High Speed Rail Map

[SarahZ]

#26,686

I shared it on Facebook as well.

 

[Texan Eagle]

This means The White House now has to give an official response to this petition since it crossed the 25,000 threshold.

The minimum threshold for a response has been raised to 100,000 signatures.

Bummer Difficult to get that many signatures. I believe the only one I know that got more than 100,000 signatures was the silly "Secede Texas from United States" petition.

 

[Anderson]

Just looking over the map, it's interesting to think about the "commuter nets" this creates:
-Nevada is going to be swamped with "tax exiles" from CA, I suspect. Reno becomes a bedroom community for Sacramento/San Francisco, and Vegas becomes the same for LA.
-Florida officially becomes one big metro area centered on "Orlampa".
-Hampton Roads becomes an appendage to the Northeast, as does Portland. This was already sort-of happening in slow motion. However, this will now extend clearly into NC as well.
-The Chicago commuter net extends to Cleveland, Des Moines, and deep into MO, WI, and southern IN. Anybody stuck working in Detroit can live far, far away.
-Seattle and Portland are also bedroom communities to one another.
-Cheyenne is likely to end up swamping the rest of WY because of Denver-oriented suburban development.

 

[CHamilton]

The petition has now gotten over 30,000 signatures in just over five days! Who knew there were that many foamers?

Seriously, though, this may be an unrivaled chance to talk to your friends about improving rail service. I've already gotten queries from people who are asking basic questions. It's up to us to explain the pluses and minuses of the proposal on the map, as well as others. We may never get such a good chance again.

I've also sent NARP and my local rail advocacy group a message saying, in effect, "Don't let this opportunity pass you by! The press seems to be all over the story, so be out there with thoughtful analysis." For those of you who are members of NARP, please send your own comments. Let's hope they take advantage of this unexpected gift.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

This means The White House now has to give an official response to this petition since it crossed the 25,000 threshold.

The minimum threshold for a response has been raised to 100,000 signatures.

Bummer Difficult to get that many signatures. I believe the only one I know that got more than 100,000 signatures was the silly "Secede Texas from United States" petition.

Blatantly ignorant petitions by Texan traitors are probably a large part of why they raised the minimum threshold in the first place. It may sound like an unreasonable number at first but we're only talking about something on the order of 0.03% of the national population here. That's still perfectly viable in my view.

We may never get such a good chance again.

Why would you say that?

Nearly every substantial advancement against ideological intransigence had been a long and involved process of slowly building consensus among otherwise disparate and disinterested parties. Seeing as how there is no limit on the number of times a pro-rail petition can be submitted I doubt this is our one and only chance to make any headway. On the plus side at least we're not trying to petition President Romney. That probably would be a lost cause.

 

[CHamilton]

We may never get such a good chance again.

Why would you say that?

Nearly every substantial advancement against ideological intransigence had been a long and involved process of slowly building consensus among otherwise disparate and disinterested parties. Seeing as how there is no limit on the number of times a pro-rail petition can be submitted I doubt this is our one and only chance to make any headway. On the plus side at least we're not trying to petition President Romney. That probably would be a lost cause.

Your point is well taken. Nevertheless, it would be a shame to let this opportunity pass without taking advantage of it.

 

[CHamilton]

Here's an interesting response.

Why Covering The US In High-Speed Rail Makes No Sense At All

I agree with a lot of the points he makes, but...I wonder if he could have even gotten his article published in a general, business-oriented blog last week. Which is the point. For all of the map's flaws, it may spark the sort of reasoned discussion we need to have if we're ever going to have a decent rail system in this country.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Nevertheless, it would be a shame to let this opportunity pass without taking advantage of it.

Agreed. We could create a banner and add it to our signatures. Or even ask the admins if it could be added to the site as a public information service? Just brainstorming out loud here.

 

[CHamilton]

Nevertheless, it would be a shame to let this opportunity pass without taking advantage of it.

Agreed. We could create a banner and add it to our signatures. Or even ask the admins if it could be added to the site as a public information service? Just brainstorming out loud here.

Yes, those are good ideas. But we also need to speak up outside the confines of places like AU. I don't generally post train-related stuff other than here, but I think it's time to let my non-train-fan friends know how I feel about this issue. Which means being more overtly political in my daily life than I usually like to be.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

It's not like you're suggesting they switch sides or anything. You're simply asking them to consider showing solidarity with your desire to see more passenger rail. While that may be a political position it's not an inherently controversial or partisan position. I think the best way to sell passenger rail to non-fans is to remind them that the more passenger rail options there are for folks like us the fewer cars they'll see on the road ahead of them and the more seats will be available for their next flight. Even if we decided to upgrade every road in the country to handle more cars it would require decades of constant construction that would take years of our lives as we slowly meander around cones and barricades on our way to an endless number of detours. Better to build more passenger rail and free up road congestion while also keeping much of the construction away from the roads themselves. Trust me when I say that the folks who currently build our roads will be happy to build new passenger rail instead, so long as they get paid for it.

 

[CHamilton]

It's not like you're suggesting they switch sides or anything. You're simply asking them to consider showing solidarity with your desire to see more passenger rail. While that may be political in today's society it's not an inherently controversial or partisan position. I think the best way to sell passenger rail to non-fans is to remind them that the more passenger rail options there are for folks like us the fewer cars they'll see on the road ahead of them and the more seats will be available for their next flight.

Indeed, yes. <looks for like button>

 

[Anderson]

And it seems that the pace is back up today. We're quickly closing on 35,000 (and have a modest chance of making that before midnight).

Also, there are three petitions that have made it to 100,000:
-The Texas one

-One on some strange Dutch situation

-One on Westboro Baptist Church (which is one on several on that subject)

 

[MattW]

I actually think this petition has merit in another way. While building out the entire system on the map may not be completely realistic, this petition could generate enough interest, or show that there's enough interest, to begin building smaller networks such as in the Midwest, Atlanta to Charlotte, etc., and to increase political support for these and the California HSR.

 

[The Journalist]

Signed and Facebooked. Just over 36,000 now...

 

[CHamilton]

The "Strange Maps" blog takes on the HSR map.

Fast Train to... Quincy? A Mirage Map of U.S. High Speed Rail

What to do with a dream that's too big for reality? Among many other things, you could map it. Such a representation could serve as an exhortation - This is the plan, get going! But if the gap between cartography and reality remains unbridged, the exhortation becomes a souvenir of the road not taken, the map of an alternate reality where the fork in the road was negotiated differently.

Strangely enough, public transport systems seem particularly susceptible to the sort of dreams that can only live on maps. ...

This...putative map of what a high-speed rail network across the United States could look like. It was created by Alfred Twu. Mr. Twu is not just a designer at MWA Architects, a Bay Area bureau, he also a bit of a train nerd.

 

[CHamilton]

The HSR petition now has over 40,000 signatures. It seems to have slowed down a bit, but its total has been steadily increasing.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Speaking of signatures, where's yours?

 

[CHamilton]

The high-speed rail petition on whitehouse.gov has now expired, and is no longer available. It had surpassed 53,000 signatures as of last night, which makes me feel that there is a very significant pool of support for better passenger rail services.

We all know that the specific system proposed on the original map had its flaws. But this effort -- which came out of nowhere, with no organized support from the usual advocacy organizations -- proved beyond a doubt that the old saw about "no one is interested in trains" is just not true!

<soapbox>

Now it's up to people like us to keep the momentum going. And we're going to have to fight to keep a national rail system viable, not only in Congress, but in the state legislatures. The most immediate battle is in Pennsylvania. Western Pennsylvanians for Passenger Rail has a very bare-bones website, but they're updating it regularly, and they're holding rallies like the upcoming one at the Lewistown Amtrak Station on Thursday, March 21, 2013.

PA state legislators need to know that keeping the Pennsylvanian going is a priority. Once a train is gone, is very hard to bring it back.

Your state's elected officials need to hear from us, too. Your state rail advocacy group needs our help to make sure that they get the message, loud and clear!

</soapbox>

 

[Texan Eagle]

Now that the ambitious NATIONWIDE high speed rail plan has been shot down, let me present my (quite badly edited) more realistic map of possible High Speed Rail network in the United States...

Let's not fool ourselves, the American West is way too sparsely populated to be feasible for high speed rail corridors, so instead why not focus on building them where they'll be used and makes sense.

 

[xyzzy]

It is a far more sensible map, congratulations. Still, I am unconvinced about Atlanta-Birmingham-New Orleans. It's a very high price to pay in order to avoid an isolated network in Texas and Louisiana.

 

[jis]

I also doubt very much that if a Northeast to Florida HSR materializes, it will actually pass through Atlanta. My bet is that it won't.

 

[Anderson]

Ditto. Frankly, I'd run something roughly down the A-line (albeit with a jog to cover Raleigh, at the very least) or the S-line. I would also add CHI-OMA[-Lincoln?] in, political hiccups notwithstanding. The longer-term support seems to be there in the end, and you have enough population on it (Quad Cities, Des Moines, and Omaha are probably enough to make it work).

 

[CHamilton]

Don't forget that the FRA has already designated a group of high-speed rail corridors. It's ironic, given the Pennsylvanian situation, that Pittsburgh-Harrisburg-Philadelphia is one of them.

 

[Texan Eagle]

Who came up with this brilliant idea of connecting Houston to New Orleans but not to Dallas, not to Austin and not to San Antonio either! Applause!

Also, what's the problem in connecting Jacksonville to Orlando and complete the east coast link? What great economic interest is served by keeping a tiny but gaping hole?

 

[CHamilton]

The 2009 variant of the above map shows "ten corridors (all previously designated as high-speed rail corridors by several successive Secretaries of Transportation) as well as the Northeast Corridor" which were "potential funding targets." IIRC, these corridors weren't intended to be a network, but at least this map shows how they might fit together.