# High speed rail ... how well will it fly?//Obama unveils high-speed rail plan **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 16, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347 "2009-04-16T22:33:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/1 "2009-04-16T22:33:05Z")
Back in December I had taken [LaHood’s nomination](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10586392&postcount=1) to be a sign that > [@](#): > > Maybe highways won’t win over rail and other mass transit as much these next few years. Well now comes [this.](http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2009/dot5109.htm) > [@](#): > > President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Biden and Secretary LaHood, announced a new U.S. push today to transform travel in America, creating high-speed rail lines from city to city, reducing dependence on cars and planes and spurring economic development. > > The President released a strategic plan outlining his vision for high speed rail in America. The plan identifies $8 billion provided in the ARRA and $1 billion a year for five years requested in the federal budget as a down payment to jump-start a potential world-class passenger rail system and sets the direction of transportation policy for the future. … > > … The report formalizes the identification of ten high-speed rail corridors as potential recipients of federal funding. Those lines are: California, Pacific Northwest, South Central, Gulf Coast, Chicago Hub Network, Florida, Southeast, Keystone, Empire and Northern New England. Also, opportunities exist for the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston to compete for funds to improve the nation’s only existing high-speed rail service. So yeah it does seem like LaHood did mean that. But will it happen and how well will it be used? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/2 "2009-04-16T22:39:12Z")
Hopefully it won’t fly. We want it to stay near the ground. If it flew that would mean something had gone horribly wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/3 "2009-04-16T22:39:21Z")
I don’t think trains are supposed to fly. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/4 "2009-04-16T22:43:27Z")
Well, it probably won’t get built because there’s unlikely to be a market. You could build rails, but there are precious few places or people to ride on them. This is likely another pie-in-the-sky dream. ---
**Author:** ![Bruce\_Wayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bruce\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bruce_Wayne)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/5 "2009-04-16T22:48:33Z")
I think it would be a good idea. It’d be cheaper than flying, quicker than driving. Tourism would flourish. I’d have a few weekends a year in Chicago, if the trip was only an hour and at rail prices. I’ve heard of a proposal on a radio show a few months back for a high speed rail line from D.C. to New York, something like 45 minutes. The U.S. is behind the bar in high speed rail anyhow. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/6 "2009-04-16T22:51:23Z")
I’m all for it. I only hope passenger rail in general expands. I wish I had an Amtrak station within 100 miles o here. ---
**Author:** ![Interconnected\_Series\_of\_Tubes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/13edae/32.png) [@Interconnected\_Series\_of\_Tubes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interconnected_Series_of_Tubes)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/7 "2009-04-16T22:56:43Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Well, it probably won’t get built because there’s unlikely to be a market. You could build rails, but there are precious few places or people to ride on them. This is likely another pie-in-the-sky dream. I agree entirely. While I’m personally quite enamored with the efficiency of high speed rail systems in certain applications (I was particularly impressed in Japan) I fail to see what benefit a new rail network would provide. The US freeway infrastructure while arguably lacking a bit of maintainable is extremely through, reliable, and cheap. I don’t see any pressing need for another means of moving between cities when our entire nation has invested so heavily in roads. What demand is expected to be met here? Is America currently lacking in labor/freight transport capacity? The place to start really seems to be distributed intra-city rail transit; once that’s been developed enough then we can start considering linking them together. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/8 "2009-04-16T22:57:32Z")
Maglev railroads actually do fly ,not too high though. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/9 "2009-04-16T23:06:40Z")
We’ve had many discussions about high speed rail in the past. The bottom line is that, with the possible exception of a couple of very dense corridors, high speed rail is a money loser and an environmental loser. It’s also a terrible idea for a modern economy, which needs to be flexible. For example, how would a high speed rail line to Detroit be faring these days? It also locks you into a specific technology at a time when technological advances are happening at a rapid pace. A Prius with a single occupant is more energy efficient than train travel. A typical mid-sized sedan with two people in it will also beat a train for energy cost per passenger/mile. How environmentally friendly are trains going to look in 20 years? What you want is networks of cheaper roads, so that traffic can ebb and flow with changing economic conditions. Let the market decide where people and cargo want to go - not a central planner designing expensive fixed transportation routes that can’t easily be changed in the future. Also, when you enter a recession like the current one, you can’t easily scale back your transportation costs. The train still has to run on schedule. So cutbacks mean fewer passengers per run, which makes them even more expensive and even less energy efficient. They’re expensive, inflexible, not particularly environmentally friendly, and don’t solve any current capacity problems that couldn’t be solved with far less money by doing road upgrades. Bad, bad idea. BTW, Canada once had high speed rail. We scrapped it, because it never broke even and load factor kept falling over time. I would like to hear what proponents of high speed rail think the benefits are. Why exactly is it a good idea to spend billions of dollars on a fixed transportation system like this? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/10 "2009-04-16T23:38:07Z")
I would think an East Coast Mag Lev line and a West Coast one would be good, along with one connecting through the continent in Chicago and a last following the Missississippippippi River. Very expensive, but so is civilization itself. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/11 "2009-04-16T23:43:07Z")
I don’t know much about this, but I note that there is (apparently) an already existing high-speed rail service from Washington to Boston (the Northeast Corridor). How’s it doing, use/cost/energy/effectiveness-wise? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/12 "2009-04-17T00:57:57Z")
I am not a committed high speed rail advocate **Sam** but the arguments often go like this: The highway infrastructure has been over capacity for years. Even funding for routine upkeep will cost huge amounts and upgrading it to solve congestion problems? Prohibitively expensive. As it is the [stimulus package](http://www.propublica.org/special/the-stimulus-plan-a-detailed-list-of-spending) gives over $26 billion to highway infrastructure and that will barely dent the needs. Highspeed rail can offer another option in these congested corridors and one that is [highly energy efficient and less polluting](http://www.midwesthsr.org/whyRail_cleaner.htm). The increase in transportation capacity is [a bargain](http://www.midwesthsr.org/whyRail_efficiency.htm) compared to the price of upgrading highways to handle similar capacity. > [@](#): > > In Northeastern Illinois in 2002, adding one lane of new highway to an existing road cost $7.3 million per mile. Building a new railroad track on land already owned by the freight railroads cost between $1 million-$2 million. Upgrading existing track and signaling to handle 110 mph service ran about $1 million per mile. … Rail can carry 3-5 times more people than highways. And much safer too. Yeah, your figures are wrong. And please refer me to some information about Canada’s past and now scrapped high speed rail system. All I can find is this [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Canada) that says Canada never had one and I’d be interested to know what you think you did have. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/13 "2009-04-17T01:32:33Z")
I would totally zip out to Chicago if it didn’t take 8 hours driving and a sweaty ass. Heck, now that Southwest is finally flying from Minneapolis to Chicago I’ve been planning a trip since it’s cheap. If rail was even cheaper I’d dig it. ---
**Author:** ![flickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@flickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flickster)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/14 "2009-04-17T02:19:56Z")
Just don’t let LaHood have control of the actual routing of any of the lines. His solution for routing a direct highway link between Peoria and Chicago was to go due north from Peoria to I-80. Same effect that routing a line between say Atlanta & Jacksonville…through Pensacola. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/15 "2009-04-17T02:27:16Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > I’m all for it. > > I only hope passenger rail in general expands. > > I wish I had an Amtrak station within 100 miles o here. I _do_ have Amtrak within 100 mi, but no closer. I live in Ames, IA, where we have 30 freight trains a day, not a one of which stops. Our last passenger train passed through in 1962. I too hope passenger rail expands. I hope I live to see the day, 'cause nobody else around here gives a shit. We’re pragmatic to a fault, here in Ames. ---
**Author:** ![Ponch8](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponch8/32/9883_2.png) [@Ponch8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponch8)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/16 "2009-04-17T02:28:21Z")
> [@flickster](#): > > Just don’t let LaHood have control of the actual routing of any of the lines. His solution for routing a direct highway link between Peoria and Chicago was to go due north from Peoria to I-80. Same effect that routing a line between say Atlanta & Jacksonville…through Pensacola. There’s been talk of that Peoria to Chicago line for decades, with nothing to show for it. The route you mention wouldn’t be much of an improvement over the current state Rte. 29. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/17 "2009-04-17T02:43:10Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I am not a committed high speed rail advocate **Sam** but the arguments often go like this: > > The highway infrastructure has been over capacity for years. Even funding for routine upkeep will cost huge amounts and upgrading it to solve congestion problems? Prohibitively expensive. As it is the [stimulus package](http://www.propublica.org/special/the-stimulus-plan-a-detailed-list-of-spending) gives over $26 billion to highway infrastructure and that will barely dent the needs. > > Highspeed rail can offer another option in these congested corridors and one that is [highly energy efficient and less polluting](http://www.midwesthsr.org/whyRail_cleaner.htm). The increase in transportation capacity is [a bargain](http://www.midwesthsr.org/whyRail_efficiency.htm) compared to the price of upgrading highways to handle similar capacity. > And much safer too. You are comparing apples and oranges. You’re comparing the cost of upgrading a nationwide network of roads with the cost of building a few high-speed lines between major centers. If you want to compare costs, you’d have to look at the specific cost of upgrading the roads where you want the trains to go, compared to the cost of the trains, compared to the cost due to congestion of not upgrading at all. Also, that page you linked seems to be promoting trains for freight use. Is there evidence now that there’s an under-capacity of current rail freight? Are loads being turned away because there’s not enough rail capacity? Or are people using trucks for other reasons? Rail freight isn’t the panacea you might think. Trucks are more flexible, and you don’t have to load and offload four times (once onto a truck, once from the truck to the train, then from the train to a truck, then off the truck at its destination). I find your cites unpersuasive, given that they are coming from an association dedicated to lobbying for high-speed rail. In the last thread we had on high speed rail, I cited all kinds of different, non-aligned cites, and did some of the math myself, and came to a completely different conclusion. > [@](#): > > And please refer me to some information about Canada’s past and now scrapped high speed rail system. All I can find is this [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Canada) that says Canada never had one and I’d be interested to know what you think you did have. Um, the cite you just linked described two of them: The [UAC Turbotrain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAC_TurboTrain), and the [LRC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRC_(train)). ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/18 "2009-04-17T03:36:37Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Um, the cite you just linked described two of them: The [UAC Turbotrain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAC_TurboTrain), and the [LRC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRC_(train)). Both of those trains only got up to about 100 mph in normal operation, which is at the very low end of high speed rail operations. Modern HSR typically goes over 200 mph. Ed ---
**Author:** ![Bearflag70](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/19 "2009-04-17T03:52:29Z")
How is a rail network more expensive and less flexible than a highway network? If a place needs greater capacity, you build track instead of building lanes of highway. Detroit or Buffalo may now have more highway than they need, but how is that worse than having a rail line that is less needed now than it once was? Also, I don’t see a lot of “fast paced” change in the need for intercity highway corridors. In California, for example, all the major interurban highways (5, 8, 10, 15, 99, 80, 101) have been around in pretty much the same alignment for a long long time. Gaspar de Portola blazed El Camino Real 7 years before the US Declaration of Independence, and it’s still there. The overland pioneers going to California from the East Coast blazed the California Trail in the 1820s, and that’s now Interstate 80. Are they going anywhere anytime soon? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/20 "2009-04-17T04:43:57Z")
High speed rail is inflexible because: A) the roads are already there, whereas new rail lines lead to eminent domain issues - that’s why so many high speed rail projects wind up running on standard track and downgrading their speeds. B) High speed rail has very high fixed costs. The trains cost a lot of money to run, and they cost the same amount to run if they’re half full as when they do when they’re completely full. If demand on a rail line drops, that rail line starts to lose money hand over fist. If demand on a highway drops, there’s simply less traffic on it, and overall costs go down. C) high speed rail needs to run at very high load factors to be profitable. That means there’s no way it can simply be extended to new areas of development. But economies grow organically. Las Vegas didn’t become huge overnight - it grew slowly, and the road system grew with it. If we relied on rail, it would be very hard for communities to spring up where they need to be. In fact, what would happen is that businesses and factories and new communities would be forced to build along the rail line. You might think this is a good thing, but it’s not. It will drive rent-seeking behavior where the land along the line becomes very expensive, and it will also force companies to locate near the rail line rather than where they would naturally be - closer to a workforce, or to resources, or water supplies, or whatever. That leads to a less efficient infrastructure. D) Politics rules all. Rail lines will be allocated where powerful politicians dictate, and once an area is served by high-speed rail, good luck getting the line removed if it’s not making money. Once people come to depend on it, they’ll have no choice and every attempt to reallocate rail traffic will be a political circus. Likewise, once a high-speed train is moving between two regions, you just watch as politicians start punishing other forms of transportation to try to force everyone onto the trains so they can run more efficiently. It’s more top-down central planning overruling the choices people would freely make if the government wasn’t pushing them around. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347.md?page=2)