6 ms·

Train travel is for the most part impractical because it's so slow -- passenger traffic takes a back seat to freight. I've had a notion that we should national

by pstuart 12y ago

Train travel is for the most part impractical because it's so slow -- passenger traffic takes a back seat to freight. I've had a notion that we should nationalize the rail lines and invest in having it handle more passenger (and freight) traffic safely. The lines could be opened to other passenger service (hello, Virgin) and some competition could be had in that space.

tptacek 12y ago
Train travel is also impractical because no train is ever going to be competitive with an airplane on a Chicago-Houston, Chicago-Boston, or (heh) Chicago-Seattle route, simply because of the distances involved, even assuming the train runs the top operational speed of the Shanghai Maglev for the entire route. (Chicago isn't what's important; substitute Minneapolis, St. Louis, or Indianapolis; the point is: trains can't efficiently get you from any coast to or from the midwest, or for that matter from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California). The problem is geography, not freight traffic.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  Yeah, even with dedicated lines, there's no way Amtrak could ever compete on a time basis with air travel over long distances. Just a matter of distance and speed. Where the freight is a problem is on the predictability of Amtrak schedules. Delays for freight can throw off long distance Amtrak by many hours, which can make it hard to plan for your arrival.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Freight makes better use of rail infrastructure than passenger transit does. Freight should monopolize the rails; that's the allocation that does the most good for the most people.
- _delirium 12y ago
  Train travel is also impractical because no train is ever going to be competitive with an airplane on a Chicago-Houston, Chicago-Boston, or (heh) Chicago-Seattle route, simply because of the distances involved, even assuming the train runs the top operational speed of the Shanghai Maglev for the entire route. Under your hypothetical, I'd certainly take the train on some of those routes. The Shanghai Maglev's top operational speed is 268 mph. Chicago–Houston is a little over 1000 miles, so that'd make the trip 4 hours, pretty competitive with a plane (the flight is a little under 3 hours, or about 5 if you want city center to city center). Of course that hypothetical is exceedingly unlikely. But TGV-style speeds would be fine on the route, too; I'd take it if it were a 6- or 7-hour trip, if the cost were reasonable. I think the reasonable-cost part is a bigger barrier than any technical feasibility, since the economics are unlikely to work out.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    A plane would crush a 6-7-hour train ride, both in travel time and in cost.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      It wouldn't crush it in travel time, but yes likely so in cost. Travel time is realistically 5 hours right now by plane, if everything goes well, often 6+ when it doesn't (which is about half the time, because IAH-ORD on-time performance sucks). I'd definitely take a high-speed train if it existed and somehow managed to not be a bazillion dollars, which admittedly means I never will.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        If planes have to account for delays, so do trains: the on-time performance of the Acela is comparable.
    - toddsiegel 12y ago
      Most Rail stations are in downtown areas. Most large airports are outside of cities. If you're going downtown to downtown you get the driving, parking, security and waiting time back. Air travel may still be better in a pure $ and time basis, but for people like myself looking for a more comfortable travel experience than air, I would still take rail for a few $ more and a little extra time.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        Hey, I'd rather spend the time I spend in airports and airplanes in the Acela. I'll probably never fly between two Acela-connected cities. I have a strong preference for trains. That doesn't mean a massive investment in rail is a good plan for the US, or, for that matter, that Brookings is right that we're in the middle of a rail renaissance.
        akamaka 12y ago
- jdlegg 12y ago
  I disagree with this assessment. The distance from Chicago to Houston is roughly 1100 miles. Non-stop flights from O'Hare to Houston Hobby are listed on Kayak.com at 2 hours and 45 minutes. Add approx. 1 hour for pre-flight check-in, security and an average delay factor (it's O'Hare after all). That's a 3 hour and 45 minute trip time. We could add post-flight transportation from the airport to where you actually want to be and probably add another hour, but let's ignore that detail. In 2007, the French TGV set a speed record on conventional track of 357 mph. The unconventional track (maglev) record belongs to the Japanese SCMaglev and is 368 mph [0]. These were set under very experimental conditions, but if it were possible to realize equivalent speeds in a practical setting (perhaps via underground tunnels), the train trip from Chicago to Houston would require only 3 hours(!). But let's assume the above is impossible in real operating conditions. French TGV passenger routes regularly attain speeds of 200mph. This makes our Houston trip a little under 5 1/2 hours. That strikes me as quite efficient. I'm not an expert, but given the deplorable state of American infrastructure, especially rail, implementation of a system like this would most likely require starting from scratch. As such, equivalence of the French TGV seems very attainable. More likely, new innovation would lead to performance improvements over their system, which was conceived in the 1970s. Is 300mph attainable? I don't know, but it seems like a reasonable goal. That brings our Houston trip to roughly the equivalent of a flight, when including pre-flight check-in procedures. Of course, trains are safer, less energy and infrastructure intensive and a lot more pleasant. All of this without mentioning the fact that SCNF, the operator of the French TGV, achieved a $1.75 billion operating profit in 2007. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehicles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehi...
  - tptacek 12y ago
    The top operating speed of the TGV is in the neighborhood of 230MPH, isn't it? If you can cost-effectively deploy rail that averages 300MPH, rail becomes more attractive. But the average speed of the Shanghai Maglev is 155MPH. It's nothing close to 300MPH. It is extraordinarily unlikely that any train using current technology is going to average 200MPH between Chicago and Houston. Even with TGV-comparable trains, the trip from Chicago to Houston will take 8+ (heh) hours --- and that presumes an expenditure of public resources unparalleled in the last 50 years... all to get to a place where it would still be still be irrational not to take one of the many tens of airliner trips between those two cities every day.
- melling 12y ago
  Why are you providing trips that are 1000 miles rather than ones that are less than 500 or 600 miles? Everyone already knows that jets are better for 1000 mile trips. los angeles to san francisco 400 miles los angeles to san diego 150 miles NYC to Philadelphia 92 miles NYC to Boston 220 miles NYC to Washington DC 226 miles chicago to St Louis 260 miles dallas to houston 240 miles dallas to austin 200 miles austin to houston 170 miles tampa to orlando 85 miles miami to orlando 235 miles
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Because most of the economically important trips in the US are more than 600 miles apart, except for the part of the country that is already well-served by rail?
    - melling 12y ago
      To which trips are you referring? Do you have any data to support your statement? I created a quick list of cities where high-speed rail should fit the distance metric.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        Why, yes. I do have data. Thank you for asking. The top 10 cities in the US by GDP are, in order: * New York * Los Angeles * Chicago * Washington D.C. * Houston * Dallas * Philadelphia * San Francisco * Boston * Atlanta Here, for your reading pleasure, are the ground travel distances between all of those cities: New York Los Angeles 2475 Chicago 790 Washington D.C. 226 ** Houston 1416 Dallas 1389 Philadelphia 94 ** San Francisco 2907 Boston 215 ** Atlanta 750 Los Angeles Chicago 1745 Washington D.C. 2288 Houston 1379 Dallas 1235 Philadelphia 2401 San Francisco 380 Boston 2611 Atlanta 1947 Chicago Washington D.C. 696 Houston 1083 Dallas 924 Philadelphia 759 San Francisco 2130 Boston 983 Atlanta 716 Washington D.C. Houston 1400 Dallas 1328 Philadelphia 136 ** San Francisco 2816 Boston 437 ** Atlanta 639 Houston Dallas 239 Philadelphia 1544 San Francisco 1927 Boston 1848 Atlanta 792 Dallas Philadelphia 1464 San Francisco 1726 Boston 1791 Atlanta 781 Philadelphia San Francisco 2876 Boston 307 ** Atlanta 783 San Francisco Boston 3099 Atlanta 2472 Boston Atlanta 1099 I have, I hope helpfully, starred the sub-700-mile routes that are already served by the Acela. The average ground distance between these cities is (wait for it) 1,356 miles. Later You edited your comment upthread to include specific routes. My response --- apart from wondering why taxpayers in Arizona should fund a rail linkage to Orlando, the 30th biggest economy in the country, to Tampa, the 27th --- is to suggest that adding Florida to this graph would not improve the average cost of the edges.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Don't be too sure of those long-distance travel routes. Air travel is reliant on cheap and abundant petroleum. And in the U.S., peak aviation fuel has come and gone. Departures and total passenger miles are both above that level, as more efficient aircraft and higher load factors are rolled out, but peak aviation fuel was reached in 2000 -- that's nearly 15 years ago. The 2000 FAA RITA estimate for 2012 fuel use was 52% higher than actual consumption. http://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation/aerospace_forecasts/2001-2012/media/Table%2022.pdf http://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation/aerospace_forecast... Petroleum supplies past 2020 are going to be increasingly volatile (US EIA projects fracked oil extraction to peak by then). The airline industry is scared, and doesn't seem to have a good plan going forward (Boeing's "biggest breakthrough there is" is quite disapointing). Rail travel can be electrified, which liberates it from dependence on any specific fuel source. At 120 mph average speed (allowing for station stops), the 2,000 mile trip from Chicago to the West Coast would be 16 hours 40 minutes. A 4pm departure would have you arriving at about 7am the next morning for east-west travel, 11 am for west-east. Higher speeds are possible, though stops and dwell tend to reduce this. I see high-speed long-distance rail as viable. The question is how long the present energy/fuel economy can sustain itself. http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wo2hl/boeings_biofuel_breakthrough_less_than/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wo2hl/boeings_...
- superuser2 12y ago
  >Train travel is also impractical because no train is ever going to be competitive with an airplane on a Chicago-Houston, Chicago-Boston, or (heh) Chicago-Seattle route When the weather is good. In the post-winter-break rush the last few years, air traffic on the East Coast went down for a few days and was backed up for several more. The only New Yorkers who made it back to school in time were the ones who got seats on the Lake Shore Limited. When air traffic is functioning smoothly, it's faster, but in a serious winter storm/holiday travel fiasco, ~24 hours on a train beats ~1 week of delays for a flight.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Come on. Like nobody has a horror story about an Amtrak train stopping in the middle of a route, having to disembark from the train, and wait half a day for the bus that comes to finish the trip?
toddsiegel 12y ago
It's shame. In the West (Denver) where I live service is terrible. There are always huge delays due to freight priority, as you mention, and other issues. My wife and I are considering visiting her family with our infant son in the Bay Area for Christmas. We don't want to drive and don't really want to fly either. From Denver to Martinez is $526 for coach and $787 for a sleeper, which is a totally reasonable price. But it's 32+ hours, which is insane. And that's before factoring in the massive delays. It they could get this down to under 20 hours I would purchase this in a heartbeat. 1200 miles + 80 mph (no idea how fast the train goes but this seems reasonable for 2014) + 3 hours of stops (seems realistic) = 18 hours. Before the lines are opened to competition I think Amtrak should be given a chance to operate with dedicated passenger lines. If it cannot succeed at that, then open it up to competitors, or break them up and sell the routes to new companies.
- robin_reala 12y ago
  Standard high speed trains in the UK run at 125mph, but that’s pretty slow compared to countries with shinkansen type trains (e.g. Japan, Germany’s ICE, France’s TGV etc) that regularly hit 200+mph.
- SystemOut 12y ago
  We did the Martinez to Denver route about 10 years ago. I really really want to love the train and for it to be successful but we were 22 hours late arriving. Some of it was weather but we had a train car lose it's suspension near Truckee, then due to that delay the crew went "dead" due to their hours and we literally had to stop for a couple of hours in the middle of Nevada while the next crew came to us. After that we got moving and made some decent time but then a freight train had issues ahead of us so we sat somewhere in Colorado for a few hours waiting. To top it all off, the woman in the sleeper next to us ran out of extra oxygen because she wasn't expecting to be at higher elevation that long and without access to more oxygen supplies and so we had to wait for an ambulance to come. We flew back. Some of this was Amtrak's fault, some of this was not. If the food were better and the trains a little more modern we wouldn't have minded as much but even then spending 22 hours extra on that route is just not going to work for much of anyone. But with all the moving parts it takes to get right for a train to come in on some semblance of a schedule I just don't see how it will ever be anything but a niche product for long haul routes.

by pstuart 12y ago

tptacek 12y ago

Train travel is also impractical because no train is ever going to be competitive with an airplane on a Chicago-Houston, Chicago-Boston, or (heh) Chicago-Seattle route, simply because of the distances involved, even assuming the train runs the top operational speed of the Shanghai Maglev for the entire route. (Chicago isn't what's important; substitute Minneapolis, St. Louis, or Indianapolis; the point is: trains can't efficiently get you from any coast to or from the midwest, or for that matter from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California). The problem is geography, not freight traffic.

waterlesscloud 12y ago
Yeah, even with dedicated lines, there's no way Amtrak could ever compete on a time basis with air travel over long distances. Just a matter of distance and speed. Where the freight is a problem is on the predictability of Amtrak schedules. Delays for freight can throw off long distance Amtrak by many hours, which can make it hard to plan for your arrival.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Freight makes better use of rail infrastructure than passenger transit does. Freight should monopolize the rails; that's the allocation that does the most good for the most people.
_delirium 12y ago
Train travel is also impractical because no train is ever going to be competitive with an airplane on a Chicago-Houston, Chicago-Boston, or (heh) Chicago-Seattle route, simply because of the distances involved, even assuming the train runs the top operational speed of the Shanghai Maglev for the entire route. Under your hypothetical, I'd certainly take the train on some of those routes. The Shanghai Maglev's top operational speed is 268 mph. Chicago–Houston is a little over 1000 miles, so that'd make the trip 4 hours, pretty competitive with a plane (the flight is a little under 3 hours, or about 5 if you want city center to city center). Of course that hypothetical is exceedingly unlikely. But TGV-style speeds would be fine on the route, too; I'd take it if it were a 6- or 7-hour trip, if the cost were reasonable. I think the reasonable-cost part is a bigger barrier than any technical feasibility, since the economics are unlikely to work out.
- tptacek 12y ago
  A plane would crush a 6-7-hour train ride, both in travel time and in cost.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    It wouldn't crush it in travel time, but yes likely so in cost. Travel time is realistically 5 hours right now by plane, if everything goes well, often 6+ when it doesn't (which is about half the time, because IAH-ORD on-time performance sucks). I'd definitely take a high-speed train if it existed and somehow managed to not be a bazillion dollars, which admittedly means I never will.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      If planes have to account for delays, so do trains: the on-time performance of the Acela is comparable.
  - toddsiegel 12y ago
    Most Rail stations are in downtown areas. Most large airports are outside of cities. If you're going downtown to downtown you get the driving, parking, security and waiting time back. Air travel may still be better in a pure $ and time basis, but for people like myself looking for a more comfortable travel experience than air, I would still take rail for a few $ more and a little extra time.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Hey, I'd rather spend the time I spend in airports and airplanes in the Acela. I'll probably never fly between two Acela-connected cities. I have a strong preference for trains. That doesn't mean a massive investment in rail is a good plan for the US, or, for that matter, that Brookings is right that we're in the middle of a rail renaissance.
      - akamaka 12y ago
jdlegg 12y ago
I disagree with this assessment. The distance from Chicago to Houston is roughly 1100 miles. Non-stop flights from O'Hare to Houston Hobby are listed on Kayak.com at 2 hours and 45 minutes. Add approx. 1 hour for pre-flight check-in, security and an average delay factor (it's O'Hare after all). That's a 3 hour and 45 minute trip time. We could add post-flight transportation from the airport to where you actually want to be and probably add another hour, but let's ignore that detail. In 2007, the French TGV set a speed record on conventional track of 357 mph. The unconventional track (maglev) record belongs to the Japanese SCMaglev and is 368 mph [0]. These were set under very experimental conditions, but if it were possible to realize equivalent speeds in a practical setting (perhaps via underground tunnels), the train trip from Chicago to Houston would require only 3 hours(!). But let's assume the above is impossible in real operating conditions. French TGV passenger routes regularly attain speeds of 200mph. This makes our Houston trip a little under 5 1/2 hours. That strikes me as quite efficient. I'm not an expert, but given the deplorable state of American infrastructure, especially rail, implementation of a system like this would most likely require starting from scratch. As such, equivalence of the French TGV seems very attainable. More likely, new innovation would lead to performance improvements over their system, which was conceived in the 1970s. Is 300mph attainable? I don't know, but it seems like a reasonable goal. That brings our Houston trip to roughly the equivalent of a flight, when including pre-flight check-in procedures. Of course, trains are safer, less energy and infrastructure intensive and a lot more pleasant. All of this without mentioning the fact that SCNF, the operator of the French TGV, achieved a $1.75 billion operating profit in 2007. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehicles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehi...
- tptacek 12y ago
  The top operating speed of the TGV is in the neighborhood of 230MPH, isn't it? If you can cost-effectively deploy rail that averages 300MPH, rail becomes more attractive. But the average speed of the Shanghai Maglev is 155MPH. It's nothing close to 300MPH. It is extraordinarily unlikely that any train using current technology is going to average 200MPH between Chicago and Houston. Even with TGV-comparable trains, the trip from Chicago to Houston will take 8+ (heh) hours --- and that presumes an expenditure of public resources unparalleled in the last 50 years... all to get to a place where it would still be still be irrational not to take one of the many tens of airliner trips between those two cities every day.
melling 12y ago
Why are you providing trips that are 1000 miles rather than ones that are less than 500 or 600 miles? Everyone already knows that jets are better for 1000 mile trips. los angeles to san francisco 400 miles los angeles to san diego 150 miles NYC to Philadelphia 92 miles NYC to Boston 220 miles NYC to Washington DC 226 miles chicago to St Louis 260 miles dallas to houston 240 miles dallas to austin 200 miles austin to houston 170 miles tampa to orlando 85 miles miami to orlando 235 miles
- tptacek 12y ago
  Because most of the economically important trips in the US are more than 600 miles apart, except for the part of the country that is already well-served by rail?
  - melling 12y ago
    To which trips are you referring? Do you have any data to support your statement? I created a quick list of cities where high-speed rail should fit the distance metric.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Why, yes. I do have data. Thank you for asking. The top 10 cities in the US by GDP are, in order: * New York * Los Angeles * Chicago * Washington D.C. * Houston * Dallas * Philadelphia * San Francisco * Boston * Atlanta Here, for your reading pleasure, are the ground travel distances between all of those cities: New York Los Angeles 2475 Chicago 790 Washington D.C. 226 ** Houston 1416 Dallas 1389 Philadelphia 94 ** San Francisco 2907 Boston 215 ** Atlanta 750 Los Angeles Chicago 1745 Washington D.C. 2288 Houston 1379 Dallas 1235 Philadelphia 2401 San Francisco 380 Boston 2611 Atlanta 1947 Chicago Washington D.C. 696 Houston 1083 Dallas 924 Philadelphia 759 San Francisco 2130 Boston 983 Atlanta 716 Washington D.C. Houston 1400 Dallas 1328 Philadelphia 136 ** San Francisco 2816 Boston 437 ** Atlanta 639 Houston Dallas 239 Philadelphia 1544 San Francisco 1927 Boston 1848 Atlanta 792 Dallas Philadelphia 1464 San Francisco 1726 Boston 1791 Atlanta 781 Philadelphia San Francisco 2876 Boston 307 ** Atlanta 783 San Francisco Boston 3099 Atlanta 2472 Boston Atlanta 1099 I have, I hope helpfully, starred the sub-700-mile routes that are already served by the Acela. The average ground distance between these cities is (wait for it) 1,356 miles. Later You edited your comment upthread to include specific routes. My response --- apart from wondering why taxpayers in Arizona should fund a rail linkage to Orlando, the 30th biggest economy in the country, to Tampa, the 27th --- is to suggest that adding Florida to this graph would not improve the average cost of the edges.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Don't be too sure of those long-distance travel routes. Air travel is reliant on cheap and abundant petroleum. And in the U.S., peak aviation fuel has come and gone. Departures and total passenger miles are both above that level, as more efficient aircraft and higher load factors are rolled out, but peak aviation fuel was reached in 2000 -- that's nearly 15 years ago. The 2000 FAA RITA estimate for 2012 fuel use was 52% higher than actual consumption. http://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation/aerospace_forecasts/2001-2012/media/Table%2022.pdf http://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation/aerospace_forecast... Petroleum supplies past 2020 are going to be increasingly volatile (US EIA projects fracked oil extraction to peak by then). The airline industry is scared, and doesn't seem to have a good plan going forward (Boeing's "biggest breakthrough there is" is quite disapointing). Rail travel can be electrified, which liberates it from dependence on any specific fuel source. At 120 mph average speed (allowing for station stops), the 2,000 mile trip from Chicago to the West Coast would be 16 hours 40 minutes. A 4pm departure would have you arriving at about 7am the next morning for east-west travel, 11 am for west-east. Higher speeds are possible, though stops and dwell tend to reduce this. I see high-speed long-distance rail as viable. The question is how long the present energy/fuel economy can sustain itself. http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wo2hl/boeings_biofuel_breakthrough_less_than/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wo2hl/boeings_...
superuser2 12y ago
>Train travel is also impractical because no train is ever going to be competitive with an airplane on a Chicago-Houston, Chicago-Boston, or (heh) Chicago-Seattle route When the weather is good. In the post-winter-break rush the last few years, air traffic on the East Coast went down for a few days and was backed up for several more. The only New Yorkers who made it back to school in time were the ones who got seats on the Lake Shore Limited. When air traffic is functioning smoothly, it's faster, but in a serious winter storm/holiday travel fiasco, ~24 hours on a train beats ~1 week of delays for a flight.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Come on. Like nobody has a horror story about an Amtrak train stopping in the middle of a route, having to disembark from the train, and wait half a day for the bus that comes to finish the trip?

toddsiegel 12y ago

It's shame. In the West (Denver) where I live service is terrible. There are always huge delays due to freight priority, as you mention, and other issues. My wife and I are considering visiting her family with our infant son in the Bay Area for Christmas. We don't want to drive and don't really want to fly either. From Denver to Martinez is $526 for coach and $787 for a sleeper, which is a totally reasonable price. But it's 32+ hours, which is insane. And that's before factoring in the massive delays. It they could get this down to under 20 hours I would purchase this in a heartbeat. 1200 miles + 80 mph (no idea how fast the train goes but this seems reasonable for 2014) + 3 hours of stops (seems realistic) = 18 hours. Before the lines are opened to competition I think Amtrak should be given a chance to operate with dedicated passenger lines. If it cannot succeed at that, then open it up to competitors, or break them up and sell the routes to new companies.

robin_reala 12y ago
Standard high speed trains in the UK run at 125mph, but that’s pretty slow compared to countries with shinkansen type trains (e.g. Japan, Germany’s ICE, France’s TGV etc) that regularly hit 200+mph.
SystemOut 12y ago
We did the Martinez to Denver route about 10 years ago. I really really want to love the train and for it to be successful but we were 22 hours late arriving. Some of it was weather but we had a train car lose it's suspension near Truckee, then due to that delay the crew went "dead" due to their hours and we literally had to stop for a couple of hours in the middle of Nevada while the next crew came to us. After that we got moving and made some decent time but then a freight train had issues ahead of us so we sat somewhere in Colorado for a few hours waiting. To top it all off, the woman in the sleeper next to us ran out of extra oxygen because she wasn't expecting to be at higher elevation that long and without access to more oxygen supplies and so we had to wait for an ambulance to come. We flew back. Some of this was Amtrak's fault, some of this was not. If the food were better and the trains a little more modern we wouldn't have minded as much but even then spending 22 hours extra on that route is just not going to work for much of anyone. But with all the moving parts it takes to get right for a train to come in on some semblance of a schedule I just don't see how it will ever be anything but a niche product for long haul routes.