Instead of high-speed rail . . . why not revive conventional rail?

Great Debates
1

I believe HSR is well worth doing – in the long run – but it would be the most expensive public-works project since the Interstate Highway System was finished. And right now, America can’t readily afford expensive things.

For the immediate future, if we want an alternative to automobile transportation and air transportation, why not just refurbish and revive America’s old fine-grained conventional-rail transportation system?

I mean, the tracks are already there. We drive over or past them without noticing them every day, but they’re there. They served every major city and many small towns. Most rail lines are long abandoned. (There’s even a “Rails to Trails” movement to turn them into bike paths, on the grounds that they pass through lots of scenic countryside, and bicyclists and railway engineers have very similar ideas about what constitutes a reasonable gradient.) But most of the rights-of-way are still public property or railway property. Many of the tracks are rusted out and might need replacing, but the hard, expensive work of grading the rights-of-way and tunnelling through hills and building bridges over gullies has already been done, done before practically any of us was born. Many of the bridges are so decrepit you wouldn’t even want to try walking across one, but they can be replaced or repaired or reinforced – we do that for highway bridges all the time. If we want them to run on electric power rather than diesel, it should be a simple matter to string catenaries or add power-rails.

Why not?

2

Rail already has had a revival - in freight. US rail freight is a huge business and carries vastly more freight as a proportion of all freight than in, say, Europe. However, pasenger service was never profitable for companies and was only used as a cost-cutting measure (because adding some passenger service cost almost nothing).

However, rail is slow and often rather jolting as a method of travel, and real security would require the same things as passenger air, which is faster for almost any distance people choose to fly anyway. Furthermore, rail travel is actually pretty expensive. People usually travel rail for the cross-country experience these days.

Now, intra-city rail has some promise, but it’s a case-by-case thing. What works in one location may not work in another, and there’s no reason to merge track with regional rail networks. Here in Knoxville, we’ve had a proposal sitting around for a long while to put in a light-rail system on old track. It has some promise, but it’s telling that nobody actually wants to do it: they want somebody else to handle it instead.

I won’t comment on your interest in HSR, except that I disagree and have argued the point many times.

3

Unless you live in the Northeast corridor, conventional medium- or long-distance rail has few advantages and a lot of disadvantages.

  1. The track beds aren’t usually able to handle speeds of more than 70-80 mph. If you upgrade the tracks you’re getting into HSR costs.

  2. The tracks are owned by the railroads. Even though passenger trains are supposed to get the right of way, at best they’re limited to the speed of the slowest freight train.

  3. Because of these factors, long-distance train trips are slow. The trip between St. Louis and Chicago, which is often hyped as the most viable HSR route inthe Midwest, often takes longer than by car. The Amtrak trip is listed at 5.5 hours, the Megabus trip is 5.5-to-6, depending on time of day. The trip from Kansas City to St. Louis is actually listed as faster on Megabus than Amtrak.

4

It’s being proposed in Indianapolis. There is an old rail line running from downtown to an outer suburb, Noblesville. (map) There is currently a railroad museum on the track that runs a daily (?) train, so it’s a fully operational line. The proposal would use light rail diesel trains. Here’s an interesting article on the subject, which delves into some other issues (notably, the brownfields that exist in the area in downtown Indy where the trains would stop, as well as the amount of blight and poverty in that area that are being focused on for development and revitalization).

5

We can’t risk terrorists diverting a train into a skyscraper, after all… :rolleyes:

6

I hace no idea what kind of nonsense you’re using, but apart from that post being insulting and lacking the wit to carry it off, you perhaps might have noticed that terrorists are happy to just kill people packed in tight?

7

In addition to the issues voiced by kunilou, there is the additional problems of logistics, scheduling, and bottlenecking. While the arrangement of rail lines was suited to the distribution needs and modes of the day in which they were built the demographics and transportation demands have changed. Just because a rail line runs between Omaha and Topeka doesn’t mean that it will be economical to use or that the demand would justify maintaining it for passenger use. And heavier travel will require more track and grade maintenance, even if the trains only see a fraction of their carrying capacity.

Another concern is the increase in accidents, particularly rail lines that have crossings at surface streets. While it is often and truthfully pointed out that fewer accidents per capita occur on public and air transportation versus automobiles, this is part due to the fact that the total volume of travel is less and therefore easier to regulate for safety. If we were running trains at 3 minute intervals rather than 7 or 12 minute intervals, the likelihood of serious accidents increases on an exponential curve simply by having more possible incidences and the possibility that by human error or undetected degradation of the track or rail car will result in an accident. Street crossings are particularly problematic because there are only limited things that can be done to prevent drivers from interfering with the safe passage of the train, and drivers tend to be impatient, or sometimes deliberately seeking oblivion. The Los Angeles MTA system (Metro and Metrolink) has had a couple of very serious accidents in the last few years that have resulted in many injuries and deaths for riders; unfortunately, the decision to use existing track lines makes it virtually impossible to mitigate this hazard.

Personally, I like rail, particularly commuter rail; it’s classic and can be scenic, and generally more enjoyable at the endpoints than flying. But it isn’t typically very convenient except in high population densities and regular heavily travelled lines. And while the per capita operating cost of a fully utilized system may be significantly lower than that for automotive transportation, the fact is that most of the maintenance and operating costs remain fixed regardless of the degree of utilization, whereas with automotive the cost of infrastructure maintenance is dependent upon the amount of particular usage, and the operating costs are borne by the users themselves, which results in a nearly optimum distribution of funds to needs, notwithstanding pork barrel projects like the Gravina Island Bridge in Alaska or Milwaukee’s Hoan Bridge.

As for the costs between conventional rail and high speed rail, while I haven’t personally done a detailed breakdown of maintenance and operating costs, it is often the case with large installations and infrastructure that it is cheaper to tear down an obsoleted structure and replace it with a newer system that is more accessible and easily repaired even when factoring in the construction and disposal costs. Of course, the investment in a new line is huge, not even withstanding the right-of-way costs and issues (which I think would be a show stopper for the proposed San Francisco to San Diego line along the California coast) and the degree of utilization is uncertain, so cost justifying new rail line construction is largely a matter of juggling the numbers until they come up looking like something viable regardless of the uncertainties in the calculation.

Stranger

8

Perhaps you might have noticed that even after those attacks, you don’t go through airport-type security scans on European trains?

9

Well…why? What problem are you trying to solve here? As smiling bandit pointed out already, rail HAS had a resurgence…in bulk freight. Rail is already available, especially on the East Coast, for passenger travel (Amtrak, for instance).

So…what are you trying to ‘fix’ here? And what benefit do you see over the already available transport systems that would justify the costs of refurbishment? What market are you looking to satisfy, or how do you propose to gain market share over the alternatives (such as air or car)?

-XT

10

And we have a different culture (which I think is mistaken, but not my concern) which pretty much requires it. Neither President nor Congress will leave any such obvious loophole like that.

11

If we’re talking improvements to passenger rail services in the US, I’d still prefer to see construction of dedicated high-speed lines betweeen city pairs 400-600 miles apart, as this seems the more viable long-term option.

As mentioned already, one of the numerous handicaps to the revival of long-distance passenger rail in this country is that, outside the Northeast Corridor, most existing routes are owned by freight railroads, and that there are many operating headaches associated with running heavy passenger and freight traffic on the same lines, especially when the route is single- or double-tracked (as is the case for most current routes). Without at least generous government subsidies for equipment and right-of-way, none of the major freight carriers would consider getting back into the passenger business to be worth the hassle, and trying to force them to get third-party passenger trains (see Amtrak) over the road on time has never had much success.

The French model of dedicated high-speed lines joining up with conventional routes has actually worked quite well. Supposedly TGV high-speed trains at least make back their direct operating costs (paying off the construction of the lines and equipment is another matter), while conventional services have lost vast amounts of money for decades. On the other hand, part of the reason that the dedicated TGV routes are successful is that the trains can seamlessly use conventional as well as high-speed lines, and one reason this can be done is that almost all major routes in France are already electrified.

This brings us to another point made by the OP: electrification, far from being ‘simple’, adds vastly to the cost per mile of a stretch of railway and can really be justified only when there are high levels of traffic. IIRC, there are actually fewer miles of electrified line in the US than there were in the 1930’s and the reason is that current traffic densities and fuel costs do not make electification economical on most lines.

A couple more random notes:

  1. I’m not sure I’d say ‘most’ rail lines have been abandoned; while a lot of mileage has been lost since the 1950s, much of this has been the abandonment and consolidation of parallel lines operated by competitors that merged or failed. Most of the actual routes between city pairs still exist, and the increase in freight traffic of the past couple decades has actually brought about a modest increase in trackage, mostly double-tracking of formerly single-track routes.

  2. To the best of my knowledge, the rails-to-trails movement got started not just to provide low-grade pathways for bicyclists, but to preserve single-party ownership of the right-of-way in case there was ever interest in reviving the abandoned line for rail traffic.

12

Well, they could always place a mine on the tracks.

But, they could do the same with highway bridges. Complete security is impossible. Heck, you could cause a lot of carnage just by dropping a cinder block off an overpass.

13

Your comparison to airport security is still incorrect. People are “packed in tight” in lots of places. Why not say that rail passengers will need the same level of screening as people at a baseball game?

How 'bout this? Future rail travel (as proposed by the OP) will require the same level of security as current rail travel. Ask anyone who has taken a train in the last seven years if they thought the security demands were bothersome.

In addition to this, what current conditions make this project feasible that weren’t there before? We had passenger rail in this country, then cars and planes came along and people stopped taking the train. What has changed since then to bring people back? For that matter, how is the OP different from what we already have? Why refurbish disused tracks when we already have service between lots of cities? (warning: link is to PDF)

14

We have Caltrain from San Jose to SF. The “Baby Bullet” (limited stops) does the trip in just under a hour. There are several other commuter trains around here.

15

Obrviously, if it’s not high speed rail, then it’s low speed rail.

How you gonna sell that in America? It’s probably almost as expensive and it’s slow!

16

Unless you have really dense populations rail doesn’t work to move people. That would be Chicago, NYC, San Fran, Boston, Philly. Hey you know they have rail.

Railroads have always failed rapidly. I love to read about interurbans and the heyday was in the early 1900s. But even then if you look, long before autos became common, interurbans were failing.

Railroads were cheap to build in the old days because the government gave them huge right-a-ways. They could lease this land out for farming, they could use it for other things besides the acutal rails. Irish (east to west) and Chinese (west to east) brought extremely cheap labour to build the rails.

This doesn’t exist anymore.

Tracks are expensive to maintain, they’re subject to sabotage, not only from terrorists but people. You can ready many stories about railroads in competition with each other sabotaging the tracks by cutting them.

Interm of subways they’re great, but too expensive to build unless you rip the street and build it, then build the street over it. Won’t work with today’s poltics. Els? They’re nice but people don’t want the noise and it’s politics.

And franky subways and trains are only faster than cars when you go exactly point to point.

For instance, I can drive from my flat to the John Hancock center in just over 15 minutes with no traffic. Even with heavy traffic it takes me 35 minutes. If I take the subway, I have to wait for the subway, go downtown, cross over, take another subway north, and then walk to the Hancock which is 10 minutes from the closest stop. If I hit all the trains exactly, this would take me about 60 minutes. And that’s hitting everything exactly. In otherwords if I enter the subway the train is waiting form.

It usually takes me 90 minute or more. So if money isn’t a major factor, 35 (or less) minutes to drive verus 90+ minutes to take a subway.

This is why public transit like busses has issues, all you’re doing is sitting in traffic other cars and waiting 5 minutes extra for every stop. With a car you can dodge traffic on side streets

17

It doesn’t need it. It will get it regardless, just like airplanes.

18

Then why doesn’t it already have it?

19

Because we don’t yet have significant passenger rail.

20

Beg pardon? I can’t think of any way to parse this that makes sense… Terrorists aren’t people?