In the 'Your dinner with Obama–what would you ask him? ’ thread, I said I would ask him about public works projects, such as a possible rail from New York to San Francisco in order to help revitalize the rust belt and connect the two coasts. It sparked a bit of a discussion, which you can read the first couple of posts about if you like. I’ll quote the one where the argument is fleshed out the most.
I hadn’t intended to start a thread but Cisco asked me to. So, here it is.
Is the debate over which route would be best?
This group proposes a HSR network including both SF-to-NY and LA-to-Jacksonville routes. See map in the middle of this page.
The debate is about anything related to the idea of building a cross country train line. Is it a good idea? If so, what route? How should it be implemented? Powered?
I’m interested in several aspects of this but first I’d like to ask about revitalizing the rust belt and/or midwest. I think that’s a great idea since it’s a beautiful area that’s been dying for the last 50 years or so. How would this rail help bring people and jobs back to those areas?
Presumably it would need to be an express train from NY to SF or else - cost be damned - no one would bother. It could take days or even weeks to get there if it made more than a few brief stops. Would other, shorter rail systems be built alongside it?
Well if we had better access to those areas, there would be more reason to go there.
I guess this would be a necessary part of it. Though many areas are working on building light rail. The site that Brainglutton posted has a pretty thorough workup on both a national and regional level. If transit between metro areas were easier, it might make it more worthwhile to expand back into decaying but already urbanized areas.
Well, there’s a whole lot of no love for my state, there! I guess nobody’s interested in revitalizing us potato-eaters.
Wouldn’t it be possible to run the continuous-run train on the same set of tracks as the ‘local’ (still state-spanning) ones? Couldn’t you just schedule the other trains around the one?
No need to choose. It could include an express train, plus other trains that make more stops, running on the same line.
Yes, but remember, we’re not talking about using existing train tracks as they are. They would have to be upgraded to high-speed-rail standards – I’m not sure what that requires but I’m sure it costs a lot even if you have a graded trackbed to start with; and electric catenaries would have to be installed overhead.
Sure, sure, by “local” I meant “fancy new trains that make runs connecting places closer together than opposite coasts”. Basically I was just trying to suggest the same answer you suggested one post later, only I did it with more words and less clarity.
Well, remember, no town in the U.S. is really inaccessible. The question is whether HSR could find a useful niche in the long-distance transportation system somewhere between airplanes and automobiles, and, if so, how (if at all) that would affect the local economies of cities lucky enough to get rail stops.
I think it would. For one thing, there would be a stimulus to local tourism. A day trip by HSR to some town a few hundred miles away might be a way to spend a weekend – faster than driving, cheaper than flying.* And – this is the kicker – to get there you ride across the land, seeing everything, as you can’t from an airplane, and can’t afford to (pay attention) from a driver’s seat.
Would it intend to replace some air travel? How would the carbon footprint and costs (contruction and ticket) compare to airplanes?
I guess we are assuming that gas prices will rise, and with it the cost of flying and driving. Rail can be powered by the grid, thus nuclear or solar or wind or whatever upgrades we make to it can give it a lower cost.
Yeah, that’s what I am thinking. This could also drive more of a culture to just head out to Ohio for the weekend or something. Though, I don’t really weekend in Boston and we have rail going there now, so who knows right?
As for carbon footprint, HSR can run on electric power, which means it can depend on nuclear power plants, which (AFAIK) don’t produce significant amounts of greenhouse gases. Those have their own risks, but I don’t see any alternative to relying on them a lot in the future anyway. If we actually crack the technology for a “hydrogen economy” with practical hydrogen-powered cars, we still need some kind of power source to electrolyze water into hydrogen.
Hey, be patient. The system as envisioned, linking all major metro areas, would take years and trillions to build. When it’s up and running, eventually there’ll be some bitching about how there’s no direct link from Minneapolis to the West Coast . . .
It’s actually easier to make rail transportation work in such areas than anywhere else – but you can run into political obstacles. What makes it easier to travel into or through those areas also makes it easier for the . . . ermm . . . natives to travel out into the suburbs. That was a big deal when Atlanta built its MARTA system. Although Washington, D.C., has one of the best subway systems in America, there is no Metro stop in the most affluent and prestigious neighborhood, Georgetown; the residents organized to stop it.
Of course, there are also proposals for making air travel cheaper and more practical for short hops – see this article.
But airplanes still need fossil fuels to burn and emit hydrocarbon wastes.
Trains are going to be what wins in the end. I’d love to see bullet trains getting people across the country instead of airplanes. Where rails don’t go, blimps can. It’s pretty fast and efficient. Planes can still be used for expedited travels or nonstop travels or international travels, but we’d be much better off without planes crisscrossing the skies.
Are rails still the best way tobuild a train? I have always wondered why they don’t build trains that run on rubber wheels in a curved concrete “trough”. High speed turns could be easily banked by just building one side of the trough higher. No worries about derailing.
I think this is a fantastic idea and the one which has the best chance of actually having a significant effect both environmentally and economically.
I might be biased because I really love trains, but I would spend a lot of time trying to convince people that this could really work.
I’m in favor of high speed rail in the US, on the French TGV model, so I disagree strongly with implementation suggested by the OP. Firstly, high speed passenger service currently tends to work best for city pairs 200-400 miles apart. Secondly, a high-speed rail route NYC-SFO, or NYC-LAX, would still take 20-30 hours assuming approx. 190 MPH top speeds with intermediate stops, thus having no realistic chance of competing with air on the route.
Likewise, how, specifically would this scheme revitalize the rust belt on its own? There is no lack of existing means for freight transport in the region, and high-speed rail as implemented currently is inappropriate for heavy freight anyway. As a passenger route, there may be some benefit in allowing people living further out than normal (say 100-200 miles) from a city center to make daily commutes, but I would question whether this effect would be all that significant.
The main benefit of such a system, in my view, would be to get a leg up on what most likely will be extreme rises in the cost of energy for transportation over the next couple decades. It would make the most sense to start with linking major cities in the east and midwest, plus maybe the interconnecting the major cities in Texas, where the speed/distance equation would handily beat road travel times and at least equal door-to-door times when traveling by air. Once a few of these corridors have been established, then one could start considering linking them into a transcontinental route.
I am aware that there have been several referenda on establishing high-speed routes of this nature in the US, and that AFAIK, all have been voted down by the populations they presumably would benefit. I imagine that having federal funds made available to build what, at first, would be a regional rail system would have a few probelsm of voter acceptability, and states have proven both unable and unwilling to fund such systems on their own.
I think the failure to adopt such a system has mostly been because fuel costs and traffic congestion simply haven’t been onerous enough to give people and incentive to establish a system of this type, but within the next twenty years or so the equation may change considerably. It would be nice if we could look far enough ahead to see this coming, as the French did, but it doesn’t look likely.