Recent content by photoeditor

I think it's eminently realistic to do a HSR line from Chicago to Minneapolis for slightly sub-three-hour service. You build it on quite a direct route, with grade separated interchanges with the existing network at strategic points -- maybe Watertown, Portage, Tomah and La Crosse. You also...

As you go faster you start to run into exponential increases in energy usage, so greenhouse emissions from electricity generation (or maxing out a windfarm) become a factor. In practice, the world's fastest current point-to-point times, including one segment that covers a 104 mile...

My goof on the OTP numbers which it looked as though I reversed. The most recent complete year farebox ratio from the rail plan is slightly below the number you cite. Actual results for 2006-07 were 40 percent, and 44.6 is the goal for 2015-2016 under the 2007-08 rail plan. But in some years...

There's a great deal of variation in farebox recovery on the corridor services. LA-San Diego is comparable to long distance trains, but Sacramento-San Jose isn't even close, for example (California's state rail plan has all the details). So it's quite possible to have corridor trains turning...

I think the crash standards in this country are a clear barrier to high-speed rail development. They are, frankly, arbitrary. The thing that I'm curious about is why in particular they seem to have gotten in the way of monoque car designs. British Rail's Mk III cars from the 1970s and 1980s...

The only obvious security measure at Union Station in Chicago is the barricading of most traffic, including taxis, from the indoor ramp in the Great Hall building ever since 9/11 -- an idiotic waste of a good facility, especially when you consider that the central post office just down the...

Orange Line from Midway to Quincy should take 25 minutes actual running time. The train goes clockwise around the Loop so Quincy will be one of the first few downtown stops (which means, for future reference, that it's about 32 minutes from Quincy back out to the airport). Headways between...

I don't think it's something to get up in arms about. It's a logical way to get to daily service on the Sunset given Amtrak's current equipment shortage. The main issue, whether or not this plan gets adopted, is to ensure that at least some stimulus money or regular capital appropriation goes...