8 ms·

I 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 t

by foota 3y ago

I 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?

sfpotter 3y ago
I don’t know the answer to either of your questions. Is track more expensive than new high-speed trains?
- foota 3y ago
  Construction is expensive, and purchasing right of way in populated areas is ridiculously expensive. Short tracks are more expensive because you want to do inconvenient things in order to keep them short (like tunneling and building bridges) instead of taking the path of least resistance. You need all of these things for a good high speel rail, but you need a lot of it to even improve the existing rail. There's some compromises you could make to improve the existing system, but there's not much desire for it I think since it'd still largely be a many billion dollar long term project. I think the opinion is that it's not worth spending all that unless it's transformative (i.e., the marginal benefit of a 2 hour vs 3 and a half hour train ride is small compared to the benefit of a 3 and a half hr ride to a 1 hour ride since at that point you have realistic commutes and such).
  - ghaff 3y ago
    1 hr Seattle to Portland probably doesn’t even really make it commuting distance because very few people are going to live and work close enough to the endpoints to keep things to 90 minutes total. Boston to NYC is 4 hours or so and that’s useful for a lot of purposes although that’s admittedly in part because driving and parking in Manhattan is so awful. (I could drive from my house to Manhattan faster but I hardly ever do.)
    - georgeoliver 3y ago
      Why is 90 minutes the magic number? For example lots of people commute from New Haven to New York City, where the train ride alone is 90+ minutes.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Manhattan is sort of a special case and I can tell you from personal experience that 90 minutes is pretty bad even if a lot of it is spent on a train. I commuted into Boston a few days a week when it was about 90 minutes door to door and IMO it was not sustainable. If I go into my downtown office now which I do rarely it’s 2 hours. That some people are forced into super-commutes now and then doesn’t make it a really sustainable most days situation. So you’re up by 6am or earlier and you’re not getting home until 8pm or later depending on your work hours.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        And it is an awful existence. People do it for the chance to earn more money, but I would not wish that quality of life on my enemies.
    - rob74 3y ago
      I don't think commuting should be the main focus - if you want HSR to make sense ecologically, it should replace existing car and airplane trips, not enable people to make longer commutes.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        I’m not from the area but does anyone actually fly from SEA to PDX assuming they have a car? It’s not like SeaTac is even that close to Seattle. And depending on where you live and destination plans it’s hard for me to imagine trading a less than 3 hour drive for a train trip.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        3y ago
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    Adding to this, there's a pretty interesting paradox of transportation infrastructure as relates to land values, and a characteristic I've noticed of many high-speed rail systems. The creation of transportation infrastructure can convert land from low-value (as reflected by market prices) to high, and this has very often occurred. The US Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869, was seen by many as a boondoggle, and indeed traveled through all but completely unpopulated (by European settlers) lands. But development quickly followed. One settlement bypassed by the railroad was Denver, Colorado. That city raised funds to create a spur line to the Transcontinental Railroad in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and in the decade following that line's completion, Denver's population exploded tenfold, from 5,000 to over 50,000 inhabitants. Many commuter streetcar and heavy rail lines were created as, or in partnership with, real estate developments, and profits from land speculation were often a very substantial portion of overall profits from such operations. The flip side is that once land values have increased, establishing new rights of way becomes extraordinarily expensive. Which means that backfilling high-speed rail into an extant prosperous region is insanely expensive, not only in direct land acquisition costs but in the costs of passing legislation and litigating various objections to such projects. Of the major high-speed rail projects created since 1950, at least three, Japan's Shinkansen, France's TGV, and China's CRH, all seem to me to have benefitted either from being developed in a post-war period of depressed property values (Japan & France) or emerged as a greenfield development through regions in which property values had not yet appreciated ... and in which private property ownership isn't a well-developed institution in the first place (China). The very slowly-progressing process of high speed rail in California is in many ways due to both the high land valuations of that state and a political environment in which legal objections to such projects are easy to mount. The easiest places to proceed with the project are in the relatively depopulated and low-land-value Central Valley. Geography also plays a role in constraining potential routes, most especially within the San Francisco Bay Area (and especially especially along the San Francisco Peninsula, some of the highest-valued land in the world), and in crossing the Tehachapi mountains at the southern end of the Central Valley, through which there are very few viable routes. These create choke points by which interests opposed to, or simply looking to benefit disproportionately from, the project can focus obstruction efforts, and they have. In darker moments, I reflect that it might be opportune to wait for a major San Andreas Fault movement to press forward with rail plans, whilst opposition is both defunded and occupied with other concerns.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
It is the layout. They had a nice bypass set up, but the first day the train derailed and it has just recently re-opened. Sharing track with freight is a PITA: the freight trains don't care about going fast (so no really straight tracks) and they often have priority especially if the cascade is running off schedule, causing even more delays. Not sure where they are going to build new straight-enough HSR track unless they employ lots of viaducts like china does.
- UtopiaPunk 3y ago
  Legally, Amtrak is supposed to have priority, and freight trains are required to pull off. But freight trains usually get priority because that's what the railway wants, and Amtrak doesn't have the political muscle to do much. But it's illegal. https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Amtrak-has-priority-over-freight-but-5923268.php https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Amtrak-has-priority-o...
  - bombcar 3y ago
    There are tons of loopholes, the biggest of which is running freights that are longer than every siding ...
  - junofan 3y ago
    I highly doubt Amtrak will suddenly run on time if enough people write Congress like their video suggests. The delays are egregious. Can’t they just pay for priority?
    - afavour 3y ago
      > Can’t they just pay for priority? With what money? Oh, the extra money they could be allocated by… Congress?
      - junofan 3y ago
        Amtrak sells tickets.
twelvechairs 3y ago
HSR can use the same rails (standard gauge) if they are in a good state (i.e. fine in most of the rest of the world, not in the USA which is far behind on rail safety). Big differences are turning radii (HSR obviously wont go around sharp corners easily) and station distance (HSR will want stops ~50-100km apart, older railways its often more like 1-5). That generally means a new route rather than using an existing one.
- mikepurvis 3y ago
  Crossings and setbacks too. An HSR line is like an interchange access highway— fenced off and grade separated from everything around it.
- ehnto 3y ago
  HSR really wants total seperation, zero crossings, no shared traffic. That is what ultimately allows safe high speed travel. Otherwise you are slowing down everywhere and can only run as fast as other trains on the line, unless you also impact their services by having them pull off.
  - realityking 3y ago
    This is how German HSR works, large part of the track are shared between freight and passenger trains with only some limited exceptions. They are however actively removing crossings and generally everything HSR is electrified.
- bluGill 3y ago
  If the track is built to HSR in the first place. You can't have crossings on HSR track because someone who carefully looks both ways before crossing will be kill by a train they didn't see. Even then while it is possible it doesn't work well, as HSR will catch up to whatever else is on the track and then must slow down.. the cost to build HSR track is so high (even at world leading low prices) that you have to run several trains per hour on those tracks to pay for it, and so there isn't free space for lower speed trains in between. Nobody makes a switch that can be crossed at high speeds so the slower train cannot just get out of the way no matter how much you might wish for that to wosk.

by foota 3y ago

sfpotter 3y ago

I don’t know the answer to either of your questions. Is track more expensive than new high-speed trains?

foota 3y ago
Construction is expensive, and purchasing right of way in populated areas is ridiculously expensive. Short tracks are more expensive because you want to do inconvenient things in order to keep them short (like tunneling and building bridges) instead of taking the path of least resistance. You need all of these things for a good high speel rail, but you need a lot of it to even improve the existing rail. There's some compromises you could make to improve the existing system, but there's not much desire for it I think since it'd still largely be a many billion dollar long term project. I think the opinion is that it's not worth spending all that unless it's transformative (i.e., the marginal benefit of a 2 hour vs 3 and a half hour train ride is small compared to the benefit of a 3 and a half hr ride to a 1 hour ride since at that point you have realistic commutes and such).
- ghaff 3y ago
  1 hr Seattle to Portland probably doesn’t even really make it commuting distance because very few people are going to live and work close enough to the endpoints to keep things to 90 minutes total. Boston to NYC is 4 hours or so and that’s useful for a lot of purposes although that’s admittedly in part because driving and parking in Manhattan is so awful. (I could drive from my house to Manhattan faster but I hardly ever do.)
  - georgeoliver 3y ago
    Why is 90 minutes the magic number? For example lots of people commute from New Haven to New York City, where the train ride alone is 90+ minutes.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Manhattan is sort of a special case and I can tell you from personal experience that 90 minutes is pretty bad even if a lot of it is spent on a train. I commuted into Boston a few days a week when it was about 90 minutes door to door and IMO it was not sustainable. If I go into my downtown office now which I do rarely it’s 2 hours. That some people are forced into super-commutes now and then doesn’t make it a really sustainable most days situation. So you’re up by 6am or earlier and you’re not getting home until 8pm or later depending on your work hours.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      And it is an awful existence. People do it for the chance to earn more money, but I would not wish that quality of life on my enemies.
  - rob74 3y ago
    I don't think commuting should be the main focus - if you want HSR to make sense ecologically, it should replace existing car and airplane trips, not enable people to make longer commutes.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      I’m not from the area but does anyone actually fly from SEA to PDX assuming they have a car? It’s not like SeaTac is even that close to Seattle. And depending on where you live and destination plans it’s hard for me to imagine trading a less than 3 hour drive for a train trip.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - 3y ago
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Adding to this, there's a pretty interesting paradox of transportation infrastructure as relates to land values, and a characteristic I've noticed of many high-speed rail systems. The creation of transportation infrastructure can convert land from low-value (as reflected by market prices) to high, and this has very often occurred. The US Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869, was seen by many as a boondoggle, and indeed traveled through all but completely unpopulated (by European settlers) lands. But development quickly followed. One settlement bypassed by the railroad was Denver, Colorado. That city raised funds to create a spur line to the Transcontinental Railroad in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and in the decade following that line's completion, Denver's population exploded tenfold, from 5,000 to over 50,000 inhabitants. Many commuter streetcar and heavy rail lines were created as, or in partnership with, real estate developments, and profits from land speculation were often a very substantial portion of overall profits from such operations. The flip side is that once land values have increased, establishing new rights of way becomes extraordinarily expensive. Which means that backfilling high-speed rail into an extant prosperous region is insanely expensive, not only in direct land acquisition costs but in the costs of passing legislation and litigating various objections to such projects. Of the major high-speed rail projects created since 1950, at least three, Japan's Shinkansen, France's TGV, and China's CRH, all seem to me to have benefitted either from being developed in a post-war period of depressed property values (Japan & France) or emerged as a greenfield development through regions in which property values had not yet appreciated ... and in which private property ownership isn't a well-developed institution in the first place (China). The very slowly-progressing process of high speed rail in California is in many ways due to both the high land valuations of that state and a political environment in which legal objections to such projects are easy to mount. The easiest places to proceed with the project are in the relatively depopulated and low-land-value Central Valley. Geography also plays a role in constraining potential routes, most especially within the San Francisco Bay Area (and especially especially along the San Francisco Peninsula, some of the highest-valued land in the world), and in crossing the Tehachapi mountains at the southern end of the Central Valley, through which there are very few viable routes. These create choke points by which interests opposed to, or simply looking to benefit disproportionately from, the project can focus obstruction efforts, and they have. In darker moments, I reflect that it might be opportune to wait for a major San Andreas Fault movement to press forward with rail plans, whilst opposition is both defunded and occupied with other concerns.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

It is the layout. They had a nice bypass set up, but the first day the train derailed and it has just recently re-opened. Sharing track with freight is a PITA: the freight trains don't care about going fast (so no really straight tracks) and they often have priority especially if the cascade is running off schedule, causing even more delays. Not sure where they are going to build new straight-enough HSR track unless they employ lots of viaducts like china does.

UtopiaPunk 3y ago
Legally, Amtrak is supposed to have priority, and freight trains are required to pull off. But freight trains usually get priority because that's what the railway wants, and Amtrak doesn't have the political muscle to do much. But it's illegal. https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Amtrak-has-priority-over-freight-but-5923268.php https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Amtrak-has-priority-o...
- bombcar 3y ago
  There are tons of loopholes, the biggest of which is running freights that are longer than every siding ...
- junofan 3y ago
  I highly doubt Amtrak will suddenly run on time if enough people write Congress like their video suggests. The delays are egregious. Can’t they just pay for priority?
  - afavour 3y ago
    > Can’t they just pay for priority? With what money? Oh, the extra money they could be allocated by… Congress?
    - junofan 3y ago
      Amtrak sells tickets.

twelvechairs 3y ago

HSR can use the same rails (standard gauge) if they are in a good state (i.e. fine in most of the rest of the world, not in the USA which is far behind on rail safety). Big differences are turning radii (HSR obviously wont go around sharp corners easily) and station distance (HSR will want stops ~50-100km apart, older railways its often more like 1-5). That generally means a new route rather than using an existing one.

mikepurvis 3y ago
Crossings and setbacks too. An HSR line is like an interchange access highway— fenced off and grade separated from everything around it.
ehnto 3y ago
HSR really wants total seperation, zero crossings, no shared traffic. That is what ultimately allows safe high speed travel. Otherwise you are slowing down everywhere and can only run as fast as other trains on the line, unless you also impact their services by having them pull off.
- realityking 3y ago
  This is how German HSR works, large part of the track are shared between freight and passenger trains with only some limited exceptions. They are however actively removing crossings and generally everything HSR is electrified.
bluGill 3y ago
If the track is built to HSR in the first place. You can't have crossings on HSR track because someone who carefully looks both ways before crossing will be kill by a train they didn't see. Even then while it is possible it doesn't work well, as HSR will catch up to whatever else is on the track and then must slow down.. the cost to build HSR track is so high (even at world leading low prices) that you have to run several trains per hour on those tracks to pay for it, and so there isn't free space for lower speed trains in between. Nobody makes a switch that can be crossed at high speeds so the slower train cannot just get out of the way no matter how much you might wish for that to wosk.