Why? High speed rail would have almost no impact on the economy. These are passenger trains, not freight trains after all. Getting home 15 minutes earlier from work would have little impact on the economy.
AHC: Get more people in the US to take the train.
- Thread starter Duke Andrew of Dank
- Start date
Why? High speed rail would have almost no impact on the economy. These are passenger trains, not freight trains after all. Getting home 15 minutes earlier from work would have little impact on the economy.
Riain
Banned
IIRC US FRA regulations only require grade-separated crossings on lines above 125mph, 110-125mph require protected grade crossings; boom gates and a few other (cheap) obstacles to stop people zig-zagging around boom gates. It's been found that even the little concrete formwork in the below picture, or other minor stuff like it, massively decreases the amount of instances of people bypassing boom gates. Now, this isn't nothing in terms of cost nor is it 150mph Acela or 220mph High Speed rail, but appears to be a handy intermediate step that would be far more achievable in the American context.
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Saw something on another board where it said the project California just scaled back would have been so costly that they'd have been better off giving each daily rider a free Prius.
Not sure how they arrived at those numbers since both the ridership and cost estimates vary wildly. But assuming the worst case scenario for both numbers (98 billion to build, 40 million passengers per year), you could buy 32 million Priuses instead of building the project. Since the 40 million riders are obviously not going to be 40 million unique individuals, there's some merit to the argument.
The carbon benefit is limited when you assume the footprint of building and operating, and it's definitely inefficient economically. Might still be worth doing from a traffic congestion perspective. And less traffic means fewer traditional engines burning gas while stuck in bumper to bumper traffic so you have an indirect environmental benefit.
As far as daily travel, we just have too much urban sprawl. You can catch a train into a city but you still have to get from your house to the station and the other station to your office. For a lot of people it's better to just drive the whole thing. If you have a really long commute like New Orleans to Baton Rouge, you're better off moving closer to the office.
Not sure how they arrived at those numbers since both the ridership and cost estimates vary wildly. But assuming the worst case scenario for both numbers (98 billion to build, 40 million passengers per year), you could buy 32 million Priuses instead of building the project. Since the 40 million riders are obviously not going to be 40 million unique individuals, there's some merit to the argument.
The carbon benefit is limited when you assume the footprint of building and operating, and it's definitely inefficient economically. Might still be worth doing from a traffic congestion perspective. And less traffic means fewer traditional engines burning gas while stuck in bumper to bumper traffic so you have an indirect environmental benefit.
As far as daily travel, we just have too much urban sprawl. You can catch a train into a city but you still have to get from your house to the station and the other station to your office. For a lot of people it's better to just drive the whole thing. If you have a really long commute like New Orleans to Baton Rouge, you're better off moving closer to the office.
Who are you to say they are better off? Maybe they like living in New Orleans and have a good job in Baton Rouge (or vice versa) and prefer making the trip to do so. Who are you to say they can't?
Where did I say they can't or shouldn't be allowed? I'm just using an example where it makes more sense to live in the other city.
SwampTiger
Banned
Economics is the biggest obstacle. I often traveled NO/BR, La when working. It was awful. To avoid traffic on either end you left too early and arrived home too late, or were stuck in miserable traffic for 3.5 plus hours/day for a 150 mile round trip. I would have loved a twice daily, reliable rail service. Plans for a light rail system for this specific daily trip have foundered for decades over cost. Too few riders. This might work for Milwaukee/Chicago or similar. If the southern Great Lakes Route, regional airlines are much cheaper. You need volume and speed for this to work, in order to reduce costs.
MorningDew said:
This is what I was referring to. Having a few men here and there spend more time with their families is hardly likely to have a huge economic impact.MorningDew said:
Population density is not the be all end all. You need to have enough folks in place A who all want to go to place B at the same time.
This is why large cities and commuters railroads work. Enough people want t go into the city to work. So you get subways and such.
But how to you get enough folks wanting to travel from Somewhere Idaho to Middle of Nowhere Idaho to justify a train?
The Answer is, you don’t. Even in France you don’t get that. Basically French Railroads run on more of a spoke and Hub system the people realize. I wanted to go from Avignon to Tours, in order to do this I had to Basically take an Avignon to Paris train and a Paris to Tours train. Because those two links had enough traffic to Justify the trains. But Avignon straight to Tours did not.
Yes thier are local trains traveling all over but mostly they take you to one of these trunk lines. So you use a local to get to a trunk. A trunk (or a couple trunks) to get close to your destination (of if a big city then it takes you to your destination) Then another local to you destination. Or you get in your car and drive, And let’s not kid ourselves a LOT of people in France England and Germany drive. I was stuck in traffic in all three Counties in the last two years on multi lane expressways. So the locals DO drive.
This will be the situation in the US as well. But because of the size of the US you will need a lot more trains over every flavor. And our Cities in much of the US are farther apart. And in huge areas such as Montana or Alaska you simply are not going to be able to build a useful network.
So you have to somehow build a network or trains while dealing with the following issues.
Scale of the system. It would have to be much larger then anyone else’s (except China) and thus would cost more.
It will lose money in many if not most locations. And thus have to be supported by taxes of some flavor (not ver exceptable in the US)
Even in Europe people would rather drive. Reality is that folks take mass transit (trains, boats, planes subways or what have you) because various factors make private transport a pain. Be it cost, time, traffic density, cost of car ownership or government regulations)
Paying for it. As stated subsidizing mass transit is not popular and tribes in the 20th century were vied as for profit companies and should sunk or swim on thier own. So good luck changing that.
Paying for it part 2. Obviously you can’t build it all at once and equally obviously you won’t build it at ALL in some locations. So you are going to have trouble getting the bill to pay for this through Congress when you consider how many congressmen will be opposed to it for any of the follong reasons A). They are opposed on general principles, B) thier State or there congressional district will not get any/enough service, C) thier State or district will be one of the areas that will pay for (subsidies) other areas. D) thier voters are opposed to it for whatever reason and thier fore they the congressman is opposed as they want to be re-elected to office,
So somehow you need 50+ % of Congress and the Senat and all while a President agrees.
Basically thier are sound and valid reasons why Trains are not as popular in the US as Europe. And I think a lot of people over estimate how popular they are in Eurpe and missunderstand why they are as popular as they are in Europe. So I don’t think this is happening without HUGE (almost ASB) changes to the World, technology, the US population, US politics, US taxes or some such.
Mind you I am not against trains. I love trains. I ride them where and when I can. I read about them. I model them I belong to train related historical societies ect etc. But I am sorry they just don’t work well in the US. Heck they don’t work all that well in France.
And to get them in the US would be even more expensive because some things that are put up with in Europe would never be allowed in the US. For instance all the metro and underground and train stations that require stairs (not even escalators) Much less not having wheel chair access. And the way they approach access would not be acceptable in the US. In the US you would not get away with telling an 88 year old that they will only have 10 minutes determine the platform thier train was going to arrive on then to stamp thier ticket, walk from the station to the platform, walk up the stairs (of if you lucky find and take the small elevator that holds 3 people at the most) then get into the platform and look up on the ONE screen where thier car is, then walk down the platform to said car. Then climb onto the train (platforms are not at floor level) dragging your luggage (the conductor standing right thier is not going to help) then scramble around inside the car lifting your luggage and then finding your seat, All this in 10 minutes, in this case it happened 3 times on various TGV routes with 1st class tickets. All because they wouldn’t tell ANYONE what track the train was going to be on. In one case (we had been thier for over a half hour before the announcement and the train as it turns out had been thier longer. So they just chose not to tell anyone.
So if your great example of trains works like that then it will realy bomb in the US and will have to make a lot of expensive changes to get past ADA laws. Thus it will be MORE expensive then in Europe.
So good luck with that.
This is why large cities and commuters railroads work. Enough people want t go into the city to work. So you get subways and such.
But how to you get enough folks wanting to travel from Somewhere Idaho to Middle of Nowhere Idaho to justify a train?
The Answer is, you don’t. Even in France you don’t get that. Basically French Railroads run on more of a spoke and Hub system the people realize. I wanted to go from Avignon to Tours, in order to do this I had to Basically take an Avignon to Paris train and a Paris to Tours train. Because those two links had enough traffic to Justify the trains. But Avignon straight to Tours did not.
Yes thier are local trains traveling all over but mostly they take you to one of these trunk lines. So you use a local to get to a trunk. A trunk (or a couple trunks) to get close to your destination (of if a big city then it takes you to your destination) Then another local to you destination. Or you get in your car and drive, And let’s not kid ourselves a LOT of people in France England and Germany drive. I was stuck in traffic in all three Counties in the last two years on multi lane expressways. So the locals DO drive.
This will be the situation in the US as well. But because of the size of the US you will need a lot more trains over every flavor. And our Cities in much of the US are farther apart. And in huge areas such as Montana or Alaska you simply are not going to be able to build a useful network.
So you have to somehow build a network or trains while dealing with the following issues.
Scale of the system. It would have to be much larger then anyone else’s (except China) and thus would cost more.
It will lose money in many if not most locations. And thus have to be supported by taxes of some flavor (not ver exceptable in the US)
Even in Europe people would rather drive. Reality is that folks take mass transit (trains, boats, planes subways or what have you) because various factors make private transport a pain. Be it cost, time, traffic density, cost of car ownership or government regulations)
Paying for it. As stated subsidizing mass transit is not popular and tribes in the 20th century were vied as for profit companies and should sunk or swim on thier own. So good luck changing that.
Paying for it part 2. Obviously you can’t build it all at once and equally obviously you won’t build it at ALL in some locations. So you are going to have trouble getting the bill to pay for this through Congress when you consider how many congressmen will be opposed to it for any of the follong reasons A). They are opposed on general principles, B) thier State or there congressional district will not get any/enough service, C) thier State or district will be one of the areas that will pay for (subsidies) other areas. D) thier voters are opposed to it for whatever reason and thier fore they the congressman is opposed as they want to be re-elected to office,
So somehow you need 50+ % of Congress and the Senat and all while a President agrees.
Basically thier are sound and valid reasons why Trains are not as popular in the US as Europe. And I think a lot of people over estimate how popular they are in Eurpe and missunderstand why they are as popular as they are in Europe. So I don’t think this is happening without HUGE (almost ASB) changes to the World, technology, the US population, US politics, US taxes or some such.
Mind you I am not against trains. I love trains. I ride them where and when I can. I read about them. I model them I belong to train related historical societies ect etc. But I am sorry they just don’t work well in the US. Heck they don’t work all that well in France.
And to get them in the US would be even more expensive because some things that are put up with in Europe would never be allowed in the US. For instance all the metro and underground and train stations that require stairs (not even escalators) Much less not having wheel chair access. And the way they approach access would not be acceptable in the US. In the US you would not get away with telling an 88 year old that they will only have 10 minutes determine the platform thier train was going to arrive on then to stamp thier ticket, walk from the station to the platform, walk up the stairs (of if you lucky find and take the small elevator that holds 3 people at the most) then get into the platform and look up on the ONE screen where thier car is, then walk down the platform to said car. Then climb onto the train (platforms are not at floor level) dragging your luggage (the conductor standing right thier is not going to help) then scramble around inside the car lifting your luggage and then finding your seat, All this in 10 minutes, in this case it happened 3 times on various TGV routes with 1st class tickets. All because they wouldn’t tell ANYONE what track the train was going to be on. In one case (we had been thier for over a half hour before the announcement and the train as it turns out had been thier longer. So they just chose not to tell anyone.
So if your great example of trains works like that then it will realy bomb in the US and will have to make a lot of expensive changes to get past ADA laws. Thus it will be MORE expensive then in Europe.
So good luck with that.
Anyone have numbers for the differences in subsidies, indirect costs, ect... For the Airline industry as well. I used to have some material published back in the early 1970s and it looked really horrible in terms of long range policy. The passenger car and trucking industries were very heavily subsidized, the airlines more so. Be interesting to see what the differential is after say 1975. Obviously its going to vary by decade, so there emay be some eye openers there as well.
To put it another way, WI the airlines & aircraft industry had to bear the full cost of building airports, were taxed at similar rates as the railroads, ect... Ditto for the automotive industry. Would as much freight travel by automobile if the trucking companies paid for their full use of the highways. Or is the cost less than in the numbers I remember back circa 1973?
Rail seems a like a medium-distance form of travel for trips/distances that are too long to drive but too short to fly. This rail system wouldn't be a national thing as a much as a series of separate regional/interstate compact passenger systems in the Northeast Corridor, the Great Lakes, and possibly other places.
These two regions have been densely populated enough for long enough to make the rail project feasible, it's harder to see passenger rail getting done in car-centric areas of the sunbelt.
These two regions have been densely populated enough for long enough to make the rail project feasible, it's harder to see passenger rail getting done in car-centric areas of the sunbelt.
The problem still is who is going to PAY for it? The Federal government is NEVER going to pay. As if you propose a system between Chicago and Milwaukee then the rest of the country won’t want to pay as they don’t get any benefit. This is the real problem in the US we are just to big. Most countries that have high speed rail have either a centralized government that couldn’t care what the people say. Or are much smaller so a bigger percentage thinks that the train will be of use.
Also many countries have either fewer roads to cross because of a less dense road system. They have more roads they can get away with cutting or they have raised crossing they can use to convert to high speed. On top of this many European countries have much smaller farms then the US so it is less of an issue to cut through them. You have to pay less when you cut a small farmers field in half then when you cut a HUGE farm in half and make the farmer driver 10 miles to get to the other 300 acres of his farm. He will fight you more and it will cost more.
So the cost is generally going to be higher.
And even with all this it is not like all of Europe has ready access to high speed rail.
The best your ever going to get in the US is some regional systems. Like the North West Coriander. Scatared randomly around the country. Otherwise you need to go back to 1800 and figure out a way to restrict land ownership, The large open spaces around almost every city in the US has made cheap land readily available and we have always had more decentralized living. This goes back to how we build farms. We buy large areas of land and live in the middle of one edge. In much of Europe the farmers have smaller plots of land outside town and live on the edge of town. Often not on any land they act farm. They can do this because of the smaller farms and because of the cultural history when grouping the houses for protection was needed. The US didn’t have this. So we decentralized more. I am sure any traveling in much of Europe has seen this. A large area of farmland (owned buy many farmers) and a little cluster of homes forming a tiny village. Then rinse and repeat a few kilometers down the road. Vs in the use you see the house scatter a 1/4. To a mile apart.
So it is a cultural thing and the fact we have more land. Made worse buy being such a large country that you won’t convince a big enough percentage of the population that any give line of trains is worth paying for as 90% of the country lives so far away from any proposed line as to make it useless for them
Also many countries have either fewer roads to cross because of a less dense road system. They have more roads they can get away with cutting or they have raised crossing they can use to convert to high speed. On top of this many European countries have much smaller farms then the US so it is less of an issue to cut through them. You have to pay less when you cut a small farmers field in half then when you cut a HUGE farm in half and make the farmer driver 10 miles to get to the other 300 acres of his farm. He will fight you more and it will cost more.
So the cost is generally going to be higher.
And even with all this it is not like all of Europe has ready access to high speed rail.
The best your ever going to get in the US is some regional systems. Like the North West Coriander. Scatared randomly around the country. Otherwise you need to go back to 1800 and figure out a way to restrict land ownership, The large open spaces around almost every city in the US has made cheap land readily available and we have always had more decentralized living. This goes back to how we build farms. We buy large areas of land and live in the middle of one edge. In much of Europe the farmers have smaller plots of land outside town and live on the edge of town. Often not on any land they act farm. They can do this because of the smaller farms and because of the cultural history when grouping the houses for protection was needed. The US didn’t have this. So we decentralized more. I am sure any traveling in much of Europe has seen this. A large area of farmland (owned buy many farmers) and a little cluster of homes forming a tiny village. Then rinse and repeat a few kilometers down the road. Vs in the use you see the house scatter a 1/4. To a mile apart.
So it is a cultural thing and the fact we have more land. Made worse buy being such a large country that you won’t convince a big enough percentage of the population that any give line of trains is worth paying for as 90% of the country lives so far away from any proposed line as to make it useless for them
Personally, I think Las Vegas to LA should be later on the list. Though LA - San Diego would definitely be the best place to start.
Riain
Banned
A commuter style system LA to Vegas able to do 90mph on the South West Chief lines with minimum intermediate stops could be well patronised. It wouldn't run on off peak times, maybe only Thursday to Monday and be a bit like a red eye, where people could catch a bit of a nap, which isn't possible in a car or a 45 minute flight.
Yeah, that makes the most sense to me. Instead CA, in its infinite wisdom, decided to start building the railroad from nowhere to nowhere in an area where the smallest percentage of the population actually wanted HSR.
Riain
Banned
Was this a political move, a 'build it and they will come' thing? Once this high speed spine is available the Counties and Cities at either end will want to attach to it and stump up the cash?
I don't know, I don't live in CA. Whatever the reason, it was dumb. I am pretty sure SD to LA is the closest distance between big CA cities and should have went first.
Riain
Banned
I think that might be too short to make 220mph HSR worthwhile. If LA-SD was the starting point it could make do with something akin to the 120mph NEC Regional and 150mph Acela trains over the ~125 miles, but these systems wouldn't be great for doing the long run between LA and SF which really need the 220mph speeds.
Make intercity flying more expensive, unreliable, and tedious. Perhaps do what China did and make all but a select few flight corridors military airspace.