The whole Midwestern corridors vision was based on the practical measure that with 110-mph you can get at least half the benefit (ridership? value of time saved by riders?) of true HSR which costs 10 times as much. (Am I remembering the numbers right?) You'll get more bang for the buck by upgrading many corridors than from gilding one for the Seaboard elite.
Nobody cares how fast they are going. Everybody wants to know how long the trip will take, when it will arrive, when it will leave, can they grab something to eat in the station or on the train, and if they can't make that mid-day departure when is the next one they can take, etc.
Politicians want to know how much train can they get with this amount of money in the budget.
Hey, citizens want to know what they'll get for the money.
When 3-C's project in Ohio was announced, it was said to go an average of 49 mph. When 49 mph became the number in the popular mind, the project was doomed. No matter that someone hurried along a couple of weeks later to explain that on a closer look it would be 59 mph, and with more money it could be 69 mph. Too late, too late, too late. Those numbers never caught up with the fast-moving 49-mph description.
Back to the Midwest Regional plan. Get the trip times under 4 hours to compete with flying, get them down to 3 hours and it's a big hit!
So the Stimulus was to fund St Louis-Chicago, for a Billion get the trip down from 5:30 to about 4:30. Another Billion would get it below that 4-hour mark.
Meanwhile, Detroit-Chicago would go from 5:40 on one of the Wolverine runs, down to about 4:50. (Am I doing this right? I always stumble over the time zones, LOL.) That's not great for the end cities, but it's better. And it is great for Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo, the busiest stations in Michigan today. Another Billion in upgrades (mostly South of the Lake) would cut the 4:50ish run time down to 4:10 or even to 4 hours even.
So two, $2 Billion projects would get very High Performing routes connecting two very big cities and their metro areas with near 4-hour trip times.
Just going with the $1 Billion each in upgrades underway will get two 110-mph routes where ridership could exceed a million on each of them by 2020.
With those results we hope that the neighbors will get jealous and want trains, too. Like Cleveland-Toledo-CHI, Indianapolis-CHI, Cincinnati-Indy-CHI, Louisville-Indy-CHI, Minneapolis-St Paul-Milwaukee-CHI, St Louis-Kansas City, CHI-Quad Cities at 110 mph, then on to Iowa City, Des Moines, and Omaha at 79 mph. (As long as they go faster than the cars on the road alongside, they will do well.) At least $25 Billion to do those routes. My wild guess that would get 3 million new riders moving at speeds up to 110 mph and getting to their destination in 4 hours or so.
For the NEC, we all want the same basic stuff. Portal Bridge, new Hudson Tunnels, new Baltimore Tunnel, Susquehanna and several other bridges, state of good repair up n down the line. That all needs to be done, along with undercutting, other track work, and new catenary, for safety and reliability. When finished, these projects should make possible some 160-mph running for bragging rights, and shave minutes off the trip time, lemme hazard a guess of shaving up to 15 minutes. So Acela Is now making NY Penn Station to Union Station in 2 hrs 53 minutes could aim for 2 hrs 40 minutes. Acela IIs might, might, get to 2 hrs 30 minutes.
How many Billions again would it cost to get run time down to 1 hr 50 minutes?
Meanwhile Regionals could be moving along Penn Station-Union Station in about 3 hours. Their riders would be very happy.
Plans to hurry up and spend $100 Billion or $168 Billion on the NEC strike me as obscene, a hub-of-the-universe arrogance, and a project for the benefit to an elite who think their time is so extremely valuable that $100 Billion of other people's money is just another day marking up the Defense Dept budget.
Meanwhile, millions of ordinary people living on corridors like Baton Rouge-NOLA, Knoxville-Chattanooga, Phoenix-Tucson, Pueblo-Denver, and yeah, Detroit-Cleveland, just want to get somewhere in less than 4 hours. Their needs can be met for roughly $2 billion and up per project.
OK, New York has a plan to spend $6 or $7 Billion between Albany and Buffalo, LOL, But for $6 or $7 Billion we could likely get a new Potomac Bridge, a 90-minute corridor to Richmond, probably less than 4 hours Raleigh-Richmond, and more.
I'm hoping that Congress, in the old-fashioned way, will spread the gravy all across the land. Don't lavish it all on helping the ruling class move faster between the political and financial capitals of the country.
First triple, or at least double, Amtrak's non-NEC passengers on state-supported corridors and more LD trains moving at 110 mph. Then I might listen to a case for a gilded ride on the NEC at 180 mph.
