5 ms·

A very good use of massive infrastructure spending along this line would also be building proper regional rail. Electrifying and improving what we typically cal

by 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.)
- tttp 6y ago
  You are comparing relatively empty trains with hypothetically 100% full planes It's the same with the wsj, they are comparing a 100% occupancy rate of the plane with a 20% for the car (a single passenger) Assuming the consumption of a train doesn't change much based on how many passengers, you can travel by train for carbon free, as the 56 mpg won't change if you are in the train or not Of course trains should be electrified, but take the train today already, the higher the occupancy rate, the better the averaged mpg will be And who knows, it might change how the fret trains seems to always have the priority over passengers ones and finally make it a pleasant experience
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    No, I’m not. Modern airplanes get pretty high average occupancy (well, pre-COVID-19... but that affects Amtrak as well). Modern airplanes get a per seat mpg of like 80-110, depending on the route. So my figure of nearly the same is correct even with typical ridership.
WalterBright 6y ago
When Seattle needed cars for the new light rail system, they had to buy a custom design that was "custom to the Pacific Northwest". Really? What about the PNW would mandate a different car from a standard design?
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  My understanding is that the core issue with US transit is that we regularly let the same firm design and build the same system. This creates some obvious conflicts of interest where the designer decides that the PNW is soooo special that it can’t buy off the shelf parts, and therefore must pay the same company tons for custom stuff. Apparently it’s the norm to separate design from construction in Europe, which cuts down on such chicanery.
wolfretcrap 6y ago
India has managed to electrify nearly all long route trains on easy terrains except hilly regions. Not only this freight corridor has been setup simultaneously and roads built at amazing pace, all this infrastructure has self funded itself.
- pm90 6y ago
  > all this infrastructure has self funded itself. Interested in learning more about this. What does self-funding mean here? Where is the funding coming from?
  - apexalpha 6y ago
    I would think the person above you meant that the line pays for 100% of the cost by selling ticket / right of way. In stead of needing permanent subsidies to operate.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It's interesting to compare India to the UK where we gave up part way on a relatively short line (London - Bristol) because the costs were out of control.
niftich 6y ago
People who think the US needs high-quality commuter rail much more so than fast long-distance rail have the right idea. Long-distance intercity rail is for the incidental traveler who travels occasionally, and this traveler has many competing choices for their journey. Meanwhile, the typical commuter rail passenger will ride day after day, both ways, and often their only alternative is an arduous commute in a car -- or moving closer to their job, where their cost of housing would be higher. Most commuter rail systems in the US suffer from the lack of agency-owned dedicated passenger tracks, and from poor integration into the metropolitan area's cohesive transportation fabric (of which both personal cars and downtown public transit are an inseparable part). Much success could be achieved by (1) increasing the average speed of commuter transit, (2) investing in reliability, predictability, and frequency of service, (3) investing in Park-and-Ride hubs near certain stations, (4) looking for synergy with freeways and exits, (5) promoting transit-oriented development by both developer incentives and by land purchase and direct investment. The resulting changes would create a culture of transit use for commuting, which will go on to enable the eventual connection of the rail transit networks of neighboring city-pairs. As for California, an Altamont Pass segment to their High Speed Rail project ought to have been one of first things built. A faster 'Altamont Corridor Express' would have created a ~1-hour link between Stockton and the Bay, integrating the corridor's economy further beyond its current role as an overlong exurban commute. It would've also provided for an alternate rail routing between Sacramento and the Bay that'd be competitive with the Capitol Corridor. After the initial push towards a 'Super ACE', Altamont lost in the planning to Pacheco Pass; this increased linearity and reduced distance in the SF-SJ-Fresno axis, but in my opinion it was the wrong move. Fresno's accession to the economic continuum of the Bay is far less likely than that of Stockton or Modesto, and the increased linearity doesn't confer a meaningful benefit. Travelers are far more likely to travel between SJ and SF than between SJ and Fresno (or any point further south), so there's little operational benefit to having both SJ and Fresno accessible from San Francisco with no transfers from the same Fresno-bound train. The choice of the Pacheco Pass route is one of the several facepalm-worthy decisions made by CAHSR or by others early on in the process, like an extremely sweeping curve on a long, expensive viaduct just outside of Fresno station [1], or the barely-realistic journey times written into legislation that drive up cost. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16172313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16172313
flower-giraffe 6y ago
High speed railway upgrades are really expensive compared with roads. Some numbers to put this into perspective: The interstate highway system is 44k miles of roadway. The current estimate for upgrading one mainline railway in the UK (HS2) is about 400m dollars a mile. US defence spending is < 1t dollars. So it would take a defence scale budget for 20 years to build out a high speed rail network to cover the same routes as the interstate highway network.
- hkt 6y ago
  Having been watching the HS2 debacle for many, many years, it is worth noting two things. One is that we, in the UK, are especially incompetent when it comes to almost all forms of capital spending. Our IT projects, property development, transport projects etc all suffer from this. HS2 is no different. But more importantly to that cost is the land which has to be bought. Yes, there are lots of expensive consultants to pay because HSR is relatively complicated, but the cost of land in London and the South East of England is exorbitant. I don't have a number, but would expect this to constitute half the cost of the first phase of building.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    > But more importantly to that cost is the land which has to be bought. I've been increasing thinking this is a negative effect of fictionalization and the resulting explosion in property prices. If the government needs to buy some land it competes with investors with access to free money from the central banks.
  - pydry 6y ago
    >we, in the UK, are especially incompetent when it comes to almost all forms of capital spending I don't think anybody is particularly good. China is better at building HSR largely by dint of having more practice, not because they're better at capital expenditure. IT projects are corruption, I think. There's no way Accenture would survive in a properly competitive market for IT were it not for the UK government contracts having legal requirements only they and a few other large consulting companies can meet.
- 6y ago

by erentz 6y ago

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.)

tttp 6y ago
You are comparing relatively empty trains with hypothetically 100% full planes It's the same with the wsj, they are comparing a 100% occupancy rate of the plane with a 20% for the car (a single passenger) Assuming the consumption of a train doesn't change much based on how many passengers, you can travel by train for carbon free, as the 56 mpg won't change if you are in the train or not Of course trains should be electrified, but take the train today already, the higher the occupancy rate, the better the averaged mpg will be And who knows, it might change how the fret trains seems to always have the priority over passengers ones and finally make it a pleasant experience
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  No, I’m not. Modern airplanes get pretty high average occupancy (well, pre-COVID-19... but that affects Amtrak as well). Modern airplanes get a per seat mpg of like 80-110, depending on the route. So my figure of nearly the same is correct even with typical ridership.

WalterBright 6y ago

When Seattle needed cars for the new light rail system, they had to buy a custom design that was "custom to the Pacific Northwest". Really? What about the PNW would mandate a different car from a standard design?

ashtonkem 6y ago
My understanding is that the core issue with US transit is that we regularly let the same firm design and build the same system. This creates some obvious conflicts of interest where the designer decides that the PNW is soooo special that it can’t buy off the shelf parts, and therefore must pay the same company tons for custom stuff. Apparently it’s the norm to separate design from construction in Europe, which cuts down on such chicanery.

wolfretcrap 6y ago

India has managed to electrify nearly all long route trains on easy terrains except hilly regions. Not only this freight corridor has been setup simultaneously and roads built at amazing pace, all this infrastructure has self funded itself.

pm90 6y ago
> all this infrastructure has self funded itself. Interested in learning more about this. What does self-funding mean here? Where is the funding coming from?
- apexalpha 6y ago
  I would think the person above you meant that the line pays for 100% of the cost by selling ticket / right of way. In stead of needing permanent subsidies to operate.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
It's interesting to compare India to the UK where we gave up part way on a relatively short line (London - Bristol) because the costs were out of control.

niftich 6y ago

People who think the US needs high-quality commuter rail much more so than fast long-distance rail have the right idea. Long-distance intercity rail is for the incidental traveler who travels occasionally, and this traveler has many competing choices for their journey. Meanwhile, the typical commuter rail passenger will ride day after day, both ways, and often their only alternative is an arduous commute in a car -- or moving closer to their job, where their cost of housing would be higher. Most commuter rail systems in the US suffer from the lack of agency-owned dedicated passenger tracks, and from poor integration into the metropolitan area's cohesive transportation fabric (of which both personal cars and downtown public transit are an inseparable part). Much success could be achieved by (1) increasing the average speed of commuter transit, (2) investing in reliability, predictability, and frequency of service, (3) investing in Park-and-Ride hubs near certain stations, (4) looking for synergy with freeways and exits, (5) promoting transit-oriented development by both developer incentives and by land purchase and direct investment. The resulting changes would create a culture of transit use for commuting, which will go on to enable the eventual connection of the rail transit networks of neighboring city-pairs. As for California, an Altamont Pass segment to their High Speed Rail project ought to have been one of first things built. A faster 'Altamont Corridor Express' would have created a ~1-hour link between Stockton and the Bay, integrating the corridor's economy further beyond its current role as an overlong exurban commute. It would've also provided for an alternate rail routing between Sacramento and the Bay that'd be competitive with the Capitol Corridor. After the initial push towards a 'Super ACE', Altamont lost in the planning to Pacheco Pass; this increased linearity and reduced distance in the SF-SJ-Fresno axis, but in my opinion it was the wrong move. Fresno's accession to the economic continuum of the Bay is far less likely than that of Stockton or Modesto, and the increased linearity doesn't confer a meaningful benefit. Travelers are far more likely to travel between SJ and SF than between SJ and Fresno (or any point further south), so there's little operational benefit to having both SJ and Fresno accessible from San Francisco with no transfers from the same Fresno-bound train. The choice of the Pacheco Pass route is one of the several facepalm-worthy decisions made by CAHSR or by others early on in the process, like an extremely sweeping curve on a long, expensive viaduct just outside of Fresno station [1], or the barely-realistic journey times written into legislation that drive up cost. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16172313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16172313

flower-giraffe 6y ago

High speed railway upgrades are really expensive compared with roads. Some numbers to put this into perspective: The interstate highway system is 44k miles of roadway. The current estimate for upgrading one mainline railway in the UK (HS2) is about 400m dollars a mile. US defence spending is < 1t dollars. So it would take a defence scale budget for 20 years to build out a high speed rail network to cover the same routes as the interstate highway network.

hkt 6y ago
Having been watching the HS2 debacle for many, many years, it is worth noting two things. One is that we, in the UK, are especially incompetent when it comes to almost all forms of capital spending. Our IT projects, property development, transport projects etc all suffer from this. HS2 is no different. But more importantly to that cost is the land which has to be bought. Yes, there are lots of expensive consultants to pay because HSR is relatively complicated, but the cost of land in London and the South East of England is exorbitant. I don't have a number, but would expect this to constitute half the cost of the first phase of building.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  > But more importantly to that cost is the land which has to be bought. I've been increasing thinking this is a negative effect of fictionalization and the resulting explosion in property prices. If the government needs to buy some land it competes with investors with access to free money from the central banks.
- pydry 6y ago
  >we, in the UK, are especially incompetent when it comes to almost all forms of capital spending I don't think anybody is particularly good. China is better at building HSR largely by dint of having more practice, not because they're better at capital expenditure. IT projects are corruption, I think. There's no way Accenture would survive in a properly competitive market for IT were it not for the UK government contracts having legal requirements only they and a few other large consulting companies can meet.
6y ago