Use existing highways as routes for new passenger train tracks.
Use existing railroads’ ROWs as routes for new passenger train tracks.
There were lots of good reasons why these would be very difficult to do.
I’ve read on this forum many who continually point out Europe, Japan, and China have such great systems, and question why the U.S. can’t do the same?
I’m asking those people now, “How?” How do you suggest we build that kind of system here?
China does not care about property rights. They say the trains are going here and there, and that’s it.
Europe and Japan both had good systems before WWII, but the destruction of rail by that war allowed them to modernize their systems, and they’ve continued in doing that.
With our system of private property, environmental laws, size of country, etc., how should we proceed building a great new passenger system here?
(I personally don’t think we should or even can, but I’m in the minority here.)
I would opine that the problem is not in the wide open spaces (ie, the great plains, and even fair portions of the east). Rather the problem is getting into the population centers.
I suspect that on open ground, an elevated, or otherwise well-protected ROW could be achieved. Even a two track line would likely come in under 150’ wide. Make it electric and noise would be minimal.
Suppose the majority of people did want it to happen? What then?
I don’t know. I live on the Great Plains where there are very few people, and I can tell you it would be a huge court battle dragging on for years to go to the area farmers and tell them you want their land.
It’s been sixty years since the Interstate crossed here, and there are still very upset families about their family land that was ruined by the highway.
The solution is very clear, as demonstrated by Brightline: arrange for the money to do it right, and the support and patronage to justify it, and you might get it built.
Anywhere true HSR would be built, just as in any other part of the world it will have to be graded and built and maintained to appropriate high standards – and that’s going to involve some company, along the lines of Speno or Loram, that builds or buys the expensive viaduct, TLM, and fixed-tension cat equipment, and then fairly contracts and effectively delivers the construction. No Government funding agency will break through its red tape, bureaucratic benchmarking, pay-after-performance, or lack of interest in stranded-capital support to do it (CAHSR is so ridiculous it doesn’t count as a fair example, but even if it had been developed effectively it would still be hopeless as promoted…)
Regional corridors men condenses of support, not just to ‘provide the trains’ but to make sure they’re used… and not just to allow certain demographics to bother other demographics, factually or in imagination.
In my section of Maryland there is a big hullabaloo over Public Service Electric & Gas wanting to build a high voltage power line from one of their generating plants in Pennsylvania to users in Northern Virginia in the Leesburg area. The power line would be constructed over predominately FARM land where it goes in Maryland. The FARMERS are PO’d.
My question is, if power is needed in Northern Virginia, why doesn’t the Pepco Plant at Dickerson, MD get improved to generate additional power to supply the need. Dickerson is nominally across the Potomac River from the intended use area that the power line is to supply.
I can only imagine farmers resistance to a rail line across their properties.
True, I can attest to the same thing, for better or worse farmers can be pretty stubborn. This can be a good thing or a bad one. And it usually depends on what perspective you take. I myself would typically side with the farmers because Iowa, but in this case I think I’d side with the trains.
Simply tunnel under everything. I remember all the hooplah surrounding this Hyperloop thing in the Cleveland news a while back. I haven’t seen any boring machines arrive just yet!
And look who’s behind the project! If anyone can get Federal funding it would be our Prime Minister!
I’ve got my credit card ready to buy one of the first tickets.
You have considerably more faith in Hyperloop than I do. The system is remarkably more lame than the PRT systems that were all the rage in 1975… those at least would run once you’d paid the ridiculous infrastructure cost, and not endanger hapless riders.
All the practical discussion of Hyperloop I’ve seen involves above-grade construction of the tubes. The Boring Company was founded to facilitate a subgrade alternative, but there’s no sign of that. I was a great fan of vacuum subways when I was four years old, but then I grew up and found out about how subgrades move over time. The guide system has to be tweaked (fairly intensively!) to work with shifting tube walls…
Here is a timetable that shows the Ohio Xplorer route:
But note that this is October 1957, just a few months after the new train was introduced, and there is utterly no mention of it…
Seems to me that setting aside land for ROW when developing new urban areas is the cheapest way to get the ROW. This could be part of a utility corridor as underground high voltage lines are expensive and limited in length due to charging currents.
I also wonder if there has been much in the way of tradeoff analysis in the design of HSR, including maximum speeds. For distances of 100 to 200 miles, it may work out that the shortest average time for riders may benefit from a lower top speed with stops every 20 to 30 miles. Time would be saved by having a fairly high frequency to minimize waiting for a train.
Back in the day - my family rode the East Coast Champion to and from Miami. Remember waking up at Jacksonville as we were crossing the St. Johns River drawbridge and thinking ‘we will be in Miami in a jiffy’. NOT The train seemed to stop every 15 or 20 miles at each and every beach community between Jacksonville and Miami - nominally 330 miles according to I-95 mile markers in the 21st Century. O-D passengers tend to get annoyed with all the intermediate stops.
This is exactly what needs to happen. Having a train ever few hours isn’t practical and every 15 mins isn’t great but it would be a start. Ideally somewhere around every 5 mins to 10 mins
I still say let’s wait for Brightline West. That should silence the naysayers one way or the other. Or so I hope. Until then I doubt we’d ever reach a consensus.
Beach subway ran on rails; only the propulsion was pneumatic, and the amount of displacement required would have been crippling for a four-track equivalent under Broadway. The whole point of Hyperloop is the pneumatic ‘suspension’.
A far better application of pneumatic continuous drive was the ‘atmospheric traction’ system as taken up by Brunel (it was exhaustively worked up and described by its inventor, which is probably what impressed Brunel).
If you’re actually building a vacuum tube system, go whole hog and fill the tube with hydrogen, and use that as your propulsion assistance. I believe you can get thousands of mph of velocity before you get to the ‘speed of sound’ in that medium…
Brunel’s only lasted a little bit longer than Beach though. The tube was sealed with leather and grease. If the rats didn’t eat it the weather got it anyway.
Hyperloop seems dead. Musk never mentions it anymore. If he can’t make it work I doubt everyone less smart than him could.
I’m getting slightly over 2800mph for Mach 1 in hydrogen at 59F/15C. Aerodynamic drag would be lower at a given speed by a factor of 14. One -um- minor problem is keeping the H2 free of any oxidizers (oxygen is the main concern, one probably wouldn’t want ClF3 in any environment).
With respect to your experience on the Champion - I would get pretty annoyed as well. I would think that each stop would add 5 to 10 minutes to the schedule - there was a reason that “Limiteds” were faster than lesser trains.
A “high-speed” service in a ~100 mile corridor (e.g LOSSAN), would have trainsets set up for reasonably high acceleration (1 to 1.5mphps) and short station dwell times, but even then a stop every 20 miles will add significant time. Such a service on the LOSSAN corridor might include a couple trains each way with intermediate stops only at Oceanside and Irvine.
During my 2 year commute on Amtrak, the first 6 months had the pleasure of train #599 with fewer stops than other trains (no stopping at San Juan Cap) and took about 10 minutes less to get from Solana Beach to Irvine. At the same time that 599 was replaced, Amtrak at Caltran’s request, added extra stops to the midday trains at the Coaster stations.