Obama Proposes High-Speed Rail System For the US 1385
fantomas writes "The BBC reports that 'US President Barack Obama has announced his "vision for high-speed rail" in the country, which would create jobs, ease congestion and save energy.' Can rail work in the land where the car is king? Would you travel on the new high speed lines?"
More details at White House website (Score:5, Informative)
Here [whitehouse.gov].
works in germany (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I like rail! Great mass transit in Europe (Score:5, Informative)
Why do you think that's automatically a 'pork barrel' scheme?
Rail systems are absolutely superb in European countries (very often it's FASTER to take a train then fly by plane).
USA could use something like this.
Totally (Score:4, Informative)
Heck yeah. Why wouldn't I? I love the train.
Bring it. I don't even care if they're not such high-speed trains. (Remember the silly claims about the Acela so-called high-speed trains in the Northeast corridor? Laughable. I'll just take the regular trains that get there ten minutes later and cost half the price.)
All I want is more connections. If I could take the train to work I would. Even transferring to a local bus would work for me. Presto: I now have an extra couple of hours per day for reading, studying, whatever I want. My commute is just wasted time.
Re:Heard of Amtrak? (Score:3, Informative)
The sad thing is, the Amtrak fare would likely have been more expensive than flying with a discount airline (e.g. AirTran) anyway.
Yes you can, but remember scope and context (Score:4, Informative)
Yes you can, but you need to keep both the scope and the context mind.
Regarding scope: high-speed rail is mostly interesting for journeys in the 50-400 mile range; for shorter journeys, the many stops would bring down the average speed too much, and for longer journeys a single-hop plane transfer is faster.
I regularly travel the high-speed net in Europe, and I love it: No of that checking-in business; I get to the station 10 minutes before the train leaves, sit down on my reserved seat, and soon I am speeding through Southern Germany at 200 mph. Still, a ~400 mile journey (case in point: Zurich-Aachen) takes me 6 hours downtown to downtown. The main reasons for that slow ~70 mph average are slow links in Switzerland, and the relatively high number of stops in densely populated Germany. Still, this is 70 mph average, at (when planned somewhat in advance) EUR 120 for a return ticket.
Now, in the US, the SF-LA corridor and the East-cost are excellent choices for such a network. Especially the SF-LA link could do with only a few stops (LA, Bakersfield, Fresno, (Stockton), San Jose, SF, say), so one could push for >80 mph average. This would bring down travel time from _downtown_ LA to _downtown_ SF to 5 hours. Such a journey would be the efficiency limit for a fast train though, since there is a good flight here. Perhaps LA-Bakersfield (~120 miles) in an hour would be a better example.
The thing to remember though, and that bring me to the "context" part of the title, is that high-speed rail cannot exist on its own. Although the connections for larger distances already exist (planes), one definitely needs connections to shorter-distance transport modalities. Examples are fast commuter train for a metropolitan area (relatively high number of stops, but fast acceleration and deceleration), tram/bus networks in the city (and _adaptations_ to the city for that, so that trams and busses are never in traffic jams, etc.). Not having this latter modality leaves you with a "last mile" problem. If you cannot get to the station fast, often, and safe, you won't use your high-speed train, and you could hardly be blamed for that.
Re:The USA: Developing Country (Score:5, Informative)
Germany: 357,000 km^2
Japan: 377,000 km^2
Shanghai: 6340 km^2
United States: 9,826,630 km^2
Maglev speed: 300 mph
757 Economical Cruising speed: 530 mph
You figure it out.
Re:Monorail! Monorail! Monrail! (Score:3, Informative)
No... Las Vegas is not planned to be incorporated into the high-speed train system. Core Cities are Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Miami, Orlando, Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York City, Buffalo, Boston, and Montreal.
See the map at the bottom of this page [whitehouse.gov].
Re:I like rail! Great mass transit in Europe (Score:2, Informative)
From my perspective, Amtrak is doing a great job given the crap they've had to deal with. I ride the Empire Builder semi-regularly and it's always a comfortable ride with great service. Some of the things Amtrak has to deal with include:
It's a wonder Amtrak works as well as it does. We need to remind the freight rail companies that we gave them their trackage in the first place and they'd better play nice with passenger rail or we'll take it away from them.
Re:We already have rail (Score:4, Informative)
We spend 40 billion a year in federal funds on the highway system. Amtrak's deficit is one billion per year. I think someone has the crazy idea that providing more funds for Amtrak may make it more solvent, if it can provide better and faster service to more areas.
We're still paying for the dismantling of mass transit systems in the 50s, when car, oil, and tire companies bought and dismantled local transit systems because they couldn't compete with them. It's the same mentality behind all of the anti-medicare propaganda. For profit companies receive government subsidies to provide medicare benefits that the government could provide, simply because they have lobbyists, and all of the sudden it's "unfair" to have a government provide a service that corporations have the "right" to make profits on.
Air travel will never be as cost effective as rail, especially when you consider how unaffordable it is when there are spikes in oil prices. The TGV in France is all electric, powered by their nuclear infrastructure, allowing them to the same reasonable rates year after year. A high speed electric rail system (I've not yet read about the Obama plan) would provide a much better solution than increasing air traffic with thousands of smaller planes that are not nearly as efficient or energy independent as electric rail.
planes rule, trains drool. (Score:2, Informative)
At least in the US. High speed rail has little to do with our "obsession" with cars. It has to do with the fact that we jumped on the regional airport route back in the 60s. Look at between NYC and Boston. You have at least 8 airports capable of MD80/737 or larger aircraft in a radius of like 120 miles. Compare the US to anywhere else in the world and while you can point out that our rail system stinks and you can't get here from there, the plane coverage more than makes up for it. The airline industry has shown that it can be healthy and profitable, though things are rough now but they are everywhere.
From my experience trains are not much cheaper (if at all) than to take a plane for anything that is high speed rail worthy. Why would we spend boat loads on infrastructure to do trains where the end result is more expensive travel, and tons of potential job loss in the airline industy. High speed rail is nothing but pork. That's reality.
Now if you want to talk commuter, that is different altogether.
Re:I like rail! Great mass transit in Europe (Score:3, Informative)
That's because the destinations are very often so much closer together. For example, London and Paris are about 214 miles (345 km for you Europeans) apart, which is exactly the same distance from Atlanta, GA to Charlotte, NC -- just one of the links in the "Southeast Corridor" route mentioned in the article. And nobody really wants to go just from Atlanta to Charlotte; a lot of them would really be trying to get to points much farther north, like New York or Boston or something. In contrast, I suspect London-to-Paris is often the whole end-to-end trip in itself.
Another fun fact: if you started in London and went the same distance it takes to get from Atlanta to New York (750 miles / 1207 km), you'd be halfway to Moscow. That's the difference in scale between Europe and the U.S.!
Re:I like rail! Great mass transit in Europe (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, one of the reasons that America has such a poor public transport system is because 'wealth creating' companies such as GM bought them and shut them down. God forbid the government try to undo some of the damage caused by decades of corporate greed.
Re:Free market will kill it (Score:2, Informative)
Newly build french fast train line are already design for speed around the 250MPH and are operated at 200. They even have a top speed record at 360MPH. Except the Eurostar nearly all the TGV are faster than 150MPH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Est [wikipedia.org]
Re:In a word... (Score:5, Informative)
Government subsidies you say?
Like all of those FREE ROADS that all of the teamsters get to drive over?
Howabout those FREE AIRPORTS? Those just don't pop out of the ether either.
Then there's the entire air traffic control infastructure. Does AA pay for
that directly as well? Nevermind the fact that "big air" gets bailed out
by the feds because those companies are considered "too big to fail".
First put rail on par with trucking in terms of free infastructure and
let see what happens after that. Doubling the amount of cargo rail lines
would be a handy start.
Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The great myth is that this kind of FUD has existed for so long.
Re:In a word... (Score:4, Informative)
They started to equip container ships with sails again....
Re:the governments track record is actually pretty (Score:2, Informative)
True, Medicare's administrative costs are just 3% of total spending, while the private sector hits 11% to 14%. But insurance companies spend money to screen their claims for fraud. Medicare automatically pays more than 95% of the bills it receives. This lack of scrutiny reduces overhead, but it makes the program highly vulnerable to abuse.
Re:Can't mix freight and passenger railways (Score:1, Informative)
No... the terms all all defined the whitehouse report. High speed rail is defined as grade separated and on dedicated track (except at terminals). Dedicated track means that not only will it not be sharing with freight, it won't be sharing with anything.
Re:I like rail! Great mass transit in Europe (Score:3, Informative)
And free to go on unemployment after you do.
Union membership strongly correlates with how well the government enforces regulations against things like firing people for union organizing.
Wealth disparity in society has a strong inverse correlation with union membership.
(Sure, correlation causation ... but the connection looks a lot more likely than the solar cycle.)
Re:What about when I get there? (Score:3, Informative)
It's not all about congestion in the cities. It's about inter-city congestion. Plus, if you reduce the number of people driving from city 1 to city 2, you will inherently reduce the congestion in the cities by that number of cars (They are in the city at the start and end of their journey). Living in south-eastern VA I find getting into DC is hell sometimes. I would rather catch a train and walk to my destination, or take a cab, than drive on some days.
For long distances it's not efficient for a single person to drive a 3000lb+ car. Obama is probably being told we (the U.S.) can reduce emissions if we provide more efficient, faster, inter-city transport methods, and then convince people to use them -- and that would not be wrong. The key to convincing people is making it fast and convenient. Rail can't match the speed of a plane, but can certainly achieve near 200mph. Acella runs between 90 and 150mph right now because of the legacy of old track and shared tracks it runs on but was designed to do 200mph in ideal conditions (newer well maintained dedicated track with no grade-level crossings)
Re:No (Score:3, Informative)
Everyone here is talking about the northeast and midwest, what about the damned west coast?
Karma-whore time! FTA:
Unlike many of the posters here, I don't think that the Presidency has forgotten the West Coast, given that they identify two corridors in that list...
Re:give us wifi (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What is it that Amtrak does wrong? (Score:4, Informative)
Rail slower than car? What is it that Amtrak does wrong?
Amtrak have to lease access to rail lines from freight haulers. They own very little track themselves (Northeast corridor and a couple of others, according to teh wiki).
Re:In a word... (Score:2, Informative)
Even better would be to ferry the cars along those rails so you can drive as needed once you reach your destination. Paying for the train then having to rent a car because your final destination is too far from the stations is silly, and that's one reason many people just drive the whole way.
Exactly! Unless and until the urban cores of places that the train stops can support not having a car to get around, this seems like a perfect solution.
Amtrak actually has one route that works this way: the Auto Train [wikipedia.org]. It only works between the DC area and Orlando, non-stop, but for about a hundred bucks [amtrak.com] one-way you save yourself the cost of a plane fare plus a rental car, not to mention the drive down I-95. And, as the Wikipedia article states, "The train grossed $49,351,664 in ticket revenue in Fiscal Year 2006, making it Amtrak's highest grossing single train. With total expenses of $62.1 million, it is Amtrak's best-paying long distance train in terms of income in comparison with operating expenses."
We already have a working, proven solution in the United States to make this happen. All we need to do now is expand it.
Re:What is it that Amtrak does wrong? (Score:3, Informative)
When I took Amtrak from Boston to Chicago, the train arrived four hours late because of delays due to slow freight ahead. So parent is completely right, this is a major part of the problem.
Funding may be national/local, not national/market (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the actual plan documents:
http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/31 [dot.gov]
If you read the first PDF, hsrstrategicplan.pdf, go to page 18, under Section 301, 501, 502 you can see that up to 80% of funding may come from the government. The exact amount depends on how closely it matches the goals of the HSR plans and/or benefits other types of rail service.
While nothing excludes provide companies from getting involved, they MUST involve the states and have the project added to that state's Rail Plan. This means the project will have a stronger local component and firmer commitments by everyone involved.
Applications are due August 2009 with a draft national rail plan out in October 09. They plan on at least two phases of projects, with the 2nd phase accepting new project applications starting January 2010.
I live outside of Louisville and would love to be able to get to Indy in an hour or Chicago in 3 hours or less. I would be much more likely to go to out-of-town concerts and events if I didn't have to spend hours behind the wheel. Being able to nap in a train and especially being able to stretch my legs a bit without stopping the car would be idea.
Driving ~6hours to Chicago is not appealing and after getting to the airport early, the 1.5 hour flight turns into the same 3 hours as a train ride.
The other thing is that trains are rarely grounded by fog or storms. I can't count the number of my flights that were delayed by weather.
Re:No (Score:1, Informative)
According to a study done to ascertain the impact of a cross harbor freight rail tunnel for New York Harbor, freight shipment costs around 2.5 cents/ton/mile shipped via rail and more than 5 cents/ton/mile when shipped by truck. Trucks do offer short trip destination flexibility not matched by trains, but for medium and long hauls of freight it is at least twice as cheap to go by rail. The savings really accrue for rail when longer, densely packed freight trains are moved. A single driver of a 200+ car freight train is payed about the same amount of salary and benefits as the 400+ truck drivers that would be required to haul the same load over the crowded interstate highway system.
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Informative)
We often use them since you save on a night of accommodation and the price right up till the last minute does not change much, if at all. Other passengers are pretty nice most of the time (aka avoid soccer fans).
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Informative)
HUH? They have nothing to do with money. It is to make sure the truck is not overloaded. It is not a toll booth or a fee collection facility for trucks.
The reason WHY roadways were subsidized... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:In a word... (Score:2, Informative)
Your energy calculations are WAY off.
>Trains still need energy to move and that means Diesel, which incidentally is pretty much similar to Kerosene.
Maybe. But in any case a LOT less. Do you have any idea how much jet fuel it takes to power a passenger plane on a single flight? A 747 uses 3378 gallons per hour! And that's cruising. It uses more during takeoff and climb. Of course it's traveling pretty fast, and carries a lot of people, but that can't make up for inherent issues of air travel. The wikipedia article on transportation fuel efficiencies puts average passenger air travel at 1.4 MJ/passenger-km. TGV gets .15 MJ/passenger-km. Combino light rail in Swizerland gets 0.085 MJ/passenger-km.
So we're talking an order of magnitude here. Maybe it will cost a lot to put the electric lines in, but the energy savings are substantial. And even if they don't choose to use electric power (an option not available to airlines, by the way) diesel is lower energy density and cheaper than jet fuel. Or they could use any of a bunch of options. Natural gas, hydrogen, even coal or nuclear.
>It's true the US expends the most energy per capita worldwide. But constructing rail infrastructure will raise, not lower that for at least two decades.
Or, we could use less energy. Every person that uses the rail saves the energy they would have used had they taken a plane or a car. And the maintenance energy that would have gone into those planes and cars. Every person that doesn't buy a car because they can use the rail saves the manufacturing energy. Frankly, I think laying train track and stretching power cable is easier and less energy intensive than manufacturing cars and gasoline.
And there are other savings. Pollution. Carbon footprint. Funding enemy regimes.