that's an income of $132 million a year for the HSR. Hopefully energy, labor, insurance, repair, and upgrades for the rail will be free for the lifetime as well. That's just a constant sink for the public for hair thin marginal benefit. If you make that trip often, you get a fuel efficient car at around 30mpg (what I did). That's about $10 in gas a day. Why would I pay to wait and be on someone else's time? Most commuter rails have narrow commuter hour windows. Not like you can hang out in the city. Worse when you need to travel around the spanse of the city quickly throughout the day. As in, on your time, not on someone else's. Btw, that 50k population ground that commutes, a lot are contractors. As in, they use vans and trucks to carry tools, equipment and materials... so, the practical number of regular users is going to be less. So, will a politician like to try to convince a population for tax raises for $350 million or for something that's 5 times more expensive? Spoiler again, when it comes to you having to pay for it, you're going to be economical. People were cool with the slight tax hikes for the widening of I25. Not for the major hike that the HSR would need. Doesn't seem political to me. Ain't get more practical than that there good buddy. Let that marinate. Source, I lived there when this was going on. It's all easy to research since it was a well reported issue. Also, I made that commute somewhat often. HSR wouldn't have worked for me since I was an IT contractor for different companies in the city and needed to move nimbly throughout Denver.
  - thethethethe 6y ago
    Roads don't pay for themselves, we even make them free to drive on. We pay for them with our taxes. Are they a drain on society because there is no revenue stream and they are expensive to maintain? No, of course not, the cost is payed off many times over by the benefits of the economic activity it facilitates. Same thing with HSR. It will shorten commutes for everyone, not just people on the train, enabling those contractors and utility workers do their jobs more efficiently. These things have ripple effects opening up new economic avenues for all different types of people, and not just those who ride the train
- burlesona 6y ago
  That's not really true. Outside of prewar towns it is unsafe and impractical to walk anywhere, so when the train drops you off there's nowhere to go. Trains are awesome for travel at distances that cars are also pretty good, but if you need a car at both ends of your trip, the train really is impractical. I say that as someone who lived in Europe, loves trains, and wishes badly that we could have a better train network here. But the problem is the US in the 1950's embarked on the suburban experiment and now the majority of the US population lives in either very low density or with unsafe walking conditions (or both), and you really can't serve those areas with trains effectively. If you wanted to do rail and have it become useful, you need to actually focus on local rail first. For example, Houston build an original light rail line that - bucking the trend for most car oriented cities - only served a 7mi track through the core urban area. That rail line actually worked really well. Meanwhile the suburbs to downtown transit is just bus lines because there's not enough demand to justify rail. But if you spent 20 years incrementally reforming land use regulations, redeveloping with better sidewalks and connective safe streets, and gradually better and better local transit to go along with it, then you might end up with a place that was a worthy anchor for regional rail on at least one end. Honestly I don't think that will happen in very many places, though, or at least not in my lifetime. It requires a long-term vision that is still counter cultural, and decades of land use redevelopment.
  - billfruit 6y ago
    Why is this an issue? People can take a taxi to/from the railway station at either end of the journey as it is done in other countries.
    - lumost 6y ago
      It's not a great assumption that there is a viable taxi network in most American suburbs with less than 50-70k people. Even with uber, you might be waiting for an hour if it's available. Even if there is a good network you might be out ~20-30 bucks each way and need a taxi between every destination. Given that a brand new car costs around 500/month in the US it wouldn't take many such excursions to make the car worth it. Once you've purchased a car and incur it's fixed monthly costs you're incentivised to use it for everything rather than incur further incremental transit expenses.
- gumby 6y ago
  > But rail is unpopular in US for political reasons, not practical ones. There is tremendous economic incentive against passenger rail as well; path dependent it may be, but real nonetheless. Specifically: most of the roadway is designed for freight, not humans, and what little passenger rail there is must run over it, typically yielding priority to freight. Thus at this point the network reaches deep into agricultural, manufacturing and port relations and little goes near the major cities. Even Caltrain in the Bay Area runs on a freight line owned by S&P; while I’ve only seen freight on it at night, S&P could contractually push Caltrain aside for freight (though it would cause an uproar S&P would rather not deal with). S& P received Covid relief money to government on its tracks in case caltrain couldn’t pay the rent. The US has the most efficient rail system in the world...for freight. Berkshire Hathaway has been investing. Passenger rail barely exists any more (in fact rails have been pulled up and sold for scrap and the land repurposed over the last century). To bring it back would mean building a lot of infrastructure from scratch. That’s not necessarily bad as the the layout of the population has shifted lever the last century as well.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    S&P? Do you mean SP (Southern Pacific)? They got bought out by Union Pacific over 20 years ago.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  On a national scale sure, but that makes mismanagement in solidly democrat areas all the more grating. A lot of this blog is about such mismanagement in ostensibly pro-rail places.
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  This misrepresents the situation, and I say that as someone who uses and prefers rail. The economics of high-speed rail in the US are quite poor in large parts of the country for a wide variety of complex reasons that can’t be wished away. In many cases, regional flights make more sense.
- pm90 6y ago
  Interested in knowing what you mean specifically. Are you talking about the lobbying power of the automobile industry? Or are you referring to NIMBY's not wanting any public transit?
geogra4 6y ago
Interesting, though I would argue that Florida may be a better comparison than the Midwest. Florida has a higher population density than France and could be served quite well by a hsr line from Jacksonville to Miami with a spur to Orlando/tampa
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dougmwne 6y ago
  There are basically no walkable/transitable cities in Florida. You could take a train between regional cities, but you would have nowhere to go once you got there. This is the reason the northeast corridor is the only place rail makes much sense.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    have you been on amtrak anywhere between from boston to D.C.? What a farce. It might make sense in theory, but in practice right now... no.
    - lumost 6y ago
      The boswash corridor is packed on most days, and the major stops have walkable downtown areas. Is your concern that crumbling bridge in Norwalk that drops the line down to 5 mph? Otherwise I generally take the train rather than fly as it shaves about an hour off the trip from Boston to NYC. Acela charges the same as a plane ticket for this route.
  - geogra4 6y ago
    Why not just take a taxi or Uber? Or heck, take the hsr from Jacksonville to Miami and rent a car when you get there. No one says airports don't make sense because you cant fly to the office building you need to get to.
- yourmom2 6y ago
  > Florida has a higher population density than France to simply divide the total area by the total population is completely disingenuous and misses the point entirely. Areas of France where people actually live are obviously much denser than those in florida..
erentz 6y ago
A very good use of massive infrastructure spending along this line would also be building proper regional rail. Electrifying and improving what we typically call “commuter rail” in the US into modern, faster and comfortable all day service. Overhead 25kv. Modern European style EMUs. This forms the backbone of transit in major regions and can be connected by new HSR lines over time, making HSR more effective. Caltrain electrification is an attempt at this in a very small scope but really shows just how slow and terrible we are at this kind of thing. And again thanks to CAHSRs not invented here attitude stuck with weird decisions like needing to support the worlds highest platform height. (I’m only barely surprised CAHSR didn’t decide to invent a new track gauge.)
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Yeah, honestly, I'm coming around to the opinion that what the US needs isn't necessarily High Speed Rail but electrifying existing rail. We can do traditional catenary, but there's a risk of the high cost of US infrastructure eating up the budget. Might be worth considering a hybrid system where you electrify the most busy corridors and then use battery-electric trains for much of the rest (but charged using a sort of overhead catenary), allowing you to reduce the amount of infrastructure significantly (but with locomotive capital costs to consider... including battery cars). And yeah, once we have more experience with overhead high voltage heavy rail in the US, with upgraded commuter rail, we can then do HSR with some sort of rationality. Because you only really need HSR between cities. In a city, you want good, electrified rail. HSR doesn't really do anything for city traffic (and could make it worse, actually, if not done at the same time as conventional rail upgrades). In fact, Amtrak is not even necessarily better than flying. Amtrak gets like 56mpg per passenger, but airliners can easily get much better than that (particularly if you fly economy class): https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704901104575423261677748380 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704901104575423... (and this article is using 2009 data... newer airplanes can get much better) (This would be surprising unless you noted that Amtrak has low occupancy compared to airlines and has to maintain a lot of routes to underserved places and that trains have to carry a lot more weight per person because, in part, the trips are a lot longer... it's a bit better for short commuter trips) So rail isn't even better for the environment than modern planes unless we electrify rail. (Which we need to do anyways, as we move lots of our cargo cheaply by rail.)
gumby 6y ago
This thinking did influence the california high speed rail design, to be anchored (initially) by two large conurbations (SF Bay and Los Angeles Basin) but passing through Bakersfield (700K), Fresno (550K) and San Jose (1.8MM). Followed by a spur to Sacramento (1.6MM). This in a state with 2/3 the population of France “To be” assumes it will ever actually happen.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Very happy to see this blog here!
systemvoltage 6y ago
I think US is going to side step Railways entirely and in 30 years achieve full autonomous driving (ofcourse electric). So roads will become the defacto "railways" with cars forming a convoy of sorts over long distances. Special lanes will be designated for autotraffic. Yet it will retain the conveniences of door-to-door transport. I, too, would love to see Japan-style railways in the US, but it's not going to happen. Any long distance will be dominated by Airways as we currently have.
- otabdeveloper4 6y ago
  Autonomous driving will never happen. It's a pipe dream like the flying car. (The problems aren't technical, they're socal and legal, and will never be solved.)
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    It’s not even clear when the technical problems will be solved. It’s been “in five to ten years” for a while now.
  - wussboy 6y ago
    That’s odd. I would have sworn the flying car problems are technical (failure scenarios, power to weight ratios etc.) and while maybe currently legal absolutely not social.
    - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
      The technical problems are solvable, while the social and legal ones are not.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    Think 200 years. We will have it but not in our lifetimes.
    - yourmom2 6y ago
      fantastic. just have to make sure society still exists in 200 years and we'll be all set.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
Rail is very nice once you have it. The problem is that building it is a very slow and complex process. My home country (the Netherlands) has a single high speed rail connection to Paris. Very nice. It took decades to build. Had many political scandals attached to it (some of which are still unfolding). Cost many billions more than was budgeted. Had a string of bankruptcies associated with its exploitation. But it's very nice that you can travel from downtown Amsterdam to downtown Paris in about the same time it takes to get to and from both airports and fly there. You don't save/lose a lot of time (or money) but it's just more convenient. It's a great example of why building new rail is not that common in either Europe or the US. In general even modest amounts of rail tend to cost billions to put in place. E.g. recent subway line extensions in Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, etc. cost billions each. It's so expensive that it is typically big news when it happens. And it doesn't happen a lot. Rail in Europe is used very intensively but there is very little added to that network at this point. Most of what is there, has been there for a long time. Munich and Berlin gained a new high speed rail connection just a few years ago. That was big news. Planning for that started shortly after the wall fell, 30 years ago. That's how long it takes. So, for the US to start building rail now, it would likely be stupendously expensive, take decades to complete, and have probably very questionable value relative to other solutions. Even just figuring out where to put it would take a very long time and involve fighting local land owners throughout the US. There are other things the US could do, including a few new solutions that are changing the economics of transport (and thus remove arguments for investing in rails). Basically, the premise of rail is that using it is cheaper than burning a lot of fuel to drive (or fly) people around. Except we are switching to electrical cars now which cost typically about at least 5 times less to operate with likely further improvements over time. And they can use sustainable sources of energy. Electrical buses are already a thing. Several Chinese cities use them exclusively by the tens of thousands each. And cities world wide are starting to deploy them. And even electrical planes are being considered (hybrid and battery) and likely to be a thing before any significant amount of new rail would be ready for use. That changes things. Flying is dirty, not that expensive, but convenient. The US has a lot of domestic flights for that reason. A few decades from now that could be a lot cheaper, clean, less noisy, and even more convenient. Guilt free, cheap, clean transport is becoming a thing. And that's before you consider autonomous vehicles. Drivers and pilots need salaries. So that raises the operational cost. Self driving buses might become a thing pretty soon. You don't even need level 5 autonomy for that because they drive fixed routes and schedules. Many cities even have dedicated bus lanes. So, self driving, electrical buses could be a cheap and viable way to ferry people around. Autonomous flying electrical vehicle startups are already flying some prototypes around. Waymo already has driverless vehicles on roads in the US. So, it's more a question of when than if that will happen. The cost for autonomous vehicles is going to drop over time as well. And it doesn't require a massive investment in infrastructure. And you can flexibly create routes to just about anywhere it makes sense to have them. And you can take self driving taxise everywhere else. So why build rail when we can do and scale all of that in the time that it takes to build a lot of new rail that is only usable exactly where you build it?
HABytes 6y ago
Florida has a higher population density than France.
pm90 6y ago
Interestingly, connecting smaller cities through High Speed Rail to bigger ones might just be the elusive solution to the depopulation of small town America. If people can continue to live where they grew up while being able to commute in decent times to the City with all its jobs, I wonder if people would continue to live in their hometowns and bring in much needed tax revenues.
- pyrale 6y ago
  The issue with this is that the US simply don't have enough population density in their urban areas to make this convenient. Train is only convenient if you don't need to drive to the station beforehand.
  - pm90 6y ago
    There’s been some success with transit systems that have extensive parking lots to allow for a “park and train” scenario.
flexie 6y ago
Great post, but it doesn't really mention that subway systems and light rail systems could be built in some of those cities that are currently without decent transit. I've spent time in Houston, too much of it in a car, and it's a city that could definitely use more transit systems than the small light rail system that it currently has. I live in a European city where transit systems except old busses and trams were absent until a few years ago, and where a metro system has been built and expanded over the last decade or so. When a new metro station is about to open, office buildings and high-rises are built in its vicinity. Nobody is suddenly selling their McMansion to move to an apartment near a metro station, but their kids might, divorced people might, people moving in from other cities might etc. It's a slow process but let's not forget that urbanization from villages to cities happened in a few decades and a lot of "densification" from suburbs to cities could happen in a few decades as well.
pm90 6y ago
HSR's should be evaluated not just on the present demand, but what kind of demand they might create if they compete effectively with e.g. airline travel. If they're able to reduce the costs enough (or if the Fed subsidizes, which it absolutely should), it might even create more demand. The plans drawn in the article link high density cities, many of which face housing shortages. By connecting them with fast, cheap rail, it might make it possible to commute between these cities. Which I would argue is better than driving for hours through rush hour traffic.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
I'm not a transportation engineer, but I think the following should and could be really interesting: Take highways. The main ones usually have 3 lanes in each direction. One lane could be retrofitted with rails, and used to on-ramp special "wagons" that could transport cars (one each). At the main entry points you would have a "station" for cars to hop in or out, and you could have these wagons move autonomously. They could have much less drag, powered by electric engines, and use small batteries that could be recharged or swapped after each trip. This way cars could "drive" faster on highways, pollute less, while retaining their ability to go anywhere once to hop off. Yes, you would need to build the infrastructure... But a back-of-the-napkin calculation would quickly show that this would provide a great ROI, as well as reduce dependence from oil, which is always a geopolitical issue. Alternatively, you could try to "reform" trains. Instead of long ones that depart every several minutes, why not single, lighter wagons that depart when you need them?
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  > Alternatively, you could try to "reform" trains. Instead of long ones that depart every several minutes, why not single, lighter wagons that depart when you need them? I think that would be a pain to manage and would lower throughput by a wide margin. As someone living in Paris, which supposedly has great public transportation (according to the local transit authority), what we need is more throughput. The main issue I see is there not being enough trains, even on the automated lines. They practically come one after the other during rush hour. I don't have the actual numbers, but as an onlooker, it seems as if as soon as one train has left the station, the next comes in. I think this is the best throughput they can get for the given station length. And yet, there are a few stations (mainly the "small ones") where you'll have to wait for up to ten minutes to be able to board a train, and even then you'll be squished by other passengers. That's because basically no one gets off the train at those stations, so no space frees up. I think the issue is clearly around getting on and off the train. So now that we have automatic trains with automated gates, they could have different kinds of trains for rush hour. For example, there could be much less or no seats at all and the train doors could open upwards. So instead of the people having to squish through small openings, they could get on and off through practically the whole length of the train.
bibinou 6y ago
The article missed the entire point that the LGV Sud-Est branches out not to small cities, but to the beach and the French Alps. I doubt Cincinnati or Knoxville are as attractive as Grau-du-Roi or Megève.
FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
Make cars too expensive to afford, and the market will sort it out.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  If we make doctors too expensive to afford, the market would sort out healthcare, too. But we wouldn't like the result. Now, it could be that we would like the results if we did this with cars, and not like it if we did it with doctors. But you haven't given any reason why that would be the case.
  - FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
    I was half-trolling. The half that was serious responds below. Most people, I would assume, want government policy to cause more doctors to exist rather than fewer. Whereas I am arguing for policies that would cause fewer cars to exist, rather than more. The direction of change is reversed in the two examples. If there were a plague of hypochondria wasting physicians' time and costing society, then perhaps we would want to raise the price of medical care. As for cars, making them (or their fuel) more expensive would have many advantages. Reduced CO2 emissions and traffic congestion are obvious examples. Road infrastructure is also an implicit subsidy to big-box businesses that destroy small shop-owners. A world with fewer cars shifts the balance towards smaller local retail businesses. Children would also not be so dependent on parents to shuttle them around, which would help both parents and children. Traffic fatalities would be reduced. People would get more exercise. There would be less noise. Even wildlife would do better. There would be less roadkill. I also assert that car-culture has contributed to the atomization of society. The car encourages geographic centralization and destroys horizontal ties. This leaves people disconnected and disoriented. And the resulting, more centralized societies are then vulnerable to power-grabs of various kinds.
m0llusk 6y ago
This is a class deaf view of the situation. Europe has redeveloped many older rail lines for high speed. These lines serve the wealthy nicely but are more expensive to the point of shutting the poor out of lines they used to use. This and cost reward balance of infrastructure generally are huge issues Europe is not confronting.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
lots of posts here about California rail. Nothing yet about the Acela Express from Boston to NYC to Phila to DC (with stops at many smaller cities in between like New Haven, Newark, etc). To call it "express" is some kind of sick joke. Its an 8+ hour ride. There is a large section thru Connecticut where the train must slow down significantly (40 mph iirc) because the route on which the tracks laid down is 100 years old. The curves, etc are simply not rated for anything faster. Getting rights of way adjusted to fix that for HSR use would require an act of God or Congress since there must be dozens of jurisdictions involv

82 points by luu 6y ago

rootusrootus 6y ago

I like the analysis. But rail is unpopular in US for political reasons, not practical ones.

barbazoo 6y ago
What do you mean by that? Is there a point where if you're on the left of it on the political spectrum you're in favor, and otherwise against?
- geogra4 6y ago
  Somewhat true. Passenger rail is not seen as part of "infrastructure" on the right.
  - labster 6y ago
    Indeed. People on the right wing are saying that Biden’s new infrastructure bill is nearly all pork because only 5% is dedicated to roads. Really only roads and dams count.
  - _delirium 6y ago
    I think generally true, but it can vary by geography. There are a number of Republicans from small to medium-sized towns that either have Amtrak stations, or would like to have them, who are supportive of passenger rail in some form, and some of that support bubbles up to Republican Senators in some states. That's one reason the Amtrak national network continues to hobble along. If its fate rested on purely party-line votes, it would've been killed years ago. For example, Kansas's senators joined with Democrats to keep the Southwest Chief route from getting axed. Texas and Oklahoma, both pretty red states, co-fund a "state-supported route", the Heartland Flyer, from Ft. Worth to Oklahoma City. For somewhat different reasons, Utah has also invested in commuter rail (FrontRunner).
- azernik 6y ago
  Yes. e.g. the California High Speed Rail is a partisan issue in California politics, and generally Republicans are suspicious of commuter and high-speed rail as wasteful environmentalism.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  In general terms, yes. It is just another one of the tribal issues in US politics that gets argued starting from ideology and not debated on the merits.
  - wallacoloo 6y ago
    I think in this case the demographic split actually is correlated to the merits. As in, if you’re in a dense city, you’re probably more pro-rail, because you’ll be the one actually using that rail. If you’re in a culdesac suburb or even further from the city, you’re likely to not be pro-rail because you won’t be using it. You could call that tribal, or you could just call it “voting for your interests”. It feels slightly different from the tribal issues I see more frequently (policing, healthcare, schooling), but maybe I’m fooling myself.
Fern_Blossom 6y ago
The widening of I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs, about a 60 mile stretch, is a great example as to why you're wrong. To add an extra lane to help the load of roughly 20% of Colorado Springs residents (~50k people) that commute between the cities, costs $350 million. To build an HSR would be around $1.8 billion. There was a push to put in a rail as this seemed like a perfect use case (spoiler alert, it showed how niche HSR actually is and how it was a bad idea for lots of places) Even if you charged $10 for a day pass and you had a 100% usage rate by those commuters on every work day (22 workdays a month) that's an income of $132 million a year for the HSR. Hopefully energy, labor, insurance, repair, and upgrades for the rail will be free for the lifetime as well. That's just a constant sink for the public for hair thin marginal benefit. If you make that trip often, you get a fuel efficient car at around 30mpg (what I did). That's about $10 in gas a day. Why would I pay to wait and be on someone else's time? Most commuter rails have narrow commuter hour windows. Not like you can hang out in the city. Worse when you need to travel around the spanse of the city quickly throughout the day. As in, on your time, not on someone else's. Btw, that 50k population ground that commutes, a lot are contractors. As in, they use vans and trucks to carry tools, equipment and materials... so, the practical number of regular users is going to be less. So, will a politician like to try to convince a population for tax raises for $350 million or for something that's 5 times more expensive? Spoiler again, when it comes to you having to pay for it, you're going to be economical. People were cool with the slight tax hikes for the widening of I25. Not for the major hike that the HSR would need. Doesn't seem political to me. Ain't get more practical than that there good buddy. Let that marinate. Source, I lived there when this was going on. It's all easy to research since it was a well reported issue. Also, I made that commute somewhat often. HSR wouldn't have worked for me since I was an IT contractor for different companies in the city and needed to move nimbly throughout Denver.
- thethethethe 6y ago
  Roads don't pay for themselves, we even make them free to drive on. We pay for them with our taxes. Are they a drain on society because there is no revenue stream and they are expensive to maintain? No, of course not, the cost is payed off many times over by the benefits of the economic activity it facilitates. Same thing with HSR. It will shorten commutes for everyone, not just people on the train, enabling those contractors and utility workers do their jobs more efficiently. These things have ripple effects opening up new economic avenues for all different types of people, and not just those who ride the train
burlesona 6y ago
That's not really true. Outside of prewar towns it is unsafe and impractical to walk anywhere, so when the train drops you off there's nowhere to go. Trains are awesome for travel at distances that cars are also pretty good, but if you need a car at both ends of your trip, the train really is impractical. I say that as someone who lived in Europe, loves trains, and wishes badly that we could have a better train network here. But the problem is the US in the 1950's embarked on the suburban experiment and now the majority of the US population lives in either very low density or with unsafe walking conditions (or both), and you really can't serve those areas with trains effectively. If you wanted to do rail and have it become useful, you need to actually focus on local rail first. For example, Houston build an original light rail line that - bucking the trend for most car oriented cities - only served a 7mi track through the core urban area. That rail line actually worked really well. Meanwhile the suburbs to downtown transit is just bus lines because there's not enough demand to justify rail. But if you spent 20 years incrementally reforming land use regulations, redeveloping with better sidewalks and connective safe streets, and gradually better and better local transit to go along with it, then you might end up with a place that was a worthy anchor for regional rail on at least one end. Honestly I don't think that will happen in very many places, though, or at least not in my lifetime. It requires a long-term vision that is still counter cultural, and decades of land use redevelopment.
- billfruit 6y ago
  Why is this an issue? People can take a taxi to/from the railway station at either end of the journey as it is done in other countries.
  - lumost 6y ago
    It's not a great assumption that there is a viable taxi network in most American suburbs with less than 50-70k people. Even with uber, you might be waiting for an hour if it's available. Even if there is a good network you might be out ~20-30 bucks each way and need a taxi between every destination. Given that a brand new car costs around 500/month in the US it wouldn't take many such excursions to make the car worth it. Once you've purchased a car and incur it's fixed monthly costs you're incentivised to use it for everything rather than incur further incremental transit expenses.
gumby 6y ago
> But rail is unpopular in US for political reasons, not practical ones. There is tremendous economic incentive against passenger rail as well; path dependent it may be, but real nonetheless. Specifically: most of the roadway is designed for freight, not humans, and what little passenger rail there is must run over it, typically yielding priority to freight. Thus at this point the network reaches deep into agricultural, manufacturing and port relations and little goes near the major cities. Even Caltrain in the Bay Area runs on a freight line owned by S&P; while I’ve only seen freight on it at night, S&P could contractually push Caltrain aside for freight (though it would cause an uproar S&P would rather not deal with). S& P received Covid relief money to government on its tracks in case caltrain couldn’t pay the rent. The US has the most efficient rail system in the world...for freight. Berkshire Hathaway has been investing. Passenger rail barely exists any more (in fact rails have been pulled up and sold for scrap and the land repurposed over the last century). To bring it back would mean building a lot of infrastructure from scratch. That’s not necessarily bad as the the layout of the population has shifted lever the last century as well.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  S&P? Do you mean SP (Southern Pacific)? They got bought out by Union Pacific over 20 years ago.
Ericson2314 6y ago
On a national scale sure, but that makes mismanagement in solidly democrat areas all the more grating. A lot of this blog is about such mismanagement in ostensibly pro-rail places.
jandrewrogers 6y ago
This misrepresents the situation, and I say that as someone who uses and prefers rail. The economics of high-speed rail in the US are quite poor in large parts of the country for a wide variety of complex reasons that can’t be wished away. In many cases, regional flights make more sense.
pm90 6y ago
Interested in knowing what you mean specifically. Are you talking about the lobbying power of the automobile industry? Or are you referring to NIMBY's not wanting any public transit?

geogra4 6y ago

Interesting, though I would argue that Florida may be a better comparison than the Midwest. Florida has a higher population density than France and could be served quite well by a hsr line from Jacksonville to Miami with a spur to Orlando/tampa

deleted 6y ago
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dougmwne 6y ago
There are basically no walkable/transitable cities in Florida. You could take a train between regional cities, but you would have nowhere to go once you got there. This is the reason the northeast corridor is the only place rail makes much sense.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  have you been on amtrak anywhere between from boston to D.C.? What a farce. It might make sense in theory, but in practice right now... no.
  - lumost 6y ago
    The boswash corridor is packed on most days, and the major stops have walkable downtown areas. Is your concern that crumbling bridge in Norwalk that drops the line down to 5 mph? Otherwise I generally take the train rather than fly as it shaves about an hour off the trip from Boston to NYC. Acela charges the same as a plane ticket for this route.
- geogra4 6y ago
  Why not just take a taxi or Uber? Or heck, take the hsr from Jacksonville to Miami and rent a car when you get there. No one says airports don't make sense because you cant fly to the office building you need to get to.
yourmom2 6y ago
> Florida has a higher population density than France to simply divide the total area by the total population is completely disingenuous and misses the point entirely. Areas of France where people actually live are obviously much denser than those in florida..

erentz 6y ago

A very good use of massive infrastructure spending along this line would also be building proper regional rail. Electrifying and improving what we typically call “commuter rail” in the US into modern, faster and comfortable all day service. Overhead 25kv. Modern European style EMUs. This forms the backbone of transit in major regions and can be connected by new HSR lines over time, making HSR more effective. Caltrain electrification is an attempt at this in a very small scope but really shows just how slow and terrible we are at this kind of thing. And again thanks to CAHSRs not invented here attitude stuck with weird decisions like needing to support the worlds highest platform height. (I’m only barely surprised CAHSR didn’t decide to invent a new track gauge.)

Robotbeat 6y ago
Yeah, honestly, I'm coming around to the opinion that what the US needs isn't necessarily High Speed Rail but electrifying existing rail. We can do traditional catenary, but there's a risk of the high cost of US infrastructure eating up the budget. Might be worth considering a hybrid system where you electrify the most busy corridors and then use battery-electric trains for much of the rest (but charged using a sort of overhead catenary), allowing you to reduce the amount of infrastructure significantly (but with locomotive capital costs to consider... including battery cars). And yeah, once we have more experience with overhead high voltage heavy rail in the US, with upgraded commuter rail, we can then do HSR with some sort of rationality. Because you only really need HSR between cities. In a city, you want good, electrified rail. HSR doesn't really do anything for city traffic (and could make it worse, actually, if not done at the same time as conventional rail upgrades). In fact, Amtrak is not even necessarily better than flying. Amtrak gets like 56mpg per passenger, but airliners can easily get much better than that (particularly if you fly economy class): https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704901104575423261677748380 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704901104575423... (and this article is using 2009 data... newer airplanes can get much better) (This would be surprising unless you noted that Amtrak has low occupancy compared to airlines and has to maintain a lot of routes to underserved places and that trains have to carry a lot more weight per person because, in part, the trips are a lot longer... it's a bit better for short commuter trips) So rail isn't even better for the environment than modern planes unless we electrify rail. (Which we need to do anyways, as we move lots of our cargo cheaply by rail.)

gumby 6y ago

This thinking did influence the california high speed rail design, to be anchored (initially) by two large conurbations (SF Bay and Los Angeles Basin) but passing through Bakersfield (700K), Fresno (550K) and San Jose (1.8MM). Followed by a spur to Sacramento (1.6MM). This in a state with 2/3 the population of France “To be” assumes it will ever actually happen.

Ericson2314 6y ago

Very happy to see this blog here!

systemvoltage 6y ago

I think US is going to side step Railways entirely and in 30 years achieve full autonomous driving (ofcourse electric). So roads will become the defacto "railways" with cars forming a convoy of sorts over long distances. Special lanes will be designated for autotraffic. Yet it will retain the conveniences of door-to-door transport. I, too, would love to see Japan-style railways in the US, but it's not going to happen. Any long distance will be dominated by Airways as we currently have.

otabdeveloper4 6y ago
Autonomous driving will never happen. It's a pipe dream like the flying car. (The problems aren't technical, they're socal and legal, and will never be solved.)
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  It’s not even clear when the technical problems will be solved. It’s been “in five to ten years” for a while now.
- wussboy 6y ago
  That’s odd. I would have sworn the flying car problems are technical (failure scenarios, power to weight ratios etc.) and while maybe currently legal absolutely not social.
  - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
    The technical problems are solvable, while the social and legal ones are not.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  Think 200 years. We will have it but not in our lifetimes.
  - yourmom2 6y ago
    fantastic. just have to make sure society still exists in 200 years and we'll be all set.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

Rail is very nice once you have it. The problem is that building it is a very slow and complex process. My home country (the Netherlands) has a single high speed rail connection to Paris. Very nice. It took decades to build. Had many political scandals attached to it (some of which are still unfolding). Cost many billions more than was budgeted. Had a string of bankruptcies associated with its exploitation. But it's very nice that you can travel from downtown Amsterdam to downtown Paris in about the same time it takes to get to and from both airports and fly there. You don't save/lose a lot of time (or money) but it's just more convenient. It's a great example of why building new rail is not that common in either Europe or the US. In general even modest amounts of rail tend to cost billions to put in place. E.g. recent subway line extensions in Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, etc. cost billions each. It's so expensive that it is typically big news when it happens. And it doesn't happen a lot. Rail in Europe is used very intensively but there is very little added to that network at this point. Most of what is there, has been there for a long time. Munich and Berlin gained a new high speed rail connection just a few years ago. That was big news. Planning for that started shortly after the wall fell, 30 years ago. That's how long it takes. So, for the US to start building rail now, it would likely be stupendously expensive, take decades to complete, and have probably very questionable value relative to other solutions. Even just figuring out where to put it would take a very long time and involve fighting local land owners throughout the US. There are other things the US could do, including a few new solutions that are changing the economics of transport (and thus remove arguments for investing in rails). Basically, the premise of rail is that using it is cheaper than burning a lot of fuel to drive (or fly) people around. Except we are switching to electrical cars now which cost typically about at least 5 times less to operate with likely further improvements over time. And they can use sustainable sources of energy. Electrical buses are already a thing. Several Chinese cities use them exclusively by the tens of thousands each. And cities world wide are starting to deploy them. And even electrical planes are being considered (hybrid and battery) and likely to be a thing before any significant amount of new rail would be ready for use. That changes things. Flying is dirty, not that expensive, but convenient. The US has a lot of domestic flights for that reason. A few decades from now that could be a lot cheaper, clean, less noisy, and even more convenient. Guilt free, cheap, clean transport is becoming a thing. And that's before you consider autonomous vehicles. Drivers and pilots need salaries. So that raises the operational cost. Self driving buses might become a thing pretty soon. You don't even need level 5 autonomy for that because they drive fixed routes and schedules. Many cities even have dedicated bus lanes. So, self driving, electrical buses could be a cheap and viable way to ferry people around. Autonomous flying electrical vehicle startups are already flying some prototypes around. Waymo already has driverless vehicles on roads in the US. So, it's more a question of when than if that will happen. The cost for autonomous vehicles is going to drop over time as well. And it doesn't require a massive investment in infrastructure. And you can flexibly create routes to just about anywhere it makes sense to have them. And you can take self driving taxise everywhere else. So why build rail when we can do and scale all of that in the time that it takes to build a lot of new rail that is only usable exactly where you build it?

HABytes 6y ago

Florida has a higher population density than France.

pm90 6y ago

Interestingly, connecting smaller cities through High Speed Rail to bigger ones might just be the elusive solution to the depopulation of small town America. If people can continue to live where they grew up while being able to commute in decent times to the City with all its jobs, I wonder if people would continue to live in their hometowns and bring in much needed tax revenues.

pyrale 6y ago
The issue with this is that the US simply don't have enough population density in their urban areas to make this convenient. Train is only convenient if you don't need to drive to the station beforehand.
- pm90 6y ago
  There’s been some success with transit systems that have extensive parking lots to allow for a “park and train” scenario.

flexie 6y ago

Great post, but it doesn't really mention that subway systems and light rail systems could be built in some of those cities that are currently without decent transit. I've spent time in Houston, too much of it in a car, and it's a city that could definitely use more transit systems than the small light rail system that it currently has. I live in a European city where transit systems except old busses and trams were absent until a few years ago, and where a metro system has been built and expanded over the last decade or so. When a new metro station is about to open, office buildings and high-rises are built in its vicinity. Nobody is suddenly selling their McMansion to move to an apartment near a metro station, but their kids might, divorced people might, people moving in from other cities might etc. It's a slow process but let's not forget that urbanization from villages to cities happened in a few decades and a lot of "densification" from suburbs to cities could happen in a few decades as well.

pm90 6y ago

HSR's should be evaluated not just on the present demand, but what kind of demand they might create if they compete effectively with e.g. airline travel. If they're able to reduce the costs enough (or if the Fed subsidizes, which it absolutely should), it might even create more demand. The plans drawn in the article link high density cities, many of which face housing shortages. By connecting them with fast, cheap rail, it might make it possible to commute between these cities. Which I would argue is better than driving for hours through rush hour traffic.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

I'm not a transportation engineer, but I think the following should and could be really interesting: Take highways. The main ones usually have 3 lanes in each direction. One lane could be retrofitted with rails, and used to on-ramp special "wagons" that could transport cars (one each). At the main entry points you would have a "station" for cars to hop in or out, and you could have these wagons move autonomously. They could have much less drag, powered by electric engines, and use small batteries that could be recharged or swapped after each trip. This way cars could "drive" faster on highways, pollute less, while retaining their ability to go anywhere once to hop off. Yes, you would need to build the infrastructure... But a back-of-the-napkin calculation would quickly show that this would provide a great ROI, as well as reduce dependence from oil, which is always a geopolitical issue. Alternatively, you could try to "reform" trains. Instead of long ones that depart every several minutes, why not single, lighter wagons that depart when you need them?

vladvasiliu 6y ago
> Alternatively, you could try to "reform" trains. Instead of long ones that depart every several minutes, why not single, lighter wagons that depart when you need them? I think that would be a pain to manage and would lower throughput by a wide margin. As someone living in Paris, which supposedly has great public transportation (according to the local transit authority), what we need is more throughput. The main issue I see is there not being enough trains, even on the automated lines. They practically come one after the other during rush hour. I don't have the actual numbers, but as an onlooker, it seems as if as soon as one train has left the station, the next comes in. I think this is the best throughput they can get for the given station length. And yet, there are a few stations (mainly the "small ones") where you'll have to wait for up to ten minutes to be able to board a train, and even then you'll be squished by other passengers. That's because basically no one gets off the train at those stations, so no space frees up. I think the issue is clearly around getting on and off the train. So now that we have automatic trains with automated gates, they could have different kinds of trains for rush hour. For example, there could be much less or no seats at all and the train doors could open upwards. So instead of the people having to squish through small openings, they could get on and off through practically the whole length of the train.

bibinou 6y ago

The article missed the entire point that the LGV Sud-Est branches out not to small cities, but to the beach and the French Alps. I doubt Cincinnati or Knoxville are as attractive as Grau-du-Roi or Megève.

FooBarBizBazz 6y ago

Make cars too expensive to afford, and the market will sort it out.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
If we make doctors too expensive to afford, the market would sort out healthcare, too. But we wouldn't like the result. Now, it could be that we would like the results if we did this with cars, and not like it if we did it with doctors. But you haven't given any reason why that would be the case.
- FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
  I was half-trolling. The half that was serious responds below. Most people, I would assume, want government policy to cause more doctors to exist rather than fewer. Whereas I am arguing for policies that would cause fewer cars to exist, rather than more. The direction of change is reversed in the two examples. If there were a plague of hypochondria wasting physicians' time and costing society, then perhaps we would want to raise the price of medical care. As for cars, making them (or their fuel) more expensive would have many advantages. Reduced CO2 emissions and traffic congestion are obvious examples. Road infrastructure is also an implicit subsidy to big-box businesses that destroy small shop-owners. A world with fewer cars shifts the balance towards smaller local retail businesses. Children would also not be so dependent on parents to shuttle them around, which would help both parents and children. Traffic fatalities would be reduced. People would get more exercise. There would be less noise. Even wildlife would do better. There would be less roadkill. I also assert that car-culture has contributed to the atomization of society. The car encourages geographic centralization and destroys horizontal ties. This leaves people disconnected and disoriented. And the resulting, more centralized societies are then vulnerable to power-grabs of various kinds.

m0llusk 6y ago

This is a class deaf view of the situation. Europe has redeveloped many older rail lines for high speed. These lines serve the wealthy nicely but are more expensive to the point of shutting the poor out of lines they used to use. This and cost reward balance of infrastructure generally are huge issues Europe is not confronting.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

lots of posts here about California rail. Nothing yet about the Acela Express from Boston to NYC to Phila to DC (with stops at many smaller cities in between like New Haven, Newark, etc). To call it "express" is some kind of sick joke. Its an 8+ hour ride. There is a large section thru Connecticut where the train must slow down significantly (40 mph iirc) because the route on which the tracks laid down is 100 years old. The curves, etc are simply not rated for anything faster. Getting rights of way adjusted to fix that for HSR use would require an act of God or Congress since there must be dozens of jurisdictions involv