I wonder if investment in more high speed service is really worth it compared to spending the same money on more conventional trains on more routes on reasonable, dependable scehdules. On the NEC from Washington to New York the Regional fare is $49 one way. The fare for Acela for the same trip is $133. The time saved is about 35 minutes. The first factor in my choice of which train to take would be cost. That extra cost is pretty steep per minute saved.
Most of those “cool” European and Asian nations who have all those high speed trains zipping along also had a pretty well established conventional rail network in place before they developed their high speed trains.
This discussion gets into the details of specific routes very quickly.
Some general facts to consider:
If a train has a lot of stops, so much time is consumed with stops and acceleration/deceleration that the high speed between stations can improve the schedule very little.
The European method was incremental: first they created pretty good regional service on existing lines. Next, they created some express service on the same lines. Next, they began building high-speed lines between the same endpoints and moved the express trains onto the new lines, and began adding more express service.
Most of the high-speed rail proposals in the U.S. approach the service incrementally, installing sufficient improvements to create 79 or 90 mph on existing corridors, with long-range planning to incrementally add express service and eventually, should the market demand appear, 135-mph or greater on dedicated corridors. Some of the proposals, such as California, obstensibly jump straight to high-speed dedicated corridors, but California already has a significant regional network. So long as one can get co-location of stations for the two services at important terminals, this can be highly functional.
I searched on the Amtrak site and the earliest you could get the $49 Regional train is two weeks from now, Jan. 28. Prior to that, the fare is $72, while most Acela fares are $133 for a time savings of as little as 17 minutes on some comparisons. I sure wouldn’t pay that.
HSR needs at a minimum a high-grade ROW, with relatively little interference from freight or slower passenger train sets. Better is a dedicated ROW. You see that in Germany. Some of the original routes use existing, upgraded track, but newer routes are dedicated. And as you say, even the class of train below their ICE (top speed 200 mph) , which is the IC (top speed 125 mph) is pretty fast, - fast enough to make a lot of shorter (200 - 400 miles) routes here very competitive if frequent and convenient service was part of the package. And it would be a lot cheaper to use the incremental approach to get there.
But----isn’t the NEC regional fare coach and the ACCELA is business class or first class? If so we need to compare NEC business class. Is there no first class on the NEC except the overnight train BOS - WASH?
I think this is one of the biggest reasons that high-speed service is suffering in the public’s eye over here. People don’t want to pay lots of money for 90 mph service and point out that even the Acela is slow by European standards.
Ninety percent of the US population does not live in the Northeast Corridor. Out west the distances are greater. Even 110 would be fine, if not for all of the freight tains in the way.
Bedell: Just checked for fares for tomorrow Fri Jan 15. It turns out that business class on the ACCELA is less than business class on the regional trains for these time frames — 5am, ,6am, 8am, 11am, 6pm and more on 7am, 1am on WAS - nyp;;; Fares ACCELA less WAS - BOS 5am, 7am, 10am, and more 9am, 12noon, 2pm, 4pm: So it is all the matter of time of departure.
Naturally if you leave at the 10pm, 3am, or 5am you can get a very good fare on the regional coach. Add $36 for regional business WAS - NYP.and $44 WAS - BOS
It was surprizing to me that the ACCELA business class is less that NEC regional business at certain times. AMTRAK may be trying to fill these trains however found a couple Regional business class trains sold out.
maybe someone else can check out the weekend fares?
Business class on a NE Regional costs an additional $36.00. So add that to the base fare of $49 or $72 and that makes it $85-108. That seems a little better.
Hear, hear!! And another key is maintained average speed. If a train can average 100 mph, that could make for excellent service. Acela manages only 80+.
Good question. Increased train frequency would be more worth it. Running trains every half hour instead of every hour can save you as much as 30min in travel time, even though the train travels at the same old speed.
Also inceasing average speed by removing slow orders instead of raising top speed might be more worth the effort. Also reducing potential sources of delay like level crossings and eliminating sections of track at restricting speed.
Faster accelerating trains might also be better then a higher top speed.
I wasn’t there, but I once heard that a 90mph GG1 could get from New York to DC with a passenger train faster then a 100mph GG1 because the 90mph engine could accelerate out of stations, slow orders, block signals and curves, all of wich there was alot of, easier due to the gear ratios.
The public needs to realize that it’s our fault that we didn’t invest in this over time. Other nation’s have been investing in their rail transportation for decades to get to where it is today. Of course it is going to cost a great deal of money to catch up. That’s the price we pay for putting it off. We can’t really on two modes of transportation for long we need a balance of three modes.
One could answer that with “The railroads did invest, but the market forces would not have the rails invest in money losing passenger service.” We have Amtrak, which has been underfunded for years and outside the NEC is very dependent on the host RR’s, so that the running of passenger trains has a low priority. In other counties, the ROW is largely government owned and maintained, although the operation of trains is increasingly privatized, passenger rail being subsidized, freight not. I don’t know what the solution will be in the US, because there is enormous resistance to government involvement. However, without state and federal involvement, I don’t see how the US will have even minimally acceptable passenger service. This argument goes round and round, usually coming back to user-paid versus taxpayer subsidized.
IIRC Alberta government did some studies that determined that there was a demand for passenger service between Calgary and Edmonton they found that the HSR portion of that support dropped drastically. Public resistance to government involvment? Or the public just is not enthusiastic as regards HSR?
We’ve batted HSR around here for a few decades between the Windsor ON - Montreal QC corridor. In most surveys I’ve seen the enthusiasm for HSR was not awe inspiring at all. Something around 25-30%. The last ttime we saw anything near HSR was with the CN Turbo units. I remember going with my parents on it a few times. Also heard a lot of stories about it breaking down-----
Speed and frequency both matter; what’s not been said yet is that the speed issue is also how slowly you don’t go.
If that seems rather confusing think of a train going at 120mph, having to slow down for 6 miles of 60 mph. 6 miles at 120mph is done in 3 minutes. 6 miles at 60 minutes is done in 6 minutes. That’s three minutes lost. Now slow the train down to 30 mph. That takes 12 minutes - nine minutes lost. Add some minutes for deceleration and aceleration and then maybe 12-14 minutes are lost. The maths is quite clear, fix the slow bits and try to have as few stops as possible.
Fixing the slow bits is not easy, and rarely cheap - the French decided that the best way to do this was avoid them complelety and build a new line. The Germans have tended to follow suit, most notably in the Cologne to Frankfurt line which allowed a very sinuous pair of lines direclty following the Rhine line to be used by local trains and more freight.
The British have tended to try to speed up existing routes - think Rugby recently where speed went from 70mph to 125mph, and back in the 1970s Peterborough went from 20mph to over 100mph; and promptly lost the benefit by stopping most trains at the station. Where we did build a new line in the 1980s (Selby Deviation) the gain was swift, and because it was open country the cost quite low.
Not stopping trains can be much more complex - the French try to do it, helped by long distances between Paris and the big central and southern cities. Rather harder in Britain, where there are markets close to London and even more so in polycentric countries such as Germany.
And finally on cost - people will pay for reliable speed - maybe not excessively, but they will pay more.
The question is whether high speed trains are worth it. There are many factors to be considered before arriving at an answer. The differences in the door-to-door travel times between journeys on airplanes, conventional trains and journeys on a high speed trains and the differences in the costs between trips on the different modes of travel must be considered. Other differences to be considered are the fares at different times of day and different days of the week
Most important is the convience of the modes of travel and whether high speed trains are truly high speed. Fast and frequent services must be offered. It is not the top speed that counts but high average speed. That means a right of way that will support high speed operation, few intermediate stops, and trains that are capable of rapid acceleration.
I think one factor in the lukewarm public support for HSR is history and the populace’s lack of knowledge or experience with HSR. For the past 40 or more years, the American (& probably Canadian) public outside the NEC has had little exposure to rail travel as a regular means of travel. Many people’s experience, if they had any with Amtrak, was likely negative. Not many Americans have had the pleasure of frequent riding on HSR’s in Europe and elsewhere. So I imagine some marketing/PR will be needed.
All the posts on this thread have hit on the various problems encountered trying to get HSR here in the USA.
A…
RWM pointed out that Europe started with an incremental approach to higher speed. That puts the US already 30 years behind. Incremental has just begun here now - more later.
Just the incremental speed increase with ACCELA vs regional has really boosted business travel. Business is a new travel option which was not available pre Metroliner. A surprize was the last minute Regional business fares were equal to ACCELA business fares.
Train Man - Yes we are slow compared to Europe and it won’t be easy to catch up.
The number of intermediate stops are usually 5 and express service non-stop (5 minutes could be saved at PHL if the high - line bridge added another track to bypass 30th St.) will not occurr until there is enough NYP - WASH demand for a non stop or one stop in PHL which was tried by AMTRAK but not enough riders for that service.
The incremental approach for the NEC has been cited by Phoebe, Schimm, TH&B, RWM, Cricketer. The AMTRAK report on decreasing times on the NEC is very informative.
a. The reduction of slow orders is first requiring less than 1 degree arc in the curves. There are 4 locations NYP - WASH needing to be addressed. 1. is the S curve Elizabeth, NJ - Lincoln 2. NE PHL - 30th street Station, 3. 30th St south and 4. the BAL tunnel. The first three slow to 60 MPH and the last to 40 MPH.
b. second the NYP - WAS CAT. Presently the variable ension CAT is limited to 135 MP. The speed can be increased to 150 MPH by adding a horizontal support between each present support for the variable tension and this additional support will also be needed for constant tension CA
No, it is not worth it NOW. But the price of oil has nowhere to go but up as supplies become shorter and more costly to extract from the ground. Sooner or later a good high speed rail link for distance under 500 miles will be essential to the US’ economic health. And we can’t just whip one into being when we really need it. We have to start now to have one in place when it is needed.