Argentina builds high speed rail

Railway Age News is reporting that Argentina will build a 435 mile high speed rail line using TGV technology. Argentina beats the US to the punch in the western hemisphere building high speed rail. I think that is pathetic.

George

I think it is wonderful! More high speed rail is never a pathetic thing. We’ll just narrow it down to the Northwestern semi-hemisphere from now on.

My point was that places like Argintina and Viet Nam can see the value in high speed rail while “leaders” like John McCain would rather please the high way lobby than move HSR ahead in our country. I do think that the more HSR is built in other countries the more it begs the question as to why we don’t have it here anywhere except the NEC. It sort of undermines the argument that our country is not populated enough to have HSR doesn’t it?

George

A lot less people live between Chicago and Kansas City than between Boston and Washington and the distances are comparable.

The new line is being built along a corridor that extends from Buenos Aires, Rosario and Cordoba. Does anyone know what the population is there? How does it compare to the NEC or the Chicago to Kansas City corridor mentioned above?

George

I knew McCain was anti-Amtrak LD trains, but not anti-HSR. Do you have a link to a position paper or article about this?

I don’t know about a poistion paper.He has been quoted in the Trains newswire as saying something to the effect that HSR won’t work in this country. There may be something on the “thomas” website or NARP may have a voting record on him. He has, like you say, fought Amtrak funding tooth and nail. He even fought against Amtrak getting funding to repair their existing passenger cars, many of which sit idle at Beach Grove. I am naturally suspicious of politicians and beleive the old saying “money talks”. I suspect that the money of the highway lobby has spoken to him as it has many others in the government.

George

Announcements and construction are two different things. Announcements are political in nature to court favor with voters. Construction is what happens after funding. Dont hold you breath that it will ever be built.

I did some digging and found that he’s generally been pro-NEC and even co-authored some bills to get it some funding. He’s also on record as being for Amtrak reform and been an outspoken critic of the LD trains.

Generally, he hates anything that smells like pork to him.

He’s always struck me as someone who’s less beholden to PAC money than most others.

I suspect that if he were elected, he’s take another swipe at Amtrak reform that could really put some heat on Amtrak’s LD trains. And, that might not turn out to be all bad, because the status quo really stinks.

What difference does it make how many people live along a rail corridor as long as the capacity of equipment is filled with passengers on every run? Must there be a queue of passengers waiting in line on standby or something before such service is justified? Isn’t there a limit to just how many people can be squeezed aboard (maybe 1000 I would think). If there are only 993 aboard does that disqualify or make it illegitimate?

I think the point was that for two similar routes, the one with the greater population along it will have greater ridership (all other things being equal). And, if one of those routes is already in operation, it can be useful in a ridership model for the one that doesnt’ exist.

In my opinion, the winning niche for rail passenger service is along corridors with good population centers along the route. End point to end point is what airlines do well.

The total population has very little to do with it. What matters would be the number of potential riders. How many Americans would leave their cars at home, and how many Argentinians have cars ?

Those three Argentinian metro areas have populations of 12 million, 1.6 million, and 2 million respectively. The distance is 435 miles, which is roughly the same length as the NEC.

The NEC population is much higher, though with Washington metro (5.6 million), Baltimore metro (2.6 million), Philly metro (5.8 million), New York metro (18.8 million), New Haven metro (0.8 million), Providence metro (1.6 million), and Boston metro (4.5 million). The NEC population approximately equals the entire population of Argentina.

The Chicago-KC population is more similar to the Argentina route, but is spread out more. The corridor population could vary depending on which route you take, but lets assume that it goes Chi-Peoria-Springfield-St Louis-Columbia-Kansas City. You have the Chicago metro (9.5 million), Peoria metro (0.4 million), Springfield metro (0.2 million), St Louis metro (2.8 million), Columbia metro (0.2 million), and KC metro (2 million) over a roughly 600 mile route.

A comparable length route to the Chicago-KC corridor, is the proposed San Diego-Sacramento HSR corridor. This population is about double the midwest corridor.

According to a study done in 1998, 47% of the population in Argentina live in a household that owns a car. The best stat for the US I could find, was that 8% of households in the US do not have cars.

As for how many Americans would leave their cars at home? You might see that number go up if there was viable alternative transportation and the price of gasoline was more in line with the rest of the world. At a consumption rate of 388.6 million gallons of gasoline used per day (which is over 10% of the world consumption of all petroleum products per day, stats from 2006), an extra $1 per gallon (which based on what I could find is reasonable adjustment to big economy world petrol prices) would fund the entire US DOT budget in less than half a year or the entire Argentina HSR project in 4 days.

With all that said, HSR in the US is tricky and will require lots of convincing and proven corridors. High population helps, but isn’t necessary for a corridor. I’m glad that Argentina is getting HSR, because trains are great, more trains are awesome, and the more that HSR is proven to work around the world, the less convincing it will take here in the US.

Viet Nam is not a reasonable comparison–few individual car owners. Argentina is a better one but you have to keep in mind it is currently a pretty socialistic country. The more government control, the more you will have massive public works. I’m somewhat surprised the country can afford this since it was only Hugo Chavez loaning them a huge amount of money to pay off the World Bank that got them to the point the country had any funds to invest. And the newly elected Argentine government has already said it won’t reduce the bloated public employee payroll. (Note: Many of Chavez’s critics, and even some of his supporters, in his home country think Argentina will never repay what it owes and Chavez knows it.) So this high-speed rail may have more to do with politics than anything else. However, if it works it will be a major achievement. Given the record of Argentina government in the last 15 years, it is a big “if”.

Once it’s actually built. Until then, it’s just paper project talk.

Using that logic, then the Soviet Union should have had high speed rail before anybody else.

For the record, Argentina’s average population density is 35 people per square mile, which is about 40 percent of the USA’s average population density.

From what I’ve read on the web, the USA has the contract to build the high-speed line, which is ironic. Costs thus far are estimated to be $1.35 billion, or a minuscule $3.1 million per mile, which is a new precedent for low costs.

How come most air passengers have to endure two or more stops in order to make such travel affordable, then? I can’t go to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Airport or Lehigh Valley International Airport (the two international airports closest to me) and hope for an unlimited plethora of one-seat ride destinations by air, never mind reasonable fares unless I fly in the wrong direction for a couple of hours.

Critics of high-speed rail in Germany (these are the pro-rail critics, not anti-rail) often note that the ICE trains on the NBS (dedicated high speed) corridors make too many intermediate stops, slowing down average speeds to 125 mph when they can be a lot faster. On the Shinkansen, the most popular trains are the super-expresses that travel endpoint to endpoint.

As for McCain, the “Rail Passenger Service Improvement Act” that he sponsored in 2002 was a bizarre and vain (IMHO) proposal to have Amtrak broken up into three different units (namely “Amtrak Operations”, “Amtrak Maintenance” and

Hmm…I’ll take that kind of “embarrassment”, of securing a multi-million dollar govt. gravy train contract, anytime [;)]

Sounds more like smart business instead.

The contract winner is Alstom (France) with Isolux Corsan (Spain), Emepa (Argentina), and IECSA (Argentina) as the rest of the consortium. I’m not seeing where the US government comes into the equation.

I never said the US govt. was in the equation :slight_smile: I would hope that they wouldn’t be in the business of building railroads for other countries.

I was refering to the reference in the post above mine, about the US (private contractors I assume) contract.