I believe you are well intentioned, but misguided. I am a huge amtrak fan but I am against HSR outside the NEC. it is an exorbitantly expensive boondoggle enriching only the highly paid ‘consultants’ and top officials. the private dedicated ROW would be impossible to acquire because of the costs. one writer mentioned using the many old abandoned ROWs available. I seriously doubt that’s feasible because of the original curvy and hilly alignments of the 1800s. ‘HSR’ of 90-110 by upgrading existing alignments is what I support. CHI-STL and empire service are good choices. the present top speed of 79 for many amtrak trains is acceptable IF they really did that! many times I have taken a long amtrak trip, and on the 79 mph track we are often stopped in the middle of nowhere. politicians love the ‘pie in the sky’ speeches about HSR with no clue about what they are talking about, but what the public wants are trains that run consistently at a decent speed. another argument against HSR are the many proponents extolling the virtues of CHI-STL, NYP-CHI, LAX-SFO, etc., but those pairs can be done easily by plane. the advantage of rail are the many intermediate towns. even NYP-WAS. that can be done by plane or express bus, but the train stops in many of the cities along the way. the intermediate traffic is the great advantage of trains. if only the trains would go at speed between stops! how many miles of the so-called high speed NYP-BOS is actually run at less than 100 mph? europeans would scoff at a ‘high speed’ train running less than 100! I rode the ‘high speed’ train between sydney and melbourne in 2001. a ridiculous ride! nice train but on the original curvy tracks you could hear the extreme wearing of the rails as we squealed around the curves! and no amenities. I predicted a broken rail derailment within 2 years if they didn’t change something. in '84 I rode the conventional overnight train. it was a far better ride, coach seating was more comfortable, and it had a full diner and
I believe this is the point of some of these so-called “high speed rail corridor” projects going on around the country, to bring track speeds up to 79, 90, or 110, and eliminate some of the slow running over grade crossings, slow crossovers, etc. You can add me to the list of people that wish trains ran at track speed like they’re allowed to, not just lope along at 25 mph. Of course, I’m riding the commuter rail, not Amtrak, but we have the same problems going fast on a line where much of the track is good for 55, if not 60.
[quote user=“cudjoebob”]
I rode the ‘high speed’ train between sydney and melbourne in 2001. a ridiculous ride! nice train but on the original curvy tracks you could hear the extreme wearing of the rails as we squealed around the curves! and no amenities. I predicted a broken rail derailment within 2 years if they didn’t change something. in '84 I rode the conventional overnight train. it was a far better ride, coach seating was more comfortable, and it
Every decision made by every politician is based on it’s potential to get votes. Therefore every transportation decision will be made to serve as many different people as possible, rather than made to implement a useful system.
If you gave Amtrak 100 Billion Dollars and told them to build some high speed rail, they would be directed by the politicians to serve as many cities as possible. The end result would be too many stops and one train a day to each city with minimal spare equipment for use in maintenance outages. Politicians always spread resources too thin.
The better plan would be to take one or two corridors at a time and do them right. Fast Frequent and on time. Then move on to the next corridor. The definition of fast would be unique to each corridor.
Oh well. Here we go again.
I’ll throw the hat into the ring by suggesting that there are a number of things that mitigate against HSR not the least of which is the mere issue of the debt load we are all carrying now. What if we all asked ourselves this question? Why do we need to speed things up so much? Why can’t we just bring the ROW’s up to snuff, bring more trains on stream and bring them in on time?
Some are for HSR for a variety of reasons, and some are against it. The most common reason to be against it is the belief that it costs too much and will benefit too few. Some even see HSR as merely a pretext to grow government.
One of the most popular reasons to be for HSR is because it is green. However, there is also a contingent of people who are for passenger rail for the purpose of being green, but are against HSR because the faster you go, the less green it is. They believe that there is only so much money available, and we will get more green bang for the buck by building normal speed passenger rail.
Ignoring the very real problems of our current debt load which is an issue with working on any public works project RIGHT NOW, not a condemnation of public works projects. I am often at a loss as to people who complain about the public commitment needed for high speed rail or even commuter rail. That same public commitment was required to build pretty much ever highway and surface street in the country. That same public commitment has built our Airports. And lest you forget, that same public commitment built the railroads in the first place with land grants. That same public commitment subsidized rail travel up through the 1950s in the form of the government funded Railway Post Office. When the Federal government transferred the mail to trucks, the Railroad companies derated their track and shut down passenger trains. Transportation has been publicly funded since the Romans built their roads. It is the nature of the beast. So suggesting they not be publicly funded is simply not a valid expectation. We can discuss the relative value of HSR versus Air travel Versus Cars and Highways, but then, you need to have all of the issues and costs involved. People rarely include all the costs. Sometimes, because they don’t believe in the costs (environmental) sometimes, because it just doesn’t occur to them that a cost exists. Personally, I think that the HSR that the current administration has proposed are very very reasonable and very doable and will have significant positive impact. I have a few issues with the California HSR as many current and former Ca commuters do. Mainly related to the state level managers who are concentrating on the wrong things, but that is not a condemnation of the overall goal.
Over the years friends have asked me “Why can’t the United States have the kind of fine passenger trains they have in Europe?”
My answer is usually two-fold.
During the mid-1980s (the latest figures I have) the United States was spending $900 per person for national defense. West Germany, by contrast, was spending about $300 per person for national defense. That $600 per person difference can buy a whole lot of social welfare services like passenger trains. Incidentally at that time the Deutsche Bundesbahn was running around 40,000 passenger trains in West Germany alone - a country whose land mass approximates the size of Wyoming.
My second answer usually suggests that Amtrak support taxes might require something like $6-to-$8 per gallon for gasoline just like they have in Europe! That usually ends the discussion right there!
Of course, with the second answer I may be exaggerating a little bit. A few years ago Amtrak asked for a permanent penny or two per gallon of the federal gasoline tax. Congress, in an uncharacteristic display of rational thinking, refused the request.
Several points.
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I woud rather the government’s money go to permanent infrastructure work that might get me a job for a length of time than to some social program thah will not help at all. Its all about jobs and permanent improvements!
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Increasing the speed of communication is always good for business and pleasure and with persons to get to their destination however which way should improve productivity.
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In that vein what are the results of the European HSR efforts?. An incremental approach has clustered more persons at station locations and allowed the previous air and automobile traffic to be mitigated.
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Although I despise trying to correlate of one type of business with an entirely different business there MAY be certain results. HSR leaders econmically are the French, Germans, Austrians, and Swiss which have had the best economic improvements the past few years followed lately by the UK. Northern European countries are still somewhat behind.
Those European countries who are not connected by HSR for what ever reason are lagging. Geography in the case of Greece, Spain, and Portugal are all isolated from the rest of Europe with poor rail connections as of now and the eastern Europe countries just don’t have the rail infrastructure and questionable Air. Could be entirely wrong because there is no definite way to tell how much this isolation has contributed to their economic woes. At least a small amount but how much more??
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HSR will allow business persons to be productive when traveling that is impossible on present aircraft, cars or bus. Gives billable hours. Will be interesting how the new WiFi on Acela affect travel there.
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Will the 2 - 4 hr HSR improve these items in the US? I can only guess.
The matter of how much time could be saved by HSR is moot, I think, for the American public. Twice in two days there has been at least one driver ride my bumper at 70mph while I passed a car. Yesterday the driver then wove into lane in front of me to pass a car on the right, then went back to the left lane to make a left turn. He was waiting to turn as me and several other cars behind me went by. The other car, today, swept around me on the left at over 70 so as to pull in front of me and make an immediate right turn off. I stayed back but passed him as he sat in a line of cars at a light. So, I surmise that if split seconds count when driving, selling as little as a mintue an hour in savings on a train ride should be an easy sell to the American public.
The Road Jockey type described so well by henry6 is alive in Austin, too. But I believe they are a different breed; they enjoy the bob and weave and their ‘expertise’; and as long as they’re happy and not causing accidents, at least they’re not on a cell phone hogging a lane or slowly drifting into another.
No doubt it’s a game they play with their auto much like those with computers. HSR wouldn’t interest them much.
Art
As a clarification, mail transportation revenue to railroads was not a subsidy. It was a payment for services rendered by rail carriers. Although the funds came from the U.S. Treasury, they were not grants. The Interstate Commerce Commission held periodic rate cases to set the compensation levels to railroads for hauling mail, just as it did for other shippers. The railroad industry’s general view was that these did not fully compensate carriers for their operating and infrastructure costs.
Also, diversion of mail to other transportation modes was not the principal reason that passenger trains were petitioned for abandonment. There was a general decline in all revenue associated with passenger services, including other head-end traffic such as Railway Express.