A story in Time magazine dated, July 19, 2010, page 18, “All Aboard?” by Michael Grunwald, discusses the issue of spending billions of federal money for high speed rail service and other related projects on Amtrak.
Any thoughts on this subject as related to the Grunwald article.
Grunwald explores the various issues and favors the increase in high speed rail service but at what costs and the complicated issues of establishing high speed rail service.
The article, apart from the intro talking about “Shaq-worthy” legroom and then segueing into a critique of SUV’s and “bad drivers” is behind a subscription wall.
OK, there are a variety of reasons for supporting trains, but if the issue of Global Warming comes up, then it becomes squarely a matter of relative fuel efficiency and fuel mix of the different modes of transportation.
I present the Vision Challenge. How much would you spend on trains, how many passenger miles would this accomodate, and how much would this effort go towards alleviating the Global Warming problem?
For example, Amtrak involves spending somewhere more than 1 billion accomodating about 5 billion passenger miles/year or about 1/10 of one percent of automobile passenger miles. Amtrak represents on average a 500 BTU/passenger mile saving over cars.
Total US energy consumption is about 100 quads (a quad is 10E15 BTU’s). At 3000 BTU/passenger miles and about 5 trillion annual passenger miles (mostly auto), the personal transportation sector accounts for 15 quads or about 15 percent of total energy consumption. The savings attributable to Amtrak is .0025 quads (or 2.5 percent of a single quad or roughly 3 hundreths of a percent of total US energy consumption).
The Vision Report proposed ramping up annual spending to 10 billion/year to accomodate a ten-fold increase in passenger train traffic to a full one percent of automobile passenger miles. The propose doing this by adding to mainly “corridor” trains without dining, lounge and sleeping cars and somewhat less “Shaq-like” proportions of legroom. These trains are proposed to save something like 1500 BTU/passenger mile over autos, for a total savings of .075 quads or less than one part in a thousand on the 100 quads of national energy expenditure.
Do we increase expenditures on trains 100-fold over the
Vision Challenge accepted. Trains tracks are 2 demensional and can easily be regulated as to vehicle height standards and compatability. What if a qualified vehicle could enter the rail system and “hook up” with an existing vehicle traveling at a constant velocity?
I studied this issue of getting better use out of the 199,000 miles of track in our country that can compete with the conveince of the interstate system and the speed of air. There is a middle ground in rails, but the system needs to fully embrace 21st century tech and incorporate the land use pattern which is the US and not attempt to mimic old world countries.
I am thinking big and out of the box, a frontier worthy of the effort in WWII.
Something along the lines of TripleCrown with high-railer cpabilites? The problem is establishing an order on who gets off when. If it handles large numbers of people, the line has to adjust for the guy in the middle who wants off. if it handles small numbers of people, then it seems impractical. high numbers of small groups of these thing will likewise become crowding. Also, one guy does the drivng for all, unless a locomotive is still utilized, and the “compartment” thing never flew in the US completely, beyond sleeping rooms. There’s actually documented stories of European rail people visiting the US in the early years and being dumfounded about how much better the open railcar worked than the various side-load compartments they used. I suppose a hybrid of the two, similar to later european desgns with a side corridor and a coach room in a shape similar to the sleeping berth could be achieved, but then one loses the amenities of being able to walk around, having comfortable sleeping places.(a flat bed versus the reclining driver’s seat) restrooms for the volme of people, and dining. The latter two could be done in a powercar, I could see some
Consider a bus like vehicle and ticketing software like the airlines use. Once the new vehicle joins the train, people could transfer to other cars that can drop off the end, accelerate forward, or have the train temporarliy separate allowing the exiting car to exit the track.
This seems like a rather complicated solution in search of a problem. It appears that each individual vehicle would have to have its own crew, making it expensive to operate.
I’d agree. I think “podcars” would work better ffor that, but still.
Actually, and I’m just thinking out loud here, but Superliners are not that much off from Autoracks. There’s room underneath them, to park a few cars. 2 or three, it’s a start on gettingf Americar back on the train, anyway.
No crew needed, just a driver, who could lock up and then turn on the auto pilot. Heck, the vechile company could rent out the bus like vehicle to a licensed driver who could have reduced fare for entering and exiting the system ie hook up and drop away. This vehicles could even be driven to the drivers home, but more likely back to the company shop for maintaince. Passengers could be picked up at ther home or meet in concentrated predetermined locations. Forty people could commute to a somewhat central location or trip could be organized to go half way across country. All a function of demand and passengers loging into a program like travelocity or orbitz to secure seats, times and dates.
The problem is too much time in airports, commuter traffic, and too long, uncomfortable, and expensive car trips. The key is access to the rails given the vehicles are standardized regarding docking capabilites and GPS location and acceleration relative to the already flowwing main stream train. And instead of changing vehicle at the station or the airport, transfer occurs while the train is in constant motion. The train possibly could never come to a stop. Different cars would repalce each other as the docked or released. A commuter stream could transform into a long distance journey as the train flowwed into the city and then left on the way to the next. Think off cars in bumper to bumper traffic, touching and locked into each other but instead of thirty cars at 500 ft, just one bus at 50 ft. And while the buses are locked and in motion, passenger can walk between buses for their transfers.
This proposal seems to get more complicated with each posting and seems to imply the existence of “open access”. It also disregards such things as labor contracts and FRA safety requirements.
A Superliner-type car designed to carry automobiles on the lower level is probably not practicable either since the HVAC and other equipment for the car would need to be relocated, among other things.
Some of the postings on this thread sound like someone chugging over to Fantasy Land. Nice, but how about finding ways to have frequent service in corridors with average (sustained) speeds of 100 to 155?
A “bus” requires a driver. 5 busses coupled need 5 drivers. Also, each driver will likely be subject to the 12hr limits. And even while drivers 2-5 are not driving, they are
a) ON PREMESIS
b) not going to be off duty for more than 4 hrs. In order to count time between shifts, you HAVE to be gone from the workplace AND be gone for more than 4 hrs. Anything else, and it’s still counted. Deadheading while that happens does not apply. You could send him off duty until another bus-convoy arrives, but I don’t see that working either, as the lineups will require a oach-attenednt in each bus or every other bus.
When the busses are out, you have no train when the train’s gone, you have no busses.
A “bus” or busses will not have sufficent horsepower to climb hills. Anything not involving terrain won;t be practical enough to be used. See the troubles RDCs had occasionally
What happens when you end up with 5 busses. two busses start in Cinncinatti. You pick up another bus in Indianapolis, but the middle bus want to go to Danville Illinois. he can’t get out of the lineup. he could go all the way to Chicago and backtrack, but that kinda defeats the purpose.
Actually, his concept has merit. Amtrak tested an Isearli train that was designed to uncouple on the fly and go to different stations. It also had a giant rubber skirt around the front door the width and height of the car, looking something like a crash bumper…
I guess I issued the “Vision Challenge” on how to make trains more cost-effective and the response has been more along the lines of “intermodal” solutions to make trains better able to substitute for automobile trips.
If there had been anyone “chugging over to Fantasy Land”, it would have been my father Veljko Milenkovic, who had been a colleague of Deodat Clejan, the originator of the GATX RRollway “Fantasy Land” concept for a wide-gauge HSR automobile ferry. My father contributed a RRollway patent for the wide-gauge railroad truck. Clejan is probably better known among the railroad knowledgable for a type of freight-intermodal piggyback car, and RRollway was “the next step” to make auto travel intermodal.
After the death of Clejan in a general aviation accident, RRollway lost its energetic promoter, although Veljko Milenkovic continued to file patents for a side-loading auto ferry with a broad loading gauge but using standard gauge track, and for standard track and loading gauge end-loading auto ferry with a kind of “Flexi-Van” type turntable arrangement to allow loading cars on individual auto carriers.
I was told that GATX held on to the idea of a high speed auto ferry for a long time, and that two of my dad’s colleagues rode in an auto on a freight auto-rack, and my dad’s co-author of the RRollway truck patent threw up because of the bouncing and swaying ride on those 3-piece freight trucks.
The whole idea behind intermodal, whether freight or passenger, is that local trips to end destinations are probably best made on rubber tires, be it cars, buses, or delivery trucks, whereas long-distance travel may be best accomplished with the rail mode. The advantage of freight
I think HarveyK has pointed out in the past how a major contribution to higher sustained speed comes from less dwell time in intermediate stations and faster acceleration and deceleration to and down from top speed (lighter weight coaching stock and electric propulsion). Part of that also comes from improved speed through switches and terminal areas. Much of that can be managed at a much lower cost than building dedicated HSR lines, yet still having a pretty high overall average speed.
Back to basics. As mentioned lay over time and acceleration is a huge problem inherent in the 19th century train technology that is still present today. But the 199,000 miles of steel rails offers incredible potential. Semi free access, ie highly regulated is key to capitalize of the fact…here it comes…unlike cars and planes which travel in a 3 dimensions, transport on rails is one dimensional.
The simplicity of just one dimension offers amazing levels of coordination that planes or cars cannot match.
There is eventually the possibility that drivers could be almost eliminated by auto pilot once the vechiles have established connection to the system from the road network.
The orgin for design parameters is function mostly of revenue projections based on initial vechile size design related to economies of scale while not condeming existing trains and rolling stock. Any other problems I see are solvable and part of econimic activity as the technology develops. As an emerging product, this system is capable of intergrating all sorts of other energy technologies regarding the acceleration issue.
No. Not really. The problem is that 19th century alignment valued ease of construction and minimization of grades. That leaves us with a lot of very curvy ROW that follows river valleys. Definitely not what’s needed for HSR.
Nope. Back to geometry for you! A line is one dimensional. A plane is two dimensional. Space is three dimensional. A car and a train are pretty much confined to the ground and two dimensions, although one uses a fixed guideway to control motion laterally and the other does not. An airplane can move in three dimensions. But, what I think you are talking about are the first/last mile issues. Is that it?
Don: As a former pilot I feel that the 4th dimension of time applies to both airplanes and to a certain extent the operation of trains. These are all about time management!! But absolutely the first/last mile(s) issue really is what slows down present RRs even those HSR lines overseas.
It’s even worse than just the terminal portion of the HSR ilne. It’s getting from your front door to the HSR line and from the HSR line to your destination.
Correct, but that lies in getti ng from doorstep to airport as well as doorstep to station. So for theoretical calculations, that can be considered canceled out, and focuc instea dof the actualt mode of transportation’s accelerations. Yes, locations do matter. In general, the airport is outlying and the rail closer to downtown, so it differs dpenging from where your marketcomes from.
In mathematics, you are correct. In however travel-geometrics, it is safe to say a train is one dimensional (forward-backward), a car is 2 dimensions (front-back, and left-right), and a plane is three (up and down as well). A train can “turn” by running through a switch to another track, but is still essentially follwong the same line, as it is forced to do by its own flanges. a car however is not confined to a single line going approximately the same direction as one next to it, and can vary its course more easily. (which is what you later said) And do not foget, that “artistic” lines are any paths between two points. straight or otherwise.
I think the big mistake in all this talk about high speed rail is that we’re trying to go straight to the top. We need to get people to use regular public transportation first with an integrated system of transportation that connects all forms of transportation: rail to airports, rail to inner city hubs (stations) that then connects to public transit within the cities. Once usage is high, the highest utilized routes can be upgraded: bus to light rail, commuter and inter-city rail to high speed rail. Also, as air corridors become saturated, high speed rail could be planned.
Going straight to high speed rail is fun, and as a novelty, and may see brief success, but the hassle of trying to get local transportation once you reach your destination will dampen the fun.
How do you get people to change their habits? If I say greatly increase the gas tax, I would unleash a storm of protest, but what other ways are there?
Some of my fondest memories as a kid involve riding trains, and I would love to see a network of high speed trains, but I just can’t see it happening soon.