Very few taxpayers understand government finance. In fact, very few of my fellow accountants and finance officers understand how the federal budget works. Accordingly, they have no idea how Amtrak or other transport services are funded.
I take two or three trips a year on Amtrak. Invariably I meet first time riders who wonder why the United States does not have trains like they have in Europe. When I explain to them how the trains in Europe, as well as other overseas countries, are funded, and how Amtrak is funded, they get a “deer in the headlights” expression on their faces. They don’t have a clue!
And I still maintain the fastest way to wake Americans up to trains is just put a HSR system in the median of the ISH system and watch how fast they will sit up and take notice especially when they are driving at 80 per with three kids fighting in the back seat and mother trying to explain it isnt that much further count cows or something. And a HSR train flashes past at 220 mph I think they will seriously consider this option the next time they visit the grandparents. If it isn’t right under there nose HSR is never going to be noticed. This morning on one of the Sunday Morning Talk shows Californias Governor, New Yorks Mayor and I think it was Pennsylvania’s Governor brought up the subject of HSR and all three agreed its time is now and to wait much longer would be a serious mistake.
And I don’t know why it is that Amtrak eastern long distance trains cannot be built using these type cars. It can’t be to difficult to take the basic shell and design different interiors. Anything would be better than to make the same mistake again and order additional Viewliners. Maybe the bi-levels would not be adaptable to sleeping car use but I can’t imagine why not. If Amtrak would have confined themselves to one type car for the east and one type car for the west they would not be in the mess they find themselves in now. I for one still believe they retired the heritage equipment far to soon. If it would have undergone major rebuilding complete with retention tanks it could have soldiered on for at least twenty more years of reliable service. Obviously Amtrak has not been really pleased with the Viewliners or they would have built the diners to this design long ago. The one experimental Viewliner diner is not even in service. It would be interesting to know how many Viewliner sleepers of the fifty built are available for service on any given day. It is my understanding there were cost overuns to the Viewliner sleepers as Amtrak kept making changes even as they were being assembled. Amtrak built two Viewliner sleepers and one Viewliner diner before the production order for sleepers was placed and even after the order was placed continued to make changes and that is why there was no funds available for the Viewliner diners. I for one am very concerned how Amtrak will waste this latest largesse from the feds. They are not going to get to many more chances so they better get it right this time.
I personally think that if the bi-level eastern commuter cars can be utilized for long distance services in the east it would be a very wise direction to go. First they
I am intrigued by the prospect of an articulated double-decked car similar to the TGV. Articulated cars offer somewhat more capacity for unit length despite the reduced proportion of car body to overall length between coupler faces or articulation center point. Articulated cars could be developed from the NJT car with any necessary modifications to meet both NEC and other corridor or regional needs.
The only problem with articulated cars or articulated trains is if one unit has a critical problem that takes it out of service than the entire articulated set or train is out of service. This was the same thing found with the early Zephyrs and UP streamliners. The other problem was that there is no way to adjust the consist for less traveled days by eleiminating part of the consist or on peak travel times increasing the consist length.
I have heard that old saw; but I don’t think it is as serious a problem as what it is made out to be.
With adequate inspection and maintenance and quick changeout, the chance of component failure affecting service readiness is minimal. Many railways run whole trains through maintenance facilities.
Amtrak runs most Midwest services with little variation in consist that I’m aware of. Adding or removing an articulated section has been accomplished readily enough to adjust capacity to the needs of a given service. Beside, switching cars in and out cost money too; and I’m not aware of Metra switching many cars in and out for respective peak and off-peak runs despite running with over half the cars closed.
Putting HSR or any rail in the medians of the Interstate Highway System would not work in many areas. For example, in Austin the I-35 median is, well, there is no median from approximately 15 miles north of downtown to 10 or 15 miles south of the city, unless you consider a concrete barrier a median. In fact, through the city the highway is double decked, primarily because the highway department could not find enough reasonably priced land for side by side construction. There are many other stretches of I-35 with similar constraints.
Interestingly, the UP line that carries the Texas Eagle runs down the median of the MoPac, which is a limited access highway on the west side of Austin. If there is a derailment, it would likely have serious consequences for the passengers, and it could wipe out many cars.
Traveling by train, or many forms of public transit, has it benefits. One can kick back, enjoy a good book, drink a glass of wine, engage in conversation with fellow passengers, and watch the countryside r
You mentioned a speed restriction for the UP tracks in the MoPac Expressway median. Just what is the limit, at least your best estimate?
Curve restrictions would be a physical impediment as well (approximate curvature scaled from Yahoo satellite map):
8-degree between Chavez & Lamar limits balance speed to 20 mph with 2 inches of curve superelevation.
2-degree at Chavez & MoPac, Westover Rd, and Northland Dr at the end of the median alignment limit speed to 60 mph with a balance speed of 40 mph with 2 inches of curve superelevation.
I wonder how real is the risk of damage to road vehicles by a train derailment. Highway guys just sticking it to the railroad and Amtrak? Seems to me a semi on the other side of the barrier wall would be a greater and more likely hazard, especially going 60-70 mph.
I don’t know the speed restriction. Cars easily pass the freight trains running in the median; I have not observed the Texas Eagle in the median. Part of the speed restriction would be due to the curve at the south end of the median where the railway turns under the northbound lane and proceeds along the river.
The probability of a train derailing in the MoPac median is low. But it is a risk with potentially dire consequences. The risk of a truck jumping a median is not germane to the question of a train derailment.
I am surprise that no-one has picked-up on my comments regarding the downside of traveling by train or other public conveyance.
I can understand slower 40 mph freight trains from the geometry of the line. The slow speed of 20 mph at the south end of the median may be due to a long train approaching or rounding the curve at Lamar extending back to the median. At the north end freight trains should be moving at 40-50 mph and the Eagle should be allowed 60 mph, probably slower than the road traffic even if there is a posted limit of only 55 mph.
One question is why a jackknifing truck on the expressway is not viewed with the same alarm, given that some drivers may not be able to evade a pileup. A train may pile up too, but most drivers can evade that equally well. Is it that because of the frustration of controlling road safety, that was taken out against the railroad for an accomplishment?
As to the downside of public transport, maybe most in this group are in denial. I rode across Pennsylvania in a crowded Manhattan Limited coach with a little girl whose happy squeals was pure torture. I met nuts that just had to talk to me in the lounge; and as politely as possible excused myself and returned to my seat or room to escape. Generally, the good outweigh the bad. The alternative is living in an island without real social contact.
HSR in medians may seem like a good idea, and might be an improvement over existing rail lines in some corridors like Tulsa - Oklahoma City. Rarely do expressways go far between curves, even 10,000 foot radius, that would limit speed to 150 mph or much less such as in Austin, TX. The Indiana TollRoad purposely layed out an alignment with frequent curves to keep the driver’s attention on the road and not become hypnotized by a long straight road to the horizon. One galling tendency of railroads was to stake out long tangents between 2-4 degree curves to cross a watercourse on a bridge at a less acute angle.
Construction and subsequent maintenance of a track in a freeway median is costly. Addition of capacity to the highway or railway at a later time is costly. Construction of new grade-separation structures is costly, because not all will fit. A scheme that proposes this as a “cost-savings feature” is not a scheme I would view with an unjaundiced eye.
I can’t think of any reason for median (assuming there is one) rail construction costs to be higher than for a dedicated right of way. Existing grade separation structures and grading can be exploited, significantly reducing cost roughly by a third.
I agree that future expansion is limited without significant rebuilding of the typical expressway and crossroad structures.
New grade separation structures will not be significantly more expensive, and be significantly less expensive than separate structures for different ROW.
I have stated my reluctance to adopt this as universal solution due to occasional restrictive curvature constrained by physical obstacles.
You may be correct. I’m speaking from my direct high-level experience with more than 20 freight, freight/passenger, and heavy-rail commuter projects that either built in highway medians or highway rights-of-ways or estimated costs for building in highway medians or rights-of-ways, or looked at conjoining the two modes, in Illinois, Texas, California, Colorado, Utah, Washington, and Oregon. A high-speed project compounds the difficulties because of its more demanding vertical and horizontal geometry, track modulus, train-control systems, and power systems. My experiences may be too limited or have come to the wrong conclusions. I enter here only to share my knowledge for entertainment purposes, and whatever people choose to do with it is their business alone.
The Sunset Limited leaving LA uses the median of I-10 for some distance and the track speed is 79 mph the same as the commuter trains that use this same ROW.
I was only using the medians of some Highways as a possible route for trains I understand it would not work on all routes and all highways. But using the median in densely populated urban areas would have to be less costly than using all new right of way. It would even be possible to elevate the rail structure in the median in many areas, costly yes but so is purchasing all new right of way. Maybe it could only be used for part of a route but it certainly is an alternative to what we have in many cases now.
It’s an idea that no one I know of in the freight and heavy passenger-rail business will support. Nor the people in the highway business either. The construction difficulties are enormous unless someone is planning to close the freeway and the cross streets for a couple of years. The compromises made to both rail and highway alignments are very bad. The cost savings do not exist.
No one would today agree to the I-10 median location. We all just cringe that SP did.
Who knows, maybe people will do it anyway. In the whole scheme of things, I guess it will only make my taxes go up a few dollars more to not consult the engineers.
With due respect to RWM’s experience, building I-10 along the SP or the MoPac along its namesake through a developed area is quite different and more expensive than plopping down a railway in a 50-foot grassy median in rural areas. I think the point of the first writer in this thread was use of predominantly rural, typically four-lane Interstate medians for rail.
I-90 was built through Chicago along the railroads (NYC, PRR, CRIP & CNW) rather than relocating them in a median because of rail yards and volumes of freight, commuter, and intercity trains. The railway enbankments posed a barrier between neighborhoods that mitigated the community disruption from an expressway. A number of rail customers were wiped out in the process.
Reduction of the commutershed may have been a contributing factor in the North Western’s petition to abandon stations in the City affected by expressway construction. Concurrent plans called for extending the Logan Square L to Jefferson Park and, eventually, to O’Hare in the median, duplicating the existing CNW Wisconsin Division commuter service as it was known.
Looked like a broad median was used for the train requiring little reconstruction. Now if 2,000 or more commuters ride in the peak hour, that’ll put off the need for highway expansion for a few years.
Would an intercity do that, even HSR? Acelas carry maybe 300 passengers an hour on the NEC, and only four trains arrive in New York from Philadelphia and beyond between 8 am and 9 am - two Regionals, a Keystone, and an Acela. How cost-effective would that be in a median on a less populous corridor?