Ahh, a 20 MPH speed limit. That would explain it.
LOL.
Rich
Ahh, a 20 MPH speed limit. That would explain it.
LOL.
Rich
True HSR involves new spine construction almost everywhere (even in the NEC region). It will not be ācity to cityā for real-estate and political-constituency reasons, even if Chinese-style viaduct construction is extensively adopted. That means that service to intermediate points will be on the Lorton/Sanford/Rotterdam/Metropark model, where regional feeders of no more than HrSR speed but minimized distance supply passengers to the actual high-sustained-speed routes.
And as several here over the years have pointed out, in some corridor services a speed above 125mph is not going to be cost-effective given the time savings or decreased equipment turn that higher speeds may offer. Here is where amenities and quality of service become more important than saving the odd 3 minutes here, 9 minutes there. (Here is also where perception of Acela-like exclusivity also enters into the thing, whether or not I think it is sensibleā¦)
The big structural problem with LD trains is that they are only bearable as ātransportationā for long distances if you have access to sleeping cars āand all that that impliesā service-wise. And no government is going to pump billions of dollars into supplying luxurious travel for the well-heeled-enough. Likewise, it has been my impression that governments don;t like being seen as subsidizing sinful amenities like bar cars ā let alone higher-quality onboard food preparation. Something that doesnāt get adequately addressed, too, is that some of the ātransportationā clientele are not exactly observant of even basic hygiene on the LD trains ā it isnāt really Amtrakās fault that the toilets are so often awful so much of the time; just that they donāt want to have to keep dealing with the awfulness. It would be nice if Amtrak would offer intermediate transportation service like hostel cars or even ātourist sleeperā arrangementsā¦ but even that is not going to play well when the new DOGE budgets start to reach coherency.
What I would do, if I were in Congress, would be to note that thereās been a mandate in place for quite a while now that requires Amtrak to at least break even on above-the-rail operations. Iād cut lots of the lawyers and other staff at LāEnfant or whereverā¦ as part of that deep-state reduction businessā¦ and then start looking at things like commissary improvement or proposals like the ones in this thread before actually cutting operation on parts of the ānational networkā.
Unfortunately, I think the Scranton-Manhattan corridor development is not going to be underwritten by the Federal Government after all. But we might hope that Pennsylvania and New Jersey will support both that corridor and the Easton corridor, with feeders for the latter via RMBNā¦
People travel long distance coach on Amtrak as they do via Greyhound. I would even venture to say that probably more Amtrak LD passengers travel Coach then via sleeping car. The coach seats are quite comfortable.
According to Amtrakās *How Do Long Distance Trains Perform Financially, which is an Amtrak 2018 study of the long-distance trains, 85 percent of the riders on the companyās long-distance trains were in coach class.
Approximately 18 percent of the coach passengers board or de-board at rural stations, where there are few if any alternative commercial transport choices. Less than 10 percent of the long-distance riders, irrespective of class, travel end point to end point. The current ridership statistics are probably close to the 2018 stats.
The coach clientele for Amtrak is vary analogous to the Greyhound clientele.
Have you flown coach recently? Though I might add it varies by airline but I see some similar behaviors in the air that one might see on a greyhound bus. I avoid coach in the air as well as much as I can.
Aināt that the truth!
RIch
All forms of transportation have grown to the Walmartian clientele. Air, Train, Bus, Taxi and Uber.
Well we are theoretically discussing rail transport. Some current routes are doing well outside the NEC, such as Chicago - Milwaukee. That would be a good candidate to upgrade to 115 mph track and speed up the approach at Western avenue crossing. It makes more sense the Milwaukee- St.Paul due to distance
My point about underused former trunk line is they could be bought and converted to HrSR routes with little or no freight interference.
Good points, but remember there is a modal difference between 110mph and 125mph ā there is no such thing as ā115mphā, only unused capacity at a much more expensive 125mph service level.
For short runs such as Chicago to Milwaukee or L.A. to San Diego, acceleration rather than top speed is the key for cutting travel time. Another is cutting back the time at stations.
On the LOSSAN corridor, there is still a fair amount of single track, with the line through San Clemente the most difficult to double track.
Acceleration is limited by what the standing human body can withstand without becoming unstable. In passenger service there are always people standing or moving about the car.
I have been on a Chicago to Milwaukee train in last few years that was standing room only. Believe it was the 3-3:30 departure from Chicago to Milwaukee but forget the departing time. It was Mon-Fri departure.
Iām well aware of that. I was thinking more along the lines of being able to increase the speed where acceleration is limited by available power to the traction motors. That is being able to maintain 1mph/sec to 90mph, will result in better schedule speed for short runs than where acceleration starts dropping off at 25mph with a top speed of 100mph.
As many have pointed out . It is not increasing the top speeds of a route but getting rid of slow section or permanent slow orders. Example only. My 60 MPH track has a 1 mile 30 MPH section. So I loose 1 minute there. But wait I also loose a minute slowing for the slow section and then speeding back up after passing the section. So, I can save 2 minutes by eliminating 1 mile of slow section. I believe the costs of upgrading to 60 MPH much less than speeding up 2 miles to 90.
Now I want to get higher speed on my 60 MPH track to get each 1 minute of savings I have to change to 120 MPH at least 2 miles of track. AT 90 MPH upgrade it takes 4 miles of track upgrade to save a minute. The expense of upgrading to HrSR instead of removing slow sections is much more. It is 226 rail miles from NYP - WASH. Regionals & LD can take almost 4 hours 55 MPH average. Acelas take ~ 3 hours + ~~76 MPH. Now if Acelas could average 100 by there being no sections slower than 100 then time would be ~~2:15. including station stops. 5 station stops means ~~ 25 minutes lost. To make up that 25 minutes you will need at least 50 miles of 125 or better track to make that 2:15 timeā¦
Maybe the railroads need to employ catapult cylinders like the Navy uses to launch airplanes off of aircraft carriers.
Rich
They are going by least cost mixed with easier to accomplish first approach first in Chicago to Milwaukee. For example the 90 mph North of the Illinois state line is in effect an attempt to speed up the run. Getting METRA to increase the speed of itās tracks South of the border is out of reach or more difficult to accomplish if everā¦ The Muskego Yard Improvement project extends CTC between South of the Amtrak Station and West Milwaukee covering a dark gap in CTC territory that reduces speeds somewhat currently as well. The addition of a Southbound passenger loading platform with elevator tower at the Milwaukee Airport station eliminates the need for the passenger trains to travel wrong main (against flow of traffic) to that station then do a rail crossover back to the other main. That will reduce delays and travel time somewhat as well. This is in partnership with CPKC. So CPKC, WisDOT, Amtrak are working together in this instance. Not sure what the issue is South of the Wisconsin border with METRA but my guess is they want a third track put down at some point or do not want to pay to maintain a higher speed METRA track. What will probably happen is a new dedicated Amtrak track as far as possible, South of the Illinois border. Nobody has money for that now. A third track South of the Border would eliminate the slow running due to the METRA āExpressā gumming up the works all the time. Or they can fix the crossover to the Fox Lake METRA line and other track improvements that reduce the interference from slower METRA trains.
Electrification would lead to faster acceleration for any service. But it wonāt happen.
I can imagine the north suburbsā reactions to a proposal for trains running through at 90 mph or more!!
And why should Metra maintain trackage to a speed limit which they wouldnāt be using?
Itās going to happen. Just not as a āreplacement for dieselā ā no one has that kind of money to waste. As a facilitator of duel-mode-lite with AC-motor locomotives, it solves a great many problems once you get past the desire for 6000hp road locomotivesā¦ which, youāll note, were never popular in self-propelled form.
I expect the method of āfinancingā the initial build and equipment will be a setaside of taxes of various kinds on the railroads ā fuel, perhaps, or even ābreaksā on certain local taxes that should have had nothing to do with railroads, such as school assessments.