I caught a very short blurp on the radio about President Obama making a pro-high speed rail speech. Does anyone know where I could see the whole thing?
George
Don’t know, but I just heard on the radio that Obama’s “riding the rails today” and he’s promoting the high speed rail stimulus money. I think they said he’s on the east coast somewhere.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-04-16-obama-high-speed-rail_N.htm?csp=15
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Obama is calling for the United States to move swiftly to a system of high-speed rail travel, saying it will relieve congestion, help clean the air and save on energy.
Obama said Thursday the country cannot afford not to invest in a major upgrade to rail travel. He said he understands it necessarily will be “a long-term project,” but said the time to start is now.
Obama said that “this is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It’s happening now. The problem is, it’s happening elsewhere.” He cited superior high-speed rail travel in countries such as China, Japan, France and Spain.
Obama said the rail upgrades are critically needed because U.S. highways and airways “are clogged with traffic.”
The money will go not only to high-speed rail development but also to a parallel effort to improve rail service along existing lines — upgrades that would allow faster train travel.
The White House said funding will move into the rail system through three channels, first to upgrade projects already approved and only in need of funding, thus providing jobs in the short term. The second and third would focus on high-speed rail planning and then a commitment to help in the execution of those plans far into the future when the stimulus funds are no longer available.
Transpor
I saw the end of the news conferance on Fox News. I just glanced at the Fox News web site and did not see a video link. Here is a written report link.
The Washington Post’ s article linked below says that this was announced at an appearance at the Old Executive Office Building this morning, before he left on a trip to Mexico and Trinidad. It also says that there were “prepared remarks”. The article also includes many more details on the routes mentioned - specific cities, etc.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/04/16/by_michael_d_shear_declaring.html?wprss=44
As much as I like the proposal, I’m not sure there’s much “new news” here, beyond what we were already expecting or had inferred from prior announcments of the $8 Billion for High-Speed rail, etc.
- Paul North.
George — CSpan has the whole thing available for viewing. Here’s the link: http://www.c-span.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-17524 Best, Andy Cummings Associate Editor TRAINS Magazine Waukesha, Wis.
Thanks to all for the replies. I will look use the links you all have given me. I’m 51 years old right now. Maybe I will get to see, photograph and ride some of it. I know this will take many years to build.
George
Transportation Sec Ray LaHood was just on CNBC with Erin Burnett talking about HSR. I caught only the tail end of it when I got home for lunch.
I just have one quick Question HOW are we going to POWER all thwese trains. IMPORT more oil or finally get the Enviromental Wack jobs off the backs of the Nuclear Energy boys and let them build more Reactors let us reprocess the Spent Fuel back into USEABLE fuel like everyother nation does. Also build more coal plants. Look HSR demands lots of ELECTRICATY to movve them and our grid is at capacity now we need more megawattage to do it.
Ed,
My thoughts exactly.
It will be “green” only because the emissions or repercussions of the electric power source are out of sight-out of mind. This administration isn’t behind coal, the environmentalists don’t want nuclear, which leaves hydro, wind, solar, or natural gas. However, hydro, wind, and solar have there own environmental impacts when you consider the large amount of real estate affected for commercial production. Plus natural gas plants are expensive to operate.
But it is all about perception.
Jay
Correct Around here they are putting up Wind farms as fast as possible however everytime they do the Cropdusters refuse to fly thru them since they are navigation hazards BIGTIME. Every other country reprocesses spent Nuke fuel into more fuel since only 10% of the fuel is used each time thru. I called a buddy that works as a plant manager at our local Nuke plant he was also a Navy reactor man so he would know. If we would reprocess the fuel the amount of waste would drop 90% that Yucca Mountain would have to store.
The FRA defines the term, high speed rail, as speeds exceeding 90 mph while the European Union defines the term, high speed rail, as speeds exceeding 125 mph. Are the high speed rail speed definitions top speeds or average speeds? In Europe top speeds easily exceed 125 mph, in fact some average speeds in Europe may exceed 125 mph as well. By defining the term high speed rail only as top speeds exceeding 90 mph is dumbing down high speed rail since top speeds in the Northeast Corridor exceed 90 mph
Top speeds. Average speeds include station starts and stops, and intermediate dwell times, which are zero mph.
You might be reading waaay too much politics into this. The 90 mph threshold is not a political benchmark, it’s a technical benchmark. Up to 90 mph, existing U.S. track geometry, rail profile, wheel profile, and train-control works without significant modification. Beyond 90 mph, significant modification is required, and the ability ends to mix freight and passenger on the same infrastructure without incurring exorbitant maintenance and construction costs. U.S. railroads don’t even own tampers, liners, rail-grinding machines, and testing and measurement tools that are capable of maintaining track for speeds in excess of 90 mph, except for a tiny handful in the NEC. They have almost no experience or in-house expertise. You try to run 125 mph and 50 mph, 17,000 ton coal trains on the same track, and it’s going to be ugly. I don’t think it’s feasible, much less sensible.
90 mph isn’t dumbing down. It’s realistic assessment that beyond 90 mph, railways in the U.S. are into a different world. When the FRA and DOT say “90 mph” is high-speed, they are simply telling the truth from the U.S. point of view.
Europe is completely different. Axle loadings, loading gauge, geography, and economic use of railways is different.
In terms of getting there, if a 90MPH top speed can produce average speeds at say about 65-70 it could well be found to be competitive with auto travel. I am going to Cincinnati, OH next weekend. Mapquest gives me 6.75 hours for the 390 mile trip, or a tad under 58MPH. That assumes I don’t have to stop for any reason. Reality for me is at least two 15 minute stops so I am now down to 54MPH. Add weather conditions and a bunch of drivers doing 60 on a 70MPH highway and who knows.
Getting good average results out of a 90MPH top speed will take some effort, probably expensive, to get rid of all the kinds of conditions that call for restricted speeds. While that deal might not make heavy inroads into the air travel market between the end points of any given route, it sure makes the prospect of getting some travelers off the highway fairly good. Especially when gas gets to $6.00.
By the way, I am not opposed to spending 30-40 billion a year over the next twenty years or so to get us a nice high speed system. Expensive? Big deal we spend 4 times that much on highways.
An engineering question. Suppose a very low density freight route, say one small train a day with a little work enroute, was built up to 125MPH for passenger service. Could the damage/wear on the track by the freight operation be mitigated by operating at something like a top freight speed of 25MPH?
At 25 mph, it had better not be traveling more than a few miles or it will be in the way.
Regardless of speed, all you need is one really-good flat wheel on the freight train, and the 125-mph will be slow-ordered to 80 or 90 mph until the grinder can make a trip.
RWM
Does China attempt to run high speed trains on right of way shared with local passenger trains or coal trains? If they do are the tracks used by the high speed trains and regular trains interconnected?
I heard them talking about putting a rail system in hawaii
FINNALY
RWM; Mudchicken:: This post got me to doing one of Paul North’s back of the envelope calculations. As we know in the late 40s and 50s there were several 100+ MPH passenger routes. CB&Q, Milwaulkee, IC, etc.). These speeds are what many of us have used to ask why not already HSR? I’m not considering the 79 MPH limitation imposed by the ICC.
Freight train axel loadings were not that much more than passenger axels. 50 - 60 Ton cars were the norm with approx max of 18K per wheel. Now we are up to the 286K cars with 38K per wheel. Passenger cars have not changed much. That said; rail weight has not changed that much. Near my house for many years we had 112RE rail and now 141# rail. Granted wheel diameter is increased but that still appears to have freight wih a greater axel loading on a unit of rail. As a result the heavier loads appear to be more wearing on rail.
The next item is rail and wheel profile. As I remember there have been several changes in US profiles since WW II. Has the desired profile changed with the max loads? If so is this the reason European profiles are different? I also remember Europe does not load their freight as heavy. The opposite end of the spectrum would be the iron ore roads especially BHP and what profiles they use. These items seem to indicate that true HSR will require separate ROW however the HSR trains could still go on freight mains or sidings for passing situations with a necessary reduction of speed to 90MPH.
If any freight is
Let’s just assume that the freight will run at night per the FRA’s “temporal separation” of freight & passenger traffic regulations, so as to avoid the scheduling conflict.
But RWM is exactly right about the track deterioration/ wear and tear from freight trains, hard as it may be to believe. Some years ago - 1980s ? - Trains published an interview by Don Phillips of W. Graham Claytor, Jr., then Amtrak’s President, during which this question came up. Claytor said that - even back then - you could just about measure the actual deterioriation in the NorthEast Corridor’s track geometry parameters from the passage of a single ConRail freight train (at night). Which is one of the reasons Amtrak imposed a per car-mile charge for freight over its lines that was about 4 times higher than the industry average at the time (if I recall correctly), and why Claytor and Amtrak said they’d really that the freight not be there at all.
Now that was back in the day when concrete ties were just starting to be widely installed, the fastener performance under such traffic wasn’t as well understood as it is now, rail grinding wasn’t really as common, the tamping and lining equipment was nowhere nea
Didn’t the Milwaukee Road routinely run their Hiawathas in excess of 100 mph between Milwaukee and Chicago back in the 1960s? What was their experience doing this with freight trains using the same track?