Nationwide or High speed first?

[Joel N. Weber II]

I agree. How about Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis? That's a lot of utility but it requires some optimization of speed.

Sure, or Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Minneapolis, with high speed bypass tracks around Milwaukee and Madison that don't require the high speed trains going directly from Chicago to Minneapolis to slow down for Milwaukee or Madison.

But we have to be realistic. 730 miles from St. Louis to Denver? That's about six hours on the train. The airplanes win. But that's OK. they are really useful for trips of that length.

I think you mean 930 miles. And you're illustrating perfectly why I think we shouldn't settle for 186 MPH or even 220 MPH if a little extra engineering effort and a small difference in construction costs will enable faster speeds.

Some will argue that taking a high speed sleeping car from St Louis to Denver would solve this problem, but what's the travel time from Boston to San Diego at 220 MPH?

Then there's the question of St Louis <-> Kansas City commuter rail. It's 249 miles on I-70. If most of those miles are covered at 300 MPH, downtown to downtown might be under an hour. There's no way a plane will ever offer that with anything resembling the current airport logistics, or even 1970s airport logistics.

 

[photoeditor]

Timekeeping on the LA-San Diego Surfliner route is quite good. Not so on the Sacramento-San Diego Capitol, which I've also heard has some customer service issues.

Could you please cite a source to back up your claim regarding timekeeping (and perhaps the customer-service issues)?

The Capitol Corridor has a stellar record regarding on-time performance, above all but one other Amtrak service in the country. A recent report from the Capitol Corridor head noted that Captiols had a 92.1 percent OTP so far this fiscal year (compared to 82.7 percent for Surfliners and 89 percent for San Joaquins). This OTP has gone down from time to time when Union Pacific is doing track work, but Capitol Corridor usually tries to let riders know about the delays far ahead of time.

I can't dispute your claims about farebox recovery because I don't know what Surfliner's goal and performance are (although preliminary research indicates it is higher than Capitols). However, Capitol Corridors farebox recovery is 44.6 percent year-to-date shy of their goal of 50 percent (which they exceeded before the new labor costs got factored into it). Based on other preliminary research, this farebox recovery ratio is similar to some long-distance trains.

I could be wrong, please share your information.

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 the Milwaukee service has been close to 100 percent OTP.

 

[photoeditor]

I agree. How about Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis? That's a lot of utility but it requires some optimization of speed.

Sure, or Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Minneapolis, with high speed bypass tracks around Milwaukee and Madison that don't require the high speed trains going directly from Chicago to Minneapolis to slow down for Milwaukee or Madison.

But we have to be realistic. 730 miles from St. Louis to Denver? That's about six hours on the train. The airplanes win. But that's OK. they are really useful for trips of that length.

I think you mean 930 miles. And you're illustrating perfectly why I think we shouldn't settle for 186 MPH or even 220 MPH if a little extra engineering effort and a small difference in construction costs will enable faster speeds.

Some will argue that taking a high speed sleeping car from St Louis to Denver would solve this problem, but what's the travel time from Boston to San Diego at 220 MPH?

Then there's the question of St Louis <-> Kansas City commuter rail. It's 249 miles on I-70. If most of those miles are covered at 300 MPH, downtown to downtown might be under an hour. There's no way a plane will ever offer that with anything resembling the current airport logistics, or even 1970s airport logistics.

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 station-to-station segment in 36 minutes for an average speed of 173mph, are to be found on France's LGV Est from Paris to a little shy of Strasbourg, which has a top line speed in regular service of 320kph (199mph) even though it was designed for 220mph.

On another note, why is it that the US seems to be incapable of bringing in construction projects at a reasonable cost? The LGV Est, close to 300 miles, is costing a total of 5.5 billion Euro including the Strasbourg extension, about 8 billion US, and that's all-in, trains included. And don't plead "Tehachapi Pass". because the passes through the Vosges are almost as big. We're left with earthquake proofing and LA and Peninsula grade separations as the only remaining variables. By French standards, CAHSR would be $20 billion including the trains, not $40 billion. I can't imagine that seismic construction and grade separations more than double the construction cost.

 

[photoeditor]

I agree. How about Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis? That's a lot of utility but it requires some optimization of speed.

Sure, or Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Minneapolis, with high speed bypass tracks around Milwaukee and Madison that don't require the high speed trains going directly from Chicago to Minneapolis to slow down for Milwaukee or Madison.

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 serve Rochester to add an important intermediate destination rather than Red Wing and Winona which are much smaller towns that in any case are already connected to the Twin Cities by passenger rail. From Watertown to Chicago O'Hare or so, a direct diagonal. From Watertown north, basically the CP route except for the Rochester deviation. In the Milwaukee area, simply quad-track and boost the existing routes to 125mph.

The key is that the HSR line would be able to support multiple service patterns if existing lines are developed and electrified. You might see a Chicago to Madison service using the HSR as far as the Watertown exit, or a Milwaukee-Minneapolis service using the HSR line from the Watertown exit to the St. Paul terminal, or a Winona/Red Wing local picking up the HSR at La Crosse and then running express to Madison and points beyond. This is how you economically maximize the utilization of the asset. Any one of these city pairs might only support hourly service or worse, but combine them all and you see that at least on the central section of the line from about Portage to LaCrosse, it would be very busy.

 

[volkris]

I still don't think its a matter of Airplanes winning.

In fact, I'd say there's a lot of room for rail and air to work together. Right now we have an overcrowded air traffic control system due, in some part, to tiny planes shuttling people to and from hubs. Meanwhile, service disruptions due to weather shut down airports for days, when trains would happily roll on, and we spend tax dollars subsidizing airports for small towns that would be efficiently connected to larger airports by rail. Expanding interconnections between rail and air would benefit everyone except a variety of politicians who have built little kingdoms around the air services that would be better handled by rail.

At some point rail and air would compete against each other, but at this point I think they stand to compliment each other more than they threaten each other.

On another note, why is it that the US seems to be incapable of bringing in construction projects at a reasonable cost?

It's because, as my dad always says, "Nobody makes stuff anymore."

In my experience, construction, engineering, and anything else that actually involves making anything has become more about paperwork and regulation than about actually getting out a calculator and welding torch. Building anything now requires an army of people not involved in actual design and building, and "absolute safety at all costs!" attitudes have removed any notion of cost benefit analysis from projects' bottom lines. Where I work lawyers' interpretations of federal law now require us to spend two weeks on jobs that used to take a day, and we have to spend four hundred percent more on certified materials that demonstrably don't actually increase anyone's safety... not to mention millions of dollars paying consultants to interpret, implement, and certify our practices themselves.

If we want to get the costs of rail infrastructure and future HSR buildout under control, as well as help the economy as a whole, it wouldn't be a bad idea to start by bringing these laws back to reality. Of course, anyone trying to do that would be accused of seeking the death of children... so maybe it would be easier to push through that national maglev network as is.

 

[Larry H.]

Getting a reasonable set of requirements is almost impossible in this "Sue" at the drop of a hat mentality the lawyers have foisted on us for decades. Some regulations no doubt are good, others as you say only make money and loss of time is the result.

 

[birdy]

Re: St. Louis to Denver. The problem is, its marginal. It would be easily the world's longest HSR line, I believe. Probably the build costs would be cheaper because the condemnation of right of way would be less, but it would still be $14 bil or so. Remember, the track maintenance would double. There are any number of marginal routes that would probably work. Salt Lake City to Las Vegas Perhaps, or Albuquerque to Phoenix. But why take a chance on an $9 billion project? Go for the low-hanging fruit, which to my mind is Chicago to Minneapolis (via Milwaukee I hope) or Atlanta to Charlotte, plus a major overhaul of Acela.

Re: Construction costs. I suspect that the difference is in condemnation costs. I doubt the French figures include this, or perhaps they undercompensate landowners for right of way (by U.S. measures).

I'm skeptical of the all-purpose liability excuse. We have a SEC that investigated Madoff and gave him a clean bill of health a couple of years before his $65 billion crimes were uncovered.

The revelations concerning regulation of air traffic in relation to the Buffalo disaster show that the FAA is no better.

FRA's reputation as a toothless regulator is well-established. Their inspectors used to keep their seniority with the railroads from which they came. Major railroads used to be able to simply call up and cancel railyard inspections when they wanted. For years FRA resisted requiring railroads to install train end devices (remote control braking for runaway trains) in the face of federal statutes requiring it.

I personally have seen major utilities with operating nuclear power plants repair natural gas pipeline with bicycle innertube and hose clamps.

We all know that the real reason is political. The libertarian elements of our polity have basically won the argument for the past 30 years. No tax, especially a tax for a large capital expenditure is worthwhile compared to not spending that money. So we spend only 3% of the federal budget on transportation. They have been making the same argument for at least 20 years without change and its now conventional wisdom. Look at this article from the NYT from 1989. It could have been written yesterday. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/03/business...for-itself.html

 

[Larry H.]

Birdy,

Just for the record, I am really not proposing high speed rail for St. Louis, Denver. I was suggesting it as a worth while feeder line to connect The California Zepher with many midwestern locations at now have to travel a long way out of their way to make that connection. I was more interested in providing quicker more direct service to many more people who than might take advantage of it. Plus the added convenience to all those in between who who suddenly have service that connects them with trains passing though the route. Lots of people in Kansas City, or St. Louis might wish to go to Reno or Salt Lake but don't want to pay to travel all the way back to Chicago and Pay for the return only to end up loosing more than a days travel time too. Connecting that train with Centralia and points east would really make a lot of things possible for us in the center of the country now not available to all but the most determined rail riders. I get pretty tired of getting up early to travel to Chicago and spend the day killing time for the sake of going entirely in reverse for the same amount of time. I do it because I want to ride, but were talking how to get people to use trains that now don't or won't.

Actually the High Speed was proposed for St. Louis/ Kansas City but the real improvement there would be on to Omaha. That is probably do able and still provides a connection to the Zephyr. But then you start to get into the timing of various things and a late evening departure from KC and arriving at Denver early in the morning looks a lot better than catching the Zephyr at Omaha probably. Here again a dual frequency Zephyr would add alot of advantages to some perhaps.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

Just for the record, I am really not proposing high speed rail for St. Louis, Denver. I was suggesting it as a worth while feeder line to connect The California Zepher with many midwestern locations at now have to travel a long way out of their way to make that connection. I was more interested in providing quicker more direct service to many more people who than might take advantage of it. Plus the added convenience to all those in between who who suddenly have service that connects them with trains passing though the route. Lots of people in Kansas City, or St. Louis might wish to go to Reno or Salt Lake but don't want to pay to travel all the way back to Chicago and Pay for the return only to end up loosing more than a days travel time too. Connecting that train with Centralia and points east would really make a lot of things possible for us in the center of the country now not available to all but the most determined rail riders. I get pretty tired of getting up early to travel to Chicago and spend the day killing time for the sake of going entirely in reverse for the same amount of time. I do it because I want to ride, but were talking how to get people to use trains that now don't or won't.

I think that raises a very valid question of whether there's any decent existing track from Kansas City to Omaha or Kansas City to Des Moines. If so, a new corridor train timed to provide connections and run with a P40 and a couple of Amfleets might work well on that route.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

we spend tax dollars subsidizing airports for small towns that would be efficiently connected to larger airports by rail.

Who exactly is going to end up paying to maintain that track well enough that the average passenger speed exceeds 25 MPH?

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

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 serve Rochester to add an important intermediate destination rather than Red Wing and Winona which are much smaller towns that in any case are already connected to the Twin Cities by passenger rail. From Watertown to Chicago O'Hare or so, a direct diagonal. From Watertown north, basically the CP route except for the Rochester deviation. In the Milwaukee area, simply quad-track and boost the existing routes to 125mph.
The key is that the HSR line would be able to support multiple service patterns if existing lines are developed and electrified. You might see a Chicago to Madison service using the HSR as far as the Watertown exit, or a Milwaukee-Minneapolis service using the HSR line from the Watertown exit to the St. Paul terminal, or a Winona/Red Wing local picking up the HSR at La Crosse and then running express to Madison and points beyond. This is how you economically maximize the utilization of the asset. Any one of these city pairs might only support hourly service or worse, but combine them all and you see that at least on the central section of the line from about Portage to LaCrosse, it would be very busy.

You don't necessarily have to make the HSR line cross the edge of every minor metro area. The Rochester, MN primary census area only has a population of about 181,000. Maybe it would work just as well to build the HSR line as a straight shot from Madison to MSP, and upgrade the 20-25 miles of track from downtown Rochester to the HSR line to ``110 MPH''. Those 181,000 people might experience an extra 15 minutes of travel time, but the millions of people in MSP going to see the millions in Chicago might appreciate saving a few minutes not having to go so close to Rochester.

An added benefit of making the tracks from the edge of Madison to the edge of MSP as straight as possible is that if those tracks can be built entirely without curves, and not too close together, upgrading the tracks for faster speeds as they become available will be straightforward. Someday we might have 550 MPH trains running on the long straight segments; if the have to slow down for 220 MPH curves every 50 miles, those 550 MPH trainsets may not be able to make very many miles at 550 MPH.

I'm also not sure why the Madison local tracks to HSR connections should be so far out of Madison as Watertown and Portage. I'd think you could get the HSR line somewhat closer to Madison without significant interference with thickly settled areas.

 

[MikefromCrete]

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 serve Rochester to add an important intermediate destination rather than Red Wing and Winona which are much smaller towns that in any case are already connected to the Twin Cities by passenger rail. From Watertown to Chicago O'Hare or so, a direct diagonal. From Watertown north, basically the CP route except for the Rochester deviation. In the Milwaukee area, simply quad-track and boost the existing routes to 125mph.
The key is that the HSR line would be able to support multiple service patterns if existing lines are developed and electrified. You might see a Chicago to Madison service using the HSR as far as the Watertown exit, or a Milwaukee-Minneapolis service using the HSR line from the Watertown exit to the St. Paul terminal, or a Winona/Red Wing local picking up the HSR at La Crosse and then running express to Madison and points beyond. This is how you economically maximize the utilization of the asset. Any one of these city pairs might only support hourly service or worse, but combine them all and you see that at least on the central section of the line from about Portage to LaCrosse, it would be very busy.

You don't necessarily have to make the HSR line cross the edge of every minor metro area. The Rochester, MN primary census area only has a population of about 181,000. Maybe it would work just as well to build the HSR line as a straight shot from Madison to MSP, and upgrade the 20-25 miles of track from downtown Rochester to the HSR line to ``110 MPH''. Those 181,000 people might experience an extra 15 minutes of travel time, but the millions of people in MSP going to see the millions in Chicago might appreciate saving a few minutes not having to go so close to Rochester.

An added benefit of making the tracks from the edge of Madison to the edge of MSP as straight as possible is that if those tracks can be built entirely without curves, and not too close together, upgrading the tracks for faster speeds as they become available will be straightforward. Someday we might have 550 MPH trains running on the long straight segments; if the have to slow down for 220 MPH curves every 50 miles, those 550 MPH trainsets may not be able to make very many miles at 550 MPH.

I'm also not sure why the Madison local tracks to HSR connections should be so far out of Madison as Watertown and Portage. I'd think you could get the HSR line somewhat closer to Madison without significant interference with thickly settled areas.

Rochester is home the Mayo Clinic which attracts thousands of visitors a year, making Rochester a bigger source of potential revenue than a town with a similar population. I'm many of those clinic patients would utilize the train if it was available.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

Rochester is home the Mayo Clinic which attracts thousands of visitors a year, making Rochester a bigger source of potential revenue than a town with a similar population. I'm many of those clinic patients would utilize the train if it was available.

I'm not arguing against service there. I just think the mainline's route should not be influenced by Rochester's presence; instead, I think it should be a spur to Rochester.

Even if Mayo causes Rochester to attract four times as many people as its population would suggest (which I'm highly skeptical of), I think it turns out that if you build the tracks in a way that wastes 15 minutes per Rochester trip to save 5 minutes per MSP<->Madison, MSP<->Milwaukee, and MSP<->Chicago trip, not bringing the mainline directly to Rochester is advantageous.

 

[birdy]

Well, far be it from me to engage in topic drift, but as a general matter, how do you guard against station proliferation?

The ability of a given developer to prevail on his politicians to create a stop for his middle of nowhere development can really drag a system down over time. The thing is, it only takes one corrupt politician to sell out and the public is stuck with the station forever. Even if a succession of politicans before stood firm.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Well, far be it from me to engage in topic drift, but as a general matter, how do you guard against station proliferation?
The ability of a given developer to prevail on his politicians to create a stop for his middle of nowhere development can really drag a system down over time. The thing is, it only takes one corrupt politician to sell out and the public is stuck with the station forever. Even if a succession of politicans before stood firm.

The answer is, you don't. You instead have express and local tracks, and a few local trains stopping at Podunk and Batavia and Dyer and the like. The rest of the trains, more intelligently operated, blow by them. You might even configure it so that these trains shuttle between major city stops.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

The ability of a given developer to prevail on his politicians to create a stop for his middle of nowhere development can really drag a system down over time. The thing is, it only takes one corrupt politician to sell out and the public is stuck with the station forever. Even if a succession of politicans before stood firm.

Are there examples from recent history?

The MBTA Commuter Rail system has some rather low ridership stations, but I think many of those have had rail service for well over 50 years. Silver Hill has 6 boardings a day, Mishawum 18, Hastings 22, and Plymouth 62, going by the numbers in the 2007 MBTA Blue Book. Plymouth seems like a particularly good candidate for elimination, given that trains that go to Plymouth can't go to Kingston/Route 3, which has 1026 boardings a day.

The Silver Hill article in Wikipedia has a photo of a sign claiming that station has had service since 1844.

Perhaps the right long term plan for the Fitchburg Line would be to have express trains that stop at North Station, Porter, Waltham, maybe Brandeis/Roberts, Lincoln, and then make every single stop beyond that, and then have local trains which only run from North Station to Lincoln and stop at every station along the way.

 

[George Harris]

I You also serve Rochester to add an important intermediate destination . . .

When thinking about Rochester, remember that Mayo Clinic is doing their best to get the DM&E run out of town, and this is the only active railroad alignment through town.

 

[jis]

The answer is, you don't. You instead have express and local tracks, and a few local trains stopping at Podunk and Batavia and Dyer and the like. The rest of the trains, more intelligently operated, blow by them. You might even configure it so that these trains shuttle between major city stops.

I am sure that in the US where we appear to have a penchant for over-engineering everything to a point of absurdity, we would try to go for quad track all the way and then decide it is too expensive and end up building nothing. While of course the Japanese and the Chinese and the Europeans are happily charging long with double track main with platforms on passing tracks at various places running a mix of express and local service with disciplined running of a diagram wherein locals are stopped at a station when an express passes by. The entire flippin' Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen line works that way with 3 minute headway.

So while we carry on having our endless discussions in the US, just read the news that China is ordering another 100 Valero 16 car high speed train sets designed for 350kph operations which will be used on the Beijing - Shanghai HSR covering 1350km in less than 5 hours in commercial service. Considering that New York to Chicago is about 1450km, that is something worth thinking about.

 

[AlanB]

The answer is, you don't. You instead have express and local tracks, and a few local trains stopping at Podunk and Batavia and Dyer and the like. The rest of the trains, more intelligently operated, blow by them. You might even configure it so that these trains shuttle between major city stops.

I am sure that in the US where we appear to have a penchant for over-engineering everything to a point of absurdity, we would try to go for quad track all the way and then decide it is too expensive and end up building nothing. While of course the Japanese and the Chinese and the Europeans are happily charging long with double track main with platforms on passing tracks at various places running a mix of express and local service with disciplined running of a diagram wherein locals are stopped at a station when an express passes by. The entire flippin' Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen line works that way with 3 minute headway.

Actually IIRC this is the very technique that the Caltrain uses for their express service.

 

[DesertRat]

I dunno. There's a lot of discussion picking up again out here for a HSR between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Barstow is firmly in the fight for a stop here of course. I'd be happy to just see the Desert Wind again.

I'd vote for a combination of both services but that's just me.