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Details emerge on Amtrak California high speed rail procurement
Complying with FRA’s Tier3 crashworthiness standard sounds like a big loser to me. Running at 220mph with so much dead weight will only inflate Amtrak’s utility bill, while providing little additionnal passenger protection beyond PTC’s collision avoidance system. True HSR will not happen in North America unless the FRA updates its paleolithic view of passenger safety.
The genius of the French TGV high-speed service is that these super fast trains are also able to operate on regular rail trackage at lower speeds.
If the same is done in CA, that means that trains could operate Los Angeles to San Francisco without waiting for the entire system to be completed.
I hope that California does not adopt any standards that make this impossible.
I agree that crash worthiness should NOT be a driving requirement. If it is imposed on high speed trains then it should also be imposed on all wide bodied aircraft that must land a high speeds. Avoidance and careful track and trackbed design are the answer. Extra non-revenue producing mass or designs expensive to produce are not an answer.
"Stiffer trucks…compatible…tracks built to higher tolerances,
What?
I have no idea what they’re talking about. Somebody please describe the qualities of track-train dynamics and design deficiencies they’re attacking.
Oh, and there was a time when in Calif, yes, before Ca, that anything, car or load, “extended more than 5 feet 5 inches from centerline of track,” was a train-order protected “wide load,” eleven feet wide train.
I can tell the brief story of side-swiping a wideload in the train I was running. Wide Loads, no fun.
Passenger rail car crash-worthiness requirements: The current crash-worthiness requirements are a death keel to any serious moderate or high speed operations. The energy consumption/track & bridge strength requirements/equipment costs/maintenance costs are not acceptable and can not be made acceptable for any higher or high speed service. The answer is positive train control with systems that virtually eliminate collisions. Yes, elimination of road grade crossings are expensive, positive train control is expensive but the correct solution. Can no one here see that thousands of passenger trains operate every day in Europe and Japan with extremely high safety. Building rolling tanks is NOT the answer.
Also building small production runs of different designs to do the same task is counterproductive. Rolling stock needs to be built to a common specification when ever possible. Note to passenger rail operating authorities: Did it ever occur to you that the aircraft built for airline A are almost identical to the ones built for airline B. Why?? Because the cost of unique equipment would be beyond affordable. (When two airlines merge fleet integration is a very small issue!) It is time for the FRA and passenger rail operating entities to stop with the local kingdom bunker mentality and work together to build a network of local/regional/long distance rail service. It once existed in North America and can again. Lets get to work to make it happen.
I don’t know how US Tier 3 requirements compare with those imposed on passenger equipment built in Germany, France, Britain, Japan, etc. but it would certainly seem sensible to look at them. If the ultimate intent is to operate at 220 mph speeds, we’d have to be nuts to not eliminate all at-grade crossings on these routes and replace them with under or overpasses. It’s highly unlikely that freight will be operated on 220 mph routes. With these two variables eliminated, I don’t see any good reason not to buy off-the-shelf foreign equipment built under license in the States. Any developmental bugs have most likely been already eliminated from this equipment and the rolling stock is already safely operating in daily service. Re-inventing the wheel is very expensive and very likely unnecessary.
Grade crossings are pretty much a non-issue in this debate. There are none between Washington and New York, and very few between New York and Boston. If I remember correctly, the speed limit over a grade crossing is still 110, even if the line is otherwise up to 125 MPH standards. I’m sure no one will be idiotic enough to build any new HSR track in California with grade crossings (although the trains may cross some while running on existing track at lower speeds).
The main thing here is protection of passengers in a train vs. train collision. The FRA may be willing to bend if it can be guaranteed that the high speed trains will never have a chance of hitting anything else, but that guarantee is not possible. The NEC shares with commuter and freight, and the California system will also enter cities on existing tracks shared with commuter and freight. Perhaps the regulation can be worked out so that the trains are okay on their exclusive HSR lines, if they meet the current regs for coexisting on conventional lines. It really comes down to lawsuit avoidance and politics, of course. Who will be sued, or lose an election, because the regs weren’t strong enough after the first crash does happen?