17 April 2009
What Speed Rail?
I'm a big fan of high-speed rail. I think stimulus money spent on infrastructure is a great idea, and also that high-speed rail in the US is long overdue. So Obama's newly announced rail plan is welcome. But... why is the bar set so low? The US govt considers anything that exceeds, or can exceed, 90mph to be "high speed". The Ocelot line or Ebola line or whatever it's called that's supposed to be high-speed between Washington and Boston travels at about 80mph, which is sad even by British standards. TGV lines reache 186 mph or more in regular service (test speeds much higher). Similar results from the Shinkansen. Even when construction of both of these networks was started 50 years ago the targets were more ambitious than the "100 mph" talk from Obama. The utility of these depends a lot on how long the trips actually take. The 2009 definition of high-speed rail should be: a train that reaches 186mph or more as part of regular service (i.e. pretty much every trip). The target for average speed for each corridor should be 150mph or more.
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one of the routes mentioned in the article I read was chicago / detroit. i thought back to the times i took Amtrack down to Lafayette.
coming south out of the loop, for some miles the train would go at a walking pace. i don't think it hit 50 until south of the region.
i can't even imagine the infrastructure needed to get a train up to 50 by the time it gets to 35th street.
Imagine getting from downtown chicago (union station) to midtown manhattan (penn station) in 5 hours. Who would continue to fly if that were available? No one.
Something like Chicago-Minneapolis would need to be under 3 hours to make it viable imo. 100mph won't do it.
What about the South Shore? How quickly does that get up past walking speed?
When I used to take the South Shore from Van Buren to East Chicago (Indianapolis Blvd station) it would frequently crawl, at a < 10 mph jog, and had stops more than 1 per mile, most miles. The commute took 30 minutes to get to downtown, same coming back. Once the SS gets past Gary (going east), it picks up speed heading out to South Bend, but even then, 60 mph is about the max speed.
The main problem with trying to put a TGV into the NE US or into/through a heavily populated area are the real estate needed for safe operation. The physics of a train moving +150mph vs sub-60mph are akin to the difference between cloth winged bi-planes and jet aircraft dynamics.
I LOVE the TGV, and have traveled on it many times when in France. I spent 3 days teaching a class in central France (Tournus) at a small shop that was immediately adjacent to the main Paris/Lyon line, and had an opportunity to see the rails, crossings, security, monitoring, up close. The US rail systems are not cambered adequately, or designed to handle rapid transit. They ARE designed to carry steel, coal, heavy loads, slowly. US rail systems have far too many crossings, and are much closer (side by side) than high speed rail specs would allow. To try and use these US rail lines (avoiding the imminent domain acquisition & legal costs of new access lines) It's like trying to run a 200 meter dash in steel toed fire-man's turn out gear, with herds of sheep crossing the tracks.
Yes, the lines could be strengthened, the routes camera monitored and computer controlled, crossings limited (at great outcry to local communities), adjacent properties acquired, but it would not be cheap. The ROI would be closer to 50 years - a time frame that short sighted American politicians and businessmen cannot comprehend as well as their Old World counterparts.
Joe, that's why it makes a perfect stimulus project -- BIG changes needed. There's no point doing a cheap and cheerful mini speed upgrade to a few existing lines and calling it "high speed rail" anyway, add the requirements of depression-avoiding stimulus and the impetus to do it right only increases.
Absolutely this would be major, major work, not incremental improvements.
sadly, i don't think the US can make those big, big changes and 50 year commitments anymore.
a chicago / detroit line would involve 3 states, plus how many federal agencies. it's like chicago's third airport times 10.
personally, i'm all for high-speed rail and whatever that massive effort would entail. chicago/NYC in 5 hours is, indeed, something i'd love to see. oh yeah -- add airlines to the mix above.
From the Trib coverage: Passenger trains traveling at 110 m.p.h.—arriving in Chicago from St. Louis in under four hoursGolly.
Regarding airlines, a plan in Texas for high-speed rail in the 90s was thwarted by legal shenanigans by Southwest Airlines.
Not sure why blogger removed some whitespace, but I must say that chicago-st. louis in "under 4 hours" is about as underwhelming and uninspiring as a project can get.
four hours = ~75 mph average. like all those non-highspeed trains i've ridden in other countries. sheesh.
I have a maternal Aunt who lives in a St Louis suburb. We used to drive from Highland to St. Louis yearly to visit her, on I-55 & 57, and it took 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 hours. 4 hours, big whop. TGV could do it in less than 90 minutes, but man would it piss off UA, AA, Southwest, and Midwest Air.
In Europe, the airlines and railines have joined forces, to share ticketing and schedules. It would take a similar alliance in the US to get inter-city-high-speed-rail moving forward.
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