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Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW
- elchief 3y agoTake the $50B and build something that'll make a dent in climate change
- charcircuit 3y agoIt would be useful if you could drive your car onto the rail and it carried you and your car at 300 mph.
- frankus 3y agoIf done right the stations will be in locations where having a car is more of a liability than a convenience (i.e. downtowns with lots of traffic and expensive parking).
- bpodgursky 3y agoThere are (at most) 2 of those locations in the entire US PNW... downtown Seattle and Downtown Portland. And frankly I'm not sure Portland counts.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoDowntown Portland definitely counts. I would include Vancouver BC. Traffic is really draining up there, more so than downtown Seattle.
- upon_drumhead 3y agoThere’s a little problem with that. You want people who live close but not directly near one of the stations to also drive and park and take it. So you do need stations continently outside of the super dense metro area.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stuaxo 3y agoBuses will probably link up from day 1, places with Metros will extend them to the stations (see Taiwan for instance).
- marssaxman 3y agoYou don't need a high-speed rail station for that; you just need one of the park-n-ride lots at a light-rail station. You drive to the transit network, then use the local train to reach the regional train.
- foobiekr 3y agoOne of the obvious problems with this, at least in the California metros, is going to be that these stations are watering holes for people who engage in car breakins.
- marssaxman 3y agoInteresting. I haven't heard of that as a significant problem with the existing Sound Transit park-n-rides; I wonder if that is a regional difference, or whether it is a function of system size.
- blq10 3y agoYeah see this is the problem - urbanist aesthetics demanding everyone live a very particular lifestyle, which includes a lot more than just urban living hamstringing projects.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago> urbanist aesthetics demanding everyone live a very particular lifestyle, which includes a lot more than just urban living hamstringing projects. You’re literally just describing how most of the population lives and has lived for the past 1000 years. Your “urbanist aesthetics” predate the invention of cars.
- GauntletWizard 3y agoThe small towns and farmsteads of history look a lot more like suburbs than modern high-rises. Even in large cities, every house would have significant garden to meet everyday needs. A very small percentage of the population lived in "urban" cities, with houses back-to-back. Rome was an anomaly in that regard, made possible by significant farmsteads held by the nobility outside the city and grain bribes paid out by them.
- favflam 3y agoRespectfully, suburban guys want to use urban cores rent free. If people with cars actually paid anything close to market rates for the precious real estate they take up with their cars, then most of them would just walk/bike/bus in the city. Car drivers have the government on their side, so they get heavily subsidized real estate (roads, parking). I don't think this treatment is very equal or fair. Keep your house and your car (SUV?), but pay real tolls and real parking fees. The US managed to build cities and suburbs fine before car drivers got government priority.
- foobiekr 3y agoHow do ambulances work in city cores if not roads?
- DoreenMichele 3y agoFrom the article: And Whittington says the designers must also ensure the rail remains dedicated to its high-speed route and that people have the ability to get to the rail through other means of public transportation. “There are going to be a lot of communities you want to serve,” Whittington said, “but you want to find a way to bring those communities to the routes as opposed to bringing the route to the communities.”
- slt2021 3y agoI am not sure it is useful to transport 2000 kg of metal occupying a half of a rail car, just to move 80kg meatbag for a distance of 173 miles.
- charcircuit 3y agoIt's useful because the rail doesn't go to your exact destination. You will need to drive there. It is expensive to have a separate car in both cities instead of just taking a single car with you.
- UtopiaPunk 3y agoI think it'd be useful to have a cute little helicopter hat, like in the Inspector Gadget cartoons.
- ryukafalz 3y agoThat depends a lot on how the cities on either end are designed, in particular how easy it is to get around without a car in each. Also, car rentals exist.
- ericd 3y agoWell, we’re talking about the US…
- JHorse 3y agoIf we're talking about high speed rail into Seattle, then you have pretty solid public transit options from the city center to where you would most likely be traveling to.
- slyall 3y agoSo how do the millions who fly each year manage?
- sfink 3y agoIt's useful for the dozen people you're transporting, but transporting a dozen people isn't exactly worth building a train system for. The economics only make sense if you're hauling around masses of people, and you can't do that if all those people want to bring their cars with them.
- littlestymaar 3y agoUse a bike instead of a car and you'll be there. (Ideally you can even have your bike be foldable for maximum convenience)
- charcircuit 3y agoA bike is too slow. It would mean just driving to the destination without a rail would be faster.
- littlestymaar 3y agoIn urban conditions with trafic, a bike is faster than a car, even without dedicated infrastructures.
- charcircuit 3y agoWhat does that matter if your destination isn't in an urban area?
- pxmpxm 3y agoSingle, childless 20 year old's ideas. You will get zero traction with this mentality.
- littlestymaar 3y agoI'm 35 with two kids, too bad for your ageist argument. And you don't even need a special kind of bike to carry two kids on a single bike: you can put both a front and back mounted seats on litterally any bike, even foldable ones! If the infrastructures are adapted, even carrying 4 children on a single bike isn't too big of a deal, especially with e-bikes (you can either use a cargo bike or a trailer and two seats). Do confuse your lack of imagination for an inherent impossiblity.
- bombcar 3y agoIIRC the Auto Train is the only long-distance route Amtrak runs that is net profitable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Train It's possible other corridors could be identified that could run something like that, though it probably needs to be about 800-900 miles to make it "worth" it time wise - shorter and it's simpler to just drive.
- ghaff 3y agoIt’s mostly the Northeast Corridor from Boston to DC where Amtrak makes the majority of its profits though—which it then mostly loses in the rest of the country. The auto train to Florida is sort of a special case. That’s not people traveling for a long weekend or even a week. It’s historically been people going south for the winter. Not sure it’s profitable though don’t see recent numbers.
- bombcar 3y agoIf they really run that train every single day year round, and it almost always sells out, it can't just be people going south and back, or the winter trains would be empty. I think it's just a common trip and the train is cheap/convenient enough.
- ghaff 3y agoI stand corrected. I thought it was a less frequent thing. Assume a lot of families do the theme parks that you really need a car for but they don’t want to do the long drive from the mid-Atlantic. Don’t know if it makes money though.
- sfpotter 3y agoAmtrak Cascade has trains that can do 125 mph but are throttled to 78 mph because of low quality tracks, as I understand it. Amtrak also recently just started running many more trains per day between Seattle and Portland. High speed rail is great, but maybe a good starting point would just be… fixing the tracks. Get 3 1/2 hours from SEA to PDX down closer to 2…
- NegativeLatency 3y agoEven just reliability, I regularly make this drive for visiting family and it would be preferable to be able to kick back and relax instead of driving, but currently it’s just too snow and infrequent to be a viable option for me.
- ryanSrich 3y agoExactly. I also do this drive every few months and still can’t believe driving is more efficient than taking the train. It’s the absolute perfect setup for a train too.
- paulcole 3y agoI never learned to drive and it turns out the Portland to Seattle train is a good option for getting between the two cities. Everybody says they’d take the bus/train/whatever instead of driving if only this or that were true. If the train was faster and more frequent you’d find another reason not to take it. The stories we tell ourselves.
- ghaff 3y agoApproximately downtown to downtown without a car on either end is pretty much the ideal scenario and it applies to a tiny slice of the population. I mostly take the train to Manhattan even though it means driving in the wrong direction for about an hour only because the southern part of the drive into the city is so awful.
- foota 3y agoI think the tracks are the most expensive part though, no? Although I'm not sure if you mean the physical tracks are in poor condition or the layout. If it's the layout, that's not much easier to fix than building a HSR. They may not even be able to fix the railroad company owned tracks?
- jaggederest 3y agoExtremely unlikely. The population density just isn't there. There are 12m people in Washington and Oregon combined, a substantial portion of whom are not on the I-5 corridor. The corridor in general is about 800km long. Compare to ~70m within 500 km of Paris.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NegativeLatency 3y agoDid you know there are nice and fast trains in Europe outside of the Paris region?
- b112 3y agoWhich carry all those people mentioned, around? Europe is crazily, densely populated.
- bigDinosaur 3y agoPerhaps you'll be shocked to hear that countries like Sweden have HSR despite not being particularly densely populated? It's absurd how much money is poured into roads and yet never attracts the same criticism.
- jaggederest 3y agoThe areas in Sweden with railroads are more populated than the Van/Sea/Pdx corridor, by about 1.8x, more if you drop a couple outlying small towns that don't make sense in themselves to connect except for network completeness reasons. Also, railways in Sweden are more middle-speed trains these days, running 200km/h as far as I am aware. These people are proposing 300km/h+ which requires a significantly higher level of track investment - you can't just use standard sleepers and bolted rails.
- jaggederest 3y agoYes. I've ridden on many of them. I'm a huge HSR proponent. I just don't think it works for Eugene to Vancouver. If we had double the population it would be a no-brainer. The math is very clear. Below about 25,000 people per linear kilometer of lines, they require massive subsidies and never really pay off. Eugene to Vancouver BC is <12,000 people per linear kilometer. Honestly I would love to be wrong.
- neilv 3y ago> If a rail is built successfully, there will be an extraordinary increase in transportation abilities — saving commuters time while reducing environmental harm. This high-speed rail is intended for people getting between home and workplace on a daily basis? Edit: I'm not asking whether it can be used for daily commutes, but is daily commutes the reason for building this? Or what is the reason?
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI have several friends that commute from Portland to seattle via bus or Vancouver to seattle via car or occasionally seaplane taxi. I’m sure they would really appreciate a high speed rail infrastructure particularly if it exits at a transportation hub as they propose.
- neilv 3y agoI know people with long commutes, too. Just eliciting requirements for this project, which I didn't see stated.
- fasthands9 3y agoI've had to do Boston to NYC a lot lately. I wish it was faster but frankly not really sure how much value is added by going faster. US cities are still fairly spread out so for someone to be able to feasibly commute on it they'd have to be a short distance (both their house and workplace) to the train station. My unsophisticated take is that it seems like better local transpo would have an easier time of finding enough people. Obviously these aren't mutually exclusive, but the number of people that would take advantage of true HSR that wouldnt take advantage of slower rail seems small.
- hx8 3y agoIf the train have an average speed of >200mph it's likely to be a <55minute ride. It's not uncommon for people to have similar timed Amtrak rides in the North East as part of their commute. You can use a laptop to work on the train.
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- hiram112 3y agoThey allocated $150M according to the article. I can't see that being enough to even break ground on a single mile of track. If California boondoggle is any indication, it will be enough to staff an army of middle managers, bureaucrats, and environmental impact and DEI staff for a year, and, of course, pay out some political kickbacks.
- leemailll 3y agoChina high speed rail costs about US$ 17-21m per km in China, which has a substantial low cost for labor. This much can't make much
- bombcar 3y agoCalifornia's spent something like $9 billion and they hadn't a single mile of track by 2022. Maybe we should do a crawl/walk/run instead of jumping directly to HSR.
- foota 3y agoSounds like construction started in 2015? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-S....
- jeffbee 3y ago“Single mile of track” is one of the dumbest memes ever. Yes, they lay the tracks last, because that is by far the easiest part of the project and there’s a machine that can poop out HSR tracks at 1km/hour.
- justrealist 3y ago> and there’s a machine that can poop out HSR tracks at 1km/hour. Uh... not in the US, there isn't.
- djcapelis 3y agoSigh. Though there are definitely automated track laying machines in the US, some pieces might not meet the needs of the project and may want other machines. You can of course ship them. Did you think CAHSR was going to lay the track by hand?
- rendang 3y agoThere are now only 3 decent sized concentrations of people in that corridor, but maybe building something like this would allow a whole new 1MM person metro to develop, e.g. around Olympia or in the Skagit Valley
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI sincerely hope not. Sprawl is the anti pattern maximizing human impact. The skagit valley in particular is beautiful - the last it needs is a suburban megaplex.
- forrestthewoods 3y agoHuh. That’s the opposite of sprawl. It’s having dense points along the route. It doesn’t make any sense to have high-speed rail that only stops in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. For it to even possibly make sense there needs more to be more points along the way. And those points need to be very dense by transit. Aka the opposite of sprawl.
- quailfarmer 3y agoI don’t think that’s a given. If you’re constantly stopping/accelerating, average speed is much lower. The rail from downtown Seattle to the airport has a comical number of stops that barely see any traffic. The optimal system to connect a large number of places is a car. The optimal system to connect a small number of places efficiently is a train.
- forrestthewoods 3y agoFor some definition of small. Which I suspect is larger than “180 miles apart”. I quite frankly just don’t see the value is connecting Portland and Seattle by high speed rail. Who gives a shit? Spend billions of dollars so that hundreds, perhaps even a whole thousand, of people can take a weekend trip that is slightly faster than a 3 hour drive? I’d rather see Renton and Kenmore/Bothell quintuple in density and get connected by a nice, fast loop. Seattle to SeaTac probably has about the right number of stops. Well, a few too many, but should be more than zero. Those stops just need to have something at them. We built a minimal amount of transit and then failed to upzone the neighborhood.
- systemvoltage 3y agoI love trains but the discussions on HN have a quality of a cargo cult, anyone who even slightly slides off tracks is punished. It exhibits similar characteristics found in climate change movement or other progressive agenda. No room for nuanced discussion, only extreme conformism. It actually has a reverse effect on me. Why is this thing pushed through without debate? It might gather more support if you allow criticism.
- fomine3 3y agocargo cult vs passenger cult
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoMy guess is that it will be tied up for at least a decade in multiple environmental impact lawsuits no matter what route they pick.
- ekianjo 3y ago> They interviewed a cadre of transportation experts in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan Have they never heard of a country called Japan?
- starkparker 3y agoFull report here: https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Keeping-it-on-the-Tracks-High-speed-Rail-Success-and-Lessons-Learned.pdf https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Keepi... > The proliferation of high-speed rail creates many opportunities for case studies. Cases in this report represent systems developed in areas with institutional and geographic attributes comparable to the Pacific Northwest. While this objective for research did not preclude study of the Chinese, Japanese, and full European networks, it did lead to the selection of the following cases: > International > • The corridor linking Paris, France to Amsterdam in the Netherlands > • The high-speed rail systems of Spain > • Taiwan high-speed rail, linking Taipei to Kaohsiung > United States > • California, linking San Francisco and Sacramento to Los Angeles and San Diego > • Texas, from Dallas to Houston > • Florida, linking Tampa to Orlando and Miami p. 45: > The rail corridor linking France, Belgium, and the Netherlands is similar in scale and scope to the project contemplated for the Cascadia corridor in the Pacific Northwest, and includes two national border crossings. The high-speed rail systems of Spain were developed after a market of suppliers had developed endogenously within France, Germany, and Japan, allowing for methods of procurement of international expertise that more likely resemble opportunities today in the U.S. The Taiwan high-speed rail project is a public-private partnership that received bids from consortia representing firms from the U.S. as well as Japan, France, and Germany, for the partial private financing of a project that incorporates real estate development of station areas into its revenue stream. The rest of the report uses existing research about Japan's Shinkansen rather than conducting new interviews on it. Parts of chapter 2 detail some of the factors distancing Japan's system from a PNW system, such as how Japan's real-estate development and urban rail planning were mostly coterminous, creating systems that were conducive to connecting with high-speed rail, while in the U.S. history went mostly in the opposite direction. In a subsection titled "Researchers caution against direct comparisons of proposed U.S. high speed lines with existing systems in other countries", pps. 22–23: > This means that Japan has benefitted from a Century of transit-oriented land use development, in ways that strain comparison with conditions for rail development in the U.S. European high-speed rail lines were designed for metro-to-metro service atop existing and robust national rail networks, which served as meaningful platforms for public transportation agencies to grow and develop services. ... In Japan and China, for example, high-speed rail development began at a time when the air travel market was not as well-developed as it is today in the U.S. Compared to the U.S., there were also greater financial disincentives to owning and operating cars in Japan, China, and Europe, which likely influenced the pace and relative success of rail travel in those parts of the world (Deakin and Pérez Henríquez, 2017; Cervero, 1998).
- gurumeditations 3y agoOnly useful HSR is maglev like SC line in Japan. HSR is such a boondoggle it’s not worth it anyways.
- AlbertCory 3y agoIronically, I just posted this on Sunday night: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36843136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36843136 it deals heavily with the California "Bullet Train" and why it's such a shitshow. I read (or skimmed) their 80-page report. They seem to have learned the lessons of other megaprojects, but I'd call this more of a realistic meta-plan than a plan: > The reasons for this dismal record of performance are not inherent in the technology or the environment, they are mainly due to human behavior. It is possible to build a megaproject under budget and on time. However, the ways in which people behave in the planning, development, and delivery of megaprojects, and the choices that result, render that outcome unlikely. There are political reasons that turn projects like this into disasters. I don't know how you avoid them, except maybe by facing them upfront.
- josh_carterPDX 3y agoWhile I am excited to see a study has been done, the pessimist in me thinks I will not be alive when this finally happens.
- slyall 3y agoThe "Railways Explained" Youtube channel did a video about the proposals a few days ago. https://youtu.be/KnGjwOCie3c?t=87 https://youtu.be/KnGjwOCie3c?t=87
- hx8 3y agoIf you were to pick a dozen likely stops on this train, you'll likely end up with a name collision. Vancouver, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia. It's fun to think about how they would handle this. Would they use the full names in all documentation. Would they give one of the locations a nickname, such as "Southern Washington" or "British Columbia". I also wonder what would be the largest mishap that could happen because of the name collision. Imagine going to the wrong country because of some minor miscommunication!
- doogblood 3y agoAmtrak Cascades literally has this problem today. Idiots like myself occasionally buy the wrong ticket and end up having to bus home instead. Took a floatplane to BC planning to take the train back, whoops the ticket is for Vancouver, WA.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ojbyrne 3y agoMy favorite name collision is Ontario, CA (city, state) and Ontario, CA (province, country).
- denimnerd42 3y agoI had a friend from Ontario tell me she was going to school in London. That was confusing initially.
- jmyeet 3y agoThe rail situation in the US is woeful and it's important to understand why: 1. Privatization has been an absolute disaster for the rail industry. Privatization has simply become a way to privatize profits and socialize losses. The advent of Precision Scheduled Railroading ("PSR") [1]. It not only decreases safety but leads to massive delays for passenger trains who can't pass the longer trains that PSR results in; 2. A car-centric culture that originated after WW2 that ultimately came from excluding poor people, particularly people of color. There is a strong cultural bias against any form of public transportation because many view it as raising taxes even though road infrastructure is heavily subsidized; and 3. Further to (2), there are some billionaires who capitalize on this attitude and fan the flames by fighting against any form of public transportation and passenger rail (eg [2][3]); and 4. The US suffered from a first mover advantage. From the mid-19th century, the US built a massive aamount of rail infrastructure. This was designed for far slower trains. You can't just put high speed trains on the same track. China in comparison didn't have that problem; and 5. The pre-eminence of private property in the US makes building anything like this difficult and expensive. Yes, there's eminent domain but local and county authorities can hold things up for years. If you look into the California HIgh Speed Rail project, you see a lot of concessions have been made with the route and stations in relatively low population centers just to get planning permission, which increases the route length and the LA and SF travel time. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165699563/how-precision-scheduled-railroading-played-a-role-in-the-ohio-train-derailment https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165699563/how-precision-sche... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/koch-activists-phoenix-ban-light-rail https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/koch-activis... [3]: https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460 https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-cali...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- poulsbohemian 3y agoYawn. So maybe we'll have a connection to Spokane in another 80 years and a connection to the Tri-Cities by 2123. Let me know when it gets to my house. I know perhaps I shouldn't be this negative, but... let's use Germany as an example, as it is roughly comparable to Washington and Oregon. Its residents now have a 49 Euro ticket anywhere in the country, useable on multiple forms of transit. We don't even have buses, trains, etc connecting our major cities. Don't even get me started on other social issues like health care, child care, etc. And as long as Eastern Washington continues to send Republicans only to Olympia, ain't a damn thing going to change for us over here. At least we are finally getting some decent internet - decades after most cities in Europe had comparably fast / cheap internet. Maybe someday we'll have more than one functioning mobile provider.
- Exoristos 3y agoThey probably don't suffer from as much graft as we here in the U.S.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoGermany: population: 84,270,625 area: 357,592 km^2 density: 232/km^2 WA: population: 7,785,786 area: 184,827 km^2 density: 39.6/km^2 In almost no way are they comparable. 1/10th the population, 1/2 the area, 1/8th the density.
- genocidicbunny 3y agoI do want to point out that unlike Germany, where the population centers are relatively spread out over the area, in WA and OR, the vast majority of the population lives in a fairly narrow band largely following I5. The density of the Portland - Seattle - Vancouver corridor is a little less dire. Eastern WA and OR are relatively sparsely populated, so HSR to those areas is almost a non-starter.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoYeah fine, I fully believe in the Vancouver->Vancouver (cough) train line. The justification for it, however, is not "WA is just like Germany". First of all, it's gone to be a relatively single-line system, paralleling I-5, which is quite unlike Germany, Second, even with the full west-of-cascades population, you're still not even remotely close to the population of Germany. You not even really that close to the population along any of the busiest lines within Germany,.
- forrestthewoods 3y agoI’ve been reading about high-speed rail in the PNW for my 20 years in Seattle and I’ve yet to see a budget. And I’ve definitely yet to see how that budget is justified. I don’t see how it can possibly make sense. The cost divided by ridership can’t be a friendly number. I live in Seattle and I don’t think high-speed rail to Portland/Vancouver is a particularly interesting thing. I’m not at all a fan of 90 minute commute times. Yeah sure you can read your phone or whatever. But it’s soul crushing. Remote work is far superior to long-ass commute times powered by high speed rail.
- poulsbohemian 3y agoWhen you realize that we are just barely caught up with what Forward Thrust was supposed to bring us when voters rejected that in the 1970s (like before I was born...) it's hard to imagine any of us will benefit in our lifetimes from any significant I-5 corridor high-speed improvements. The legislature really needs to be considering the housing benefits of improved transit, not only along I-5, but also for those who might live in say Ellensburg, Yakima, Spokane, who could conceivably be just an hour or two by rail away from their office in Seattle. Maybe not as every day commuters, but certainly in a blended work model.
- salamiboy 3y ago"Along with community engagement, limiting political sway is important. The study shows that if political representatives convince planners to route through different locations — deviating from the design — cities could end up with an expensive commuter rail system instead of a competitive high-speed rail." Good luck, it's Seattle
- 23B1 3y agoAs a PNW native: no thanks. I'd much rather we spend tax dollars on ways to prevent the need for commutes – especially ones that require highway travel.
- jdlshore 3y agoWhat would prevent the need for travel between Portland, Seattle, and BC, and how would you like the government to make that happen?
- 23B1 3y ago[flagged]
- jdlshore 3y agoI understand the difference, and chose my words intentionally. What evidence do you have that the purpose of the high speed rail project is primarily for commuting to and from work? I’d be willing to wager that the actual report (which I haven’t read) probably names a variety of reasons for high speed rail in the PNW, of which commuting is one of many. Setting your passive aggressive pedantry aside, you haven’t answered the question: how would you like the government to prevent commuting in the PNW? And—now that we’re focusing on just one form of travel—how much do you expect that will reduce the demand for travel, and how will that reduction change the desirability of high-speed rail?
- 23B1 3y agoDid you RTFA? The cited UW report is entirely about commuters. If you want to visit granny in Portland, take a car no problem. If a Seattle exec needs to meet with his dev team in Olympia once a week, make it a zoom.
- jdlshore 3y agoThe actual report is here. It’s quite readable: https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Keeping-it-on-the-Tracks-High-speed-Rail-Success-and-Lessons-Learned.pdf https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Keepi... The word “commuter” appears 19 times, always in the context of “local commuter rail,” in contrast to the high speed rail the report discusses. High speed rail is very clearly described as a metro-to-metro solution, in competition with air travel. Commuting is not the stated purpose. The stated purpose is to “overcome long-term problems of affordable housing, traffic congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions.”
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CSMastermind 3y agoFor those unaware allow me to present The Seattle Process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_process Otherwise known as "decision making through exhaustion" where everyone tries to stop progress as much as possible until the other people get so sick of arguing with you that they give up and you get your way. The Seattle region might be the part of the country least capable of building infrastructure. I'll believe they'll get high speed rail when I see it.
- carabiner 3y agolol California would disagree. I am amazed at how much is being built here. I wouldn't be surprised if Seattle is the fastest building urban metro area in the US. I still think WA has a libertarian streak (hence no income tax) that moves things along.
- throwaway-blaze 3y agoWA does but Seattle does not. Worse, the one big city / region we have completely swamps the rest of the state politically so our "leaders" only ever get leftier and don't have a moderating influence from the other side. It's worse in OR to the south (Portland)...it's so out of balance there that 11 rural counties voted to secede and join their eastern neighbor Idaho.
- irrational 3y agoWhy does there need to be a balance? Wyoming is considered the most Republican state. Do people there talk about there needing to be more balance?
- denimnerd42 3y agowhat people? no one lives there
- irrational 3y ago
- Gibbon1 3y agoFull report this article is based on https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Keeping-it-on-the-Tracks-High-speed-Rail-Success-and-Lessons-Learned.pdf https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Keepi...
- jboydyhacker 3y agoI wish we had trains just like Japan and Europe have, but we don't have geography or population density like Japan or Europe has. We have surmountable problems in regulation that drive up our costs to 6x per mile what it costs other countries but the problem is the revenue per ticket mile. Hard to match the city and population density.
- amrocha 3y agoThere's plenty of high density in certain corridors of North America. Vancouver -> Seattle -> Portland, potentially extending down to California. Geography is not an excuse. Japan and China have horrible geography too.
- irrational 3y agoVancouver to Seattle would be doable. It’s the Portland to Vancouver part that would be hard. There were plans to rebuild the interstate bridge to allow more lanes, include pedestrian/bike crossing, and train crossing. It got so bogged down in disagreements that it was eventually scrapped. I’m not holding my breath on allowing a high speed rail crossing between Portland and Vancouver. Fortunately the rail yard in Vancouver is just on the other side of the Columbia.
- beembeem 3y agoAha, to clarify for others - Vancouver WA is what you're referring to, not BC.
- irrational 3y agoOh, yeah. In Portland, if you say Vancouver, it means the one right across the river. You have to specify Vancouver BC if you mean the other one.
- foota 3y agoSometimes I wish transit development was... Less community oriented and more build it and they will come. It's frustrating watching them waffle back and forth while things stall.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoI like the piece because it's research-based. I did a study of a rail plan based on "Local incorporated cities get together and divide up the political pie, thereby leaving out essential entities that weren't municipalities, and then hired a consultant to pick the best rail locations for each city that had already been granted a rail station based on political jockeying." Suffice it to say, political jockeying did not exactly pick optimal sites for the county in question.
- scythe 3y agoFor a region with relatively low population and big mountains, this is surprising. Sure, Florida built Brightline, but Miami plus Orlando alone equals the population of Portland + Seattle + Vancouver... on flat ground, with few changes to an existing rail corridor, over a shorter distance, and most importantly, it's all in the same country, in the same state even. On the other hand, if it can work in PacNo, that's a call-out to all of the laggard corridors that have it so much easier: Atlanta-Charlotte, Washington-Richmond, etc.
- _ah 3y agoThis is dumb. In a high-density environment (hey there Japan!) HSR makes tons of sense. In a much lower-density area, moving people isn't the biggest problem, it's moving stuff. Next time you take a long-distance flight in the USA, look out the window and ponder how dang big AND EMPTY the country is. People can be transported quickly by air, but for cargo you want energy efficiency per kg (not speed). For most of the USA, it's completely rational to build a slow, efficient cargo rail network. The overhead of airports makes sense for human transport given the distances involved. This is different from Europe/Japan where the overhead of air travel matters proportionally more given the short distances between destinations. It gets worse. The value of a (human) rail network grows as its density grows. Germany is awesome because the rail network connects a bunch of different cities. Even if the Seattle+Portland route makes sense in isolation, that's basically the entire network right there. Maybe add Vancouver? There's no other population center even close... just 3 cities in a line on the coast. There's absolutely no multiplier effect on the new HSR links. They'd be better served by building a small dedicated airport at either end and running frequent commuter planes back and forth all day.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SllX 3y agoEugene -> Albany -> Salem -> Woodburn -> Wilsonville -> Tigard -> Portland -> Vancouver WA -> Woodland -> Long View -> Castle Rock ->Centralia -> Grand Mound -> Olympia -> Lacey -> DuPont -> Tacoma -> Federal Way -> Seattle-Tacoma International Airport -> Burien -> White Center -> Seattle -> Shoreline -> Lynnwood -> Everett. You could keep going, but that gives you the spine of the populated places between Seattle and Portland and a little past them too covering basically the Willamette Valley in Oregon. You could extend through Mount Vernon and Bellingham up to British Columbia. You could run an East-West line connecting Forest Grove and Gresham through Hillsboro, Beaverton and Portland. I know Seattle and Portland are the big ones, but the value to people in passenger rail is the whole rail network, not just two points. That said, I’m not going to defend the economics of high speed rail in America either, I’m a bit soured on it, just thought your characterization was unfair that Portland and Seattle were the only two points that mattered when you’ve got most of metropolitan Oregon and Washington around them.
- scyzoryk_xyz 3y agoMan, whenever all this train talk comes up, I get this impression that Americans really know their shit when it comes to trains. All these plans and documentations, speeds, infrastructure details, hundreds of comments, expertise - you’d think it’s all the other way around. I live in Poland, and all I know is that it all just works here (more or less).
- achates 3y agoTrains aren't a good fit for the US outside the northeast corridor. We have a fantastic interstate highway system for medium distances and for longer trips flying is cheaper and faster.
- scyzoryk_xyz 3y agoYeah, I think I can say we were/are intensely jealous of that interstate infrastructure. And yet you don’t see the same amount of people poring over all the minutae details that you see with trains - just funny how that works isn’t it?
- dclowd9901 3y agoLet me see if I can get this straight. $150 million for 200 miles of high speed rail track, trains and stations. Even in Taiwan, where it has existed for a minute, it’s $80 million PER MILE. This, though, perfectly illustrates how Oregon likes to spend money: wasting it on projects that could never even possibly get off the ground based on the tiny commitment it’s willing to give.