6 ms·

Map Shows Where 220mph Trains Would Go in the U.S.

27 points by cajuntrep 14y ago

rayiner 14y ago
I think a lot of the HST skeptics would do well to spend some time in the northeast. In just 10 years, Amtrak has captured 75% of the traffic between NYC and DC, and over 50% of the traffic between NYC and Boston. It's phenomenal. At my office, nobody takes flights between NYC/PHL/DC anymore. Why go out to LaGuardia when you can walk over to Penn Station, enjoy WiFi and a ton of leg room, not to mention a snack car, and get there in about the same amount of time as flying? Oh, and you're dropped off right in downtown DC, instead of Reagan or in the god forsaken suburbs if you're unlucky enough to land in Dulles. And Amtrak isn't even very good! Years of neglect and bad regulation have left the service with old cars (except Acela), crumbling infrastructure, etc. But it beats the hell out of air travel, and the differential will only get more dramatic as fuel prices continue to increase.
- calinet6 14y ago
  Sure would be nice if the prices were more competitive. You can still get in & out of DC round trip for about half the price of a one-way Acela trip (from Boston). Not worth the premium in most cases... but I want to like it!
  - rayiner 14y ago
    So booking a random trip: Wed Mar. 6 to Fri. Mar. 8. For business hours flights (leaving NY at 2 pm, returning at 9AM) I can get UAL for $175 round trip. But that's JFK <-> IAD. But Midtown to JFK is a $50 35 minute cab ride, and Dulles to downtown DC is an $80 40 minute cab ride. Add in an hour at the airport in JFK and half an hour getting out of IAD, you're looking at $305 round trip, and 4 hours for each leg. The Acela Express will get you downtown to downtown for $300 even ($150 each way) in three hours including boarding time/disembark time at each station. The Northeast Regional will get you there for $100 round trip in three and a half hours including boarding/disembark time.
    - calinet6 14y ago
      Yep, I was talking about DC, which (from memory) was $279 each way on Acela, but only $140 round trip on Jet Blue into Reagan. Sounds good to NYC though—I will consider it for sure. Also, you highlight an interesting deficiency of the Acela: it's only 30 minutes difference in time. On the BOS->DC route it's only a 70 minute advantage on a ~6.5 hour trip. Sort of makes HSR seem unnecessary when compared to "slow" standard regional train service. It's just not that much better. They need true grade-separated modern HSR on this route. It would be excellent.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        I was talking DC to NYC. It can be $250, but there are $150 Acela trains spaced throughout the day. There is a 10 am Acela for $150 that gets you there into DC in time for a late lunch or afternoon meeting. The best part is: you can actually schedule that lunch and count on probably being able to make it.
- NoPiece 14y ago
  As a skeptic, I look at the northeast, and say that may be the one place in the country it makes sense to have high speed rail because of the population density, and close proximity of the major cities.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    You don't care so much about the density in the abstract, but the size, density, and proximity of the major cities. Several other regions of the U.S. compare favorably to Europe in this regard. E.g. the Great Lakes mega-region has about the same population as France. It's longer (St. Louis to Montreal is about 1,000 miles versus Toulouse to Metz which is about 6,00 miles), but it's also more linear versus France which is squarish. Most importantly, it has 11 metro areas with a population greater than 2 million (leaving out Minneapolis), while France has only 2. If France can have high speed train from Paris (about the size of Chicago) to Marsaille (about the size of Milwaukee) why can't we have high speed rail between Chicago and Milwaukee (which are much closer together)? Or for that matter Chicago and Detroit, the latter of which is bigger than the 2-4'th largest French metro areas put together?
    - yummyfajitas 14y ago
      Between Paris and Marseille are Dijon and Lyon. Between Chicago and Milwaukee are Franksville, Caledonia and Pleasant Prairie.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        A more apropos comparison is Paris-Lyon-Marseilles (480 miles, 14 million people) to Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Minneapolis (430 miles, 14.9 million people). A train from Detroit-Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis would in a single 700 mile line cover 1/3 the population of France.
        NoPiece 14y ago
        NYC is the largest city in the US and the economic capital. DC is the political capital. Both are huge tourist destinations. There are myriad reasons people travel between them. Minneapolis to Detroit, much less so. The 16 non stop flights (8 each way) between Detroit and Minneapolis probably cover most the needs without an infrastructure project that would cost tens or hundred of billions of dollars.
- Turing_Machine 14y ago
  "I think a lot of the HST skeptics would do well to spend some time in the northeast" Taking "the northeast" to be New England + New York + Pennsylvania + New Jersey, it covers ~135,000 square miles and has a population of ~56 million people. New Mexico alone has an area of ~121,000 square miles and has only ~2 million people. This matters. A lot.
  - timr 14y ago
    Yeah. It makes it a lot easier to build a truly high-speed train. It's harder for a train to go 200mph through densely populated areas where NIMBYs don't want anything built. Cows, on the other hand, don't care. The train also doesn't have to stop very often -- a train can stop in Albequerque and Santa Fe, and zip north to Colorado Springs and Denver. The biggest challenge to high-speed trains in the US is not population density or technology; the problem is political.
    - Turing_Machine 14y ago
      So you're figuring that the passenger volume between Albuquerque and Santa Fe compares with say, that between New York and Philadelphia?
    - rdouble 14y ago
      Topography is also a big challenge.
    - brc 14y ago
      You're forgetting the immense networks of rural roads. With high speed trains you can't just throw a level crossing up, and wait for a pickup full of chickens to get t-boned at 220mph. And then there is the wildlife - you'd need high fences the entire distance to stop wildlife and stock from wandering onto the tracks, but that also causes other issues with wildlife corridors. Those rural areas are also largely divided into private property holdings, which have to be resumed meaning compensation for all the property owners. You're right, the problem is political, in that the politics of the country is set up in such a way that a centralised body cannot just go and throw railways everywhere. But that is a design feature, not a bug. The same governmental processes that stop people ending up with a nuclear waste dump next to their town also apply to railway lines. You can't just plan this stuff from a central office in Washington and make it so.
- notJim 14y ago
  I can't help but be skeptical when it costs from 3-7 times more than the bus and is only 20-30 minutes shorter of a trip. Of course, it's far more comfortable, but for a 3-5 hr trip, the trade-off is well worth it.
  - jonknee 14y ago
    No traffic delays. Important to consider if you're in town for a meeting.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    If you book in advance, the Northeast Regional is $50 each way from NYC to DC, versus about $30 for the Washington Deluxe bus. And a far more comfortable trip that's less likely to get stuck in traffic.
    - notJim 14y ago
      Oh, I honestly didn't know the train was that cheap when you book in advance. I've only ever booked the week of. Still, it's like an hour longer of a trip than the bus. (I guess I haven't had bad experiences with traffic--on my last trip to Boston, we arrived early.)
- rdouble 14y ago
  Another reason to be skeptical is that the longest existing HST line is still only 1/2 as long as the distance from NYC to Los Angeles. If the USA is really interested in country wide coverage like that, it would be unprecedented.
- jzwinck 14y ago
  You're right, Amtrak in the Northeast isn't very good. It's the only mode of transportation that completely prohibits carriage of bicycles. And simultaneously one of the few major rail services in the world to do so.
- aheilbut 14y ago
  And by 2035, they are planning to get the WiFi working properly.
calinet6 14y ago
This is a little ridiculous. High-speed rail in the United States will never be feasible on a country-wide scale. It's just not necessary or logical. 14 hours across the country—or even 8 hours at nearly twice the viable speed—will never match the speed or efficiency of air travel. High speed rail can compete in the regional corridors where it makes sense. And it should. But the United States is huge. It's not Europe. We shouldn't expect this or desire it.
- rayiner 14y ago
  There's two physical factors working against air travel here: 1) it's much less cost-effective to make a flight comfortable, in terms of leg room, food, space to walk around, than a train trip; this difference only gets bigger as liquid fuel prices go up; 2) as a practical matter you can't build airports in the heart of urban centers. If there was a 14 hour train between NYC and LA, with the leg room and amenities of existing Amtrak trains, I think it would give air travel a run for its money. Taking a cab to LaGuardia takes about half an hour from Manhattan, and it's like a $40 cab ride. Another half an hour in LA, probably $50+ cab ride. Add at least an hour at the airport for each scenario, plus the 4-5 hours of actual travel time, and you're looking at an 8 hour trip. Would you rather have 8 hours of cab -> airport -> airplane -> airport -> cab, or 14 hours just walking from a downtown train station, onto a train, and out of another downtown train station? Would you rather spend 5 hours crammed into an economy class seat, or 14 hours in an Amtrak train with a ton of leg room, where you can get up, go to the snack car, etc?
  - brc 14y ago
    On your point (1) : making a flight comfortable is just a case of paying more money for bigger seats and better food. However, people are extremely price-sensitive about travel, and will eagerly give up comfort for price savings. You can't argue against this : the market bears it out. A train service wanting to compete will reduce seat size and service to something approximating what air travel does now.
    - rayiner 14y ago
p1mrx 14y ago
Doesn't 220MPH seem insufficiently ambitious? That's at least 12 hours to get from New York to Los Angeles.
- lutusp 14y ago
  > Doesn't 220MPH seem insufficiently ambitious? It accommodates the state of the track (in most cases). To go faster would require wholesale replacement of most existing track, which is thought to be too expensive (but is the approach that was used in Japan and France). > That's at least 12 hours to get from New York to Los Angeles. I think many people would accept that, if the price was reasonable and the cars had suitable accommodations.
  - calinet6 14y ago
    Also - probably averaging in realistic stops, which is a lot of slowdown/speedup delay.
  - kposehn 14y ago
    > It accommodates the state of the track (in most cases). To go faster would require wholesale replacement of most existing track, which is thought to be too expensive (but is the approach that was used in Japan and France). It does not accomodate current tracks. No rail lines in the US are designed for speeds over 150 mph.
    - lutusp 14y ago
      I should have said that a comparatively modest roadbed upgrade would allow this speed -- but only compared to the effort required for the higher speeds possible elsewhere.
      - kposehn 14y ago
        Ah, ok. I would caveat that it is the alignment you can use for high speeds, not necessarily the roadbed, but your point remains the same then.
secabeen 14y ago
It's a nice map, but it elides over the difficult parts of high-speed rail in the US. Running track through rural areas is easy, modulo getting across the Rockies and the Sierras. The hard part is routing through urban areas. Look at the Los Angeles and New York "stations". They cover the entire metro areas. Same with San Francisco. No one wants to be forced to sell their house to the government for high-speed rail, but without new dedicated track carved deep into the hearts of our urban areas, it will never compete with air travel.
simonsarris 14y ago
I think that the high-speed rail map that the Obama Administration put up on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) website is a little more close to a tenable future. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/High_Speed_Rail_07-09-2009.JPG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/High_Spee... It highlights the boston-washington route (NEC on the map or BosWash some like to say[1]), which seems to be easily the most do-able route in the near future, in terms of people served. I like it. The idea, I mean. But its hard to get people to come around to spending money on anything remotely like this seems. I think all societies should have very lofty goals published and promoted often[2], but I think at the same time we need to always provide concrete reality-scale plans when trying to make the argument to non-believers, which is why I prefer the ARRA map, or something even smaller. I think there are some larger societal issues that affect the value of things like this too. I wish Americans would (could) travel more, and see what other developed countries are like. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boswash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boswash [2] "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea" -Antoine de Saint Exupéry
- kposehn 14y ago
  The problem with the Obama map is that it still suffers from the same problem as the one posted: topography. It is more a map to appease voters, without bearing into mind the cost of building it. If you look at it and go "oh wow, I can go from LA to SF up the coast", you of course can't tell that it would be madly expensive to build.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  I wish Americans would (could) travel more, and see what other developed countries are like. If they did this, they would realize why high speed rail makes sense in other developed countries but not in the US. Most other developed countries are tiny. Aomori-Kagoshima (top of Japan to bottom) - 1928 km. London-Moscow - 2885km. Paris, France to Mosul, Iraq - 4522km. NY-LA - 4469km. And unlike the NY-LA route, all of the routes I mentioned have a lot of destinations in between the endpoints. For example, on the Paris-Mosul route you find Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Syria. Between NY and LA there are Omaha, Chicago, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Denver and Vegas. Even the short London-Moscow route passes through Antwerp, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Warsaw and Minsk.
ashika 14y ago
This can't be serious. Quincy, Illinois?
fleitz 14y ago
Here is why high speed rail in the US and Canada is stupid. NY to SF: 2500 miles. London to Moscow: 1500. People who live between NY and SF: 313 million. People who live between London and Moscow: 731 million. The economics of it are completely backward, and you can't take high speed rail from London all the way to Moscow. We'd be much better off to start by improving I80 and just wait for driverless cars (busses) to go 250 mph. Also, yes, high speed rail in the sprawl (Boswash) makes sense, but it doesn't really make much sense anywhere else except for maybe Seattle to LA. Linking the coasts with high speed rail is probably pretty silly unless you can start getting close to 350-450 mph.
- jonknee 14y ago
  High speed rail wouldn't be primarily for 2,500 mile trips. It's also super inconvenient to drive across the country on the insterstate system.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- kposehn 14y ago
  Seattle-LA isn't really viable. Seattle-Portland certainly is though, but it has the Cascades service doing 90mph.
- rayiner 14y ago
  You don't have to link NY to SF. High-speed rail in the U.S. makes the most sense for linking the mega-regions. Chicago to Montreal is less than twice the distance from Bordeaux to Strasbourg and hits much bigger cities along the way. Birmingham, AL to Raleigh, NC is about the same distance hits similar sized metro areas. Also: the fact that cars are driverless doesn't change the physics of 250 mph cars...
  - fleitz 14y ago
    Actually driverless cars experience much different physics... Driverless cars can squeeze together much tighter drastically reducing wind resistance. Even the lead car will experience less drag because of vacuum effect. 250 MPH cars also need much straighter roads and allow for greater traffic flow which changes the economic modelling for highways leading to shorter journeys. Driverless cars also allow for greater degrees of sharing meaning that you'd only need a few 250 MPH cars shared amongst many individuals. Of course you don't have to link NY and SF but that's what the map shows, well to be fair the map shows, NY to LA.
kposehn 14y ago
There is an extremely glaring problem with this map: topography. The route from LA to Seattle, with the branch additional bay-area line, has to deal with the following: 1. The tehachapi mountains, where the current rail line can handle up to 40 freight trains per day. This line is at capacity and cannot handle anything more. Worse even, it is mostly single track with steep grades and sharp curves. No regular passenger trains have run over it since the late 70's. In order to put a high-speed line here, it would cost billions, requiring many long tunnels through solid rock, along with large bridges and fills. 2: The Sacramento River Canyon, north of Redding. This is the only workable pass up to the Klamath River drainage, and quite frankly is extremely tough to pass. It has many tight curves, has had plenty of washouts and is a very steep grade past Dunsmuir. The I-5 alignment goes up and down and up, while taking up the only side of the canyon which can handle a right-of-way. There is no other option to get north, so this is pretty much right out. 3: The Siskiyou mountains, or the cascade mountains, to make it to Eugene. Both of them have rail lines, again with many sharp curves and steep grades. The Siskiyou line is absolutely brutal, which caused the Southern Pacific (the original owner, bought by the Union Pacific in 1996) to sell it off to RailTex. It handles 1 through train daily and is prone to washouts and landslides. The Cascade line is also single track, rough and at capacity. No other passes which can accomodate a line with moderate grades and few curves exist, requiring another expensive series of tunnels. So, that one is pretty much a wash, as you can tell. The route to San Diego from LA is already very good with high speeds (90MPH), but for whatever reason they want to route it through San Bernadino. This is absolutely stupid, as the route would follow I-15 and is already extremely rough with many changes in elevation and no consistent routing. There was a previous Santa Fe rail line through here that was promptly abandoned once they built the Surfliner route along the coast. The route from LA to Denver is a pipe dream, sadly, due to: 1: Cima Hill, which runs through Mojave National Preserve. The only way across is along the existing Union Pacific alignment, which has several nasty curves. 2: The Wasatch Mountains. There is no good pass here outside Soldier Summit, which is rather brutal. Look it up to see what I mean. 3. The Rocky Mountains. You want to put a railroad through that? Go north through echo canyon and across the continental divide in Wyoming. That is the only HST viable route there, wide open for the taking. The route from New Mexico to Denver is mostly owned by the state of New Mexico and Amtrak, but suffers from the beast that is Raton Pass. 3% grades, very tight curves and lots of general unpleasantness south of Trinidad. The lead up to it is nice, flat and high-speed, but the pass itself is nasty. I could keep going, but I think the point has been made. Maps are all well and good, but what rules HST design is topography vs. budget. In order to do like the Japanese and punch a line down rough land, you have to spend gobs of cash and years of effort. With tight budgets and a booming national debt, it isn't really an option. However, the Northeast Corridor is an excellent place, and several other routes across the midwest are also great candidates, should there be traffic to support them. Chicago-NYC would be a very good one, as the route has high demand and can follow water-level routes with gentle grades and few curves. What makes HST succeed is either great land for it (France) or $$$ (Japan, China) or both in spades (Germany). I want to see it happen, but we have to restrict it to where it makes sense. Those routes are: 1: Chicago/Great-Lakes to NYC 2: LA to San Diego (the surfliner would be packed if the trip was on an HST) 3: Boston-NYC-DC-Richmond. Replace the Acela with something faster on a grade-separated alignment. 4: Texas to Kansas City - this is seriously one of the best places around for HST. Nice, flat, open and fast. 5: Eugene to Seattle. Only tough thing is crossing the Columbia river as the existing rail bridge is at capacity and has a 35mph slow order. 6: Florida. They just need to bite the bullet and do it.
nemothekid 14y ago
I recently read a comment on Reddit that went into some of the pitfalls a HSR would have. http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/17nvfk/i_really_hope_this_idea_doesnt_fall_through_like/c87fv0c http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/17nvfk/i_really_hope_t... Theres quite a bit of back and forth, but the main conclusion is that the market for HSR won't support one. It seems in most cases people would rather fly, or the distance is short enough that a HSR doesn't make any sense.
jstalin 14y ago
Outside the NE corridor, any significant amount of rail is a pipe dream. Why spent trillions to provide service that planes are already providing more than enough service to? At least I can take a plane from here to wherever I want in the United States. Rail? Oh, I'd have to travel to the nearest station (potentially hours away) and then hope it goes anywhere near where I want to go. And judging based on that map, it will go near maybe 5% of the locations I'd like to go. And the linked article doesn't seem to take into account the massive operating subsidies that rail requires. It's a money loser nearly everywhere (except, sometimes, in the NE corridor). "In 1970, the year before Amtrak took over the nation's passenger trains, average rail fares were about one-third less than average airfares—about 18 cents (in today's pennies) versus 27 cents per passenger mile. Four decades of Amtrak management have reversed this ratio and more: by 2011, average rail fares were 110 percent greater than airfares—about 28.5 cents versus 13.8 cents per passenger mile (see Figure 1)." [1] [1]: www.cato.org/pubs/pas/PA712.pdf
- fleitz 14y ago
  Airfare also relies heavily on subsidies, but fortunately investors keep investing in airlines, so it doesn't cost the public much.
asthasr 14y ago
It would be excellent to have high-speed rail in the southeast, in the Atlanta-Raleigh ("I-85") crescent. This region will eventually be a major urban agglomeration, and improved transit would help its future immensely, as well as the development of the secondary cities along the route. Raleigh, Charlotte, and Atlanta are doing fine; but the Upstate (South Carolina) and Piedmont Triad (North Carolina) could use some help, and being more integrated with the overall region would make a lot of sense.

27 points by cajuntrep 14y ago

I think a lot of the HST skeptics would do well to spend some time in the northeast. In just 10 years, Amtrak has captured 75% of the traffic between NYC and DC, and over 50% of the traffic between NYC and Boston. It's phenomenal. At my office, nobody takes flights between NYC/PHL/DC anymore. Why go out to LaGuardia when you can walk over to Penn Station, enjoy WiFi and a ton of leg room, not to mention a snack car, and get there in about the same amount of time as flying? Oh, and you're dropped off right in downtown DC, instead of Reagan or in the god forsaken suburbs if you're unlucky enough to land in Dulles. And Amtrak isn't even very good! Years of neglect and bad regulation have left the service with old cars (except Acela), crumbling infrastructure, etc. But it beats the hell out of air travel, and the differential will only get more dramatic as fuel prices continue to increase.

calinet6 14y ago
Sure would be nice if the prices were more competitive. You can still get in & out of DC round trip for about half the price of a one-way Acela trip (from Boston). Not worth the premium in most cases... but I want to like it!
- rayiner 14y ago
  So booking a random trip: Wed Mar. 6 to Fri. Mar. 8. For business hours flights (leaving NY at 2 pm, returning at 9AM) I can get UAL for $175 round trip. But that's JFK <-> IAD. But Midtown to JFK is a $50 35 minute cab ride, and Dulles to downtown DC is an $80 40 minute cab ride. Add in an hour at the airport in JFK and half an hour getting out of IAD, you're looking at $305 round trip, and 4 hours for each leg. The Acela Express will get you downtown to downtown for $300 even ($150 each way) in three hours including boarding time/disembark time at each station. The Northeast Regional will get you there for $100 round trip in three and a half hours including boarding/disembark time.
  - calinet6 14y ago
    Yep, I was talking about DC, which (from memory) was $279 each way on Acela, but only $140 round trip on Jet Blue into Reagan. Sounds good to NYC though—I will consider it for sure. Also, you highlight an interesting deficiency of the Acela: it's only 30 minutes difference in time. On the BOS->DC route it's only a 70 minute advantage on a ~6.5 hour trip. Sort of makes HSR seem unnecessary when compared to "slow" standard regional train service. It's just not that much better. They need true grade-separated modern HSR on this route. It would be excellent.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      I was talking DC to NYC. It can be $250, but there are $150 Acela trains spaced throughout the day. There is a 10 am Acela for $150 that gets you there into DC in time for a late lunch or afternoon meeting. The best part is: you can actually schedule that lunch and count on probably being able to make it.
NoPiece 14y ago
As a skeptic, I look at the northeast, and say that may be the one place in the country it makes sense to have high speed rail because of the population density, and close proximity of the major cities.
- rayiner 14y ago
  You don't care so much about the density in the abstract, but the size, density, and proximity of the major cities. Several other regions of the U.S. compare favorably to Europe in this regard. E.g. the Great Lakes mega-region has about the same population as France. It's longer (St. Louis to Montreal is about 1,000 miles versus Toulouse to Metz which is about 6,00 miles), but it's also more linear versus France which is squarish. Most importantly, it has 11 metro areas with a population greater than 2 million (leaving out Minneapolis), while France has only 2. If France can have high speed train from Paris (about the size of Chicago) to Marsaille (about the size of Milwaukee) why can't we have high speed rail between Chicago and Milwaukee (which are much closer together)? Or for that matter Chicago and Detroit, the latter of which is bigger than the 2-4'th largest French metro areas put together?
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    Between Paris and Marseille are Dijon and Lyon. Between Chicago and Milwaukee are Franksville, Caledonia and Pleasant Prairie.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      A more apropos comparison is Paris-Lyon-Marseilles (480 miles, 14 million people) to Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Minneapolis (430 miles, 14.9 million people). A train from Detroit-Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis would in a single 700 mile line cover 1/3 the population of France.
      - NoPiece 14y ago
        NYC is the largest city in the US and the economic capital. DC is the political capital. Both are huge tourist destinations. There are myriad reasons people travel between them. Minneapolis to Detroit, much less so. The 16 non stop flights (8 each way) between Detroit and Minneapolis probably cover most the needs without an infrastructure project that would cost tens or hundred of billions of dollars.
Turing_Machine 14y ago
"I think a lot of the HST skeptics would do well to spend some time in the northeast" Taking "the northeast" to be New England + New York + Pennsylvania + New Jersey, it covers ~135,000 square miles and has a population of ~56 million people. New Mexico alone has an area of ~121,000 square miles and has only ~2 million people. This matters. A lot.
- timr 14y ago
  Yeah. It makes it a lot easier to build a truly high-speed train. It's harder for a train to go 200mph through densely populated areas where NIMBYs don't want anything built. Cows, on the other hand, don't care. The train also doesn't have to stop very often -- a train can stop in Albequerque and Santa Fe, and zip north to Colorado Springs and Denver. The biggest challenge to high-speed trains in the US is not population density or technology; the problem is political.
  - Turing_Machine 14y ago
    So you're figuring that the passenger volume between Albuquerque and Santa Fe compares with say, that between New York and Philadelphia?
  - rdouble 14y ago
    Topography is also a big challenge.
  - brc 14y ago
    You're forgetting the immense networks of rural roads. With high speed trains you can't just throw a level crossing up, and wait for a pickup full of chickens to get t-boned at 220mph. And then there is the wildlife - you'd need high fences the entire distance to stop wildlife and stock from wandering onto the tracks, but that also causes other issues with wildlife corridors. Those rural areas are also largely divided into private property holdings, which have to be resumed meaning compensation for all the property owners. You're right, the problem is political, in that the politics of the country is set up in such a way that a centralised body cannot just go and throw railways everywhere. But that is a design feature, not a bug. The same governmental processes that stop people ending up with a nuclear waste dump next to their town also apply to railway lines. You can't just plan this stuff from a central office in Washington and make it so.
notJim 14y ago
I can't help but be skeptical when it costs from 3-7 times more than the bus and is only 20-30 minutes shorter of a trip. Of course, it's far more comfortable, but for a 3-5 hr trip, the trade-off is well worth it.
- jonknee 14y ago
  No traffic delays. Important to consider if you're in town for a meeting.
- rayiner 14y ago
  If you book in advance, the Northeast Regional is $50 each way from NYC to DC, versus about $30 for the Washington Deluxe bus. And a far more comfortable trip that's less likely to get stuck in traffic.
  - notJim 14y ago
    Oh, I honestly didn't know the train was that cheap when you book in advance. I've only ever booked the week of. Still, it's like an hour longer of a trip than the bus. (I guess I haven't had bad experiences with traffic--on my last trip to Boston, we arrived early.)
rdouble 14y ago
Another reason to be skeptical is that the longest existing HST line is still only 1/2 as long as the distance from NYC to Los Angeles. If the USA is really interested in country wide coverage like that, it would be unprecedented.
jzwinck 14y ago
You're right, Amtrak in the Northeast isn't very good. It's the only mode of transportation that completely prohibits carriage of bicycles. And simultaneously one of the few major rail services in the world to do so.
aheilbut 14y ago
And by 2035, they are planning to get the WiFi working properly.

calinet6 14y ago

This is a little ridiculous. High-speed rail in the United States will never be feasible on a country-wide scale. It's just not necessary or logical. 14 hours across the country—or even 8 hours at nearly twice the viable speed—will never match the speed or efficiency of air travel. High speed rail can compete in the regional corridors where it makes sense. And it should. But the United States is huge. It's not Europe. We shouldn't expect this or desire it.

rayiner 14y ago
There's two physical factors working against air travel here: 1) it's much less cost-effective to make a flight comfortable, in terms of leg room, food, space to walk around, than a train trip; this difference only gets bigger as liquid fuel prices go up; 2) as a practical matter you can't build airports in the heart of urban centers. If there was a 14 hour train between NYC and LA, with the leg room and amenities of existing Amtrak trains, I think it would give air travel a run for its money. Taking a cab to LaGuardia takes about half an hour from Manhattan, and it's like a $40 cab ride. Another half an hour in LA, probably $50+ cab ride. Add at least an hour at the airport for each scenario, plus the 4-5 hours of actual travel time, and you're looking at an 8 hour trip. Would you rather have 8 hours of cab -> airport -> airplane -> airport -> cab, or 14 hours just walking from a downtown train station, onto a train, and out of another downtown train station? Would you rather spend 5 hours crammed into an economy class seat, or 14 hours in an Amtrak train with a ton of leg room, where you can get up, go to the snack car, etc?
- brc 14y ago
  On your point (1) : making a flight comfortable is just a case of paying more money for bigger seats and better food. However, people are extremely price-sensitive about travel, and will eagerly give up comfort for price savings. You can't argue against this : the market bears it out. A train service wanting to compete will reduce seat size and service to something approximating what air travel does now.
  - rayiner 14y ago

p1mrx 14y ago

Doesn't 220MPH seem insufficiently ambitious? That's at least 12 hours to get from New York to Los Angeles.

lutusp 14y ago
> Doesn't 220MPH seem insufficiently ambitious? It accommodates the state of the track (in most cases). To go faster would require wholesale replacement of most existing track, which is thought to be too expensive (but is the approach that was used in Japan and France). > That's at least 12 hours to get from New York to Los Angeles. I think many people would accept that, if the price was reasonable and the cars had suitable accommodations.
- calinet6 14y ago
  Also - probably averaging in realistic stops, which is a lot of slowdown/speedup delay.
- kposehn 14y ago
  > It accommodates the state of the track (in most cases). To go faster would require wholesale replacement of most existing track, which is thought to be too expensive (but is the approach that was used in Japan and France). It does not accomodate current tracks. No rail lines in the US are designed for speeds over 150 mph.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    I should have said that a comparatively modest roadbed upgrade would allow this speed -- but only compared to the effort required for the higher speeds possible elsewhere.
    - kposehn 14y ago
      Ah, ok. I would caveat that it is the alignment you can use for high speeds, not necessarily the roadbed, but your point remains the same then.

secabeen 14y ago

It's a nice map, but it elides over the difficult parts of high-speed rail in the US. Running track through rural areas is easy, modulo getting across the Rockies and the Sierras. The hard part is routing through urban areas. Look at the Los Angeles and New York "stations". They cover the entire metro areas. Same with San Francisco. No one wants to be forced to sell their house to the government for high-speed rail, but without new dedicated track carved deep into the hearts of our urban areas, it will never compete with air travel.

simonsarris 14y ago

I think that the high-speed rail map that the Obama Administration put up on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) website is a little more close to a tenable future. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/High_Speed_Rail_07-09-2009.JPG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/High_Spee... It highlights the boston-washington route (NEC on the map or BosWash some like to say[1]), which seems to be easily the most do-able route in the near future, in terms of people served. I like it. The idea, I mean. But its hard to get people to come around to spending money on anything remotely like this seems. I think all societies should have very lofty goals published and promoted often[2], but I think at the same time we need to always provide concrete reality-scale plans when trying to make the argument to non-believers, which is why I prefer the ARRA map, or something even smaller. I think there are some larger societal issues that affect the value of things like this too. I wish Americans would (could) travel more, and see what other developed countries are like. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boswash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boswash [2] "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea" -Antoine de Saint Exupéry

kposehn 14y ago
The problem with the Obama map is that it still suffers from the same problem as the one posted: topography. It is more a map to appease voters, without bearing into mind the cost of building it. If you look at it and go "oh wow, I can go from LA to SF up the coast", you of course can't tell that it would be madly expensive to build.
yummyfajitas 14y ago
I wish Americans would (could) travel more, and see what other developed countries are like. If they did this, they would realize why high speed rail makes sense in other developed countries but not in the US. Most other developed countries are tiny. Aomori-Kagoshima (top of Japan to bottom) - 1928 km. London-Moscow - 2885km. Paris, France to Mosul, Iraq - 4522km. NY-LA - 4469km. And unlike the NY-LA route, all of the routes I mentioned have a lot of destinations in between the endpoints. For example, on the Paris-Mosul route you find Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Syria. Between NY and LA there are Omaha, Chicago, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Denver and Vegas. Even the short London-Moscow route passes through Antwerp, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Warsaw and Minsk.

ashika 14y ago

This can't be serious. Quincy, Illinois?

fleitz 14y ago

Here is why high speed rail in the US and Canada is stupid. NY to SF: 2500 miles. London to Moscow: 1500. People who live between NY and SF: 313 million. People who live between London and Moscow: 731 million. The economics of it are completely backward, and you can't take high speed rail from London all the way to Moscow. We'd be much better off to start by improving I80 and just wait for driverless cars (busses) to go 250 mph. Also, yes, high speed rail in the sprawl (Boswash) makes sense, but it doesn't really make much sense anywhere else except for maybe Seattle to LA. Linking the coasts with high speed rail is probably pretty silly unless you can start getting close to 350-450 mph.

jonknee 14y ago
High speed rail wouldn't be primarily for 2,500 mile trips. It's also super inconvenient to drive across the country on the insterstate system.
- deleted 14y ago
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kposehn 14y ago
Seattle-LA isn't really viable. Seattle-Portland certainly is though, but it has the Cascades service doing 90mph.
rayiner 14y ago
You don't have to link NY to SF. High-speed rail in the U.S. makes the most sense for linking the mega-regions. Chicago to Montreal is less than twice the distance from Bordeaux to Strasbourg and hits much bigger cities along the way. Birmingham, AL to Raleigh, NC is about the same distance hits similar sized metro areas. Also: the fact that cars are driverless doesn't change the physics of 250 mph cars...
- fleitz 14y ago
  Actually driverless cars experience much different physics... Driverless cars can squeeze together much tighter drastically reducing wind resistance. Even the lead car will experience less drag because of vacuum effect. 250 MPH cars also need much straighter roads and allow for greater traffic flow which changes the economic modelling for highways leading to shorter journeys. Driverless cars also allow for greater degrees of sharing meaning that you'd only need a few 250 MPH cars shared amongst many individuals. Of course you don't have to link NY and SF but that's what the map shows, well to be fair the map shows, NY to LA.

kposehn 14y ago

There is an extremely glaring problem with this map: topography. The route from LA to Seattle, with the branch additional bay-area line, has to deal with the following: 1. The tehachapi mountains, where the current rail line can handle up to 40 freight trains per day. This line is at capacity and cannot handle anything more. Worse even, it is mostly single track with steep grades and sharp curves. No regular passenger trains have run over it since the late 70's. In order to put a high-speed line here, it would cost billions, requiring many long tunnels through solid rock, along with large bridges and fills. 2: The Sacramento River Canyon, north of Redding. This is the only workable pass up to the Klamath River drainage, and quite frankly is extremely tough to pass. It has many tight curves, has had plenty of washouts and is a very steep grade past Dunsmuir. The I-5 alignment goes up and down and up, while taking up the only side of the canyon which can handle a right-of-way. There is no other option to get north, so this is pretty much right out. 3: The Siskiyou mountains, or the cascade mountains, to make it to Eugene. Both of them have rail lines, again with many sharp curves and steep grades. The Siskiyou line is absolutely brutal, which caused the Southern Pacific (the original owner, bought by the Union Pacific in 1996) to sell it off to RailTex. It handles 1 through train daily and is prone to washouts and landslides. The Cascade line is also single track, rough and at capacity. No other passes which can accomodate a line with moderate grades and few curves exist, requiring another expensive series of tunnels. So, that one is pretty much a wash, as you can tell. The route to San Diego from LA is already very good with high speeds (90MPH), but for whatever reason they want to route it through San Bernadino. This is absolutely stupid, as the route would follow I-15 and is already extremely rough with many changes in elevation and no consistent routing. There was a previous Santa Fe rail line through here that was promptly abandoned once they built the Surfliner route along the coast. The route from LA to Denver is a pipe dream, sadly, due to: 1: Cima Hill, which runs through Mojave National Preserve. The only way across is along the existing Union Pacific alignment, which has several nasty curves. 2: The Wasatch Mountains. There is no good pass here outside Soldier Summit, which is rather brutal. Look it up to see what I mean. 3. The Rocky Mountains. You want to put a railroad through that? Go north through echo canyon and across the continental divide in Wyoming. That is the only HST viable route there, wide open for the taking. The route from New Mexico to Denver is mostly owned by the state of New Mexico and Amtrak, but suffers from the beast that is Raton Pass. 3% grades, very tight curves and lots of general unpleasantness south of Trinidad. The lead up to it is nice, flat and high-speed, but the pass itself is nasty. I could keep going, but I think the point has been made. Maps are all well and good, but what rules HST design is topography vs. budget. In order to do like the Japanese and punch a line down rough land, you have to spend gobs of cash and years of effort. With tight budgets and a booming national debt, it isn't really an option. However, the Northeast Corridor is an excellent place, and several other routes across the midwest are also great candidates, should there be traffic to support them. Chicago-NYC would be a very good one, as the route has high demand and can follow water-level routes with gentle grades and few curves. What makes HST succeed is either great land for it (France) or $$$ (Japan, China) or both in spades (Germany). I want to see it happen, but we have to restrict it to where it makes sense. Those routes are: 1: Chicago/Great-Lakes to NYC 2: LA to San Diego (the surfliner would be packed if the trip was on an HST) 3: Boston-NYC-DC-Richmond. Replace the Acela with something faster on a grade-separated alignment. 4: Texas to Kansas City - this is seriously one of the best places around for HST. Nice, flat, open and fast. 5: Eugene to Seattle. Only tough thing is crossing the Columbia river as the existing rail bridge is at capacity and has a 35mph slow order. 6: Florida. They just need to bite the bullet and do it.

nemothekid 14y ago

I recently read a comment on Reddit that went into some of the pitfalls a HSR would have. http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/17nvfk/i_really_hope_this_idea_doesnt_fall_through_like/c87fv0c http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/17nvfk/i_really_hope_t... Theres quite a bit of back and forth, but the main conclusion is that the market for HSR won't support one. It seems in most cases people would rather fly, or the distance is short enough that a HSR doesn't make any sense.

jstalin 14y ago

Outside the NE corridor, any significant amount of rail is a pipe dream. Why spent trillions to provide service that planes are already providing more than enough service to? At least I can take a plane from here to wherever I want in the United States. Rail? Oh, I'd have to travel to the nearest station (potentially hours away) and then hope it goes anywhere near where I want to go. And judging based on that map, it will go near maybe 5% of the locations I'd like to go. And the linked article doesn't seem to take into account the massive operating subsidies that rail requires. It's a money loser nearly everywhere (except, sometimes, in the NE corridor). "In 1970, the year before Amtrak took over the nation's passenger trains, average rail fares were about one-third less than average airfares—about 18 cents (in today's pennies) versus 27 cents per passenger mile. Four decades of Amtrak management have reversed this ratio and more: by 2011, average rail fares were 110 percent greater than airfares—about 28.5 cents versus 13.8 cents per passenger mile (see Figure 1)." [1] [1]: www.cato.org/pubs/pas/PA712.pdf

fleitz 14y ago
Airfare also relies heavily on subsidies, but fortunately investors keep investing in airlines, so it doesn't cost the public much.

asthasr 14y ago

It would be excellent to have high-speed rail in the southeast, in the Atlanta-Raleigh ("I-85") crescent. This region will eventually be a major urban agglomeration, and improved transit would help its future immensely, as well as the development of the secondary cities along the route. Raleigh, Charlotte, and Atlanta are doing fine; but the Upstate (South Carolina) and Piedmont Triad (North Carolina) could use some help, and being more integrated with the overall region would make a lot of sense.