Would an American Higher Speed Railroad Network - Up to 110 mph - Contirbute to Productivity and Competitiveness? As our railroad system is a freight railroad system, additional passenger service in many instances impedes freight operations due to diefferences in freight and passneger speeds. If both operated at 110 mph max, they would then be speed compatible. Would higher freight speeds create more competiveness and productivity for the American economy? Would higher speed compatibility attract passener business both now bound to the road and the air? Would a higher speed railroad (HrSR) system relieve / lessen truck / auto congestion and passenger air congestion? These thoughts from “The Economics and Politics of High-Speed Rail” by Albalate and Gel.
In all probability going to ‘one-speed’ at a somewhat lower speed would give you most of the practical ‘benefits’. Many attempts have been made to accelerate the speed of intermodal service, but most of them founder on how to ‘monetize’ the gains from additional speed, and there are relatively few pieces of cost-effective freight equipment that could run at 110mph technically, let alone ‘legally’. To get the one-speed high speed benefit you would need extensive and expensive rebuilding of equipment in the ‘general system of transportation’ and that money could be spent in many better places than arranging high sustained speed … or outside the rail industry entirely, since payback for the added freight speed would be so paltry.
On top of this, 110mph passenger ops need long runs of high continuous speed for the time gains to mean anything. If we accomplish HrSR by the usual gradualism (see Charlie hebdo’s recent post about German practice) you will be spending an enormous amount for what starts as 5 to 10 minutes quicker corridor speed … most riders won’t give much of a crap but the much more vast non-riding taxpayer base subsiding such ‘improvement’ certainly will, in ways unlikely to be positive.
Note that there is a serious increase in fuel burn and required suspension and guiding engineering when going from, say, 90mph peak to 110. It is not nearly as pronounced as what’s needed for 125mph, but it is nontrivial and some people here may know specific cost numbers for the differential. It would be possible to address some of this with well-designed catenary, but don’t expect private money to provide that.
To answer the question posed in your title- not really. Speed of delivering goods is not high on the list of what affects the competitiveness of most goods. It’s the relative cost of the delivered goods that’s the deciding factor in whether a product is cost competitive.
I can’t really address the productive component, but…competitive? Against what? Trucks? Ships? Other economies?
Actually, a good question! There are high hurdles to get over to get 110 mph freight trains operation. Heck, 90 mph would be tough. The freight cars just don’t have the suspension or braking of that kind of speed. Also, piling on enough HP to get to 110 mph would be a tough task, as well.
You’d probably need to electrify and get ECP braking everywhere and trash the 3 piece freight truck. While you’re at it, might as well build lighter, cheaper and less strong freight cars and go very heavy with DPU.
The economic side of it revolves around the carrying cost of inventory. Is the stuff on the train worth enough to pay for the higher speed?
Careful there Don, you know the OP has been hanging around some of those so-called “transportation planners” who have been out in the back-alleys smoking dope and spending other people’s money.[:-,]
The basic problem with rail passenger service is that the tracks have to be where your are, and go where you need to go.
For most Americans that is the basic problem, most of us don’t live in cities, nor do we want to, nor is our typical destination a big city.
I will use my classic example of a car vs air travel. We live in the northern rural suburbs of Baltimore. We have relatives in the Detroit suburbs. I can get in my car and drive to my relatives door in about 8-1/2 hours for a cost of $50-$75 in fuel and food.
But if I want to fly (or take a train) I have to drive my car in the wrong direction for nearly one hour to get to BWI airport. Park it in a place of questionable security (you may drive an old junker but I don’t), then wait around the airport for two hours of security checks, etc. Get on the plane (driving I am in Ohio by now), fly to Detroit, rent a car, drive to my relatives home about 1 hour from the airport.
Elapsed time portal to portal - 8-9 hours…
Expense - a whole bunch more even with some discount air fare, that may have got me “bumped” from the flight…
Some will say driving is stressfull and tiring - so is anything having to do with an airport…
So, unless I’m going to Chicago, or LA, or Las Vegas from Baltimore, driving is better and cheaper. 500 miles is the earliest tipping point in favor of other forms of travel.
Now, if you live in city “A”, and your work or your pleasure takes you to the heart of city “B”, well than OK. But what percentage of the population does that apply to? Pretty small I suspect.
And so as mentioned above why should the rest of us subsidize that?
Freight - I would love to see fewer long haul trucks on the highway and see them instead on flat cars - all you have to do is improve loading/unloading times and train scheduling - AND convince some industries that “just in time” deliveries are actually costing more than
Fully Agree! Very little freight is that time-sensitive. Reliability, which was a major issue in the “dark days” of the 1970’s, is a far-better measure of performance here.
What I do believe would pay large dividends would be to upgrade present-day communter lines to “exurban” status via higher speeds; this would vastly increase he radius around our major cities at which rail passenger services would be competitive.
The private sector won’t touch this for reasons which should be obvious; but there ought to be a means via which the benefits of the investment (not only in revenues, but in the increased value of property served) could be determined; but it also should be noted that the development of exurban intermodal terminals, some at a considerable distance from the anchor city would act as a mitigating factor.
The investment, particularly in signaling and dispatching (and as wih the inception of Metroink in Southern California) would be subsantial, so cost-benefit ratios need to reflect this more accurately.
La Poste (French Postal Service) used five “half” TGV trainsets painted bright yellow for 31 years.
However, two years ago they retired them for more “standard” rail transport.
In a word, no.
I worked in intermodal marketing and I’ll tell you that if you give me a 40 MPH schedule between Chicago and Memphis (500 miles), the railroad will dominate the lane. Ship it on Monday afternoon and get it reliably delivered Tuesday morning, that’s the key. Reasonably fast and reliable.
Faster service cost more and therefor reduces the railroad’s advantage over trucking. You’re never going to beat a truck’s time, so sell reasonable time schedules, reliability, and savings. Yes, a truck can go from door to door on the Chicago - Memphis run in eight hours. So what? The vast majority of customers don’t need a few hours savings. As long as your service is reliable
It is not about the top speed but eliminating the slow sections… If all the NEC NYPS - WASH was 125 MPH capable then enroute time would be just over 2 hours. The 150 MPH improvements /trenton - Newark would give that 2 hours.
True enough. Bring many buckets of money for each one.
Mac
Yes, like the replacement of the Susquehanna Rivier bridge on the Northeast corridor…
Well first let me be the first to tell you that your in the wrong forum if your going to discuss Finance or Economic theory as both topics are well beyond most of the posters here and so you will probably not get the answers your looking for. There is a Economic theory on velocity that says faster velocity is better and produces tangible positive GDP results. That is if everything being equal in your transportation choices and a additional rail choice that did not exist before gets you between point A and point B faster than existing transportation choices then your transportation between A and B no longer takes the time it did which frees you up to produce more and be more productive. Thats how it basically applies to rail passenger service.
Rail Freight service is a somewhat different animal in that your more looking at the increased productivity of rail equipment or the increased utility of getting a transported object from A to B faster…which is a little more complex than a human. Generally, inventories could be tighter if freight train velocity was faster, saving money, equipment utilitization would be more as well and pot
I assume that what the OP refers to is a PPP arrangement in which the government funds the capital upgrade as public infrastructure. So the government will decide whether it is cost-effective. So it seems to me that this would be a nationalized transportation overlay onto existing private freight railroads. It would be kind of like a high speed freight Amtrak.
[quote user=“CMStPnP”]
Well first let me be the first to tell you that your in the wrong forum if your going to discuss Finance or Economic theory as both topics are well beyond most of the posters here and so you will probably not get the answers your looking for. There is a Economic theory on velocity that says faster velocity is better and produces tangible positive GDP results. That is if everything being equal in your transportation choices and a additional rail choice that did not exist before gets you between point A and point B faster than existing transportation choices then your transportation between A and B no longer takes the time it did which frees you up to produce more and be more productive. Thats how it basically applies to rail passenger service.
[quote user=“CMStPnP”]
So, CMStPnP says that there is an Economic Theory somewhere, note he did not bother to cite it, that says faster passenger transport increases GDP and effieciency. Lets stipuate that, there is such a theory. The problem is how much increase in GDP and effiency FOR HOW MUCH COST. This is plain old cost/benefit analysis which itself is succeptible to manipulation.
Proponents almost never consider the cost, as you did not, and when a specific project gets beyond the vague idea stage they always under estimate the cost and over estimate the benefit.
For an example of cost underestimates review the history of the California Bullet Train. The benefits are the most difficult to get correct. Consider a project much like your original question, a faster Chicago-St. Louis train with 110 MPH speed. I think end to end time savings was about an hour. What is that worth?
Theory is simple figure total traffic, how many passengers, say 100,000 per year, multiply hours saved by their hourly pay rate, and that is the value of time saved, or benefit. Nice theory but is it real? First, the economic value of time of many passengers is zero. Re
Why do you get to say what the OP means?
I’d say that the overwhelming majority of tonnage hauled on our railroads is not time sensitive. Having tha
I said I assumed what he meant. I assumed he was referring to a PPP arrangement because he said this:
These thoughts from “The Economics and Politics of High-Speed Rail” by Albalate and Gel.
Maybe the OP will come back and confirm what I assumed.
It’s evident this is gearing up to be another exercise in pointless semanticism when someone quotes a reference without … well, not just without reading it, or the Rodrigues or some other review of it, but not even bothering to correct the wretched typo (his name is Bel, not “Gel”)
The relevant sources they used for ‘American practice’ are listed before the formal introduction, and discussion of the ‘special’ American case begins on p.9, both of which can be read in online preview. I recommend that y’all actually read the material, taking due note of the Fogel quote and the authors’ response to it, before getting Euclyrusized in theoretical minutiae unrelated to the OP’s question (which, incidentally, I don’t see following from what the authors say in the book…)