See diagram below and discussion which follows....

 

 

OK, I realize this is a dream. But consider that there is active planning underway for a 700-mile, 200 mph TGV-type high-speed rail line between the Bay Area and the Los Angeles basin, with branches to Sacramento and San Diego possible. The cost is projected to be $37 billion. Around the world, similar endeavors have been built in abundance, and continue to be built. South Korea was the latest (opening earlier this year), and now China is starting to develop an 800-mile TGV service linking Beijing with Shanghai.

 

Maglev was considered, but a TGV-type service offered 80 percent of the travel-time savings of maglev but at less than half the cost. In France, the TGV is a massive network, but less than 20 percent is on new super-speed right of way. The rest uses existing, upgraded rail lines, which is a flexibility maglev can't match. Similar networks beyond the super-speed trunk line are being pursued in this country -- the 110-mph trains of the Ohio Hub, the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, and the Empire and Keystone corridor improvements underway in New York and Pennsylvania, respectively.

 

Add to that the super-speed, 200 mph trunk line between Chicago and New York City, plus branches to Detroit, Baltimore/Washington DC, a dedicated high-speed line out of Pittsburgh's Midfield Air Terminal, and a high-speed bypass of downtown Philadelphia. Altogther, that provides 1,200 miles of high-speed rail routes. It doesn't include the section between Baltimore and Philadelphia, which is pretty fast today (135 mph), but could be upgraded to 150 mph with some relatively modest improvements.

 

Using California's example, the 1,200-mile Midwest-East Coast TGV network could cost in the neighborhood of $50 billion to $70 billion. It would serve an extensive number of city-pair travel markets, with half-hourly service Chicago to New York, and hourly service on all other segments. The travel capacity that would be offered would be akin to having an airport in the downtowns of more than 20 cities. But these high-speed rail-ports would be small in size, with many below street level. Any city that would have one would enjoy an extremely powerful economic generator, like that which was offered by the canals of the early 1800s, the railroads of the late 1800s and early 1900s, or the highways and airports of the late 1900s.

 

With increasing problems of air quality and energy supplies, an environmentally benign and extremely energy efficient mode like high-speed trains is needed now. Super-speed, electrically powered trains like the TGV use  a majority of their energy when they accelerate. When they reach top speed, they use very little energy and when their brakes are applied, they regenerate electricity back into the overhead wires. Such efficiency will be needed even more in the future. With a super-speed line between Chicago and the East Coast, Ohio would no longer be a fly-over state. Nor would Cleveland, Toledo and Youngstown continue to be bypassed on the ground, like they are with the Turnpike.

 

Instead, these and other cities would benefit greatly from having trains that offer downtown-to-downtown travel times that are as fast, or faster than the airlines on trips of less than 400 miles. But, even on trips as long as 900 miles, 200-mph trains are only slightly slower downtown-to-downtown than the airlines. Discretionary or leisure travelers would likely take advantage of these fast trains. Who knows, they might even make a profit, once the capital costs are borne by another entity.

 

Why, if other nations are moving forward into the 21st century, is our infrastructure stuck in the 1950s and 60s? We should link the major and secondary cities in the region, which have a combined population of more than 60 million people (slightly more than that of France). We have the population density in this region. We have the travel demand. We have the environmental and energy constraints. We are developing the rail distribution networks. But we are lacking the trunk line high-speed rail service to tie it all together.

 

The only question is, do we have the interest and the will?

 

They do in China...

 

 

In South Korea...

 

 

In France...

 

 

In Italy (the Pendolino tilt train taking a tight curve at 135 mph)...

 

 

In the United Kingdom...

 

 

But in our future ? ? ?

 

Cleveland to PIttsburgh in 45 mins with 2 stops? Impossible!!!

Not far-fetched at all if we allow rail to be funded at a decent level over the coming years.  There is no reason we cannot build up our systems to this level someday.  As KJP so ably pointed out, the rest of the industrialized world is running true high speed trains, so clearly it is not an engineering problem to do so.  What America lacks is the poltical will to move in this direction.

we'd rather spend our loose change on building new highways to university circle. you'd think.

Consider some of these train services (100 km/h = 62 mph):

 

http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~dajf/byunbyun/speeds/world.htm

 

I envision there being two classes of service on this "dream" high-speed line: essentially local and express. The locals would stop at every station, averaging 100-110 mph, with the expresses stopping only in the downtowns of the major cities, averaging 150-160 mph. This is consistent with other high-speed operations. But in Japan, there are three classes of service, the Kodama (local), Hikari (express) and Nozomi (super express). All of these operate twice hourly or, in other words, a total six trains per hour per direction on most routes.

 

Japan's Nozomi covers the 120 miles from Hiroshima to Kokura in 44 minutes, at an average speed of 162 mph. This distance is equivalent to that which separates Cleveland from Pittsburgh. Below is a picture of the Series 500 Nozomi train.

 

Consider also that Paris is 500 miles from Marseille, which the TGV covers in 3 hours. That's an average speed of 167 mph. That's also roughly the same distance between Cleveland and New York City.

 

 

Here's a link to see more really fast choo choos throughout the globe:

 

http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/highspeedrailways_gallery.html

Wow some of those trains look really awesome... you can count on my tax dollars!

As KJP ably shows, high speed rail is a reality in most other industrialized nations because they made the commitment to do it and are developing the second and third generations of these systems.

 

Meanwhile back in the good old USA, the leadership and commitment we're getting from the poweers that be in DC won't get us much more than this ....

Given what few trains we have in Ohio have routinely been running 1-10 hours LATE for much of this autumn, that the airlines are in a tailspin and fewer airports have airline service, or that Greyhound is in wholesale retreat, you have to wonder what will be the economic implications of our increasingly Third World transportation system. Actually, it probably wouldn't be much of a problem if the rest of the world had the same piss-poor transportation. But even parts of the Third World have more First-World travel choices that we do in "The Greatest Country On Earth."

 

(edit: added the word "LATE" above....kind of an important word to leave out!)

KJP, without examining your proposed route map too in-depth yet, why would you want to bypass downtown Philadelphia?  Wouldn't it make more sense for a high-speed train to run directly into 30th Street Station (and perhaps beyond to New York Penn) to connect with the Northeast Corridor? 

 

I'm also not really a fan of the westbound route from Washington westbound via Harrisburg.  Is that really necessary, considering it's not hard to get to H'burg via Philly? 

Closer examination will reveal that I do have a routing via downtown Philly. But some expresses should bypass Philadelphia, as I found that it would save about 15-20 minutes. That bypass alignment would be built alongside Norfolk Southern's existing freight railroad bypass that's very straight, and shouldn't incur "substantial" capital costs.

 

I had an alternate route running NW from Baltimore that joins the east-west super-speed trunk line SE of Altoona, but that route was only 30 miles shorter and saved only about 15 minutes, but would have added significant capital costs in terms of tunneling, bridging, grading and so on. Plus, it might also involve a back-up/reverse move by trains in Baltimore to access that alignment, depending on Baltimore's station location. Traveling from D.C. to the west via Philadelphia would incur even more travel time loss, perhaps an hour and a half. That would require about four hours to travel from D.C. to Pittsburgh, and nearly five hours to Cleveland -- both of which is equivalent to the driving time via I-70 and the Turnpikes. And there's no way that's competitive with flying. Once you get beyond a 2-3 hour travel time by rail for distances of up to 400 miles, you'll not be able to compete with the airlines for the time-sensitive business travel market.

Understood.  I'm sorry if I wasn't clearer.  For a DC-Pittsburgh run, I agree it doesn't make any sense at all to go through Philly.  I guess I see running via Baltimore in the same sense--isn't there a way to go from Washington to Pittsburgh via Frederick, MD and possibly Harpers Ferry, WV instead of heading northeast to Baltimore and then doubling back?  Or is the existing right-of-way(currently used by Amtrak's Capitol Limited and MARC Brunswick Line) too geographically constraining?

Yes, the farther west you go into the Alleghenies, the tougher the terrain gets. But there are multiple wide gaps between the mountains in Central Pennsylvania, between Johnstown and Altoona. That's the best place to build a relatively straight right of way. So, the best way to reach that is to go generally north or northwest from Baltimore and then turn west toward Altoona.

 

The old Baltimore & Ohio railroad (and the Western Maryland RR which paralleled it) follow narrow, twisting river valleys, with no towns of any consequence west of Cumberland to Pittsburgh. The extra-large capital costs of building a high-speed line via that route might be worth considering if there were population centers along the way. Since there aren't, I would take the northern alignment.

Cool beans.  I'd still take the 3:10 travel time to Cleveland, considering flying isn't currently that much quicker, and is much more of a hassle.

Beautiful, well-thought-out proposal.

 

I suggest we give Norman Mineta the boot, and give the job to KJP. It'd be nice to have a Secretary of Transportation who knows something about transportation.

>In France, the TGV is a massive network, but less than 20 percent is on new super-speed right of way. The rest uses existing, upgraded rail lines, which is a flexibility maglev can't match.

 

I've ridden it from Paris to the border with Spain, it hauls ass between Paris and Lyon and then slows to a trickle along the Mediterranean coast.  What really struck me was the freqency of trains -- probably 5 an hour between Paris and Lyon, with each fanning to a different location south of that point.  The right-of-way is entirely exclusive and grade separated, and the trains accelerate to nearly their top speed immediately outside of Paris.  The ride is very comfortable while seated but when you get up to walk to the snack car the extreme speed is much more apparent. No corners were cut on the Paris-Lyon stretch, and I'm suspicious that the French government designated all that immediately visible along the line as a special zoning area, because the countryside appears immaculate.  In fact I suspect the many rural villages visible weren't occupied at all but were maintained as decoration.     

 

South of Lyon there are frequent stops and the train rarely tops 100mph.  It shares the line to Parpignon with freight and the speed steadily decreases as the line approaches Spain.  There seems no feasible way for high speed service to be continued to Barcelona or Madrid, it would require a 15 - 30 mile tunnel under the Pyrenees.  The Alleghenies in Pennsylvania don't pose nearly that barrier. 

 

   

 

 

    A question for the math inclined:

 

    Q: The train leaves hourly and makes 120 miles per hour. You are travelling between two cities that are 120 miles apart. How long will it take you to get there?

 

   

 

 

 

 

    A. Up to 2 hours. If you said one hour, you forgot about the hourly schedule. If you just miss the last train, you will have to wait an hour for the next one. You would travel 120 miles in 2 hours, for an overall speed of only 60 miles per hour.

 

    My point is that frequency is just as important as speed, if not more so. The best transit systems have high frequency service. Also note that private automobiles reduce the schedule time to nearly zero, and that's why they compete so well with other forms of transportation.

 

    A train that makes only 65 miles per hour on a ten minute schedule would take the same time, 2 hours, to cover the 120 miles, assuming you just missed the last train.

I beg to differ.  You're talking about maximum waiting time (and not even average, which would be 30 minutes wait with 1 hour headways).  Unfortunately for your argument, neither is valid.

 

The reason is that intercity trains run on a set schedule and usually have reserved seating, where a passenger buys a ticket for a particular train in advance (just like our air travel system).  Thus, one doesn't just show up at the station and wait for the next train, as if riding a subway.  The rider follows the train schedule and shows up a few minutes before his particular train leaves. 

 

The only reason cars became competitive is not necessarily due to the lack of waiting time (ever get caught in an unexpeted traffic jam?), but rather because we have had a transportation policy very heavy-handed in favor of cars.  If trains were subsidized at the same level as automobile travel, cars wouldn't be able to compete on trips longer than 100 miles (or even less, given the system proposed above).

Don't get me wrong, I like to dream about the day we use high speed trains in our daily commute too, but...

 

Aren't we all forgetting about the small practicalities of this type of travel?  I think DaninDC was eluding to this, but I'll just spell it out.

 

If this ends up being anything like air travel, it will take you:

5 minutes to park

10 to take the shuttle to the terminal

10 to purchase a ticket

15-60 to get through security

10 to walk to your terminal

 

Right there you're talking about an hour in misc. time.  You could be halfway to Pittsburgh in that amount of time.

 

I don't think there's any reason to think that a high speed commuter train wouldn't be subject to the same security that our air travel system currently is.  It provides a good target for terrorists...especially a centerpiece like this system would be.

As a semi-frequent train traveler, I feel I am qualified to comment.  This is what's involved:

 

Travel to station - varies based on your location.  From my house, it's a 15 minute bus ride.  (Closest airport to my house is a 20-25 minute subway ride.)  For what it's worth, Union Station in DC has a parking garage directly behind the station.  Try parking next to the airport terminal anywhere.  In the NEC cities, the train stations are typically directly connected to the rail transit system.  Simply stated, parking is much less of a hassle than at an airport, and train stations are often more centrally located (anyone ever fly to New York?).

 

Buy ticket - 5 min. tops, if using the automated ticket machine.  Often less.  Usually, I reserve on the internet, and just print and go at the station.

 

Head to gate and board.  Walk down platform and board train (5 min).

 

There is no shuttle to the terminal.  No unwieldy baggage check (unless you really really need it).  No cumbersome metal detectors.  I took the train from DC to Boston for Thanksgiving, the busiest week of the year for Amtrak.  I showed up at Union Station 15 minutes before my scheduled departure, and had over 5 minutes to spare once I boarded the train and got settled in my seat. 

 

The post above just tells me how ignorant most Americans are about the ease of train travel.

 

 

The post above just tells me how ignorant most Americans are about the ease of train travel.

 

Pre-9/11, air travel used to be easy too.  You're naive to assume that a centerpiece high-tech train, traveling at 200 mph, carrying hundreds of passengers, would have the same level of security as those old, slow Amtrack trains.  :roll:

Well, the train I was on was only capable of 150 mph and not 200 mph, but that's exactly what was involved.  I'm not aware of any special security precautions on the TGV in France, but considering the frequency and popularity of those trains, I hardly think it would be cumbersome.  Regardless, train travel is still easier than even pre-9/11/01 air travel.

 

As an aside, Air France has been able to eliminate numerous money-losing short-hop flights because the TGV performs better on the shorter trips.  I would think the privately-held airlines in the U.S. might be interested in this prospect, considering the pounding they've been taking despite receiving about 10 times the annual subsidy that Amtrak (a government corporation) does.

 

The reason planes are targets of hijackers is because they can be redirected, not because they are a mode of transportation.  You hijack a train, you're going to be caught.   

  "The post above just tells me how ignorant most Americans are about the ease of train travel."

 

    Please be kind. Where I live, there are six passenger trains per week, three in each direction. They are scheduled to stop at 5:00 in the morning. There is no public transportation to the terminal at that hour. They have been known to be 10 hours late, or even cancelled. The fare is comparable to the cost of gasoline if driving. If you have a two people in the car, it's cheaper to drive than take the train, not to mention faster and more reliable. Most people in my area have NEVER travelled on a train in their entire life, unless they have been fortunate enough to travel to the east coast or to Europe.

 

    "15 minute bus ride to station"

    "20 to 25 minute subway ride to airport"

 

    These are simply not available here. Basicly, if you don't have access to a car, you're not going anywhere.

And, a high-speed train can be stopped by a dispatcher by sending a red signal to a specific segment of track (called a block). If the locomotive engineer (or a hijacker) doesn't apply the train's brakes within 10 seconds, the train's automatic cab signal system will apply emergency brakes and shut down the train. The train will not be able to move again until the dispatcher gives an approach (yellow) or clear (green) signal. Every train that operates in excess of 90 mph in the United States is required to have cab signals integrated with an automatic train stop feature. There has never been a hijacked high-speed train in the world, though the TGV was bombed once -- the train didn't derail even though the side of the train was blown out.

 

Eighth and State is partially correct in that, if someone isn't done with their day's business at just the right time, they will have to wait for the next train. If the departures aren't frequent enough, then this becomes an inconvience. On most TGV lines, trains depart every hour, but run half-hourly between 7-9 a.m. and 4-6 p.m. On my proposed super-speed corridor, I would have trains every 30 minutes New York to Chicago, with trains every hour Detroit-Chicago and Detroit-Washington. Plus, Chicago-Columbus trains would use the western half of the super-speed trunk line, and Detroit-Columbus trains using the Detroit branch. And, of course, the Northeast Corridor and Keystone Corridor trains would use the eastern portions of the route. When all these services are combined, the levels of service on a given route segment would be very frequent.

These are simply not available here. Basicly, if you don't have access to a car, you're not going anywhere.

 

That's why I didn't propose a high-speed line through Cincinnati!

 

    Please be kind. Where I live, there are six passenger trains per week, three in each direction. They are scheduled to stop at 5:00 in the morning. There is no public transportation to the terminal at that hour. They have been known to be 10 hours late, or even cancelled. The fare is comparable to the cost of gasoline if driving. If you have a two people in the car, it's cheaper to drive than take the train, not to mention faster and more reliable. Most people in my area have NEVER travelled on a train in their entire life, unless they have been fortunate enough to travel to the east coast or to Europe.

 

    "15 minute bus ride to station"

    "20 to 25 minute subway ride to airport"

 

    These are simply not available here. Basicly, if you don't have access to a car, you're not going anywhere.

 

I know, and I think it stinks.  IMO, our national transportation policy sucks at best, because in about 95% of the country, we require each person to outlay thousands of dollars a year just to exist as a first class citizen.  Free market, my ass.

One of the nice things about train travel in Europe is that you can schedule the trip and show up at the scheduled time and just walk on to the train, but if that doesn't work for some reason the service is frequent enough to just walk up and wait for the next train.

 

High speed trains make way too much sense for the people in charge of our transportation policy to ever go for it, however.

>That's why I didn't propose a high-speed line through Cincinnati!

 

The Cincinnati Southern Railroad originally had something like 22 tunnels on its route to Chattanooga but it's now down to 4 thanks to dynamite and modern earth movers.  Nevertheless a Detroit->Atlanta line via Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Lexington, Knoxville, etc., would be expensive and slow in Kentucky.  Cincinnati's in an unfortunate location both for east/west and north/south lines.

^ That's another reason

Brewmaster,

 

Consider a couple of things:

 

1. High-speed rail stations in Europe are actually older, historic stations downtown, but have been renovated or expanded to include the high-speed trains. In America, these stations would also need to be downtown, so as to allow easy walking to/from the travelers' final points of origin/destinations. Having these stations in American downtowns would promote significant changes in their land use, just as the old railroad stations did in America more than 50 years, and just as they have done and continue to do in the rest of the world today.

 

Imagine the density of development in places like Cleveland, Toledo, Youngstown, Detroit, Pittsburgh etc etc if this service came into the hearts of those cities. The draw for residents, corporate headquarters and leisure activities would be immense. High-speed rail will change the form of our cities. The result is that you could walk or take a bus the short distance to the station from your center-city home or office, arrive at the station less than 15 minutes before train departure, get on the train and go. What could be more convenient than that? It's why high-speed rail has been such a tremendous success in the rest of the developed, and developing world.

 

2. Something else about security procedures... It is highly impractical to offer on trains the same kind of security required on planes. For the most part, a plane goes from point to point, with all the passengers getting on at the start of the flight and all the passengers getting off at the end of the flight. Even Southwest Airlines, which has coast-to-coast flights making stops enroute, limits these to about four or five stops. Trains, even high-speed ones, make more stops than that. While an express from Chicago to New York City would likely be limited to stops in Toledo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, it would serve stations and their track-level platforms with trains that make many many more stops, including regional commuter and conventional intercity trains. There is no way to secure that type of system as you would an airport -- there's simply too many entry points, and one of the advantages of mass transit, including high-speed rail, is multiple access points. When thing you can do is to have a chemical - biological - radiological measuring device in the passageways leading to track level -- like they do at Grand Central Station, Penn Station and elsewhere. All you do is walk within 10-20 feet of it, and if you're carrying something you shouldn't, the device will sound an alarm. The area is then cordoned off by security personnel and, until the offending person is found, no trains leave the station.

KJP -

 

I agree completely with the first point, and I'm as excited as you at the thought of this scenario playing out.

 

I just can't see the DaninDC lax security policy working here.  I see terrorists targeting a train like this.  As much as we all hate it, this is the world we live in.  Once they blow up a few of these (and maybe derail one or two of them in the process), there will be metal detectors, baggage screeners, and ID checkpoints at every station.  Politicians will see to it, because thier constituents will be afraid to ride on trains anymore.

 

But what do I know?  I'm just the typical ignorant american who knows nothing about trains.

Brewmaster, it's just not practical, and some would argue unnecessary, to have an elaborate security system for passenger trains, for the reasons KJP explained above.  Keep in mind that intercity rail stations would also serve regional commuters.  Do you really mean to propose that daily commuters should endure metal detectors, baggage checks and ID checks just to get on the train they take every day to work? 

 

In reality, all you can really do is be vigilant.  This is where bodies like Amtrak Police and local transit system police have to step up.  I ride the Metro to work everyday, and believe me, if terrorists want to strike a transit system, this is a good one to hit just because of the people who ride it, and the sheer numbers of them.  It doesn't keep me from going to work, though, nor should a perceived threat keep our nation from making progress either.

 

I'm sorry if I find it hysterically funny that people in Middle America are more scared of "t'ehr" than we are here in DC. 

 

 

You're so very brave.

This train appears to have already gone on the ground, so let me pile a little more rubble on the wreckage.  :roll:

 

Transportation disasters with high body counts, whether they involve trains, planes or ships and whether the cirucmstances are accidental or terror-caused, attract a lot of national attention and sometimes spur multi-billion-dollar responses. Approximately 45,000 Americans die in car crashes each year, many more are maimed and disabled, and millions of dollars worth of property is damaged or destroyed, and yet serious local efforts to curb drunk and aggressive driving are met with legislative resistance and public outcry against intrusion against individual privacy and freedom.  :?

 

Perhaps national news should include weekly reporting of the previous week's auto carnage statistics, delivered with the same strident tone used for plane crashes, terror attacks and natural disasters.

No, I just refuse to let one incident keep me from defining my entire life.  Likewise, we can't keep trotting out the excuse of "9/11" when it comes to moving this country forward, especially with an idea like this that could help wean us off imported petroleum.

I would rather die living my life the way I want, than live in fear the way the terrorists want.

 

Now, let's get back to the subject of debating the shortcomings of our transportation system and how fast choo-choos can rectify them.

Now, let's get back to the subject of debating the shortcomings of our transportation system and how fast choo-choos can rectify them.

 

How about Star Trek or Jetsons rectifing our transportation shortcommings instead.

 

 

I suppose. Someone of their caliber is alive at the present time. But I think they're all living in just about every developed or developing nation except ours, based on what they've been able to acommplish and what we have not.

 

BTW, your response and many others like it that I've heard shows how little this country has come to expect from itself.

BTW, your response and many others like it that I've heard shows how little this country has come to expect from itself.

 

I say the same thing after reading yours and DaninDC's rants.

Isn't it great having America or Americans be among, if not the most ...

 

> car-addicted, with more than 90 percent of all day-to-day trips by car

> overweight

> forced to spend nearly as much or more on owning cars than we do on housing

> oil wasting

> militant, as a result of the previous

> polluting

> destructive when it comes to our approach to our historic core cities

> boring, when it comes to land use, as one community looks increasingly like every other

> unsympathetic to our poor urban residents, who are locked into poverty because they can't access jobs

> increasingly immobile by a decline in investment in urban bus and rail, plus intercity bus and rail, and reduced commercial aviation options in small-, moderate-sized airports

> where commercial aviation does exist, we're forced to spend a king's ransom for fast, intercity transportation to/from small- and moderate-sized cities

> pathetic commercial aviation systems in the civilized world, where airlines still cannot make money despite being lavished with huge subsidies

 

You should know better than most Americans, Magyar. I'm disappointed that you don't know better about what's going on in the world when it comes to transportation. I know it's hard to accept the fact that America isn't the greatest country in the world anymore, and we no longer have the greatest transportation system in the world.

 

But I can tell that you are having a hard time accepting this when you make an insipid comment like the one about Star Trek or the Jetsons rectifying our transportation system. Such a transportation system may seem like science fiction to you and most other Americans who are happily ignorant that such a transportation system exists in all but one civilized nation of this planet. It seems that you'd rather keep your head in the warm, comfortable sand, than pull it out and take a look around at how we're getting our asses handed to ourselves on the world's economic stage -- and transportation is a big part of that competitive angle that we've failed to address.

 

I sure do miss the old America, where we believed we could do it better than anyone else, and usually did. Now, people like me get insulted when we suggest proven ways to regain lost ground. Now I see how far America has fallen, and how little chance it has of catching up.

Gentlemen... let's be calm.  We get nowhere when we cut each other to shreds.  Highway are no more the enemy that rail, air, waterways or bike trails.  We will truly do nothing but cancel each other out if all we can do is slash one side's tires while they try to derail the other.

Isn't it great having America or Americans be among, if not the most ...

 

> car-addicted, with more than 90 percent of all day-to-day trips by car

> overweight

> forced to spend nearly as much or more on owning cars than we do on housing

> oil wasting

> militant, as a result of the previous

> polluting

> destructive when it comes to our approach to our historic core cities

> boring, when it comes to land use, as one community looks increasingly like every other

> unsympathetic to our poor urban residents, who are locked into poverty because they can't access jobs

> increasingly immobile by a decline in investment in urban bus and rail, plus intercity bus and rail, and reduced commercial aviation options in small-, moderate-sized airports

> where commercial aviation does exist, we're forced to spend a king's ransom for fast, intercity transportation to/from small- and moderate-sized cities

> pathetic commercial aviation systems in the civilized world, where airlines still cannot make money despite being lavished with huge subsidies

 

You should know better than most Americans, Magyar. I'm disappointed that you don't know better about what's going on in the world when it comes to transportation. I know it's hard to accept the fact that America isn't the greatest country in the world anymore, and we no longer have the greatest transportation system in the world.

 

But I can tell that you are having a hard time accepting this when you make an insipid comment like the one about Star Trek or the Jetsons rectifying our transportation system. Such a transportation system may seem like science fiction to you and most other Americans who are happily ignorant that such a transportation system exists in all but one civilized nation of this planet. It seems that you'd rather keep your head in the warm, comfortable sand, than pull it out and take a look around at how we're getting our asses handed to ourselves on the world's economic stage -- and transportation is a big part of that competitive angle that we've failed to address.

 

I sure do miss the old America, where we believed we could do it better than anyone else, and usually did. Now, people like me get insulted when we suggest proven ways to regain lost ground. Now I see how far America has fallen, and how little chance it has of catching up.

 

So what did you do for the revolution today!?

Construct this critique for me?

 

Yeah, this country is f'ed up in many, many ways.  But restoring railroads to their former glory won't complete any puzzle.  The beauty of the automobile is that you can decide where you want to go when you want to go.  Railroads never provided that.  You lived by their schedule and were at the mercy of other people's service.

Now you can counter-argue that we can only drive on the roads provided (and that nary a person goes "off-roading" in spite of what car commercials show), that drivers are at the mercy of auto mechanics, highway signage, and their map-reading skills (ignoring finances on all sides).  But, I've never read or heard of anyone packing all their belongs and moving west via rail.  It was by horse, carriage/wagon, ship, car/truck.  Railroads were romatized for traveling, not moving.  And our nation has a 175 year history of federally paid for highways (re: National Road), as compared to 35 years for railroads.

 

The current hegmony, here stateside, is that railroads are passe and 19th century (technically, so is the automobile). Instead of reinventing the wheel (Maglev, electric cars), we should look to something new.  Why not "flying cars" or "Star Trek" shape shifting.  And maybe spending more on developing fusion technology and less on a useless war 2,000 miles away. 

 

Complaining about the subsidies that highways & airliners get is akin to complaining about the recording/music industry. It's rotten along with someone is getting paid, and it ain't me.  So again, if you want to start a revolution, you'll have to work twice as hard to convince the populace that the status quo isn't working for them.

 

Me, I'm just jaded from all these promises that ended up empty due to a failure somewhere along the chain of command.

... But, I've never read or heard of anyone packing all their belongs and moving west via rail... 

 

Actually, it was a common practice, especially for small farmers. The railroads had procedures and tarrifs for the service. In the early 1900's one of my maternal grandfather's brothers moved his household from Indiana to Missouri. The railroad provided a boxcar for the farmer, his family, his livestock and his household goods and farm tools. He loaded the boxcar at a siding in a town near his farm, and the railroad delivered the car to a siding or railyard near his destination. He was responsible for providing all necessities en route including food for his family and feed for his livestock and water for both. They spent a few days in a railroad yard at Danville, Illinois, and he had to carry water from almost a half-mile away.

 

It certainly wasn't luxury travel, but it was the only option other than selling all his animals and equipment and starting over in a new location. By that time, farmers had too much invested in tools and implements, even horse-drawn, to try to transport it long distances by wagon or the trucks that existed then.

 

In the era of steam-powered farming, up through the 1920s, steam traction engines and threshing machines cost thousands of dollars, too costly for individual farmers, and custom harvesters filled the need. They often started the wheat harvest in Indiana or Illinois and travel westward by road in relatively short increments, following the harvest season to the plains states and sometimes ending up as far away as Kansas, Oklahoma and Montana. At the end of the harvest, they paid off their workers and turned them loose, and hired a flatcar or two from the railroad to transport their equipment home.

 

Before the advent of paved government-run highway systems that facilitated the growth of the trucking industry, the rail system was much more widespread and more oriented toward small shippers, express service and less-than-carload freight. Sears Roebuck even delivered the building-material packages for their houses by rail to individual buyers.

 

Dad told of the building of a Sears house near where we farmed. The entire package arrived at a siding in Bluffton, about five miles from the building site. The load was divided into bundles for each day's work, and the car was loaded last-in, first-out, so that the first materials needed were on top. Early each morning the builder went to the siding and loaded the day's work onto a wagon and took it to the building site.

 

I'll shut up now, so someone can re-rail this thread. Sorry about the derailment.

Rob1412 is absolutely accurate in his history and it's not as far off topic as he may think.

 

Magyar... the railroads pretty much accounted for the expansion of this country long before the highways or cars came along.  Then, as nwo, it is the most efficient way to move large quantities of people or goods.

 

No one is suggesting that highways or car be eliminated or even reduced to second class status in the U.S. or anywhere else.  But there is a pressing need to reinvigorate and expand our rail systems in light of both the existing congestion on other modes (mostly highways and air) and what are solid prediction by even the most solid of highway proponents (The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) that we are headed for at least a doubling of freight traffic over the next 20 years in this country.  Put in perspective, that means for every semi you see on the highways today, double it.  Even Ohio's DOT Director is predicting upto a 70% increase in overall freight traffic by 2025, because Ohio is still a major crossroads for the nations highways and the commerce that flows through it.

 

We have no alternative but to restore and expand capacity to our rail lines and allow that traffic to be better managed.  It will be good for all modes, especially our highways, which are getting pummelled daily by the increasing frequency of traffic and heavier loads.

 

The much-romanticized freedom of the roads that you allude to is no more.  There is hardly a stretch of major roadway in Ohio where one is not hemmed in by packs of semi's and other cars.  You've got to find some piece of very rural road to even get a hint of that so-called freedom.  True, the car allows us to come and go as we please and trains (as currently provided) do not.  But what KJP and others have spoken of in many earlier posts is that we can and must do better in building rail systems that move people and goods faster and with greater frequency.

 

I like the freedom of having my car for certain trips.  But I also want another basic freedom.... freedom of choice ... in this case, to be free to choose to take a train at almost any time of day to get from where I am to where I want or need to go.

Magyar, I don't think anyone is arguing to restore railroads to their former glory.  As noozer pointed out, none of the pro-rail posters here has advocated for the elimination of cars.  Instead, we're advocating for choice.

 

The "freedom" that an automobile allegedly affords is moot if you have to start planning car trips based on time of day due to traffic.  We're seeing this now in telecommuting and flexible work hours, for example.  I know many people who live in suburban areas that have to schedule all of their shopping trips in advance, just to avoid weekend traffic jams.  Heck, if you don't want to believe me, just ask corporate executives in the Atlanta region how their heavy investments in roadways are working out for their businesses.  The "freedom" of the automobile is also predicated on an abundance of cheap, easily available parking, requiring expensive and wasteful redundancy of infrastructure (there are about 4 parking spots for every car in the United States). 

 

Railroads are technology that we are quite familiar with.  In other words, we know how to build them in a reliable manner, and the technology is proven, unlike Maglev or the magical Star Trek and Jetsons modes you propose.  High speed passenger trains have proven themselves time and again in Europe (where Air France has been able to eliminate its least profitable short-hop flights) and in the Northeastern U.S., where Amtrak carries more passengers between New York and D.C. than all the airlines COMBINED.

 

The frustration with subsidies to airlines, is that these PRIVATE companies annually receive ten times the amount of subsidy that our government-run national passenger rail system receives.  Yet, these PRIVATE companies are nearly all teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, if they haven't reached it already.  In 2001, the U.S. government spent more money to bail U.S. Airways out of bankruptcy than it did to fund the entire Amtrak system.  This, despite Amtrak demonstrating its value when it was the only mode of intercity travel remaining in operation for several days.

 

There is also a larger argument that extends to the type of communities we want to build.  Those communities that have invested heavily in automobile infrastructure are largely economically decimated.  Cities like Detroit and Cleveland are prime examples of this, exhibiting large degrees of socioeconomic isolation, minimal growth, yet ever-increasing traffic congestion, and paving of the natural environment.  In a nutshell, do we want to create places for people or cars? 

 

 

>car-addicted, with more than 90 percent of all day-to-day trips by car

> overweight

 

The goal of mass culture is for there to be a seemless integration of car, TV, shopping mall, iPod, computer, etc.  An unknown mystery world, full of danger and social scorn, lurks outside this self-congratulatory realm.  But simultaneously, the lauded "creative class" is just as conformist.  That said there are no shortage of high energy people who pay no heed to materialism and who are not self-conscious.  However, they tend to operate outside the media and academia. 

 

 

> pathetic commercial aviation systems in the civilized world, where airlines still cannot make money despite being lavished with huge subsidies

 

Well the newer airlines who are not crippled by unions and pensions are making money.  And flying seems to me to be much cheaper than it was before deregulation.  I don't have the numbers in front of me, I'm no expert on aviation. 

 

Back on the subject of high speed rail, it would be interesting to see what kind of freight could also be carried on these lines, such as mail and even empty shipping containers.  I'm guessing 3 out of 4 shipping containers are empty, thousands of empties clog our railroad yards waiting to be sent back to Long Beach, Houston, etc.  The inland marine industry really hasn't gotten its act together in the business of returning empty containers to New Orleans which contributes greatly to congestion in the eastern railroads.  The faster shipping containers can be returned to their point of origin, the fewer that have to exist.  Also, the auto train has run along the east coast from NYC to Miami since the 70's, the ability to put cars on high speed trains would make them a lot more attractive to some travelers. 

 

 

Most high-speed rail systems being planned in the U.S. ... and there are 25 states either planning or implementing such plans as we speak (including Ohio)... call for expanding the capacity and increasing speeds for freight as well as passenger.  Some states are doing it better than others, like California, Wisconsin, Washington State and (yes) Ohio.

 

But the biggest problem isn't so much one of speeding up freight as it is removing numerous rail bottlenecks around the country.  The Port of L.A. has improved, but still has a long way to go before shipping containers can move more freely, and other Pacific Coast ports need work on the rail side as well. Chicago is the "poster child" for bottlenecks: the industry joke is that you can get a container of freight from Los Angeles to Chicago in a couple of days, but it takes five days to get from one side of Chicago to the other before that freight can finish the journey East. Ohio has bottlenecks in Cincinnati, Toledo, Cleveland and Columbus that are just as bad, though on a smaller scale.

 

Remove or at least smoothing out these bottlenecks will increase speedy movement of freight without actually increasing speeds on the rails themselves, althought those will certainly be increased as infrastructure is improved.

 

The only airline I know of that's making a profit is Southwest.  The smaller ones can't grab enough market share to get or stay financially healthy, and the larger ones have become victims of their own cost-cutting fare wars.

 

One minor correction: the Auto-Train never ran from New York.  It runs from a suburban Washington DC (Virginia) location to Florida. I've always thought this was an underutilized method of moving people and cars by rail.  There was actually a Chicago to Florida version of it for a short time back in the late 70's but it never caught on.  Somewhat surprising, given the number of "snowbirds" from the Midwest who make the Florida migration every year.

It seems to me the midwest auto train actually loaded farther south, maybe in the Louisville area. It's been a while, and I'm not up to digging out old timetables right now to check it out. I think it was doomed by the same thing that kept the Chicago - Florida train (Floridian?) from succeeding, abysmal track maintenance on L&N tracks, almost eternal slow-orders, consistently very late trains and a bad ride. There may have even been a horrendously-expensive derailment that hastened the end of the midwest auto train.

 

The loading point was too far from major northern population centers and comparatively too near to its destination to attract customers, too. If I were going to drive from Chicago to Louisville to catch an auto train, I'd likely say "To hell with it," and keep driving. I always thought an auto train might have done better if they had originated it in Fort Wayne, nearly equidistant between Detroit, Chicago and Indianapolis, and run it south via Cincinnati, using the N-S Newcastle District between Fort Wayne and Cincinnati. They might have picked up additional business in Cincinnati.

Groups to study how county could benefit from high-speed rail

Middletown Journal-News 12/28/05

 

HAMILTON — Two groups will study how Butler County could benefit from the $3.3 billion building of a statewide high-speed freight and commuter rail network.

 

Officials are looking for good news as Middletown is among about 20 Ohio cities tentatively scheduled for stops on the network. The plan also calls for possible rail or bus connections in Hamilton and Oxford, and may involve the county’s steel and construction industries.

 

“We haven’t been contacted so far about their economic studies, but we’re aware that the city is listed as a stop on early plans and we’re certainly supportive of that,” Middletown Planning Director Marty Kohler said. “We’d be glad to help them if they need us.”

 

Read more at:

 

http://www.journal-news.com/news/content/news/stories/2005/12/27/HJN122805RAILSTUDY_s.html

   

 

 

 

Staley said his opposition has been rooted in a lack of demand and revenue. This plan, he said, has the potential to be different.

 

“There’s the potential for this to make money,” he said. “I’m involved in this research because I want to see if the numbers work. If you can show me a light rail project that will cover its costs, I’m all for it.”

 

 

 

Okay, please let us know when the widening of I-71 starts to turn a profit.

Mr. Lacote nails it:  it is all about the political will to get this done, and that is why anyone who favors at least having the option of being able to travel by rail (or to ship via rail as well) needs to be raising this issue with every state and federal official they can reach, especially their members of Congress.  Creating the political will to do something is still largely a "bubbling up" process.