I provided hard numbers. You responded with a vague sense that I’m missing something, but offered no specifics or numbers. I would call that glossing over details.
Whatever, in the end I don’t have an opinion about HS rail in America.
Now if you want to talk about HS rail in Mexico? As an American, I have important things to say about that.
The Biden administration’s new infrastructure package includes huge new money for Amtrack expansion. The map above shows the planned new routes in blue.
Man, I’ll bet that train between Cheyenne and Pueblo will be packed every day.
Yes, obviously if we made trains faster and more convenient, that would result in fewer people using them. That’s just basic common sense.
So you think that if we ran a rail link between two 10,000 person cities, so long as it was good and fast it woild get the same kind of ridership as a Boston to New York link?
I think that a rail line as fast as a plane would get the same kind of ridership as a plane.
These discussions gave me gas, and not the kind that powers cars.
It’s true that high-speed rail is not efficient and effective in most parts of the country in today’s world. But the future is not today’s world. There are worlds in which they would make sense. If, for example, huge costs are added to fossil fuels, then both planes and cars will be affected for mid-length travel. Electric cars would have to essentially replace fossil fuel cars in such a world and much more quickly than anyone expects, but train travel to the middle of cities paired with short-term transportation would be viable.
Do we know what the world 20, or 30, or 50 years from now will be like? Of course not. Yet our infrastructure must be planned for far-future use not for today’s use. That’s an unsolvable problem that historically planners have missed the targets on consistently.
All we can say for sure is that planning based on today’s usage and numbers is guaranteed to be, on average, the worst possible case.
Thanks for the cites. I think rail makes some sense for shortish distances in dense areas and for industry. The historically disadvantaged are more likely to be urban than live in the Midwest.
Where you stand depends on where you sit. I wonder what in the past caused rail to be prioritized more than roads? This classic clip from Yes, Minister argues lobbyists do not always consider the public interest.
You compared the energy use of current trains with the hypothetical energy use of future automobiles. I didn’t see you mention how efficient passenger trains may be in 20 years, or whether high-speed rail would draw riders away from cars more than it would from air travel.
You said that passenger rail doesn’t account for changes in population between when it is planned and when it will be operational, and you cited the decline in Detroit as an example. But then you discussed how passenger trains could hamper the high efficiency of freight rail, with no mention of how freight rail avoids the same pitfall of shifting populations.
There are gaps in your argument.
My view is, the US ought to copy places where rail has been cost-effective and implemented and developed successfully: Japan, Korea, parts of Eastern China, and Europe - places where there’s heavy population density. In places with high population density in the US and in the economic corridors, copy their rail systems and grids, but with more modern and greener tech.
Candidates for high-speed and less high speed ‘express’ routes are: Boston to Washington; South Florida; Pittsburgh to Chicago; and coastal California between San Diego and San Francisco.
They should mainly do it:
- on popular routes in dense areas
- where commuting is difficult
- where it offers obvious efficiencies
- where people will gladly use it
- where it is basically cost-effective
If that goes well, expand further once the technology improves, as it doubtless will. By all means look at Asia. I do have pleasant memories taking a Shinkansen from Tokyo to middle-of-nowhere ski country. But Japan differs from most of the US in many ways, including: car ownership, density, public homogeneity, cultural traditions, and so much more.
Actually, I didn’t. I used a 2020 Tesla for comparison, and merely used the expected proportion if EV’s in the future with today’s efficiency.
And thd thing with trains is that if they take 30 years to build you wind up locking yourself into today’s technology, except for perhaps the locomotives.
If we want yo go down the toad of projected future efficiency,mut looks worse for trains because train technology is mature and there are no efficiency breakthroughs on the horizon. There are experiments with fuel cells and such, but that’s more about tetting the diesel out of diesel-electric motors.
And speaking of that… Long distance trains are powered by fossil fuels, making electric cars look even better. And electric cars promise to get better in the future, and there are still lots of efficiency fains to be had. So if we want to project the technology for both into the future, it looks better for cars.
The tracks take 30 years to build; I believe the trains are considerably less.
I read somewhere that one of the factors at play is that the standards for passenger rail cars in the U.S. haven’t been revised in decades, and so they’re much heavier than comparable trains in Europe. I haven’t heard if the new proposal includes a revision to those rules, but there are potential efficiency improvements that could be made.
The freight trains that you were extolling are diesel powered. All the high-speed passenger trains I’m aware of draw their power from overhead wires, and the infrastructure proposal we’re discussing does include electrification of some routes that currently aren’t.
There are about 5mm people that live in that 200 mile stretch so the population density isn’t terrible. While it’s true most people won’t commute from one end to the other there are already people that commute from the ends to Denver. More would probably chose that option and move out of Denver if they can. There is already a plan in place for commuter rail from both cities into Denver though it is taking forever and is way over budget to your point.
Not that I’m a fan of high speed rail.
It might be. It approximates the route of Interstate 25, which gets a lot of people into and out of Denver daily, as well as to places up and down the Interstate. Heck, my ex-wife commuted between Colorado Springs and Pueblo daily for a few years, and would have been very happy with an option that didn’t require her to drive, especially in winter.
Remember also that on that route are Pueblo, Denver, and Greeley–all cities with universities. Poor college students who cannot afford cars need a way to get between the cities, especially when they may live in Fort Collins or Denver, but are attending college in Pueblo.
I well remember leaving Toronto on a train bound for Montreal, and about one-third of the train got off at Kingston. Why? They were students at Queen’s University in Kingston, but their families were in Toronto, so they’d go back for weekends on the train. I see no reason why Colorado students would not do the same, if offered the chance.
That would have to be an awfully generous definition of “almost nothing”, seeing that over 10% of Americans use public transport on a daily or weekly basis.
The question of what type of public transport is the best choice for American investment is different from the question of whether any type of public transport has a viable role in the US at all. The answer to the second question is definitely “yes”, while the answer to the first is highly debatable.
I’m baffled as to why the word “intercontinental” is being used at all in the context of discussing domestic travel within the USA.
? While I have a whole lot of reservations about proposals for an American long-distance high-speed rail network, the hypothetical basis of this comparison just seems flat-out absurd. Even if every private automobile in the US were fully electric by 2050—a highly unrealistic assumption—there would still be tens of millions of people who would need or prefer some form of mass transit for medium- to long-distance trips.
The idea that in 2050 every American will be using a privately owned electric vehicle for all their vehicle transportation needs is as silly as saying that right now every American uses a privately owned gasoline-powered vehicle for all their vehicle transportation needs. No they don’t, and no they won’t, so it doesn’t make sense to construct transportation mode comparisons based on such far-fetched hypotheticals.
This OP is in large part a rewriting/updating of a Cato Institute paper from 2009.
I’m impressed Amtrack improved from from 2700 to 1535 BTU per passenger mile! I’m wondering what changed or who is wrong here.
It goes on to trash the California project in similar fashion. I agree with Sam’s trashing, it’s a boondoggle.
Yeah. While I agree with you about many of the problems with proposed long-distance high-speed rail in a country like the US, that article is not a useful survey of the issue. Part of it is simply ten years out of date, and part of it was wrong even when it was written, such as the claim that highways “paid for themselves”.
I’m not sure but AFAICT it’s got to do with their electric-only routes gaining many more passenger miles as compared to the diesel ones.
A big problem with trains, buses and airplanes is that they usually involve three separate trips: from home or office to origin terminal, from origin terminal to destination terminal and from destination terminal to final destination (office or whatever). In contrast a car only involves one trip.
When self driving cars arrive I think people will prefer them for a substantial fraction of the trips done by train especially: it’s unpleasant to drive for several hours–but that several hour period spent on office work, sleeping or enjoying entertainment would be much more acceptable.
The claim of the OP, that there is a current push for high speed rail by the Biden administration is not supported by that map nor by recent articles.
Improved and expanded rail service yes.
High speed? Not mentioned.
Agreed it should not be. Better ways to invest.