The US being the most developed country is still lagging behind Europe or Asia when it come to high speed railways for passenger use. The Amtrak though has the Acela but it's not enough to be considered "high speed" rail.

There were plans of building a high speed train network in some areas such as California but never went to effect.

Do you think the government or private corporations should invest in improving it's commuter rail network or even building up a high speed network from the east coast to the west? Do you think American citizen would benefit from it or are they better off buying a nice car or SUV and travel around the highways?

Amtrak can barely get on its feet. If they can't sustain conventional rail, good luck with HSR.

Actually HSR is usually more profitable than conventional rail,. The problem is that the capital lockup is enormous.

Of course, YES!!
:yes:

It certainly should improve its passenger rail network - both high speed and regular. But I don't think it can or should be done using the current Amtrak system. I believe we need to develop a national rail infrastructure - meaning tracks, signalling, control, and stations - either using the current system or building from scratch. I would start off with nationalized service to get things started, but eventually I would hope that private operators would take over the trains themselves, simillar to how our air travel system works. This would require improvements in rail traffic control, and certainly a lot of building, but in the long run I think those things would help the economy.

Isn't this kind of like asking "should there be peace in the world"?

No, not really. HSL's are extremely expensive to build, that's why they're only viable between large cities. In Europe, HSL's can be found between large cities like Brussels and Paris, Cologne and Frankfurt or Rome and Naples.

That's why the US should concentrate on corridors between large cities like Boston, NY, Philly, Baltimore and DC; Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland or Los Angeles and SF. That would provide an interesting and attractive alternative to flying.

The more traffic on rails, the better.

Should it? Probably. Will it? Not a chance.

:grouphug:

there was plans (or talk) of a HSR linking houston, austin, san antonio and dallas but it's only a pipe dream

The US being the most developed country is still lagging behind Europe or Asia when it come to high speed railways for passenger use. The Amtrak though has the Acela but it's not enough to be considered "high speed" rail.

There were plans of building a high speed train network in some areas such as California but never went to effect.

Do you think the government or private corporations should invest in improving it's commuter rail network or even building up a high speed network from the east coast to the west? Do you think American citizen would benefit from it or are they better off buying a nice car or SUV and travel around the highways?


From east coast to west? Unless it would Maglev (which would prohibitively expensive) or the fast HSR to date I would say no. The U.S. is just not densely populated enough to warrant a frequent HSR from one coast to another. Planes fit a much better role for coast to coast travel. HSR should be broken up into high density regions before trying to build a national network. Also it would have to improve rail infrastructue within the major cities that such HSR would feed into.

\The U.S. is just not densely populated enough to warrant a frequent HSR from one coast to another. Planes fit a much better role for coast to coast travel. HSR should be broken up into high density regions before trying to build a national network. Also it would have to improve rail infrastructue within the major cities that such HSR would feed into.

Exactly, hence why the only "high speed line" in the US currently running (the accela) runs between Boston and DC, the most densly populated corridor in the country. I've also heard (not certain on this, feel free to correct me) that this is the only line in all of amtrak that operates at a profit.

I am not sure it is the only one that runs at a profit but it is easily its biggest revenue maker.

The U.S. is just not densely populated enough to warrant a frequent HSR from one coast to another.

Why does everyone always assume that a HSR is going to have to run directly from the east coast to the west coast? With the exception of NYC to LA, there really isn't a really big cross-country route even for air travel. People aren't looking to go from coast to coast, they want to get to Chicago, to Phillidelphia, to St. Louis or Denver. Few people are going to be crossing the full distance. A train running at 180mph for 10 hours can cover quite a good chunk of the US.

But what is needed is a network. Not just a line, a network, which allows multiple connections to multiple cities.

We had plans for a bullet train from Tampa to Orlando but they decided it was too expensive and canceled it.

Like I posted in the Amtrak topic, trains are a much better solution in respect to the environment. So I think the focus should be more on rail transportation in more densely populated areas in the US. In this way the dependence on fossil fuels and air pollution can be decreased.
It would be interesting if an efficient passenger rail service could be set up and promoted in a region such as California (for instance, a Sacramento-San Francisco-San José-Fresno-Bakersfield-Los Angeles train service). Of course this would go hand in hand with the construction of a commuter rail network.
In the long run there may be even longer distance trains which connect all mayor cities on the west coast, and the same goes for the east-coast. The maximum speeds of hs-trains are already above 500 km/h! However, I do think that intercoastal transport will probably always be most efficient by air.

HSL's are really usefull for densly populated corridors between big cities, and not longer that 1000 km. In longer distances plane is more useful than trains, at least in daytime travels. For nightime travels you can cover a distance of 2000 or more km on HSLs.

There are some interesting corridors in USA for HSL developing:

NE Coast Corridor (Boston-New York-Philadelphia-DC), with links to Canada (Montreal), and even to Chicago (via Pittsburg and Cleveland).

California, as Nefast has commented.

In Florida, for example the cancelled project between Tampa and Orlando.

In Texas (San Antonio-Dallas-Houston triangle).

500 kph in traditional system of road-rail, even in HSL is very expensive, not due to infraestructure, but due to energetic cost. Any speed over 300-350 kph on traditional rails tracks causes an enormous energetic cost. It's no impossible, in fact French TGV reached 515,3 kph in 1990, but it isn't economically profitable in commercial services. To reach 500 kph you need a different technology based on maglev trains as German Transrapid. A Transrapid at 400 kph consumes less energy than an ICE-3 at 300 kph.

One of the problems with air travel, though, is that it is not that easy to build the necessary facilities for it. Airports near the city centers are getting more and more crowded, and can't take any more additional traffic. Contrary to popular conception, it's hard to find a large enough piece of land that is not affected by geography and noise issues that is close enough to the destinations people want to travel to. Plus, our weather adversely affects air travel - the spate of bad storms this year has really made a whole mess of air travel nationwide.

From east coast to west? Unless it would Maglev (which would prohibitively expensive) or the fast HSR to date I would say no. The U.S. is just not densely populated enough to warrant a frequent HSR from one coast to another. Planes fit a much better role for coast to coast travel. HSR should be broken up into high density regions before trying to build a national network. Also it would have to improve rail infrastructue within the major cities that such HSR would feed into.

Europe will have a network from Denmark to Portugal, it will be highly used and very profitable, but the amount of services that run from Denmark to Portugal will be precisely zero, because that is a ridiculously long journey to do by rail - even hsr. Just because the network goes somewhere doesn't mean there will be a service that traverses it's entirety. You can drive from Cape Town to Beijing, but I'm sure not too many have had the need to do it.

Europe will have a network from Denmark to Portugal, it will be highly used and very profitable, but the amount of services that run from Denmark to Portugal will be precisely zero, because that is a ridiculously long journey to do by rail - even hsr. Just because the network goes somewhere doesn't mean there will be a service that traverses it's entirety. You can drive from Cape Town to Beijing, but I'm sure not too many have had the need to do it.

Yes, but between Denmark and Portugal you have a lot of major metropolitan areas to make a network between - without even considering the cities in between, you have a nice chain of these national capitals:

Copenhagen-Amsterdam-Brussels-Paris-Madrid-Lisbon

So, you're right about Europe, but you can't use the same logic with the USA. New York to Los Angeles is about 4,000km, but there just aren't enough large metro areas in between that would make it feasible to connect them with high speed rail. LA to Denver is about 1,500km, making it far quicker to fly, and there's nothing in between.

The Atlantic seaboard, Californian coast and maybe Texas are good candidates for high speed rail, but I can't ever see them being joined up with high speed lines via other places...

I think I read (DTK Guide) that 20,000 passengers pass over the Copenhagen-Malmo link per day ... and 10,000 go by road.

Ok, I live in D.C. Here is the problem with Acela. It is only for business travellers, as their is no "second/coach" class at all. Its only business or first class. Therefore the price is somwhere around 120$ one way between DC and NYC on the weekday. Too expensive for most people.

Second, the speed. It is only about 20 mins faster than the regular train, which costs much less...This is because the train, capable of 150mph top speed, is unable to achieve that speed from DC to NYC (top is 135) due to old catenary, curves and tunnels. The tilting mechanism was not built properly to allow full speed on curves, so this is another restriction.

Third, the track restrictions between NYC and BOS -- It has to share commuter rail tracks for a good portion of the stretch in Connecticut slowing the Bos-NYC trip to 3:30 mins or so...just not fast enough to compete with the air shuttle.

The next problem is that it stops in all the cities in between DC and NYC, there is no non-stop service..so it ends up being 2:50 mins, rather than 2:15 mins. For example, its stops in wilmington, philadelphia, newark, baltimore, etc.

So, all you get for your extra 60$ on the acela is nicer accomidation and 20 mins gain in time. If they could get it down to 2:15 mins and add a more second class carriages, it would be much more useful to the majority of people.

^^ That's a pity. Sharing lines with commuter rail is a problem here too. One question: given that the US has numerous competing railways previously, what happened to all those easements? can't you find an old abandoned one along the Conneticut coast suitable for redevelopment as a high-speed corridor?

A pity about the pricing, too. I tried out about 170 miles of newly upgraded "regional fast rail" here recently ... with the bus between the two cities I visited, it cost me about $US 20. No wonder the trains always seem to be almost full!

It's impractical. Major cities are served so extensively by flight, and flights are so cheap that it's hard to do. Also, the amount of capital required is enormous.

There was a poll done somewhere that Americans prefer to drive for journeys under 500 miles than fly, let alone rail.

If it happens, it'll almost certainly flop.

There is a revival of conventional rail serice in many places and Amtrak has added trains from Chicago to Milwaukee, St. Lous and Quincy over the years and civic groups in places such as Rockford and the Quad cities are clamoring for rail service to REopen.

In terms of highspeed rail, I think it'll end up happening at the state/regional level before the feds really get behind it. But I do believe it is coming.

It's impractical. Major cities are served so extensively by flight, and flights are so cheap that it's hard to do. Also, the amount of capital required is enormous.

There was a poll done somewhere that Americans prefer to drive for journeys under 500 miles than fly, let alone rail.

If it happens, it'll almost certainly flop.

I wonder how such a poll was done. Americans may prefer to fly or drive everywhere and everywhere, but their habits are destroying not just their own environment, but that of the World as well.

If the people of Asia- or Europe- emulated the American lifestyle the US apparently invaded the Middle East in order to promote (Democracy at the barrel of a guided missile) the earth's climate would be spiralling vastly faster into chsos than it already is ... but Americans still insist on taking a tonne of steel with them every time they go to the supermarket.

Forget about the broadsheet press here: even the tabloids are reporting that hundreds of American scientists were threatened or silenced by the US Government regarding climate change.

So Americans would like to fly if they can't drive. Big deal. Australians don't want to drink treated sewerage, but, as it evolves, they have to. Why? sorry, but this was all on the cards forty years ago.

It's impractical. Major cities are served so extensively by flight, and flights are so cheap that it's hard to do. Also, the amount of capital required is enormous.

There was a poll done somewhere that Americans prefer to drive for journeys under 500 miles than fly, let alone rail.

If it happens, it'll almost certainly flop.

I wonder how such a poll was done. Americans may prefer to fly or drive everywhere and everywhere, but their habits are destroying not just their own environment, but that of the World as well.

If the people of Asia- or Europe- emulated the American lifestyle the US apparently invaded the Middle East in order to promote (Democracy at the barrel of a guided missile) the earth's climate would be spiralling vastly faster into chaos than it already is ... but Americans still insist on taking a tonne of steel with them every time they go to the supermarket.

Forget about the broadsheet press here: even the tabloids are reporting that hundreds of American scientists were threatened or silenced by the US Government regarding climate change.

So Americans would like to fly if they can't drive. Big deal. Australians don't want to drink treated sewerage, but, as it evolves, they have to. Why? sorry, but this was all written large and accurately forty years ago.

No, not really. HSL's are extremely expensive to build, that's why they're only viable between large cities. In Europe, HSL's can be found between large cities like Brussels and Paris, Cologne and Frankfurt or Rome and Naples.

That's why the US should concentrate on corridors between large cities like Boston, NY, Philly, Baltimore and DC; Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland or Los Angeles and SF. That would provide an interesting and attractive alternative to flying.

agreed.
New York State is actually considering a plan to have an intra-state HSR system, with connections from NYC - Albany - Syracuse - Rochester - Buffalo

It's a great plan.

Texas had a proposal for HSR in the '90s. Southwest Airlines essentially killed it. What makes a Texas triangle (I prefer a 'T" for HSR: http://www.thsrtc.com/ ) makes that same triangle *very* profitible for Southwest.

agreed.
New York State is actually considering a plan to have an intra-state HSR system, with connections from NYC - Albany - Syracuse - Rochester - Buffalo

It's a great plan.
Just wondering, does this route already have a train service? Is it or was it once served by turbo-trains?

Just wondering, does this route already have a train service? Is it or was it once served by turbo-trains?

Served by the Empire, Lake Shore Limited, Maple Leaf, and various others. The turbo trains I think used to run between Albany and NYC. The state actually paid Amtrak to have a bunch of turbo trains refurbished in the early '00s that would have run between Buffalo and NYC to speed up service some, but Amtrak renegged on the project after New York State gave them the money. Last I heard the state was suing them.

I rode the metroliner from Boston to New York. Good pace all the way through Rhode Island. What the fuck happens in Connecticut. I get out of the damn city into the trees, and they slow the train down to 30mph. Ridiculous.

Yeah, only HSR in 'regions' would be profitable and useful.
I think if these lines will be constructed: San Diege-LA-SF-Sacramento, Salem-Portland-Olympia-Seattle, Minneapolis-Milwaukee-Chicago, the BoshWash Corridor offcourse, Chicago-Indianapolis-Cincinatti-Columbus-Cleveland and a branch to Detroit and another one to Buffalo/Rochester. And maybe some other HSR lines in regions like Texas, Florida, Atlantic Coast or the Midwest.
If you combine this with aiport station, flights between US Regions and good public transport facilities from the HSR stations(Bus/Metro/Tram?Regional Train) I think that the US could get out of the car!

But i also think this is nothing more than just a dream that wont come true.

Yeah, Europe has (which I'm IMPOSSIBLY jealous of by the way) many large cities that are within hundreds of miles of each other. The United States traverses 4,500 KM. Our country has an extremely developed passanger transport system via airplanes. People will drive up to 500Km or less, and fly longer distances.

People in the USA aren't AGAINST trains, we just have cars and airplanes that normally are more efficient than taking a train. It just is what it is. The northest, Chicago to Detroit, LA/San Diego, etc are a few of the regions where train travel actually makes sense.

I love train travel, and am all for it, but in our country there are rational reasons why we don't have a major network/system that people use.

Cars & planes aren't more efficient than trains ... they both burn up far more fuel and create far more global warming per passenger-mile.

Yes, I'm envious of Europe, too. But whereas Europe, the contiguous 48 states of the USA and Australia have more or less similar areas, we have just over 20 million people in that area, whereas you guys have about 300 million, and so do the Europeans (OK , in round figures, and it depends where you draw the lines).

Reading one of the other threads here, I find it incredible that a train from Chicago to Washington (or wherever) can routinely turn up hours late. Certainly much slower than say, Frances's TGV's. It's not about efficiency or population distribution, it's about political and economic will & organization.

Even here, little old Bendigo, a city of about 60,000 people 100 miles away, gets a train every hour, more at peak, the fastest of which does the distance- city centre to city centre, start to stop,- in under 90 minutes, even though it has to slot into suburban (commuter) traffic. Certainly not TGV stuff, but ...

I was referring to the "Amtrak" thread ... can't imagine why you haven't got dedicated high-speed passenger lines, at least between Washington & Boston.

i was thinking of a new high speed rail line and that i think Florida could do it maybe if they combined it with TGV Technology and Shinkansen can be done also around the United States it can use existing or modified Main Stations and then around the countryside it will go on its separate tracks and right of way and it can speed it doesn't have to go all the way separate it just can do that on the countryside on evelated right of way like the shinkansen and use exisiting right of way near the city that will stop but it will only be with the major terminals of the lines it will built new stations on the HSR lines so yeah i imagine it is possible since alot of people in the United states are thinking now that the rest of the world that Railways are the way to go

by the way i like Railways as well as cars and airplanes also ships as well

I hope waking up an old thread is permissible.

It seems to me that the best way to implement a HSR system in US is to develop a "hub and spoke" system, like many airlines possess.

Regional networks would need to be developed first. They may or may not be high speed. For example, a "hub" in Chicago would serve routes going to Detroit, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and other Great Lakes and Midwest cities, which would form the "spokes".

One could be set up in Jacksonville, to serve as a "hub" for the rest of Florida, Denver could serve the Rocky Mountain states, L.A. to serve Southern California and Las Vegas, San Fran for Northern California, and so on.

After those networks were established, the "hubs" would then be connected by High Speed Rail, running uninterrupted between them.

Perhaps the cost of the system could be subsidized in part by the US Postal Service and package companies like Fed Ex and UPS, that could utilize the system's high speed hub connections for their next day or second day domestic deliveries. It would reduce the amount they need to invest in jet-based fleets.

not a chance. The major airlines hold too much stake in the US political stage. Investing tax payers money into a rail-net work? All the while fighting wars in Iraq and cutting taxes for large corporations?

Let's be realistic here.

^^ That's a pity. Sharing lines with commuter rail is a problem here too. One question: given that the US has numerous competing railways previously, what happened to all those easements? can't you find an old abandoned one along the Conneticut coast suitable for redevelopment as a high-speed corridor?

A pity about the pricing, too. I tried out about 170 miles of newly upgraded "regional fast rail" here recently ... with the bus between the two cities I visited, it cost me about $US 20. No wonder the trains always seem to be almost full!

Torn up and built on!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, like I recently said in "Why the US has little high-speed rail" (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=458075&page=2), the biggest problem rail has is the fact that every time someone brings up the topic of rail, the debate immediately jumps on the "180mph HSR at any cost" bandwagon, which ultimately kills any chance of it happening because the up-front costs for 180+mph HSR are so outrageously high, anyone with the slightest bit of fiscal responsibility recoils in horror.

And that's a shame, because rail IS something that scales up fairly well. You don't HAVE to do 180+mph on day one for it to be worthwhile. Assuming the corridor is already there, it costs about a million dollars per mile to throw down a second track that's good enough to run 110mph trains on (the fastest you can run in the US without eliminating grade crossings). With that brand new track, you can launch hourly service between cities ~200-300 miles apart (using the old track to allow trains meeting from opposite directions to pass each other without having to completely stop on a siding) and easily achieve reliable, 99.9% on-time 4-hour or less travel between them. At least, you can if you also have dispatching control over the track and can force the freight trains to get out of the way, instead of vice-versa (the BIG problem Amtrak has).

Once you're running full hourly trains, you can build new track #2 (almost all RR corridors are at least 50' in Florida, most are 100-150'), and have trains leaving every half hour or less. When you start getting backups that cause two trains that left 10-20 minutes apart to end up in the same station somewhere along the way, THEN it's time to look into building the all-out HSR line.

There's nothing holy about the French or the TGV. They didn't build it out of some abstract sense of environmental responsibility or to bolster national pride. They did it because their existing passenger trains were running 24/7 at full capacity, and the only real way to solve the problem was to run faster trains.

There's a reason why people bitch about trains and transit needing subsidies, and don't gripe about freeways: just about everyone uses freeways daily, few use trains and transit. People generally don't obsess over the balance sheets of things they use all the time. People DO obsess, and scream loudly, about expensive projects like the proposed Tampa-Orlando HSR that would have cost tens of billions of dollars to build, and been of genuine use to almost nobody.

If hourly trains made reliably on-time 4 hour trips between Miami & Tampa+Orlando, few people would complain, or even care, if the system needed $25-100/year in outright subsidies for each person who lived in one of the served metro areas, because it would rapidly become a popular service. On the other hand, people in Miami (and everywhere else in the state) would raise holy hell if we had to kick in $250/year per taxpayer to help subsidize a high speed rail line that only ran between Tampa & Orlando, with no real hope of ever reaching Miami because the Tampa-Orlando line hemorrhaged so much money.

Cash resources aren't infinite. The more expensive the first phase of something is, and the fewer taxpayers who benefit directly from it, the less chance it'll ever expand beyond that first phase. Go for "cheap and reasonably fast" now, and worry about High Speed Rail(tm) when there's enough demand and revenue to responsibly finance it.

And forget trying to sell it on environmental grounds. It won't win voter support. Americans could give a flying f**k about the environment. At least, insofar as actually spending money is concerned. Instead, remember that post-9/11 air travel in America is like riding a boxcar to a nazi death camp, but less comfortable, with more missed connections and lost luggage. Driving 3-6 hours is boring. Intermediate-speed trains making 200-300 mile trips are slightly faster than driving, not much slower than flying, and enormously more enjoyable than both.

HERE's the selling point for rail: It's more enjoyable, less stressful, and might even be a tiny bit cheaper for people traveling by themselves. You can play with your laptop, binge in the dining car, and sleep all the way home if you feel like it. And it doesn't have to be expensive to build.

There is a revival of conventional rail serice in many places and Amtrak has added trains from Chicago to Milwaukee, St. Lous and Quincy over the years and civic groups in places such as Rockford and the Quad cities are clamoring for rail service to REopen.

In terms of highspeed rail, I think it'll end up happening at the state/regional level before the feds really get behind it. But I do believe it is coming.

This suggestion is focusing on the correct geography. State and regional rail service has to be established before long HSL are built in the USofA. The political problem is the exclusion of inter city (ie Amtrak) rail services for the Federal to State Transport subsidies so all support of new inter city rail services cannot be funded from the same sources as local commuter rail.

The sooner we let Amtrak die and include rail services in the overall Federal to State Transport subsidies, the sooner we will begin to rebuild Americas passenger railroads.

There's nothing holy about the French or the TGV. They didn't build it out of some abstract sense of environmental responsibility or to bolster national pride. They did it because their existing passenger trains were running 24/7 at full capacity, and the only real way to solve the problem was to run faster trains.

.

This is post I made on another thread.

I have been tracking the development of high speed railways in Asia and Europe since the 1960’s and I have never seen a vision or a plan for a “European High Speed Rail Network”. The current “”EHSRN”” is a pastiche of individual national development programs which reflect local problems, peer pressure and local politics. France, for example, has a plan which is subject change with every new government and the availability of Swiss, Italian and Spanish government funds. The only real vision that I have read came from the previous Spanish government. Their 2000-2007 investment plan stated that: “no provincial capitol shall be more than 4 hours from Madrid and six and half hours from Barcelona by rail”. All the current Spanish investment appears to be focused on this vision.

I never said that the emerging EHSRN was to relieve congestion, however I was not precise in my phraseology. I do believe that the first decisions by individual nations to build the new railways which now begin to constitute a possible EHSRN were based on serious problems of congestion on their networks at the time the investment decision was made. The first examples were the diretissama in Italy during the Mussolini regime. This was especially true of Japan with the Tohaido shinkansen, France with the LGV-se, Germany with the Mannhein – Stuttgart NBS and Spain with the Madrid – Seville AVE.

In the USofA we have become dismayed that that the nation which ran a Zephyr form Denver to Chicago in the 1930's and who traveled faster on a Metroliner from New York to Washington than the Japanese Shinkansen in the early 1960's is now running "Acelas" which only rank 10th or 11th in the world in journey time, start to stop, and will probbaly drop even further when the 2007 world speed survey is published.

I agree with "miamicanes", we need to rebuild our basic railways before we even begin to propose an HSL. Cailfornia maybe on the right track, they actually have a state wide system. Florida has a long way to go, but it has started.

not a chance. The major airlines hold too much stake in the US political stage. Investing tax payers money into a rail-net work? All the while fighting wars in Iraq and cutting taxes for large corporations?

Let's be realistic here.

So does the Highway Lobby. We need to move the debate to States and to Regional compacts such as the Mid-West Regional Rail Initiative. Abandon Amtrak and include inter-city rail in the Federal to State transportation funding programs. Allow the states to use federal transport fund to develope inter-city rail and kill the Amtrak monopoly.

Even here, little old Bendigo, a city of about 60,000 people 100 miles away, gets a train every hour, more at peak, the fastest of which does the distance- city centre to city centre, start to stop,- in under 90 minutes, even though it has to slot into suburban (commuter) traffic. Certainly not TGV stuff, but ....

I have visited Bendigo, the "gateway to the to the Outback". Its reasonable train service might have something to do with the Military Establishments in Bendigo.

Yeah, only HSR in 'regions' would be profitable and useful.
I think if these lines will be constructed: San Diege-LA-SF-Sacramento, Salem-Portland-Olympia-Seattle, Minneapolis-Milwaukee-Chicago, the BoshWash Corridor offcourse, Chicago-Indianapolis-Cincinatti-Columbus-Cleveland and a branch to Detroit and another one to Buffalo/Rochester. And maybe some other HSR lines in regions like Texas, Florida, Atlantic Coast or the Midwest.
If you combine this with aiport station, flights between US Regions and good public transport facilities from the HSR stations(Bus/Metro/Tram?Regional Train) I think that the US could get out of the car!

But i also think this is nothing more than just a dream that wont come true.


I believe that we have to start with intra-state travel.
The Bos-Wash corridor is bedeviled with multistae issues covering eight states (ie all trains must stop at Wilmington, Trenton and Providence)

It's impractical. Major cities are served so extensively by flight, and flights are so cheap that it's hard to do. Also, the amount of capital required is enormous.

There was a poll done somewhere that Americans prefer to drive for journeys under 500 miles than fly, let alone rail.

If it happens, it'll almost certainly flop.

This has nothing to do with the development of passenger railway services on high density corridors. It reflects the realities of of travel in America. My wife is agonizing over whether to drive or fly on a visit to an old friend who lives 700 miles away (no hope of a train for 50 years).

^^ That's a pity. Sharing lines with commuter rail is a problem here too. One question: given that the US has numerous competing railways previously, what happened to all those easements? can't you find an old abandoned one along the Conneticut coast suitable for redevelopment as a high-speed corridor?

A pity about the pricing, too. I tried out about 170 miles of newly upgraded "regional fast rail" here recently ... with the bus between the two cities I visited, it cost me about $US 20. No wonder the trains always seem to be almost full!


I am glad to hear the trains are full, maybe the government will increase the number of trains subsidised

Ok, I live in D.C. Here is the problem with Acela. It is only for business travellers, as their is no "second/coach" class at all. Its only business or first class. Therefore the price is somwhere around 120$ one way between DC and NYC on the weekday. Too expensive for most people.

Second, the speed. It is only about 20 mins faster than the regular train, which costs much less...This is because the train, capable of 150mph top speed, is unable to achieve that speed from DC to NYC (top is 135) due to old catenary, curves and tunnels. The tilting mechanism was not built properly to allow full speed on curves, so this is another restriction.

Third, the track restrictions between NYC and BOS -- It has to share commuter rail tracks for a good portion of the stretch in Connecticut slowing the Bos-NYC trip to 3:30 mins or so...just not fast enough to compete with the air shuttle.

The next problem is that it stops in all the cities in between DC and NYC, there is no non-stop service..so it ends up being 2:50 mins, rather than 2:15 mins. For example, its stops in wilmington, philadelphia, newark, baltimore, etc.

So, all you get for your extra 60$ on the acela is nicer accomidation and 20 mins gain in time. If they could get it down to 2:15 mins and add a more second class carriages, it would be much more useful to the majority of people.

I sympathize with the disastrous congressional railroad which requires all trains to stop in every state. Imagine how bad it will be when the northeast corridor is tranferred to an interstate compact? Let Amtrak die!

I have been tracking the development of high speed railways in Asia and Europe since the 1960’s and I have never seen a vision or a plan for a “European High Speed Rail Network”.

You are partially right, unfortunately. There are some promising projects in individual countries and even some that cross from one country to another. But what's completely lacking is one person looking at the whole picture from an European perspective, with an independent budget and the means to make things happen.

The only thing that that even aims to fill this void is the Trans European Transport Networks (TEN-T (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-European_Transport_Networks)), this.. thing, is only envisioned for coordination and only has a budget of around €600million though (if memory serves me correctly). When the need is around €100billion, per year, if the goal is a true European network that is.

As it is now all funds and plans go through national whatever ministries, and as such any "European line" ends up not being a "European line" but several national lines that are just joined together.

There are visions and plans however, this map (http://www.indiasheritage.org/POPLAR/engMap.htm) shows the top 30 priority plans. But as every national section has to be approved by national governments the lines will probably end up going through every local town and a change in government to a less rail enthusiast government could mean that the line doesn't get built at all.

I think a HSR through Cascadia would work, Eugene-Portland-Olympia-Tacoma-Seattle-Everett-Vancouver.

even the iran wants to build a maglev!
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=6163&sectionid=351020102

I look at it this way: the current problem with maglev is less a matter of technology than a matter of cost. If China -- a country with both the technology to make maglev work and some of the lowest labor & materials costs in the world, with a government capable of forcibly smoothing over any political problem it encounters -- can't do it cost-effectively, the chances that any state in America or country in Europe (where EVERYTHING, from land to labor and intellectual property royalties, is going to cost a LOT more) can pull it off is 'nonexistent'.

The ONLY economically-viable use for maglev I can see in the US anytime in the next 25 years MIGHT be if a new airport were built 20-30 miles east of New York somewhere in Long Island, and a maglev line with a station in midtown Manhattan, another along the line in Queens, a station at the new airport, and one last station a mile or so from the airport one, but in a location more convenient for massive numbers of commuters using it to turn a 20-30 mile commute into a 10 minute expensive trip. And even THAT scenario is kind of a stretch.

they will build a maglev from the munich airport to the central station. u need then 10 minutes istead of 40 with the subway.
the 38km long munich track will cost 1,7 billions €. the 900 (!) km long track from tehran to mashhad will cost only 6,7 billions. I think ure right! ;)

I have been tracking the development of high speed railways in Asia and Europe since the 1960’s and I have never seen a vision or a plan for a “European High Speed Rail Network”. The current “”EHSRN”” is a pastiche of individual national development programs which reflect local problems, peer pressure and local politics. France, for example, has a plan which is subject change with every new government and the availability of Swiss, Italian and Spanish government funds.
If the EU is not prepared to put in the money then there is no reason why governments should put the interest of their nations behind in favour of a wider european vision/plan. In Portugal's particular case only 10% of the funding for our TGV network will come from the EU so it is obvious that with each passing government the network layout changes to suit their vision for the country better.

If the EU is not prepared to put in the money then there is no reason why governments should put the interest of their nations behind in favour of a wider european vision/plan. In Portugal's particular case only 10% of the funding for our TGV network will come from the EU so it is obvious that with each passing government the network layout changes to suit their vision for the country better.

I agree.

I wonder how such a poll was done. Americans may prefer to fly or drive everywhere and everywhere, but their habits are destroying not just their own environment, but that of the World as well.

If the people of Asia- or Europe- emulated the American lifestyle the US apparently invaded the Middle East in order to promote (Democracy at the barrel of a guided missile) the earth's climate would be spiralling vastly faster into chsos than it already is ... but Americans still insist on taking a tonne of steel with them every time they go to the supermarket.

Forget about the broadsheet press here: even the tabloids are reporting that hundreds of American scientists were threatened or silenced by the US Government regarding climate change.

So Americans would like to fly if they can't drive. Big deal. Australians don't want to drink treated sewerage, but, as it evolves, they have to. Why? sorry, but this was all on the cards forty years ago.

Lol, so angry. I agree with what you said, but you know, Americans haven't gotten to that stage yet, and knowing the way things work around here, they wont change their minds until it's too late.

Being in America, it's like I said before, people in general don't have the drive to do something very out of the way, and this is everywhere around the world, not just in America. If the planners didn't have the foresight to cater to the people's needs, then the people will fill the niche by themselves.

It's hard not to lug a ton of steel with us when we go to the supermarket. The nearest supermarket is 20 minutes away by walking, and the buses don't even come by here. The local shuttle only comes once an hour.

Tabloids report a lot of things that aren't true (and a lot of things that are but the mainstream media don't) hard to determine the validity of tht, but it's probably true.

On the topic, Canada is planning to have its first HSR corridor between Edmonton and Calgary. The province has just bought the land for ROWs. The plan is to actually have it built in 20-30 years.

If the EU is not prepared to put in the money then there is no reason why governments should put the interest of their nations behind in favour of a wider european vision/plan. In Portugal's particular case only 10% of the funding for our TGV network will come from the EU so it is obvious that with each passing government the network layout changes to suit their vision for the country better.

You have some point, but its not as bad I think. Even though the EU funding makes up only a part of the total costs, at least in Austria, the argument "part of the EU priority plan" is a quite strong one.

And the perhaps most important point, the European railways are thanks to EU initiatives on a good way to become far more compatible. The new railguiding system will be a European one, and replace the dozen old incompatible ones. Just to name an example.

Furthermore EU regulations made it possible that now railways are able to run a train the entire trip long if they choose to do so, its not obligatory to let the other national service to take over the train.


Still its true, national egoism still dominates. But I think things get better.

You have some point, but its not as bad I think. Even though the EU funding makes up only a part of the total costs, at least in Austria, the argument "part of the EU priority plan" is a quite strong one.

And the perhaps most important point, the European railways are thanks to EU initiatives on a good way to become far more compatible. The new railguiding system will be a European one, and replace the dozen old incompatible ones. Just to name an example.

Furthermore EU regulations made it possible that now railways are able to run a train the entire trip long if they choose to do so, its not obligatory to let the other national service to take over the train.


Still its true, national egoism still dominates. But I think things get better.

I have heard of glaciers which are moving faster!

Americans love there cars, i dont think small towns would like it if the hst would pass thru there city without a stop!!

The same injustice they got with the Interstate in the 50's.

Few people really "love" their cars. What they really love is what the cars afford them - privacy, control, point to point efficiency, space, and security. So you can't really develop an effective transit system without either adddressing those needs or finding niches where those needs either arn't as important or people are willing to sacrifice.

Americans love there cars, i dont think small towns would like it if the hst would pass thru there city without a stop!!
Well, if the HSR were really ISR in the 100-110mph range built within an existing rail corridor, there's nothing the small town could really do to stop it since everything involved can legally be done under FRA rules as a matter of right, without needing to get special permits from anyone. Faster trains (requiring grade separations, new ROW, etc) would give those small towns a lot more leverage.

The thing is, if it's done RIGHT (with offline stations, at least in the small towns), there's no reason why there can't be lots of trains that stop only at the big cities along the way, and maybe 2-4 trains per day that hit every single station.

In the Florida context, there might be...

* a FEW trains per day that go straight from Miami to Orlando, skipping every station in between

* 4-6 trains per day that go Miami->Fort Lauderdale->Boca Raton/Deerfield->WPB, then the stations between Auburndale (where a train coming north from Miami would turn left towards Tampa or right towards Orlando) and Tampa.

* a LOT of trains that hit Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton/Deerfield Beach, West Palm Beach, skip the small towns in central Florida along the route, then hit the stations between Auburndale and Orlando (with a few possibly continuing all the way to Daytona and Jacksonville). Passengers could also get to Tampa by getting off at Auburndale and boarding the next Orlando->Tampa train 15-30 minutes later.

* 3 or 4 trains per day in each direction (or more likely, one physical train that just keep running back and forth all day) between West Palm Beach and Auburndale (maybe Ocala or some northwestern suburb of Orlando) that stop at all of the small towns (Sebring, Winter Park, Okeechobee, etc) in between that the main trains skip. In addition, the last train of the day (if it's ultra late and has few passengers anyway) might stop at the small-town stations to drop off passengers without checked baggage (if any). From WPB, the small-town passengers could either wait and transfer to a "main" train, or (more likely) just take Tri-Rail the rest of the way. Ditto, for the Orlando-bound.

As far as people loving their cars... that's true up to a point (say, 90-150 minute drives). But there's also a point where boredom and dread start to kick in, and rail becomes increasingly appealing... especially if passengers can safely leave their cars parked overnight or longer at the station, do their rental car paperwork and get their keys (or at least a code that opens a safe at the destination) while they're still on the train, and the whole thing is as convenient and ceremony-free as possible.

Why don't you guys come to Japan and see the marvel of the Japanese Rail system.
The Tokaido Shinkansen went into operation in 1964 and after 40 odd years it is still packed from the first train leaving Tokyo at 6AM till 10PM the last train to leave. A train either an express or a Kodama that stops at every station pulls in/leaves every 3~10 minutes.
The Sanyo Shinkansen which extends to Kyusu from Osaka connected to the Tokaido is also packed. The price is about $130US one way from Tokyo central to Osaka central with a distance about 500Km and the ride is about 2.5 hours.
The extra leg to Hakata from Osaka is about the same distance of 500Km taking about the same time.
The average daily passanger amount is 510,000 person combined.
The Tohoku shinkansen from Tokyo to Yaheto is also about 600Km and the price is little more than a $100US which went into partial service in 1971.
The total daily passanger amount for the Tohoku Shinkansen is 220,000 passangers.

This thread is not about Japan. Most of us have been to Japan and we are very aware of the Shinkasen system.

The population density and distribution in Japan has provided a unique opportunity for an simple, very effetctive railway. These conditions don't even approximate the northeast corridor in the USA.

This thread is not about Japan. Most of us have been to Japan and we are very aware of the Shinkasen system.

The population density and distribution in Japan has provided a unique opportunity for an simple, very effetctive railway. These conditions don't even approximate the northeast corridor in the USA.

Oh I don't know about that, the NE corridor looks very much the same as the Tokaido line back in the '60. The Tokkaido corridor was a very congested railway back then and it is the same now.
The distance of the NE corridor is shorter than the Tokkaido with only about 350Km or the equivalent to Tokyo-Nagoya and you guys don't have to negotiate with the rocky terrains like Japan.
It's just a matter of choice and will, remember the Shinkansen was announced in 59 and went into service in 64 meaning it only took 5 years to complete.

Oh I don't know about that, the NE corridor looks very much the same as the Tokaido line back in the '60. The Tokkaido corridor was a very congested railway back then and it is the same now.
The distance of the NE corridor is shorter than the Tokkaido with only about 350Km or the equivalent to Tokyo-Nagoya and you guys don't have to negotiate with the rocky terrains like Japan.
It's just a matter of choice and will, remember the Shinkansen was announced in 59 and went into service in 64 meaning it only took 5 years to complete.

The Tokkaido corridor was congested as early as as the 1930's running on a narrow guage railway which was still in place in 1959 running at less tham 100km/h

The NEC has Alcela running at over 150 km/h on many stretches and fast commuter trains running on all stretches.

Trying to compare the conditions between Japan and the US and suggesting that there is simple solution is to trivialize almost 100 years tranportation politics in the United States. While I admire the accomplishments of Japanese in building the shinkansen system, which I have visited and enjoyed traveling on, the suggestion that the US can solve a complex political problem in five years the way that the Japanese solved thirty years of failure to invest in its railways is offensive.

Within the mentioned 30 years Japan was at war for a good 20 years and still recuperating the last 10.

The problem maybe complex but needless to say it is a political one. If you Americans only refinanced some of the tax payer's money into more worthwhile projects instead of war machines you people would have developed a more productive infrastructure and don't tell me Japan gained all the profit since Japan pick up around 2 billion dollars US anually for maintanance of military installation here in Japan for the last 2 decades. Japan is also pitching in a whopping 609 billion dollars US as a restructuring aid to move US millitary installations from Okinawa to Guam.

Our current presidency is but a blip on the political debate over transportation policy

Within the mentioned 30 years Japan was at war for a good 20 years and still recuperating the last 10.

The problem maybe complex but needless to say it is a political one. If you Americans only refinanced some of the tax payer's money into more worthwhile projects instead of war machines you people would have developed a more productive infrastructure and don't tell me Japan gained all the profit since Japan pick up around 2 billion dollars US anually for maintanance of military installation here in Japan for the last 2 decades. Japan is also pitching in a whopping 609 billion dollars US as a restructuring aid to move US millitary installations from Okinawa to Guam.

Are you sure that is 609 billion dollars US? 609 billion yen sounds like a much more plausible figure. I do agree that the US should turn its attention inward and disengage from areas like the Middle East, South Korea and NATO. By keeping returning our military forces home we can maintain the same size military at far less cost, forward deployment is expensive and the host nations only pick up a fraction of the actual costs, and even at that a large amount of the "costs" are offset by the economic stimulus of having the forces in the host nation.

In the US losing a military base is a big issue due to the area where the base is located losing that economic activity. Since the end of the Cold War we have closed scores of bases across the US, we would have been far better off closing the bulk of our overseas bases instead.

The US will be much better off when we elect our own version of Shintaro Ishihara and have an America that says "NO" to nations like Israel and South Korea.

Should it? Probably. Will it? Not a chance.

:grouphug:
agree, but i will be 'more' precise, "should it? of course. will it? not a chance, before a long time"

agree, but i will be 'more' precise, "should it? of course. will it? not a chance, before a long time"

I am confused, this is a long thread! In what context are you replying?

Are you sure that is 609 billion dollars US? 609 billion yen sounds like a much more plausible figure. I do agree that the US should turn its attention inward and disengage from areas like the Middle East, South Korea and NATO. By keeping returning our military forces home we can maintain the same size military at far less cost, forward deployment is expensive and the host nations only pick up a fraction of the actual costs, and even at that a large amount of the "costs" are offset by the economic stimulus of having the forces in the host nation.

In the US losing a military base is a big issue due to the area where the base is located losing that economic activity. Since the end of the Cold War we have closed scores of bases across the US, we would have been far better off closing the bulk of our overseas bases instead.

The US will be much better off when we elect our own version of Shintaro Ishihara and have an America that says "NO" to nations like Israel and South Korea.

You guys really over simplify the world. Its simply not that simple.

I am confused, this is a long thread! In what context are you replying?
about the title of the thread
" Should the US build or improve it's HSR network?"

this kind of superstructures (HSR, like europeans's or japaneses's) needs many studies of all sorts... so, if nothing is decided in a near future, it will take many, many, more time before seeing this improvement...

a high speed train would be useful in the east side from boston to miami via new york, philadelphia, baltimore, washington DC, atlanta and jacksonville. i'm talking about a unique path... that would be successful i think... on the other hand i dont think a high-speed network would be so much successfu in the west side. california is the queen state of cars i think :) well.. i;d like to see a unique line from vancouver to san diego passin throug portland, sacramento, san fracisco and los angeles. what about a high-speed railway from houston to portland via dallas denver and salt lake city? or chigago detroit toronto montreal?

I'm extremely frustrated with the transportation situation the United States and its various governmental bodies, its awful beaurocracy. They are squandering the potential to improve connectivity in the most densley populated part of the country by ignoring the potential for high speed rail/maglev transportation up and down the NEC. Ever since Bush has come into office, no movement has happened on the maglev initiative - it has stalled and there is no furher news on it - how shortsighted.

The NEC is a megalopolis, a long narrow strip of land consisting of various cities with suburbs almost completley conjoined - if not now, they will be in the comming decades. There is aprox. 40 million people living in this coridor, more if you add adjacent areas further south and west. If you add places like Charlotte, etc..

Here we have an area that is very dense, comparable to the density of the european nations where HSR is now used succesfully. New Jersey is very dense, much denser than somewhere like France, for example. There can be no excuse that lack of density is an issue. I mean, Spain with its massive land area has only around 40 million and look at its new rail lines that are very succesful. We have incredible airline delays and congestion at places such as JFK, where there is no room for new runways. The NEC consists of some of the most vital cities in the country, NYC, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C along with other large cities. A proper dedicated Maglev or HSR system would allow more room at airports for longer distance flights by siphoning off the short halls up and down the north east.

In order to increase the economic output of this region and to improve the situation of expensive housing in places like manhattan, boston, d.c, etc. it is vital to offer a way of joining all these cities together in a quick and efficient manner. It really should be actiing like one very large city and high speed rail could make it so.

Right now, it takes 6:30 hours to get from DC to Boston on the so-called HSR acela train- unacceptable. With maglev that could be down to 2-3 hours. Think of the possibilities for development. Cities like philly, baltimore, providence could almost act as bedroom communities for the larger employment centers leading to economic revitalization. People could live in Philly and work in DC, NY or Boston. Likewise for baltimore, D.C, etc. Airports could be linked to the system in order for transfers from long distance flight connections from places like JFK to smaller areas such as providence, trenton, etc.

Although people say there is no room for a new traditional LGV style line due to urbanization, a maglev could be a much better solution. Being elevated above the highways or along the current NEC rail line. Elevation would allow it to fit into the current urban sprawl without impacting too many residential areas.

There really is a lack of forsight, and I believe that in the future the US will regret not investing in itself as it looses out to the new emerging economies. Its time to invest in the country and stop being the police man of the world. There is no need for a massive military anymore as soon as Iraq has ended. Just enough troops required to defend the country. Let the EU or China be the world's guardian. If California gets its new HSR, it would be extremely stupid for the states in the north east to rest of their laurels. I am hoping that the california project may spur interest in investing the money now for the economic benefit of the region in the future.

Also, it is disgusting that in this so called democary, big business lobbyists are able to derail projects like HSR - an example, South West airlines in Texas derailed their HSR project with false ads, etc... To be honest, I wish business were not allowed to lobby at all - the people should be allowed to choose rather than big business.

i dealt with the problem for a while, had a lot of discussins and all I can say in the end is this:

If the US wants something, they do it/get it.

If they dont want it, they dont do it/ get it, no matter how usefull or good it is.

Yes, a really good high speed rail would be good for the Norhteast....,so what?

So what? Please take that cynical attitude and shove it up your arney please!

That kind of attitude leads to inaction - if more people had the will to ask for it, it would happen. The point i'm making is that the people here don't know how good this would be for the country. The majority don't know that they may want it or how great it could be because the majority havn't travelled enough to experience such transportation options.

I don't know how you could be so flippant and glib either, how creepy. I'm trying to bring up a serious issue here that is very important. Perhaps you really don't care about this country - well, perhaps do not discuss here please.

The goal should be to raise awareness so that more citizens ask their leaders for an improved way to travel in this era of high gas prices, global warming, air pollution, increasing gridlock and congestion, and competition from growing emerging nations. There must be a desire to invest in the country for the future generations = and a proper high speed link would kill many birds wih one stone - delivering a clean, environmentally friendly way of travel that will boost economic development, protect the air we breath, reduce gridlock and help us attract new business. There is the prestige issue too, which is important in attracting foreign investment. I.e, if you build it, they will come, look at Shanghai!

The arguments from anti-rail types that there is no room for a new dedicated ROW in the NEC is baloney. Much of the land is old decaying industrial land along the current ROW. They could even build a new ROW up through Hartford, instead of going along the coast in CT. And then the fact that maglev can be elevated allows for highways to be used as ROW's further reducing the need for perfectly straight lines as maglev can reach high speeds even on curves. The only problem would be getting the thing into NYC. Perhaps it would be best to build the line with stops just outside the CBD's at transport nodes as to decrease the cost of tunnelling under cities. I.e, you could have a stop at Newark/Jersey City - a new rail station there connected by a quick transfer into manhattan by PATH, etc.. The overall time savings would still be alot quicker. the current NEC would be kept for freight and shorter distance commuting. The currrent proposal to link DC to baltimore would be a great start - unfortunately the project is on-hold due to dumb pro-road/airlines lobbysits and old fashioned backward republicans with no vision. I wonder if this country could ever really innovate again. A chane of government is required which I hope will happen soon. Perhaps americans are just happy to be backwards, I don't know, I can never understand why there is a lack of vision, a lack of interest in beating the odds. It always amazes me how many people would rather say "it'll never happen here" - this is why the lazy, boring politicians who have no real understanding of technology, environment, etc. have no interest in "wasting" tax payers money on so-called monstrosities such as maglev - if only they new how much benefit it would bring. Maybe they are all cynics.

Is that really your point of view or you've just pasted it from anywhere? I've never heard of any country where bureaucracy wasn't on a priority level. The idea of maglev transportation isn't the best one due to its unbelievably high price, in my opinion. More of your ideas are absolutely non-productive.

i do agree with you but i would say this maglev is very expansive and well HSR can be built in the united states but this is my approach to this

the HSR tracks can be built outside the city and well the Trains can follow existing Railway lines its much cheaper that way

the HSR Tracks can be built in the rural areas in the countryside and in the cities it can go with the other Rail traffic pretty much like the french and the japanese approach to HSR

maglev is great but the price its too expansive regular HSR is cheaper but way better since it can adapt itself to regular Railway traffic in the cities and go on high speed Railway Tracks outside the cities area

Maglev you have to built everything from scratch which makes it very expansive

with HSR however the Railway cars of the HSR. the stations of the HSR, the right of way for the HSR, and the electiricty power for the HSR will have to be built but there is an advantage to this in that you don't have to built anything in the cities area it can go on the normal railway traffic without having to build a new railway station but the thing is that it will have to be electified of the tracks area that it will use

HSR is expansive but its cheaper then maglev

There may not be room for new tracks in the NEC. hence maglev

A New York City metropolitan area inhabitant myself, better high-speed rail would be appreciated. Yes, I have NJT, which does a great job most of the time with tons of connectivity and easy of reaching the city, but a lot of the time I'm going to DC, Providence, or Boston and it takes about the same time as driving which seems contradictory. Before we start adding tracks, it's more important to fix the detereorating infrastructure of the already existing Northeast Corridor. The NEC uses outdated electric systems, with overhead lines at 11 or 12.5 kV 25Hz AC until it reaches New Haven. All of the NEC should be at 25kV 60Hz AC (for those who don't know, the US was stupid and uses 60Hz rather than the world standard of 50Hz, however that has to do with voltages and I'm not going into that). The tracks are worn out to the point of unusability; however, this stems from FRA Tier II requirements that trains be able to withstand crashes with freight trains. Not only does this almost never happen, but it puts too much strain on tracks, get rid of that rule. Other repairs such as bridge re-construction are necessary. It's important to note that the Northeast readily accepts rail transport unlike the rest of the US, which prefers driving. The Acela is booked solid, with at least 95% of every train reserved at least a week in advance.

BS. You need new tracks - no fix'm uppers will work, given the congestion on those tracks no matter what upgrades are done. A crash just happened yesterday btw a freight and an amtrak in Illinois - they won't remove that law. Yes, fix the NEC but don't expect it to ever really be much more than a short term, stop gap measure. Didn't you read the report by Amtrak recently? They said it would cost 7 billion to upgrade the NEC but that would only gain you 20 mins time off the NY-DC trip - not really efficient use of funds if you ask me. I think its time to try something new that isn't going to interfere with the freight operations. IMO, maglev is the ONLY solution due to lack of room for new HSR, unless you move the whole track inland and have spurs into the cities on regular lines. Maglev could hover above the Intersates, which a new LGV could not.

Also, By the time the upgrades are done, the congestion, etc..will have started to erode the economy. We will allready be far behind other nations who are planning the real thing now.

maglev is great but the price its too expansive regular HSR is cheaper but way better since it can adapt itself to regular Railway traffic in the cities and go on high speed Railway Tracks outside the cities area

Maglev you have to built everything from scratch which makes it very expansive

with HSR however the Railway cars of the HSR. the stations of the HSR, the right of way for the HSR, and the electiricty power for the HSR will have to be built but there is an advantage to this in that you don't have to built anything in the cities area it can go on the normal railway traffic without having to build a new railway station but the thing is that it will have to be electified of the tracks area that it will use

HSR is expansive but its cheaper then maglev

HSR isn't an option unless it is moved far inland from the major cities due to massive sprawl/urbanization along the route. Maglev can be elevated above highways. the Feds won't allow these light HSR trains on regular tracks due to regulations due to freight trains along the routes.

the HSR Tracks will be identical to the regular Railway tracks but there could be some ways to be intergreted with them

the french approach to high speed rail is pretty good and spot on but for the NEC railway right of way will have to stay how it is but outside the NEC it can adapt better

the french approach to HSR outside the NEC will be alot easier

Can you believe it, the so called HSR for the SE USA - DC-->Charlotte is going to be 110mph top speed? And that may not even happen at all!!! HAHAHAHA, is this some kind of a joke. :ohno: Why don't americans understand what HSR is? Are they that parochial, do they not look beyond their borders? HSR is greater than 150mph. Also, its disgusting that even this lametable 110mph speed train may not happen due to anti-rail, pro-highway idiots and scumbags who are stuck in the past and think rail is for old people or for romantic journeys only. This country needs to wake up. I can't wait for oil to rise, then these people will be singing a different tune!! haha, what creeps!!

If you dare google it, search for HSR south east USA -- prepare to be disgusted.

funny threat.

110mph? Even ours (UK) is faster than that :lol:

BS. You need new tracks - no fix'm uppers will work, given the congestion on those tracks no matter what upgrades are done. A crash just happened yesterday btw a freight and an amtrak in Illinois - they won't remove that law. Yes, fix the NEC but don't expect it to ever really be much more than a short term, stop gap measure. Didn't you read the report by Amtrak recently? They said it would cost 7 billion to upgrade the NEC but that would only gain you 20 mins time off the NY-DC trip - not really efficient use of funds if you ask me. I think its time to try something new that isn't going to interfere with the freight operations. IMO, maglev is the ONLY solution due to lack of room for new HSR, unless you move the whole track inland and have spurs into the cities on regular lines. Maglev could hover above the Intersates, which a new LGV could not.

Also, By the time the upgrades are done, the congestion, etc..will have started to erode the economy. We will allready be far behind other nations who are planning the real thing now.

Actually, you're forgetting that Acela is capable of only 135mph on non-25kV AC and 150mph on 25kV AC. If they were to upgrade Acela, not just the tracks and electrical systems, to say, 175mph or even 200mph, the time would shorten by over 35-45 minutes at minimum. Seriously, where are you going to put MAGLEV? Remember, there are huge clearance issues especially going into New York City. Also, MAGLEV's capacity isn't amazing. It may go quickly but requires large spacing. Curves on MAGLEV are also an issue. To get the desired speed that you're talking about would need it to be flat and straight enough, but the NEC and Northeast doesn't have any areas that can fit it. You say that more tracks are necessary. Think about it this way. The West Coast Main Line in the UK operates during rush hour 6tph in both directions for high-speed Virgin, at 10tph Overground/Silverlink up to Watford Junction, and freight trains. That's a train every two to four minutes. The NEC's gaps between trains during rush hour are about ten minutes.

What are you suggesting? There is no room to straighten the current track for true HSR in the NEC. Even if you upgrade the catenary, there are too many curves to make a difference. Didn't you hear what I said about the 7billion upgrade for 20mins reduction (official study)? If not maglev, what do you suggest to get true HSR in the NEC, new ROW, or what? The current tracks are useless, especially north of NYC in CT. At least you can put the maglev over the highways, its possible to do that on highways that have medians.

Problem is that the rest of the country doesn't want to pay for it, and without a powerful passenger rail lobby to counteract both them and the freight companies who want that federal cash themselves, its going to be a hard battle.

Even on the state level, you have problems, such as Central PA and Upstate NY whose representatives are loath to spending money on Philly and NYC

It's better than the 79 mph that we have now (Why is it 79 mph? Why not a round 80?)

At least the California one is the real deal. 200 mph.

What are you suggesting? There is no room to straighten the current track for true HSR in the NEC. Even if you upgrade the catenary, there are too many curves to make a difference. Didn't you hear what I said about the 7billion upgrade for 20mins reduction (official study)? If not maglev, what do you suggest to get true HSR in the NEC, new ROW, or what? The current tracks are useless, especially north of NYC in CT. At least you can put the maglev over the highways, its possible to do that on highways that have medians.

I don't get it, in post #4 you say that the arguments about ROW are baloney, so yes, a new HSR ROW is needed. I think this whole "maglev can go over highways" argument from its supporters is a red herring - there is absolutely no technical reason why HSR couldn't do the same. Only problem is that it would be expensive and hard to maintain in either form.

Much more realistic is that the line should run alonside existing highways as has been done in Germany, Holland and the UK, for example. The CTRL is proof that a 300km/h railway can follow existing highway curves.


UK

http://www.tgv.pl/tgv/lgv/CTRL1.jpg


Germany

http://www.ice-fanpage.de/bilder/ice3/ice3hallerb/ice3_hallerbtb03gro.jpg


Holland

http://www.hslzuid.nl/hsl/Images/TP060706%20HSL%20Kruising%20A4025_tcm51-65334.jpg

The funniest thing I read re. the California HSL was a pro-car lobby critic citing HSR as "a 21st century version of Victorian technology", as if cars were invented in the 20th century! Granted I see his point, cars are 'newer' by about 50 years, but I found it funny :)

The West Coast Main Line in the UK operates during rush hour 6tph in both directions for high-speed Virgin, at 10tph Overground/Silverlink up to Watford Junction, and freight trains.

From the 2009 timetable Virgin will operate 11tph during the peak, I believe it's already more than 6 per hour in the non-peak now.

Aquablue - I have never understood the idea that Maglev is easier to find space to build. A maglev train is about the same size as a normal train, it's trackbed is about the same size as a normal trackbed, the only reason it can 'hover' above expressways is because a bloody great long elvated section for the trackbed is built, which could just as easily be a conventional trackbed. I don't get it. All the proponents of Maglev seem to make this same mistake - that Maglev will be cheaper and easier to build, cheaper to maintain, easier and more convenient to use and have a higher potential capacity. The only proven thing with Maglev is that it's fast. France are upping their LGVs up to 224 mph within the next 5 years. That would bring DC and Boston within 2 hours of each other on a dedicated high speed line with no timetabled stops. Why choose maglev?

From the 2009 timetable Virgin will operate 11tph during the peak, I believe it's already more than 6 per hour in the non-peak now.

Aquablue - I have never understood the idea that Maglev is easier to find space to build. A maglev train is about the same size as a normal train, it's trackbed is about the same size as a normal trackbed, the only reason it can 'hover' above expressways is because a bloody great long elvated section for the trackbed is built, which could just as easily be a conventional trackbed. I don't get it. All the proponents of Maglev seem to make this same mistake - that Maglev will be cheaper and easier to build, cheaper to maintain, easier and more convenient to use and have a higher potential capacity. The only proven thing with Maglev is that it's fast. France are upping their LGVs up to 224 mph within the next 5 years. That would bring DC and Boston within 2 hours of each other on a dedicated high speed line with no timetabled stops. Why choose maglev?


Can I shed some light to that subject, first of all, maglev can turn tighter curves due to magnetic induced propulsion positioning the cart within the guideway.
In term of price since it is still in development stage(for Japan anyways) this can not be thoroughly compared but in theory there is no alignement of rail nor sleepers needed and the Japanese system only needs coils for magnetic inducement, I think the price can be reduced significantly once technology is established.
Price for construction of experimental track can be found here. (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=16347514&postcount=14)

1. Germany developed a new generation of Maglev Trains in the years 2002-2007, based upon the Transrapid System that they sold to China (in 2001), and which is in reliable operation there for 4 years now.

This new Generation of Vehicle and Guidway is 25% cheaper than the one sold to China, which makes costs per mile for constructing it about as expensive as a modern state of the art Wheel/Rail Highspeed system

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9726/tr09hc9.jpg


http://www.max-boegl.de/boegldip/web/ifsbinary.jsp?fsId=34667629&disposition=inline


2. This system needs a corridor of 13 meter width (+1 meter noise protection walls where necessary) and can operate there with 500 kmh speed and a 10 minutes intervall.

Based upon tested todays technology.

3. As the Transrapid system wraps around the guidway it can go aroung thigher curves.
Even with 400 kmh it could easily follow a US-Highway.
With 500 kmh it might need to cut some corners, but generally would also be able to follow it.

4. I highly recommend to take a look at the Shanghai maglev route on google earth, there you can see, how a system looks, that carries 20 000 Passengers/day (which makes 7,3mio a year) with 430 kmh in a 15 minutes interval.( with passenger numbers rising)

To sum it up:

Dinner is served!
The US would just have to stop talking, discussing and babbling (what they actually do for 25 years now) and just go for it.

1. Germany developed a new generation of Maglev Trains in the years 2002-2007, based upon the Transrapid System that they sold to China (in 2001), and which is in reliable operation there for 4 years now.

This new Generation of Vehicle and Guidway is 25% cheaper than the one sold to China, which makes costs per mile for constructing it about as expensive as a modern state of the art Wheel/Rail Highspeed system



I suspect, as with the UK case, that the actual cost of the track hardware will be insignificant compared to the cost of land, project planning and other legal fees on a US project in the NEC. If Transrapid can show that their track is cheaper (is it in use at Emsland yet?), they still have the above to overcome.



2. This system needs a corridor of 13 meter width (+1 meter noise protection walls where necessary) and can operate there with 500 kmh speed and a 10 minutes intervall.

Based upon tested todays technology.


As can be seen in the pictures above, HSR typically needs 8 to 10 metres for a twin track.

Whilst no train is yet running at 500kmh regularly, neither is any Transrapid. AFAIK they top out at 430kmh (for 2 minutes) in Shaghai and 450 on the test track. Granted this is faster than a normal train in regular use.

The 10 minute interval is IMHO the achiles heel of the technology. Intervals on TGV are 3 minutes, allowing over 20,000 passengers each way per hour. On Transrapid it is 6,000 per hour.



3. As the Transrapid system wraps around the guidway it can go aroung thigher curves.
Even with 400 kmh it could easily follow a US-Highway.
With 500 kmh it might need to cut some corners, but generally would also be able to follow it.


This is a myth. The TGV records show that a normal train is perfectly able to ride corners at high speed, they do not need to be wrapped around it to travel over them safely.

Instead it is all to do with cant deficiency (super-elevation) of the tracks and passenger comfort. Dedicated passenger railways can use high cant just like the maglev tracks have to be leaned into corners.


4. I highly recommend to take a look at the Shanghai maglev route on google earth, there you can see, how a system looks, that carries 20 000 Passengers/day (which makes 7,3mio a year) with 430 kmh in a 15 minutes interval.( with passenger numbers rising)


If you look at the line on Google Earth, or indeed below, you can see that the track - elevated or not - requires long sweeping curves and realistically a lot of land underneath. If you want the line to really enter the city centre, as was done at Lille, Antwerp and London, then tunnelling is the only acceptable answer and Transrapid does not lend itself well to this. That is why Shanghai avoided it.

http://www.randstadrapid.nl/image.php?ent=image&id=54

http://www.randstadrapid.nl/image.php?ent=image&id=63



France are upping their LGVs up to 224 mph within the next 5 years. That would bring DC and Boston within 2 hours of each other on a dedicated high speed line with no timetabled stops. Why choose maglev?


To be fair, DC to Boston is 450 miles, so even using the sort of average speed the AGV could give (~170mph), they are at best 2h40m apart. But the difference in timing would not be sufficient to go to the expense of constructing maglev infrastructure through or under all the intermediate cities.

The funniest thing I read re. the California HSL was a pro-car lobby critic citing HSR as "a 21st century version of Victorian technology", as if cars were invented in the 20th century! Granted I see his point, cars are 'newer' by about 50 years, but I found it funny :)


This dates from 1771, so in reality it is the train which is the newer technology :lol:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/FardierdeCugnot20050111.jpg/800px-FardierdeCugnot20050111.jpg

Can you believe it, the so called HSR for the SE USA - DC-->Charlotte is going to be 110mph top speed? And that may not even happen at all!!! HAHAHAHA, is this some kind of a joke. :ohno: Why don't americans understand what HSR is? Are they that parochial, do they not look beyond their borders? HSR is greater than 150mph. Also, its disgusting that even this lametable 110mph speed train may not happen due to anti-rail, pro-highway idiots and scumbags who are stuck in the past and think rail is for old people or for romantic journeys only. This country needs to wake up. I can't wait for oil to rise, then these people will be singing a different tune!! haha, what creeps!!

If you dare google it, search for HSR south east USA -- prepare to be disgusted.


:applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause:

I suspect, as with the UK case, that the actual cost of the track hardware will be insignificant compared to the cost of land, project planning and other legal fees on a US project in the NEC. If Transrapid can show that their track is cheaper (is it in use at Emsland yet?), they still have the above to overcome.
Yes, they have installed prototypes of the new, cost reduced girders on the Test Track in emsland.
The line in Munich will be built completely using them.
When it comes to bureaucratic costs I dont think, that it will make any difference, if the train rolls or levitates on its tracks.
As can be seen in the pictures above, HSR typically needs 8 to 10 metres for a twin track.
I have to correct mysefl: double track maglev for 300kmh needs 10,4 meters, for 500 kmh 11,4 meters.
Whilst no train is yet running at 500kmh regularly, neither is any Transrapid. AFAIK they top out at 430kmh (for 2 minutes) in Shaghai and 450 on the test track. Granted this is faster than a normal train in regular use.
From a technological aspect, the system is ready for 500 kmh in Shanghai already. And they also reached that speed in 2005 with a manned, NOT modified vehicle.
The 10 minute interval is IMHO the achiles heel of the technology. Intervals on TGV are 3 minutes, allowing over 20,000 passengers each way per hour. On Transrapid it is 6,000 per hour
Thats not correct:
Right now, the minimum interval given by the technology for the Transrapid Maglev is 5 Minutes.
One train can carry a maximum of 1200 Passengers using 10 segments.
That makes 14400 Passengers per hour in one direction or 28800 per double track. Ten segments are the maximum for the Transrapid right now. If needed, you could easily modify the system, so that it can accomodate 15-20segments per train.
This is a myth. The TGV records show that a normal train is perfectly able to ride corners at high speed, they do not need to be wrapped around it to travel over them safely.
Instead it is all to do with cant deficiency (super-elevation) of the tracks and passenger comfort. Dedicated passenger railways can use high cant just like the maglev tracks have to be leaned into corners.
A train can super-elevate its tracks at a maximum of 6,5° (11,3 %) .
A transrapid maglev with 16° (28,7 %)
At cruising speed, the passenger doestn take notice of how much the train leans into the curve. But the effect is, that the maglev can make either tighter curves at the same speed than HSR or can drive through the same radii at higher speeds, with the same comfort for the passenger.
The problem with HSR is, that you cannot increase the cant angle, because in case of an emergency stop, the train would fall out of its rails.
If you look at the line on Google Earth, or indeed below, you can see that the track - elevated or not - requires long sweeping curves and realistically a lot of land underneath. If you want the line to really enter the city centre, as was done at Lille, Antwerp and London, then tunnelling is the only acceptable answer and Transrapid does not lend itself well to this. That is why Shanghai avoided it.
if you want to enter and leave the city at high speed with a rail system, you also have to build new tracks.
Lots of cities do that, because using the old tracks, you will loose a lot of time. Paris also thinks about builidng one new central HSR statin with new tracks, so that the TGV`s can enter and leave the city as fast as they can.
Germany builds a new HSR Train Station tunnel though the whole city in Stuttgart ( google Stuttgart21) and plans to do that in varios other citys too, on the long term
To be fair, DC to Boston is 450 miles, so even using the sort of average speed the AGV could give (~170mph), they are at best 2h40m apart. But the difference in timing would not be sufficient to go to the expense of constructing maglev infrastructure through or under all the intermediate cities
As I mentioned, the prices for maglev vs. HSR are falling right now, and I assume that in the not to distant future, it will cost exactly that amount of money more, that it offers more in speed and comfort.

Using the average speed of the latest AGV is a bit tricky, because they have hardly any intermediat stops and travel through almost empty spanish countryside. Thats hardly comparable to dense populated Boswash with several intermediate stops.

But using the acceleration/decelartion of the Transrapid-maglev used in Shanghai, that corridor could be served with several intermediate stops in alltogether 2 h.

But never mind, i assume that the US wont see neither HSR nor Maglev in the too near future.
Even a 20 year old TGV would be a big step forward for them.....

:)

It's better than the 79 mph that we have now (Why is it 79 mph? Why not a round 80?)
79mph is the fastest a passenger train is allowed to run unless it -- and any freight trains also running on the track -- are equipped with in-cab signaling. 99.999% of passenger trains are, but freight trains almost NEVER are unless the passenger service pays the cost of equipping the freight trains as well.

110mph is the fastest a passenger train is allowed to run along track with grade crossings.

"True HSR" is nice, but in most parts of the US, it wouldn't make sense to build it at this moment in time.

Transforming an existing single-track freight railroad into a corridor suitable for 110mph passenger trains costs about $3-5 million per mile, since you're basically just throwing down one or two new tracks and leaving everything else "as-is". To increase speeds to 125mph, you have to eliminate the grade crossings at ~$10 million a pop. To go faster, you have to either use ultra-heavy & expensive Acela-like trains, or segregate passenger trains from freight trains completely. At that point, you've just increased the cost beyond anything most state legislatures would EVER approve.

There's no grand conspiracy from the auto industry. Even if every railfan's wet dreams about HSR passenger service were to come true in America, it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to the number of cars sold per year. It wouldn't even make much of a difference to the airline industry, since HSR would compete mainly with small and regional airlines serving routes that American, Delta, Continental, Northwest, United, and USAir don't even bother with directly (they're flown by small airlines who've franchised the name of a major airline). Southwest Airlines (famous for its opposition to Texas passenger rail) is purely a regional player. Just about anywhere else in the country, their lobbyists would get a yawn or two from the representative's receptionist.

The opposition comes from "true HSR's" unholy up-front capital costs relative to relatively few users. $15 billion buried Boston's main freeway, doubled its capacity, and directly benefits about a million people every day. That same $15 billion would have been enough to build roughly 300 miles of "True HSR" track at ~$50 million/mile. I don't think even the TGV has that many passengers per day. And this is a comparison of the most expensive road improvement project in America with the busiest HSR network in the world. A more "normal" road project (like rebuilding and widening 10-20 miles of a major urban freeway somewhere in America) would normally be about $500 million to $2 billion... enough for a whopping 10-40 miles of "True HSR" track. The freeway will typically have at least 200,000 users every day. How many daily riders will 10-40 miles of "True HSR" track generate above and beyond the number who would have used the train anyway if it were 110mph?

Rather than belittle North Carolina for having "only" 110mph, HSR supporters should be cheering it on, and encouraging their OWN states to do the same thing. Eventually, the 110mph trains will have enough riders to make elected officials view its reconstruction into a true HSR line as a worthwhile expenditure, rather than a financial black hole that will get them slaughtered at re-election time.

110mph isn't perfect... but it's good. And it's a hell of a lot better than what exists there now, and what's likely to exist there 10 years from now if the rail line's supporters get swept up into the "True HSR" quagmire like Florida did. If it hadn't been for the damn HSR proposal in Florida, we would have had 110mph trains from Miami to Orlando and Tampa at least 5 years ago, and would probably have service extended from Orlando to Jacksonville, and along the entire east coast (from Jacksonville to Miami) by now. Instead, we have Amtrak, with two trains per day leaving Miami at the crack of dawn & arriving at Tampa and Orlando 5-7 hours later, because the HSR fans who wrote the original law mandating it took the same "zero-tolerance" attitude towards anything that wasn't perfect, and produced a monster so awful, even rail SUPPORTERS had to vote against it.

79mph is the fastest a passenger train is allowed to run unless it -- and any freight trains also running on the track -- are equipped with in-cab signaling. 99.999% of passenger trains are, but freight trains almost NEVER are unless the passenger service pays the cost of equipping the freight trains as well.

110mph is the fastest a passenger train is allowed to run along track with grade crossings.

"True HSR" is nice, but in most parts of the US, it wouldn't make sense to build it at this moment in time.

Transforming an existing single-track freight railroad into a corridor suitable for 110mph passenger trains costs about $3-5 million per mile, since you're basically just throwing down one or two new tracks and leaving everything else "as-is". To increase speeds to 125mph, you have to eliminate the grade crossings at ~$10 million a pop. To go faster, you have to either use ultra-heavy & expensive Acela-like trains, or segregate passenger trains from freight trains completely. At that point, you've just increased the cost beyond anything most state legislatures would EVER approve.

There's no grand conspiracy from the auto industry. Even if every railfan's wet dreams about HSR passenger service were to come true in America, it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to the number of cars sold per year. It wouldn't even make much of a difference to the airline industry, since HSR would compete mainly with small and regional airlines serving routes that American, Delta, Continental, Northwest, United, and USAir don't even bother with directly (they're flown by small airlines who've franchised the name of a major airline). Southwest Airlines (famous for its opposition to Texas passenger rail) is purely a regional player. Just about anywhere else in the country, their lobbyists would get a yawn or two from the representative's receptionist.

The opposition comes from "true HSR's" unholy up-front capital costs relative to relatively few users. $15 billion buried Boston's main freeway, doubled its capacity, and directly benefits about a million people every day. That same $15 billion would have been enough to build roughly 300 miles of "True HSR" track at ~$50 million/mile. I don't think even the TGV has that many passengers per day. And this is a comparison of the most expensive road improvement project in America with the busiest HSR network in the world. A more "normal" road project (like rebuilding and widening 10-20 miles of a major urban freeway somewhere in America) would normally be about $500 million to $2 billion... enough for a whopping 10-40 miles of "True HSR" track. The freeway will typically have at least 200,000 users every day. How many daily riders will 10-40 miles of "True HSR" track generate above and beyond the number who would have used the train anyway if it were 110mph?

Rather than belittle North Carolina for having "only" 110mph, HSR supporters should be cheering it on, and encouraging their OWN states to do the same thing. Eventually, the 110mph trains will have enough riders to make elected officials view its reconstruction into a true HSR line as a worthwhile expenditure, rather than a financial black hole that will get them slaughtered at re-election time.

110mph isn't perfect... but it's good. And it's a hell of a lot better than what exists there now, and what's likely to exist there 10 years from now if the rail line's supporters get swept up into the "True HSR" quagmire like Florida did. If it hadn't been for the damn HSR proposal in Florida, we would have had 110mph trains from Miami to Orlando and Tampa at least 5 years ago, and would probably have service extended from Orlando to Jacksonville, and along the entire east coast (from Jacksonville to Miami) by now. Instead, we have Amtrak, with two trains per day leaving Miami at the crack of dawn & arriving at Tampa and Orlando 5-7 hours later, because the HSR fans who wrote the original law mandating it took the same "zero-tolerance" attitude towards anything that wasn't perfect, and produced a monster so awful, even rail SUPPORTERS had to vote against it.

Thanks, but my question was why it's 79 mph and not 80 mph. Seems like it wouldn't make that much of a difference.

Basically we drive everywhere you can get to in a couple hours, and fly everywhere else. Just the way it's done here....rail is a hard sell.

Most people I know fly everywhere. in 2005 the stats for the USA were:

Passengers flown: 745,700,000

Total flights: 11,000,000

The average distance flown by passengers in 2005 was a little less than 1,700 KM.

^^ exactly, which is why the above comments on 110mph being sufficient will produce a system that falls short of the mark.

The US already had >110mph rail in the form of Metroliner and that hasn't exactly opened up the market for faster services (timings in 1969 were 5 minutes better than the fastest Acela service today:lol:). It wasn't and isn't fast enought to seriously compete with the airlines. It will take a step change in speed like the California proposal to show what can actually be done.

As for the capital cost - both the Texas and Florida systems could have been paid for with just a couple of year's tax cuts implemented by the incoming governors subsequent to their cancellation.

we would have had 110mph trains from Miami to Orlando and Tampa at least 5 years ago... Instead, we have Amtrak...

Huh? Contrasting something with itself? If it's intercity rail it's probably Amtrak no matter what speed. In Detroit there are plans to make the extant 95mph line 110mph.

Thanks, but my question was why it's 79 mph and not 80 mph. Seems like it wouldn't make that much of a difference.

It's supposed to be a "technicality" in the law, or so I read from Wikipedia. That usually means about 80mph in any case. There are regions here in SoCal where the commuter and Amtraks coast at about 92-93mph even though the speed limit is 90mph.

well, if California votes yes, it will get trains that can go 220 mph. So don't be so negative - things often don't move in a linear way, leaps can occur.

Thanks, but my question was why it's 79 mph and not 80 mph. Seems like it wouldn't make that much of a difference.It's an arbitrary regulatory limit imposed by the government. Specifically, the FRA. Amtrak routinely exceeds it, but someone could cause them a lot of headaches if they decided to actually stand in the path of an oncoming Amtrak train with a radar gun and clock it.

The US already had >110mph rail in the form of Metroliner and that hasn't exactly opened up the market for faster services (timings in 1969 were 5 minutes better than the fastest Acela service today). It wasn't and isn't fast enought to seriously compete with the airlines.
The competitive position of rail has changed dramatically since the 1960s. 40 years ago, flying was a pleasant experience, and trains were full of smelly poor people who couldn't afford to fly. Now, thanks to BinLadenCo, it takes an hour to get through security at lots of big-city airports, and flying is about as pleasant as having bamboo slivers pushed under your fingernails. People back in the 1960s couldn't boot up a laptop, stick in a Sprint wireless card, and watch streaming pr0n in the privacy of their roomette (or other things computer + internet related), so not having to drive wasn't as big of a perk as it is now.

Rail doesn't have to be faster than driving or flying to be competitive, as long as it's more convenient and enjoyable. Flying is a miserable experience, and driving 3-5 hours sucks. Provide internet access, food on the train, upscale ambiance, and have people on board to do the rental car paperwork before arrival (so you can literally be driving away within 10 minutes of arriving at the station), and passenger rail will compete quite well with both for 200-300 mile trips.

Its quite obvious who is holding the country back - the right wing, pro-oil/highway people who are generally republicans. Its a shameful travesty to hear grown educated men speak of rail being something for, a) communists (because every man should be free with his own private transport), b) a massive waste of money when highways must be expanded to alleviate congestion (ha!), c) sucking up to big business, i.e, OIL and Airlines. Basically, that party = fear, the past, and status quo. The USA will never prosper or compete without a change in leadership and unfortunatley, many people just don't have the intellegence to grasp the benefits of HSR in this country. I don't see how people interested in living a 21st century, cutting edge existance would consider remaining in this stone-age country! I foresee this country declining and wasting away in a sea of congestion if someting major isn't done to help us regain a foothold again. This country should stop going it alone and look at other countries as examples. I wish we had some presidential candidates who would see this and talk about how important it is for out future economic prosperity.

P,S -- i don't accept this crap about 110mph being a good step. It is a complete shameful embarassment in comparison to the rest of the industrialized world, and soon countries like morroco, turkey, argentina will be ahead of us and more advanced. Yet we're happy to go slowly while the rest of the world is completley trouncing us. I wish this country wasn't a superpower, then it wouldn't be resting on its laurels. Also, we are happy to allow our flagshp stations become ratholes. And we're not even building amazing highways or airports - so basically, we're now behind in everything. Our airports are now ugly - there is no decent designs compared to europe/asia. We should be bowing our head to europe and japan. There is no innovation left in this country --> instead we are content to police the world wasting billions/month on wars while we have 400 people being killed on the streets of philly a year!!! WAKE UP USA, WHERE ARE YOUR PRIORITIES???? IN THE TOILET, THATS WHERE THEY ARE

It's purely a matter of cost vs benefit. In this case, the benefit (to politicians) is votes from people who are happy because they see their tax dollars spent on things that are of direct, personal daily benefit to them. Nobody bitches about roads being "subsidized", because the vast majority of taxpayers use them multiple times every single day. $10 billion spent on a HSR line used by a few hundred thousand passengers per day is $10 billion likely NOT spent on a dozen road projects that would have been used by several million taxpayers every day. In elected-official-economics, roads are "profitable" (vote-getting). HSR isn't.

It's not strictly zero-sum, nor does one have to overwhelmingly defeat the other... but at the end of the day, a rail proposal whose cost per daily voter is at worst double that of competing proposals for limited transportation funds is going to be a lot more likely to make it into reality than one that will cost ten or twenty times as much (per daily taxpaying user) as competing proposals. 110mph is cheap enough to squeeze by and get past elected officials. In most places, 150+ mph isn't, and will be stopped dead in its tracks before it sees the light of day outside of a committee meeting.

That's the harsh reality of rail in America. Elected officials, and voters, could give a flying f**k whether or not it's "competitive" with other countries. They want to see dollar figures and ridership projections, so they can figure out how many votes each allocated transportation dollar is going to buy them on election day. Ask them to choose between a futuristic, environmentally-responsible alternative that will make a few hundred thousand voters happy every day, or a collection of freeway projects that will make ten million voters happy every day, and the freeway projects will win, hands down every time. In a democracy, votes are the only currency elected officials care about, and every decision they make is going to be driven by which alternative will win them the most new votes and lose them the fewest existing ones.

Before HSR will ever exist in the US, it has to have a large, visible constituency of voters who'll use it, use it often, and who bend over backwards to make it known to the elected officials in charge of spending money. Right now, that constituency doesn't exist. 110mph trains now are the seed that will someday grow into it.

The United States fucking sucks when it comes to passenger rail. :down: :ohno:

It's purely a matter of cost vs benefit. In this case, the benefit (to politicians) is votes from people who are happy because they see their tax dollars spent on things that are of direct, personal daily benefit to them. Nobody bitches about roads being "subsidized", because the vast majority of taxpayers use them multiple times every single day. $10 billion spent on a HSR line used by a few hundred thousand passengers per day is $10 billion likely NOT spent on a dozen road projects that would have been used by several million taxpayers every day. In elected-official-economics, roads are "profitable" (vote-getting). HSR isn't.

It's not strictly zero-sum, nor does one have to overwhelmingly defeat the other... but at the end of the day, a rail proposal whose cost per daily voter is at worst double that of competing proposals for limited transportation funds is going to be a lot more likely to make it into reality than one that will cost ten or twenty times as much (per daily taxpaying user) as competing proposals. 110mph is cheap enough to squeeze by and get past elected officials. In most places, 150+ mph isn't, and will be stopped dead in its tracks before it sees the light of day outside of a committee meeting.

That's the harsh reality of rail in America. Elected officials, and voters, could give a flying f**k whether or not it's "competitive" with other countries. They want to see dollar figures and ridership projections, so they can figure out how many votes each allocated transportation dollar is going to buy them on election day. Ask them to choose between a futuristic, environmentally-responsible alternative that will make a few hundred thousand voters happy every day, or a collection of freeway projects that will make ten million voters happy every day, and the freeway projects will win, hands down every time. In a democracy, votes are the only currency elected officials care about, and every decision they make is going to be driven by which alternative will win them the most new votes and lose them the fewest existing ones.


Well reading today's newspaper concerning the present conference held in Bali to curve carbon emissions, US may have to curve her ferocious appetite
for personal transportation since it looks as if PRC will also be signing in to the Post Kyoto Protocol carbon emission deduction program.

With world pressure and a face to save it's going to be difficult to say no again.

You know what you're talking about, very sad indeed..... most people couldn't give a flying "fk", but maybe that will change when congestion on the hwys/airports gets worse in places like JFK, LAX. If the economy goes south and america begins to loose its status as a world power something drastic will have to be done to regain foreign investment and to compete with new asian powers who are all investing in high speed transport solutions.

In a democracy, votes are the only currency elected officials care about, and every decision they make is going to be driven by which alternative will win them the most new votes and lose them the fewest existing ones.

Not so sure about this one. Seems that the freight rail industry and auto industry seem to be able to use that other currency really well...

Basically we drive everywhere you can get to in a couple hours, and fly everywhere else. Just the way it's done here....rail is a hard sell.

Most people I know fly everywhere. in 2005 the stats for the USA were:

Passengers flown: 745,700,000

Total flights: 11,000,000

The average distance flown by passengers in 2005 was a little less than 1,700 KM.

EU flights per year is also >700M, although that's not as much per capita. Rail is >350 billion passenger-kms.

Air (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2007/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2007_MONTH_01/7-19012007-EN-AP.PDF)
Rail (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2007/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2007_MONTH_01/7-29012007-EN-AP.PDF)
(2005)

I think conditions in Europe are much more in favour of HSR than they are in the US. Europe simply needs to have all the different modes of transport. If we had done it the American way, we would have had to pave half the continent with motorways and airports. Yes, a bit of an exaggeration, but not that far from the truth.

Not so sure about this one. Seems that the freight rail industry and auto industry seem to be able to use that other currency really well...

And you can always tell the voters you'll do one thing and then go do the exact opposite when they elect you :| Just remember to repeat the lies when it's election time again..

Oh, I was thinking about the super-fast ACELA... LOL
:lol:

LOL. The Acela is not High-speed.

As for the Southeast HSR whatever, hey...it's easier to walk gradually instead of rushing. If the demand for faster speeds comes, then it would be easier to incorporate it later. It's a step in the right direction.

when California does high speed rail then the rest of the country will follow suit with it

^^That all depends on whether or not California does it. Remember, the state is $10 billion in debt. It will be a very tough sell unless the state stops resting on its laurels and gets the budget fixed. The system is expected to pay for itself. How is it in other countries. Does it operate at a loss? If so, how much per year?

I support the increases to 110 mph.

It is not so much out of the fear that a more ambitious jump to 180+mph trains would backfire, but more so along the lines of gradual improvement.

If 180+ mph is approved, then that would be magical - I would support that too. Anything is better than the speed of 79 mph, which is about as fast as passenger trains went in the 1930s... under steam.

It's time to break the 70-year hiatus. Even the most marginal of speed increments would be a breath of fresh air.

The system is expected to pay for itself. How is it in other countries. Does it operate at a loss? If so, how much per year?

Japan is doing quite fine thank you, Tokaido Shinkansen been in black for the more than 35 years paying back all construction cost within 10 years from inauguration. Other lines are also making profit.

Some people needs to learn that trains when operated properly makes profit. :banana:

Other systems operate in profit, but one lesson is that systems should be built incrementally - the interest on the capital can otherwise be too large.

However I would warn you against taking a small step to 110mph. It will be another generation at least before you get the opportunity to improve that, and it just isn't fast enough to get people out of their cars, yet alone planes.

^^That all depends on whether or not California does it. Remember, the state is $10 billion in debt. It will be a very tough sell unless the state stops resting on its laurels and gets the budget fixed. The system is expected to pay for itself. How is it in other countries. Does it operate at a loss? If so, how much per year?Not in France, but it depends if you take in account the company, the company+state, the company+state+taxpayer you get different results! SNCF operate profit on all high speed lines.
BTW TGV traffic in France is smaller, eg for Eurostar it is 7 million per year. For all France there are:
~1500 km of high speed sections
~700 TGVs a day (-> 350,000 passengers a small day)
~average distance must be 500 km

The interest in regard with the car/plane is the time you win, but in the USA due to the extended cities and lengthy "security" procedures in railway and very slow and unreliable trains stations you lose a lot of time. Comfort is also better than plane or car, and can also be improved to drain passengers - Amtrack doesn't seem to be aware of it!

The main interest of train is for commuting daily in big urban areas and intercity between two close big cities. This requires a comprehensive med speed network (100-150 mph) that can be improved for long distances (400-800 miles) using high speed (150-200mph). So far this seems a small step but it is necessary to move on for further high speed developments.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

:rofl:

ZOMFGLOLZ!! That's the funniest thing I've ever heard!!! You're a comic genius!! LMFAO!!

:hahano:

"...The opposition comes from "true HSR's" unholy up-front capital costs relative to relatively few users. $15 billion buried Boston's main freeway, doubled its capacity, and directly benefits about a million people every day. That same $15 billion would have been enough to build roughly 300 miles of "True HSR" track at ~$50 million/mile. I don't think even the TGV has that many passengers per day. And this is a comparison of the most expensive road improvement project in America with the busiest HSR network in the world. A more "normal" road project (like rebuilding and widening 10-20 miles of a major urban freeway somewhere in America) would normally be about $500 million to $2 billion... enough for a whopping 10-40 miles of "True HSR" track. The freeway will typically have at least 200,000 users every day. How many daily riders will 10-40 miles of "True HSR" track generate above and beyond the number who would have used the train anyway if it were 110mph? ..."


Your figures are suspect. The Big Dig may benefit a million people each day, but your figures have to include others than those actually using the freeway and network to add up to one million. Maybe the coffeeshop barrista at the next offramp able to sell one more cup of coffee per hour??? Anyway, the busiest freeways in the world are probably in California... and none have average daily traffic over 350k or so. Nothing in the Boston region comes close to LA or SF Bay Area.

A check of online info indicates that the Central Artery average daily traffic is 158k vehicles. That's actually down from the elevated structure that was there before.... having an ADT of 163k.

Secondly, TGV does have numbers that are comparable. No, they are not at one million a day. But at 45 million a years (2003), average daily trips... probably weekdays... is in the vicinity of 150k per day. If it was not in 2003, then I am certain it would be today.

Your figures are suspect. The Big Dig may benefit a million people each day, but your figures have to include others than those actually using the freeway and network to add up to one million. Maybe the coffeeshop barrista at the next offramp able to sell one more cup of coffee per hour??? Anyway, the busiest freeways in the world are probably in California... and none have average daily traffic over 350k or so. Nothing in the Boston region comes close to LA or SF Bay Area.

A check of online info indicates that the Central Artery average daily traffic is 158k vehicles. That's actually down from the elevated structure that was there before.... having an ADT of 163k.

Secondly, TGV does have numbers that are comparable. No, they are not at one million a day. But at 45 million a years (2003), average daily trips... probably weekdays... is in the vicinity of 150k per day. If it was not in 2003, then I am certain it would be today.

As supplemental info., Tokaido Shinkansen's average daily ridership is 355K(F02) and yearly adds up to 130MM(F02) announced by JR Central.

http://jr-central.co.jp/eng.nsf/english/n-04-0408

Bottom line is: HSR is profitable.

Investment on a sensible route is paid back and in the black within 10-20 years, taking the examples of France and Japan. Incremental construction is probably required for this outcome.

Can I shed some light to that subject, first of all, maglev can turn tighter curves due to magnetic induced propulsion positioning the cart within the guideway.



Thanks for the info. As I've mentioned before on other threads, much of the reason why conventional trains do not run tighter curves is not because of the physics involved in keeping the stresses on the track down to tolerable levels, but health and safety imposing maximum lateral acceleration that will be experienced by the passengers. Basically we don't want the passengers' coffee splatting against the window when the train hits a corner.

Even if there are slight gain to be made by maglev technology there is absolutely no chance a maglev line designed for 250mph wont need to be as straight or straighter than a conventional line designed for current hsr speeds of 200mph. The argument that maglev cornering abilities will reduce engineering and land requisition costs I believe is false.

A train can super-elevate its tracks at a maximum of 6,5° (11,3 %) .
A transrapid maglev with 16° (28,7 %)
At cruising speed, the passenger doestn take notice of how much the train leans into the curve. But the effect is, that the maglev can make either tighter curves at the same speed than HSR or can drive through the same radii at higher speeds, with the same comfort for the passenger.
The problem with HSR is, that you cannot increase the cant angle, because in case of an emergency stop, the train would fall out of its rails.


This isn't correct. A train would not fall out of the rails until much higher cant than this whilst the train is stationary - obviously this depends on the particular design of train - but trains with under-slung motors would fare very well in this excercise. If the regulations state 6.5° , that means the maximum outward force on a curve at max speed (cant deficiency) is attained at this amount of lean, but the the same maximum amount of cant deficiency is acheived in the opposite direction (towards the inside of the curve) if the train were to stop on the curved, banked track. After all, if it's not safe to have hot drinks flying towards one window while the train is passing a banked curved section then it's not safe to have them falling towards the other window if the train came to a halt on that same section.

Thanks for the info. As I've mentioned before on other threads, much of the reason why conventional trains do not run tighter curves is not because of the physics involved in keeping the stresses on the track down to tolerable levels, but health and safety imposing maximum lateral acceleration that will be experienced by the passengers. Basically we don't want the passengers' coffee splatting against the window when the train hits a corner.

Even if there are slight gain to be made by maglev technology there is absolutely no chance a maglev line designed for 250mph wont need to be as straight or straighter than a conventional line designed for current hsr speeds of 200mph. The argument that maglev cornering abilities will reduce engineering and land requisition costs I believe is false.

No that is where you are wrong since a train with a fixed axle being able to negotiate turns is the differencial within the size from bottom to the edge of a wheel. With centrifugal force applied, the rim of the wheel is force to the edge further, with too much force the train risks derailment. So HSR needs either a large radius at high speed or needs to slow down at small radius turns. Tracks always have an inherit speed limit within design and trains that are heavier lowers that speed limit due to physics and trains that have tilting mechanism can negotiate tighter curves by moving the center of gravity, heightening the limit but never the less it is not limitless.
With maglev centrifugal force is some what offset through magnetic positioning within the guide system but there is still a limit.

^^If this were the case then the French 574km/h TGV would have wrecked the tracks or derailed. But it didn't.

^^If this were the case then the French 574km/h TGV would have wrecked the tracks or derailed. But it didn't.

That is because there was no turns within the test run.

Why are people so hell bent on using a relatively novel strategy on such an important corridor?

Plus, building a HSR line would allow for intermediate services to be offered, by allowing the high speed train to veer off the dedicated line onto the regular line.

:crazy2:

That is because there was no turns within the test run.

http://www.railpictures.net/images/images2/0/0702131137_JMF_Passavant-en-Argonne_PK195_544kmh_DSC_0037.jpg.10525.jpg

http://www.railpictures.net/images/0/0703291206_0341_TGV4402_pair_541kmh_Foucaucourt_PK201_JM_Frybourg-1.jpg.75448.jpg


Not exactly true.


The top picture was taken with the train at 338mph, the bottom 336mph. Does that look like very steep super-elevation to you?

This picture was taken with the train at 338mph. Does that look like very steep super-elevation to you?

Point taken but it doesn't mean it could clear the same point at over 500Km or if it was full with passangers adding extensive weight.
As you probably know weight is key component in centrifugal force.
Plus I hear the wheels were specially modified for this test run.

Actually it was loaded with passengers, technicians and measuring equipment on both decks. At this point *it is* doing over 500km/h.

The wheels were made bigger on the power car so as to reduce the necessary speed of the drive train and motors. You seem to be infering that doing so is somehow cheating.

Actually it was loaded with passengers, technicians and measuring equipment on both decks. At this point *it is* doing over 500km/h.

The wheels were made bigger on the power car so as to reduce the necessary speed of the drive train and motors. You seem to be infering that doing so is somehow cheating.


No it wasn't since I saw the footage film when the record happened. It was full of equipemnts but they were lighter than an average human.
The 500Km mark was not made on a curve either.
I'm not infering that they were cheating, I saying it is impossible to make tight curves at high speed and it becomes more difficult as weight becomes heavier and/or radius becomes smaller because of inherent limit within design of all rail/fixed axis wheels.

Fixed axis wheels do not make turns by steering because the distance between rails are fixed there by even trying to steer the axis will cause derailment.
Turns are negotiated by the differential of circumference within the inner and outer rim of the wheel, sliding the contact point between the rail and wheel from one side to the other makes it possible to turn curves.
A larger wheel can negotiate curve better because it can develop larger differentials within circumference of inner and outer rim.

We need new railroads for any real HSR to take place in the Northeast Corridor.

A lot of the tracks, especially in New York and Connecticut are simply at the end of the ropes, and have no potential to be upgraded further, IMO. Problem is, land in that area is incredibly expensive and NIMBYs are huge...remember, this is one of the most expensive areas in the nation.

Unlike in other regions of the US, the NEC isn't used for freight, and is used mostly by Amtrak and existing commuter rail. I think, to get the plan actually on the ball, it would cost billions. And that's a word that is like fucking kryptonite for some of the scumbag politicians in this neck of the woods. :ohno:

But, HSR is totally viable here...with the horrible air traffic here, I believe that if it's not doable in BosWash, it can't be done anywhere else in the US. It can be done, but it would take effort, money, and time.

No that is where you are wrong since a train with a fixed axle being able to negotiate turns is the differencial within the size from bottom to the edge of a wheel. With centrifugal force applied, the rim of the wheel is force to the edge further, with too much force the train risks derailment. So HSR needs either a large radius at high speed or needs to slow down at small radius turns. Tracks always have an inherit speed limit within design and trains that are heavier lowers that speed limit due to physics and trains that have tilting mechanism can negotiate tighter curves by moving the center of gravity, heightening the limit but never the less it is not limitless.
With maglev centrifugal force is some what offset through magnetic positioning within the guide system but there is still a limit.


No no no absolutely not. The APT, when in testing, was driven around a 40 mph corner at Dover at 90 mph, with the tilting mechamism locked in the wrong directin, to test it's stability, i.e. would it tip over. The engineers were not worried about the flange losing lateral traction with the railhead, just if it would tip over. It didn't, it was fine. The technical maximum of track and train are always much higher than limits imposed. That's mainly because the passengers don't wear seatbelts.

No no no absolutely not. The APT, when in testing, was driven around a 40 mph corner at Dover at 90 mph, with the tilting mechamism locked in the wrong directin, to test it's stability, i.e. would it tip over. The engineers were not worried about the flange losing lateral traction with the railhead, just if it would tip over. It didn't, it was fine. The technical maximum of track and train are always much higher than limits imposed. That's mainly because the passengers don't wear seatbelts.

Oh boy. :ohno:
What was the designed speed limit for that certain section where they conducted the test?
As a side note tilting mechanism only off set 5%~15% of the limit and are not designed to tip over.
Seatbelts has nothing to do with the speed limits imposed on track and I really want to know why you got that notion in the first place. :nuts:

Please study again how rail with fixed axle wheel negotiates curve since it is 101 train technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cant_deficiency

CD = gage_se / ( 1 + R^2 * g^2 / Vact^4)1/2 - super_el.


Where:
gage_se = guage - in this case 1511.03mm
R = Radius in m
g = 9.8 m/s^2
Vact = actual velocity
super_el = super elevation in mm
cd = cant deficincy measured in mm from the virticle axis at track level.

The minimum curve on LGV Est is 4000m so let's take that as R. (7 curves are only 3200m). Let's take a hypothetical, and assume there is no banking on this track, so super_el = 0, and let's assume the train is travelling at 300 kph (88.33 m/s^2)

The equation gives as a cant deficiency of 93.4mm, which is inside the 100mm max for an LGV (as per French policy on LGVs), and well within the 150+mm max in the USA and the rest of France's network. And that's with no super elevation.

At the minimum radii of 3200m which only exist a few times on the LGV est, wihout cant super elvation the cant deficiency is 115mm, just over French policy for LGVs, but well under the technically allowed max in France, and well under again the safe maximum. It is generally considered that the cant deficiency needs to approach the rail (so that on the curve the vector of lateral accelration points towards the outside rail) before there is any danger of the train losing contact or balance endangering the vehicle. Though this varies considerably with the way the load is contained within the vehicle, the cant deficiency to achieve this is about 750mm, or 6-7 times more than the calculation shows. And even then there could be super elevation up to 100mm, enabling even higher speeds on the LGV Est. So then, why on earth do the French build their lines so unecessarily straight?

BECAUSE ITS MORE CONFORTABLE.

Forget the nonsense about maglev going round corners better. Engineers don't even take conventional trains ANYWHERE NEAR their technical limit so just drop it.

No it wasn't since I saw the footage film when the record happened. It was full of equipemnts but they were lighter than an average human.
The 500Km mark was not made on a curve either.


Let me remind you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJfDWtbioEM

Obviously the people (and equipment) onboard this train and the corners it goes around at over 500km/h are figments of my imagination.

Fixed axis wheels do not make turns by steering because the distance between rails are fixed there by even trying to steer the axis will cause derailment.
Turns are negotiated by the differential of circumference within the inner and outer rim of the wheel, sliding the contact point between the rail and wheel from one side to the other makes it possible to turn curves.
A larger wheel can negotiate curve better because it can develop larger differentials within circumference of inner and outer rim.

I know how a train wheel works, thanks.


The maglev "following a highway" claim is a myth. As you can see here, even pushed to the extreme, TGV is perfectly safe and stable on a regular track at 350mph / 570km/h.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cant_deficiency

CD = gage_se / ( 1 + R^2 * g^2 / Vact^4)1/2 - super_el.


Where:
gage_se = guage - in this case 1511.03mm
R = Radius in m
g = 9.8 m/s^2
Vact = actual velocity
super_el = super elevation in mm
cd = cant deficincy measured in mm from the virticle axis at track level.

The minimum curve on LGV Est is 4000m so let's take that as R. (7 curves are only 3200m). Let's take a hypothetical, and assume there is no banking on this track, so super_el = 0, and let's assume the train is travelling at 300 kph (88.33 m/s^2)

The equation gives as a cant deficiency of 93.4mm, which is inside the 100mm max for an LGV (as per French policy on LGVs), and well within the 150+mm max in the USA and the rest of France's network. And that's with no super elevation.

At the minimum radii of 3200m which only exist a few times on the LGV est, wihout cant super elvation the cant deficiency is 115mm, just over French policy for LGVs, but well under the technically allowed max in France, and well under again the safe maximum. It is generally considered that the cant deficiency needs to approach the rail (so that on the curve the vector of lateral accelration points towards the outside rail) before there is any danger of the train losing contact or balance endangering the vehicle. Though this varies considerably with the way the load is contained within the vehicle, the cant deficiency to achieve this is about 750mm, or 6-7 times more than the calculation shows. And even then there could be super elevation up to 100mm, enabling even higher speeds on the LGV Est. So then, why on earth do the French build their lines so unecessarily straight?

BECAUSE ITS MORE CONFORTABLE.

Forget the nonsense about maglev going round corners better. Engineers don't even take conventional trains ANYWHERE NEAR their technical limit so just drop it.

I was going through your posting concerning cant deficiency trying to understand what you wanted me to comprehend, in simple physics term cant deficiency is inertia generated through centripetal acceleration.
This means your are being pulled sideways away from the center of curve.
This can be compensated by superelevating the inner and outer rails by creating an right angle against the bank making a smoother ride.
This however does not desolve the additional load (force*weight) created by centripetal acceleration to the rails.

Here is an excerpt concerning the whole subject concerning derailment.

The true derailment risk at high cant deficiency comes from the fact the vehicle attempts to push the track out from under itself. The safety issue is closely related to track buckling. High-speed trains may encounter speed restrictions during extremely hot weather. Greater track longitudinal forces due to temperature and greater net axle lateral forces due to cant deficiency increase the risk of track buckling.

The critical value is the net axle lateral load. In Europe, the limit is defined by the Prud’homme formula. Track lateral strength is defined by a constant term and a term linearly dependent on axle load. Relative to axle load, maximum track strength is obtained at low axle loads. Tilting vehicles intended for high cant deficiency thus have comparatively low axle loads, on the order of 15 tons to 20 tons maximum per axle. The current U.S. standard is solely proportional to axle load. However, current discussions and research findings will probably move the U.S. to adopt a limit similar in form to the Prud’homme formula.


Link for full text (http://www.interfacejournal.com/features/09-05/cant/1.html).

Here is a report concerning Prud’homme formula. (http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/22000/22600/22628/errishft.pdf)

One side note, your figure was wrong concerning speed per second and I did not understand the equation since the unit was not formatted properly. Why is gauge represented in mm while other figures are represented in meter?

I have calculated the G force generated through centripetal acceleration for reference.
Lateral component (g)
speed 300 500
radius
2000 0.35 0.98
2500 0.28 0.78
3200 0.22 0.61
4000 0.18 0.49

Combined force(g)
speed 300 500
radius
2000 1.06 1.4
2500 1.04 1.27
3200 1.02 1.17
4000 1.02 1.11

Multiplying the weight of a cart becomes load.
Safety margin is usually 15~25% of maximum load.

I was going through your posting concerning cant deficiency trying to understand what you wanted me to comprehend, in simple physics term cant deficiency is inertia generated through centripetal acceleration.
This means your are being pulled sideways away from the center of curve.
This can be compensated by superelevating the inner and outer rails by creating an right angle against the bank making a smoother ride.
This however does not desolve the additional load (force*weight) created by centripetal acceleration to the rails.

Yes, you've followed up to there. What you're still not getting is that the limits imposed by the rail authorities regarding cant deficiency, or centripetal acceleration, is NOT governed by safety, but by comfort. The comfort maximum is a fraction of the safe maximum. A TGV will go down an LGV track at near enough the speed of sound before centripetal acceleration causes the train to derail. (Current suspension would probably cause the train to bounce off the track at that speed even on the straight anyway so it's irrelevent.)

Here is an excerpt concerning the whole subject concerning derailment.



Link for full text (http://www.interfacejournal.com/features/09-05/cant/1.html).

Here is a report concerning Prud’homme formula. (http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/22000/22600/22628/errishft.pdf)

One side note, your figure was wrong concerning speed per second and I did not understand the equation since the unit was not formatted properly. Why is gauge represented in mm while other figures are represented in meter?

Tell me about it - I got it from Wikipedia and it took me half an hour to decipher it. Formatted better it's

CD = (gage_se / ( 1 + (R^2 * g^2) / Vact^4)1/2) - super_el

But like 33Hz I know exactly how a conventional wheel / rail system works. Any current train that adheres to UK rail certification standards could quite easily throw any standing passengers over and/or splatting against the window before it would destabilize.

Yes, you've followed up to there. What you're still not getting is that the limits imposed by the rail authorities regarding cant deficiency, or centripetal acceleration, is NOT governed by safety, but by comfort. The comfort maximum is a fraction of the safe maximum. A TGV will go down an LGV track at near enough the speed of sound before centripetal acceleration causes the train to derail. (Current suspension would probably cause the train to bounce off the track at that speed even on the straight anyway so it's irrelevent.)

Tell me about it - I got it from Wikipedia and it took me half an hour to decipher it. Formatted better it's

CD = (gage_se / ( 1 + (R^2 * g^2) / Vact^4)1/2) - super_el

But like 33Hz I know exactly how a conventional wheel / rail system works. Any current train that adheres to UK rail certification standards could quite easily throw any standing passengers over and/or splatting against the window before it would destabilize.

I see want you're saying but your are missing two factors as written within the link I provided.
One, cant deficiency addresses the possibility of derailment concerning the differencial of attack angle in the front axle and rear axle of the cart.

Second and major factor is that force generated through centripetal acceleration is the major factor to derailment and as you can see within the cant deficiency equation it does not address mass or weight of the train so it's irrelevent to what I am talking about.

One question concerning the equation, where did the trigonometric value disappear ?
Since centripetal acceleration is a lateral component independent from the vertical component(g), I don't understand why g is included within the equation without a trigonmatric value.
Am I missing something?

reroute track in-land in CT to hartford --> PVD-->Boston. More rural there. Highspeed all the way!! Track could parallel interstate between danbury and Hartford, comming into NYC via the westchester line (metro north). No other way to upgrade CT track due to coastal towns and nimbies.

Indeed the first TGV line had made an ROI of 15% after its first decade.

In terms of ridership, a TGV line can handle a train every 3 minutes (and some are at capacity). With typical a maximum of 1200 passengers per train, then over a 16 hour day, the line would carry 768000 passengers if used fully.

There is a load of useful stuff on this here: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=595477

reroute track in-land in CT to hartford --> PVD-->Boston. More rural there. Highspeed all the way!! Track could parallel interstate between danbury and Hartford, comming into NYC via the westchester line (metro north). No other way to upgrade CT track due to coastal towns and nimbies.

Tunnels?

too expensive.

Two proposals

1) Track follows I-684 to danbury, waterbury, hartfrd, providence, boston.

2) Follow Merrit PKWAY to New Haven..then Hartford, PVD, Boston.

Lots of open forest land along the route, low density. Cheaper to build a true HSR - shorter time even though longer route.

Which illustrates why "true HSR" would have hemorrhaged cash in Florida -- the HSR "Vision Plan" called for one train each way PER HOUR. Spending billions of dollars to build a HSR line from scratch, just so you can run one train per hour, is absolute madness. There is no sane justification for building a brand new HSR line just to run one train per hour on it. It also illustrates why 110mph ISR "baby steps" make more sense in most parts of America right now. Most people agree that the demand is there for one train per hour. Maybe even two, during peak travel periods. But even in the NEC, you'd be hard-pressed to fill a full-length HSR train leaving Grand Central Station every 3-6 minutes, even at 5pm. I don't even think New York and DC's subways run every 3 minutes... so the theoretical carrying capacity of a HSR line is largely moot.

With service that infrequent, you could LITERALLY run 180mph trains on a single track, with double-tracked stations, and passing trains would barely even notice each other's presence if the schedulers and dispatchers were "on the ball" and timed them to both arrive at some station along the way within a minute or two of each other. It's also a major reason why grade crossings aren't a huge problem for 110mph trains... if you only have one per hour, the gates are only going down twice per hour at any given road crossing, and the whole thing (from first flashing light to rising gate after the train blows past in 5 or 6 seconds) will probably take less time than most of the red lights in Orlando.

Whats the current progress on the 110mph train in Florida -- it seems all talk no action. I don't see why a tilting train couldn't work in Florida - would brand new tracks be needed for a tiltin train at 125mph? Or just upgrades to existing tracks? The Jet train would be a good step foward

Which illustrates why "true HSR" would have hemorrhaged cash in Florida -- the HSR "Vision Plan" called for one train each way PER HOUR. Spending billions of dollars to build a HSR line from scratch, just so you can run one train per hour, is absolute madness. There is no sane justification for building a brand new HSR line just to run one train per hour on it. It also illustrates why 110mph ISR "baby steps" make more sense in most parts of America right now. Most people agree that the demand is there for one train per hour. Maybe even two, during peak travel periods. But even in the NEC, you'd be hard-pressed to fill a full-length HSR train leaving Grand Central Station every 3-6 minutes, even at 5pm. I don't even think New York and DC's subways run every 3 minutes... so the theoretical carrying capacity of a HSR line is largely moot.

Firstly, this is an extreme illustration of what a line can carry - not what it needs to break even. Secondly, the service pattern doesn't need to be A to B - the HSR lines in Europe are the backbone used by services starting from and going to a multitude of destinations at each end.




With service that infrequent, you could LITERALLY run 180mph trains on a single track, with double-tracked stations, and passing trains would barely even notice each other's presence if the schedulers and dispatchers were "on the ball" and timed them to both arrive at some station along the way within a minute or two of each other.

This is exactly what is being proposed for lines in several developing world countries


It's also a major reason why grade crossings aren't a huge problem for 110mph trains... if you only have one per hour, the gates are only going down twice per hour at any given road crossing, and the whole thing (from first flashing light to rising gate after the train blows past in 5 or 6 seconds) will probably take less time than most of the red lights in Orlando.

That's may be, but it doesn't seem to stop people running the lights in many other states where the frequencies are just as low.

One, cant deficiency addresses the possibility of derailment concerning the differencial of attack angle in the front axle and rear axle of the cart.

Cant deficiency doesn't address this. Cant deficiency applies to any cornering movement, including cars, planes and maglev - none of which can possibly derail. It is normally measured in degrees, though for a fixed curve and fixed gauge railway track it can happily be given as a distance from the centre of the track.

Second and major factor is that force generated through centripetal acceleration is the major factor to derailment and as you can see within the cant deficiency equation it does not address mass or weight of the train so it's irrelevent to what I am talking about.

As above, cant deficiency isn't about this. Mass won't affect the value of cant deificiency - the centripetal acceleration is dictated by the velocity and the track curvature. The Prud'homme formula is about track movement, progressively over long periods of time, causing safety problem. If the track was built on a 5 metre deep block of steel that absolutely wouldnt move under any circumstances, this analysis would not help us to understand the speed at which the train could be predicted to derail from a curve on it.

One question concerning the equation, where did the trigonometric value disappear ?
Since centripetal acceleration is a lateral component independent from the vertical component(g), I don't understand why g is included within the equation without a trigonmatric value.
Am I missing something?

I don't see why a trigonometric function would be required - centripetal acceleration is uniform around a constant radius curve.
Gravity is a compenent of the resulting vector. A proportion of the acceleration due to gravity will be deflected by the track inwards, varying with the angle of the the track's banking. Since this again is a constant independent of speed or position on the curve or radius of the curve I see no reason for a kind of trigonometric function.

In order to model how a train may derail due to high cant defiency we would need to know the mass of the train, the center of gravity, virticle and lateral wheel/rail reaction vectors and a pretty good knowledge of the suspension system which would introduce a few things aswell. We would find out that in most circumstances the train would effectively topple over, leaning over to the point where the wheel is at quite an angle to the track, and can slide over it. Cant deficincy would increase as this point is reached, but the the height and mass of the vehicle are the determining factors - a 100 ton 1 meter high vehicle would have far less trouble than a 5 ton 20 meter high one - yet they wold both experience the same cant deificency at the same speed.

Trains in service in the uk that use tilt technology have a cant defiency of over 10 degrees over many curves. Thats because the cant defiency experieced by the passengers is reduced to under 4 degrees by the vehicle body tilting 5 degrees. But this doesn't alter the physics between the track and train.

Cant deficiency doesn't address this. Cant deficiency applies to any cornering movement, including cars, planes and maglev - none of which can possibly derail. It is normally measured in degrees, though for a fixed curve and fixed gauge railway track it can happily be given as a distance from the centre of the track.

You should read links which are provided.

Wheelset angles of attack decrease with increased cant deficiency. The diagram at the top right of Figure 7 shows the usual curving orientation of a truck at balance speed. The leading axle takes an angle of attack and the trailing axle takes a near-radial position. The bottom right diagram shows the curving orientation at high cant deficiency. In this condition, the leading axle moves into a radial position (the angle of attack decreases) while the trailing axle goes to an over radial position. This has important consequences in terms of derailment safety.
http://www.interfacejournal.com/features/09-05/cant/Figure_7_400.gif


This is the point I was talking about in the first place.

I don't see why a trigonometric function would be required - centripetal acceleration is uniform around a constant radius curve.
Gravity is a compenent of the resulting vector. A proportion of the acceleration due to gravity will be deflected by the track inwards, varying with the angle of the the track's banking. Since this again is a constant independent of speed or position on the curve or radius of the curve I see no reason for a kind of trigonometric function.

Gravity is a vertical component, which has no influence to lateral centripetal acceleration. Gravity is not a resulting vector, inertia is. Inertia is represented as m/t^2 (acceleration). I did not understand why gravity is included within this equation to obtain a figure that is suppose to be independent from effect of gravity in the first place.
Trigonometric function is needed to combine lateral component, centripetal acceleration with vertical component, gravity to gain combined force in order to compensate superelevation.


In order to model how a train may derail due to high cant defiency we would need to know the mass of the train, the center of gravity, virticle and lateral wheel/rail reaction vectors and a pretty good knowledge of the suspension system which would introduce a few things aswell. We would find out that in most circumstances the train would effectively topple over, leaning over to the point where the wheel is at quite an angle to the track, and can slide over it. Cant deficincy would increase as this point is reached, but the the height and mass of the vehicle are the determining factors - a 100 ton 1 meter high vehicle would have far less trouble than a 5 ton 20 meter high one - yet they wold both experience the same cant deificency at the same speed.

Actually your missing an important factor which is lateral load limit of the rail. Other factor would be heat deformation rate of rail.
Again read the link I have provided.
Simply put heavy load(regardless of height and/or center of gravity) at high speed at steep curves destroys rails resulting to derailment.

Whats the current progress on the 110mph train in Florida -- it seems all talk no action.
At the moment, FDOT's preoccupied with getting CSX's freight operations relocated from the JAX-Orlando segment to the JAX-Auburndale segment (that runs through Ocala) to clear the way for FDOT's purchase of the CSX tracks for Orlando's commuter rail, which will also be used by future intercity trains. They have to get that done first, because the tracks through Orlando will be expensive to buy (comparatively speaking... it's still a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of trying to ram a brand new rail corridor through the area), and by officially justifying it as a "commuter rail" project, they can get the federal government to pay a big chunk of its purchase and improvement costs.

Basically, FDOT's strategy is to make sure that their plan is so financially bulletproof, not even Wendell Cox will be able to find an opportunity for it to lose money. The upside is that it means that their eventual success is nearly assured (the legislature won't vote against it if it won't lose money). The downside is that it's going to take about a decade to make it happen, because they have to take advantage of every possible opportunity to get the federal government to buy corridors for them since that's going to be their largest single cost. They already own WPB to Miami. They'll own Kissimmee to DeLand fairly soon. From that point, DeLand to Jacksonville will be cheap (since it'll be almost completely devoid of commercial value). So will Auburndale to West Palm Beach (it costs CSX more money to maintain it than they actually make from all their operations on it). That leaves Tampa to Kissimmee as the only expensive segment left. If push came to shove, they could launch phase 1 with only Miami to Orlando service (Miami-Orlando would probably take in enough passenger revenue to pay its own costs, even without Miami-Tampa and Tampa-Orlando), and use its objective success to sell the Tampa segment to the legislature a year or two later (since its total cost would be a fraction of the original Miami-Orlando segment's costs, and would more or less double the service's ridership by adding Miami-Tampa and Tampa-Orlando).

In other words, you aren't going to see FDOT boldly calling for the state to indiscriminately throw money at them and "build the future." They're going to show up at the capitol building quietly, business plan in hand, accountants in tow, and sell them on an incremental plan with minimal financial risk to the state that's likely to be popular with voters and tourists alike. And re-emphasize a few hundred times that it'll be cheap, and won't require perpetual subsidies. It won't make the HSR firebrands happy, but it will get us frequent, fast, and reliable rail service in a few years -- probably long before ANYONE in America successfully launches "true" HSR for revenue service.

That's may be, but it doesn't seem to stop people running the lights in many other states where the frequencies are just as low.
Which is why FDOT built concrete barricades in the median at crossings in Fort Lauderdale... so people can't try to drive around the lowered gates. They also modified the traffic lights where there's a light "just beyond" a crossing, so that there are now two lights... the one "before" the tracks turns red a few seconds before the one "after" the tracks, to minimize the likelihood of a daydreaming driver getting stuck on the tracks by gridlocked traffic. And when a train IS approaching, the traffic lights "before" the tracks turn red when the gates go down, but the lights "after" them stay green for an extended period of time to clear the area between the tracks and second light. Remember... Americans who'll ignore a train signal are still conditioned from birth to regard a red traffic light as sacred. Even at 4am, in the middle of the Everglades, with no other cars in sight, Americans will still sit at a red traffic light for 2 minutes waiting for it to turn green.

You should read links which are provided.
This is the point I was talking about in the first place.

The discussion is centering around the possibility of maglev going round a tighter corner than conventional rail. The links you are providing discuss how a train might derail, and what the loads are. But this is much like discussing how a jumbo jet's wings might fare if the pilot started doing dive-bomb manouvres - it wouldn't have much relevence to normal in-service performance statistics, because a pilot wouldn't be allowed to push the plane that far as it wouldn't make for a very confortable ride.

Gravity is a vertical component, which has no influence to lateral centripetal acceleration. Gravity is not a resulting vector, inertia is. Inertia is represented as m/t^2 (acceleration). I did not understand why gravity is included within this equation to obtain a figure that is suppose to be independent from effect of gravity in the first place.
Trigonometric function is needed to combine lateral component, centripetal acceleration with vertical component, gravity to gain combined force in order to compensate superelevation.

No gravity doesn't have any effect on the centripetal acceleration. That's not what I said. Unless gravity is acting on a body that is resting on a completely flat surface, it is responsible for a lateral force on the body due to the slope deflecting the effect of gravity. If a ball rolls down a hill is gravity not responsible for the sideways element of the balls motion, aswell as it's virticle descent?

I don't quite understand the issue with the equation - if you would notate how you think it should appear instead it may help.

Actually your missing an important factor which is lateral load limit of the rail. Other factor would be heat deformation rate of rail.
Again read the link I have provided.
Simply put heavy load(regardless of height and/or center of gravity) at high speed at steep curves destroys rails resulting to derailment.

I did read the link but I found it irrelevent to discussion. Technical failure happens at speeds way above the maximum speeds permitted by what is effectively a 'comfort' policy the rail regulators. As people are the same people whether they be in a maglev or a conventional train I see no reason why it would be permissable to fling people round corners more in one mode of transport than another. I must stress again that trains can go round corners a lot faster than they are allowed, and this restriction is not a safety-critical one. It obviously would have implications for maintenance which must be the consideration for the lower tolerances on the LGVs, in addition to the comfort.

ridiculous - disgusting that it takes 10 years to implement slow rail in the biggest economy in the world -- What a long, drawn out process you described. Its ludicrous. Sounds like something a third world nation would be doing.

Just think of it as old-money frugality, vs nouveau-riche extravagance. Third-world countries feel like they have to prove to others that they're worthy of respect. America yawns, then acts amused when everyone else pretends to be sleepy and ready to go to bed just so they can be like us, too. :D

Just think of it as not being able to see the wood for the trees. See it as old-money arrogance that an idea they didn't have can't be any good because they didn't have it, ignoring all the countries around the world that have deployed the idea to very great effect. Whilst France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea develop the next stage in the 21st century golden age of rail, America yawns, feels a bit asleepy as it suffocates under the clouds of it's own monoxide - blissfully unaware of the the rest of the world's decreasing reliance on the one remaining superpower to lead the way in any form of technology. The USA is the definition of nouveau-riche.

Amtrak sucks, the government won't pay for neccessary rail improvements, and the current lines are conjested. The government is more interested in building airports that building short links between cities. The freeways are getting to the end of their useful life. In my city, there was a freeway that was just upgraded. The first time since 1937. Short regional links like Chicago-Indianapolis and the like need high speed rail. The Acela is not true HSR, it rarely goes over 125 mph. Amtrak charges way too much for a trip also. Charlotte-Atlanta is probably one of the worst HSR lines to build. Many segments are being upgraded to 110 mph, though.

IMHO, Charlotte-Atlanta is a perfect example of a GOOD route for 110mph ISR. It doesn't have anywhere near the market to sustain HSR yet... but almost certainly has enough of a market to sustain a much cheaper ISR line.

France didn't build the TGV just for the hell of it, or because they thought it would be an impressive, forward-looking thing to do. They built it because their existing passenger rail network was saturated to the breaking point, and desperately needed HSR's increased capacity. If France's domestic passenger rail network in the 1960s/1970s were like America's is today, they probably wouldn't have built the TGV, either.

Let's suppose that someone decided to throw caution to the wind, and build a multi-billion dollar HSR line someplace besides the NEC or (maybe) California. Say, if Indiana were to build a no-compromise HSR line from Indianapolis to Gary (hoping Illinois would eventually continue it to Chicago, but deciding to build their part anyway -- possibly, justifying it by propping it up with lots of feelgood buzzwords about how it will "stimulate Gary's economic recovery" and other BS). I think everyone can agree that a HSR line linking only Indianapolis and Gary would be a miserable failure of scope and magnitude rarely seen anywhere outside North Korea. It would consume a huge chunk of Indiana's transportation budget, and contribute almost nothing useful to the daily lives of the state's taxpayers. Worse, its failure would be used to argue against other proposed HSR lines. Highly-visible failure has a way of doing that.

Now, let's suppose instead that they got neighboring states to cooprate and launch 110mph service between Indianapolis and St Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Detroit, and (of course) Chicago. All things considered, Indiana's share of the cost to build ALL of those lines for 110mph would probably be about the same as what they'd spend on a True HSR line to Gary. Which do YOU think would be more genuinely useful to people on a daily basis?

It's an extreme example, but it illustrates an important point. Right now, American passenger rail is practically nonexistent. If someone builds a HSR line, it really WILL be almost like the Indianapolis-Gary example -- alone, without anything resembling a network of regional trains to augment it, probably linking two cities that aren't even far enough apart to be WORTH bothering with the train instead of just driving (< 100 miles). Like the crazy Tampa-Orlando HSR line almost did. And such a HSR line will fail miserably and spectacularly, because such a line should have never been built as HSR to begin with. Before you can do handstands on a skateboard, you have to learn to stand on one first. Otherwise, you'll just get hurt, and be laughed at afterwards. Whether or not America's passenger rail network should have been allowed to degrade to its current nadir is besides the point. It was, and it did. Going forward, burning billions on expensive projects that exist in isolation of one another without the supporting network of regional rail service it really needs to succeed would be a terrible mistake.

First of all what will be the comparison for construction cost between ISR and HSR?
What will be the best guess estimate projection of ridership between gary and Indianapolis with in 10 years, 20 years and 30 years regardless of speed?
What is going to be the frequency?
How about net traveling time(check-in and security clearance time, traveling time to and from airport, delay,etc.) compared with air?
How about price?
Without answering these questions, I think your hypothesis is meaningless, just trying to justify your own thoughts.

You can extrapolate estimated travel figures with present ones and see the trend to give a best guess projection.

How about construction costs?

If you're going to build from scratch, the cost difference is not going to be that significant between ISR and HSR.

Construction cost and/or ridership doesn't have to be at par with present expectation as long as it meets mid/long term goals and would be foolish and a waste if it reaches it's limit with just short term demand.
If you are going to build something from scratch then might as well build something with scalability to meet growing demand for at least 20~30 years.

I see your point about France in the 70s Miamicanes, but it doesn't lead to any conclusions. Why was France's rail network in need of increased capacity? Because France was a highly industrialised nation with an excellent (by worldwide standars) integrated railway network. If France were to have been like the USA now it would have to have had a completely different transport approach for the preceeding 50 years. But even then that doesn't mean that the French wouldn't suddenly adopt a different approach. It's not the current state of transport that leaves the USA paralysed to do anything. I would suggest a deeply entrenched relationship with oil at every level from car consumer up to oil-rich government over the past 100 years has left a stubborn infrastructural and social blind-spot with public transport.

There is also no need to increment rail speeds up slowly - take Spain. Their railways up until the 80s were basically rubbish. Now they're building one of the largest HSR networks in the world, and what has opened so far has been a runaway success.

Spain's also doing it because they have the EU throwing money at them by the fistfull. If the feds showed up in Tallahassee and asked, "Will you build HSR throughout Florida if we pay 95% of the cost? Here's 10 billion to get you started...", it would be quite sane and rational for Florida to do the same. The overwhelming majority of the funding for HSR in Spain isn't coming from Spanish taxpayers. It's basically "manna from heaven" (or Brussels, as the case may be).

Also, the point of 110mph is that it doesn't require building a brand new track that's 100% grade-separated every inch of the way before the first train carrying passengers can run. Throwing down a new track in an existing rail corridor through relatively flat countryside (or someplace hilly that HAS an existing flat trackbed where a track used to be 30 years ago) costs about $1-3 million per mile. And you don't have to do a single damn environmental impact study first, nor can NIMBYs stop it, because it can all be built as of right. An old railroad was "there" long before someone decided to build $3 million estate homes and a golf course next to it, and has more vested and grandfathered rights than Walt Disney World (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCID), courtesy of some old-but-still-on-the-books laws passed by Congress at the behest of the 19th-century railroad barons. The elimination of the need to do those studies, and fight NIMBYs alone, reduces many of the startup costs and time a brand new line would have to bear.

Spain's also doing it because they have the EU throwing money at them by the fistfull.


This is true...over the last 20 years just about everything thats been built in Spain has been paid for by other EU countries tax payers, its been the same in Ireland.

This is coming to an end though, as money switches to the poorer eastern countries.

Spain's also doing it because they have the EU throwing money at them by the fistfull. If the feds showed up in Tallahassee and asked, "Will you build HSR throughout Florida if we pay 95% of the cost? Here's 10 billion to get you started...", it would be quite sane and rational for Florida to do the same. The overwhelming majority of the funding for HSR in Spain isn't coming from Spanish taxpayers. It's basically "manna from heaven" (or Brussels, as the case may be).
95%? Are you crazy? EU funding is around 33% in the three new HS-lines that will be opened soon. In the future it will decrease a lot to become net payers in 2013 due to the entry of the EE-countries. That's the way the EU works.

It's all about priorities. 45% of the Spanish infraestructure budget in 2005-2020 will be spent in railways.

Major train lines should e grade seperated, especially in urbanized areas. Amtrak should try to improve all train lines to 110, but there is too much conjestion and delays on the current system. You have to remember most of the rail in the US is single track.

Major train lines should e grade seperated, especially in urbanized areas.
Yes, they should. But if you make it a non-negotiable baseline prerequisite to having service at all, you'll never be able to make a business case for passenger rail anywhere in the US. Right now, today, there just aren't many potential passenger rail corridors that could economically sustain more than one or two trains per hour at their busiest peak service. That's just not enough to justify the incredible cost of elevating every single road crossing over them.

While you don't want passenger trains sitting behind mile-long coal trains, you don't have to banish every trace of them to have a viable rail line. For a tiny fraction of what it would cost to build a brand new rail network from scratch, you can triple-track an existing corridor, and still give the freight trains their own track (with the only real interaction being places where the freight trains cross the passenger tracks to get to a yard on one side or the other of the passenger pair).

In many parts of the US, there are LOTS of rail corridors with only a few trains per day. The railroad (and its users to whom one or two of those trains per week might be their business' lifeline) won't give them up entirely without a fight, because they can spend another half-century wringing the equity out of them by neglecting maintenance and running the trains slower and slower. However, most of them would be DELIGHTED to let someone else pay to throw down another track or two & maintain them to passenger standards at their own expense, as long as they can still use them for their own trains as well. Where railroads get obstinate is sharing a single track with passenger trains (for obvious legal liability and logistics reasons). The moment a state offers to double-track a disused corridor and assume its future maintenance costs, freight railroads almost always become enthusiastic partners, because it lets them have their cake and eat it too.

It's a mistake to make perfection the enemy of good. There are lots of rail corridors where 110mph passenger service would make financial sense, but HSR would be cost-prohibitive. Getting to 110mph is relatively cheap, and will help re-establish the market for higher-speed rail travel so that HSR can someday make its own business case, just like the TGV did in France. It's also worth noting that Spain didn't just pull HSR out of a magic hat, either... it had fast, frequent ISR trains filled with passengers running across the country long before the first True HSR™ service was launched there.

France didn't build the TGV just for the hell of it, or because they thought it would be an impressive, forward-looking thing to do. They built it because their existing passenger rail network was saturated to the breaking point, and desperately needed HSR's increased capacity. If France's domestic passenger rail network in the 1960s/1970s were like America's is today, they probably wouldn't have built the TGV, either.

If saturation of existing rail lines had been the only reason to build a new railway line between Paris and Lyon, I think they would have chosen a more modest solution instead of building a high-speed line. While it is true that congestion on the classic PLM line urgently required new infrastructure, it was indead a "forward-looking" thought of how "impressive" a high-speed train would be not just for actual but especially for potential passengers that led to this particular solution in that context. It's not just about taking a definite amount of people from A to B. In fact most of the later high-speed lines have been built not because of saturation on existing lines but because the existing infrastructure was just not good enough to generate the same expansive economic effects as high-speed lines.

That being said, I don't doubt that there are just a few corridors in the United States that would justify 250-350 Km/h dedicated high-speed lines, and that 160 or 177 Km/h diesel trains on existing tracks would make more sense economically in many other cases. But that analysis shouldn't be made just upon actual or current traffic figures, but also focussing on high-speed trains' potential to generate more traffic in a very efficient and economically productive way.

France had two problems... lack of capacity, and lack of room within the existing corridors to build more tracks. They had to build a brand new corridor regardless of whether or not it was high-speed. With that expensive decision carved in stone and settled, the decision to go HSR was fairly straightforward. It meant they could get away with a narrower corridor, since each track could carry more trains per hour. Analysis of the business market for intercity air travel drove the ultimate decision to go 180mph instead of 150, but from that point it wasn't a huge leap. It was more a case of, "Oh, merde! This is going to cost a fortune! Is there anything we can do to drum up enough new riders to help pay for its astronomical cost, so the voters won't crucify us in the next general election?"

That's a scenario that doesn't exist in ANY existing passenger rail corridor in America right now. Low speeds on the NEC are due to curve radii and political infighting. If Amtrak wanted to double the number of trains running between New York and Washington, and they had enough trains and employees to do it with, they could double the number of trains they have running between New York and DC tomorrow, and have plenty of track capacity left to spare. That's wasn't a serious option in France.

I maintain, bring on the 110mph trains in the US, and the market for HSR will arrive on its own, eventually. When the time is right, voters won't balk at the cost of HSR, any more than they balk at the cost of 16-laning a gridlocked freeway, or building a new mile-long suspension bridge that'll cut 15 minutes or more from their drive to and from work every day. Ironically, it probably won't be the NEC. Instead, it'll probably be California, probably followed by Texas or Florida. Maybe Virginia. Why? Too many states have their hands in the NEC cookie jar. The first states to really do HSR will be ones that are big enough to go at it alone. Or *maybe* do it with the cooperation of one adjacent state (say, Washington & Oregon, Indiana & Illinois, North & South Carolina, etc). I don't envy the job of the future person who has to try and get New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut to agree on anything...

according to the following new study:

http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/project...rwg-report.pdf

It will take until 2050 for florida

Spain's also doing it because they have the EU throwing money at them by the fistfull. [...] The overwhelming majority of the funding for HSR in Spain isn't coming from Spanish taxpayers. It's basically "manna from heaven" (or Brussels, as the case may be).
Laughably factually incorrect.

[...]. Throwing down a new track in an existing rail corridor through relatively flat countryside (or someplace hilly that HAS an existing flat trackbed where a track used to be 30 years ago) costs about $1-3 million per mile.
Laughably factually incorrect.

And you don't have to do a single damn environmental impact study first, nor can NIMBYs stop it, because it can all be built as of right.
Laughably factually incorrect.

[...] The elimination of the need to do those studies, and fight NIMBYs alone, reduces many of the startup costs and time a brand new line would have to bear.
Laughably factually incorrect.

Have you considered a job in US transportation planning?
You appear to have all the qualifications!

France had two problems... lack of capacity, and lack of room within the existing corridors to build more tracks. They had to build a brand new corridor regardless of whether or not it was high-speed.

Again, it is true that the construction of a new line, "regardless" of whether it would be high-speed or not, was based on the saturation of the existing network. The decision to build the new infrastructure as a high-speed line, however, was not. Instead, high-speed was chosen because of its huge potential and positive effects on the economy. And this last reason has later shown to be sufficient and independent from the former one to justify the construction of further high-speed lines. Today the saturation of existing rail lines is not considered to be a sine qua non condition for the construction of parallel new high-speed lines. It is rather decided upon economic reasonings and perspectives than on the basis of operational saturation.

With that expensive decision carved in stone and settled, the decision to go HSR was fairly straightforward. It meant they could get away with a narrower corridor, since each track could carry more trains per hour. Analysis of the business market for intercity air travel drove the ultimate decision to go 180mph instead of 150, but from that point it wasn't a huge leap. It was more a case of, "Oh, merde! This is going to cost a fortune! Is there anything we can do to drum up enough new riders to help pay for its astronomical cost, so the voters won't crucify us in the next general election?"

The costs of choosing a commercial top speed of (initially) 260 Km/h instead of the 160 to 200 Km/h of the PLM can hardly be described as a small leap. Building a new line is always expensive, but the cost can easily double if different track characteristics (like broader curves and more bridges, new catenary and signalling systems, special high-speed switches, etc.) and more research and development are necessary. So it's hard to believe they opted for a new high-speed line with purpose-developed technologies instead of a cheaper new conventional 160 to 200 Km/h line relying on existing techincal resources just to "sweeten" the deal for tax payers.

That's a scenario that doesn't exist in ANY existing passenger rail corridor in America right now. Low speeds on the NEC are due to curve radii and political infighting. If Amtrak wanted to double the number of trains running between New York and Washington, and they had enough trains and employees to do it with, they could double the number of trains they have running between New York and DC tomorrow, and have plenty of track capacity left to spare. That's wasn't a serious option in France.

The saturation "scenario" you describe didn't exist in most of the later high-speed developments in Europe either. In most cases the authorities didn't wait for anyone or anything else to create a "market for HSR" than HSR itself. Increased travel (and thus economic ties) between different cities and regions was seen as a (very desirable) result of high-speed rail, not the other way around. Of course in each particular case there may be additional reasons for these investments. I also don't doubt that there are enough corridors in the United States that already are "markets for HSR" and which should have some kind of priority over smaller markets with potential.

Quote:
Originally Posted by miamicanes View Post
[...]. Throwing down a new track in an existing rail corridor through relatively flat countryside (or someplace hilly that HAS an existing flat trackbed where a track used to be 30 years ago) costs about $1-3 million per mile.

Laughably factually incorrect.
Bullshit. Even in Miami, FDOT only spent ~$3 million per mile in hard costs to build Tri-Rail's second track alongside the rehabbed original one in the corridor they already own. You'll notice I specifically limited the scope to relatively flat countryside, or someplace hilly that has an existing unused flat trackbed... neither of which is the case in California, as was conceded several months ago.

Read back a few posts, and you'll notice that I've been shockingly tolerant of California's HSR proposal (at least, the part between LA and San Francisco, at a cost of $12 billion or less). I do, however, reserve the right to question the sanity of spending another $8-12 billion on top of that just to add San Diego and Sacramento.


Quote:
Originally Posted by miamicanes View Post
And you don't have to do a single damn environmental impact study first, nor can NIMBYs stop it, because it can all be built as of right.

Laughably factually incorrect.
No it's not. The feds might require an EIS as a condition of receiving federal funding, but a state with its own money (or a private railroad pursuing the matter on its own) can do anything legal within the scope of its operation as a railroad within its right of way. In Florida, a railroad can even condemn and acquire property from adjacent property owners by eminent domain if it so chooses. As far as I know, there aren't even any limits to that power -- they don't even have to show that it's for a public purpose, or anything directly related to running trains. In theory, CSX could condemn and acquire land next to their tracks for purely speculative real estate development. The law is vague, and its absolute limits have never been tested in court. It's likely that the law would be quickly changed if they ever abused it that way... but they'd still get to enjoy the benefit of that one-time abuse, because laws can't be retroactively changed.

The discussion is centering around the possibility of maglev going round a tighter corner than conventional rail. The links you are providing discuss how a train might derail, and what the loads are. But this is much like discussing how a jumbo jet's wings might fare if the pilot started doing dive-bomb manouvres - it wouldn't have much relevence to normal in-service performance statistics, because a pilot wouldn't be allowed to push the plane that far as it wouldn't make for a very confortable ride.　

I give up on the equation concerning cant deficiency since the more I look at it, the more it does not make sense to me.

Anyways we have the figures for centripetal force which I posted eariler and I think that is all we need in terms of whether a maglev can go around in tighter curves than conventional rail which is Yes.

Let's look at the figures;

Lateral component (g)
speed 300 500
radius
2000 0.35 0.98
2500 0.28 0.78
3200 0.22 0.61
4000 0.18 0.49


As you can see at radius of 4000m at the speed of 500Km the lateral force is about 0.5g that means half the weight of the train will be pushing aside of the rail.
Going through specs. I found that the engine cart weighs around 60 tonnes and a full rolling stock weighs between 385 and 750 tonnes depending on the equipment type.
Steel is resilient against compression so vertical limit is much higher but how about the stakes that keeps the rail in place?
What is the lateral force limit for these tracks?
How about the wheel?

The same centripetal force is applied on maglev as well but Maglevs works on the principle of magnetic attraction-repellent.
Japanese Maglev propulsion coils are applied on the vertical wall of the guide way so whether it is pulled or pushed the force goes vertically into the walls.
The coils can be anchored to the wall with more strength than a stake using various methods making the whole system resilient. On top, the maglev engines are more lighter since the coil for the motor is attached on the wall and not within the engine.

Anyways we have the figures for centripetal force which I posted eariler and I think that is all we need in terms of whether a maglev can go around in tighter curves than conventional rail which is Yes.

You're still not getting my point and you're still not understanding that I know how conventional rail works and I know how maglev works and have done for decades. Yes, Maglev can go around corners faster than conventional rail. On the LGV Est alignment Maglev could probably do over 1000kph against a probable maximum of 700 kph for conventional train.

Yet the maximum speed for comfort due to centripetal forces is limited to 350kph on this line. So it's a pointless conversation, seeing as both technologies easily obtain unusable performance on this stretch of line.

So it goes back to the original point. Why are LGV lines as straight as they are?

COMFORT.

Are people on maglevs somehow physically different from people on conventional trains?

NO.

Therefore, the operational minimum radius of curve for a given speed is governed not by the choice of technology but by choices in comfort for the passengers, effectively making maglev and conventional train EQUAL.

So, Maglevs won't go around corners tighter than conventional train, even though they can.

You're still not getting my point and you're still not understanding that I know how conventional rail works and I know how maglev works and have done for decades. Yes, Maglev can go around corners faster than conventional rail. On the LGV Est alignment Maglev could probably do over 1000kph against a probable maximum of 700 kph for conventional train.



Now we are moving from the realm of the improbable to the impossible.:ohno:

Let's see now, centripetal force a object moving at 700Km in a curve with a radius of 4000m is a whopping 0.96G that's almost the full weight of the engine pushing on side of the rail.
Even if it was somehow able to manage that feat, E=mv^2/2 meaning the engine will have to be twice as strong at the same weight of a engine with a maximum limit of 500Km(without any consideration of air resistance).:nuts:
There is also the consideration of loss in traction between rail and wheel with accumulated velocity.
700km with conventional train for passanger transit?
Yeah, dream on.

Back on topic please -- which routes do you think could be doable through CT?

Call me crazy (and you probably will), but couldn't this be bundled as a part of a bunch of expressway improvements? Stick one in the middle of the Merritt and Wilbur Creek Parkways, improving the geometrics a bit (if possible). A spur would serve Bridgeport and New Haven for regional traffic. At I-91, take that up to Hartford for another major stop (being NYC, Hartford, Worcester and Boston). Transfer to I-84 and I-90 near Worcester, taking that all the way in to Boston after stopping in Worcester, shifting off into local infrastructure near the city.

Only problem is RI gets screwed, and that I don't know how expressway widenings would go over there (though it wouldn't be capacity enhancing, necessarily).

This proposal wouldn't work in a number of fronts:

There isn't enough of a commuter rail infrastructure in the first place to support HSR. In virtually every country that has HSR, there is ample local rail, inter-city rail, and express services as well. It is only then that HSR can be added to already successful services and then succeed financially. Putting in HSR into the US where there isn't anywhere near the kind of ridership for it, would be disaster, as people would still be taking airplanes or driving.

You need to get to HSR stations somehow. Without the necessary infrastructure to connect the stations to the cities, it's pointless. Yes I recognize that NYC has a great system, but outside of NYC, even the best of the other cities aren't THAT great with mass transit. The fact is, in basically every other country, there are amazing connections between HSR and virtually every other form of mass transit that goes everywhere.

If you only relied on downtown->downtown travel for your HSR, you'd be targeting a much, much smaller demographic than the airlines, and it would just not be economically feasible. So again, without a network in place, it's pointless.

HSR is not generally a commuter service. It's for long-distance travel which can compete with an airplane for shorter distances if implemented correctly with well placed stations and good connections. There is absolutely no way a maglev line would have enough capacity to allow 'bedroom communities' hundreds of miles away. It just doesn't work like that, the capacity and high price will definitely not be there to support that sort of proposal.

Now we are moving from the realm of the improbable to the impossible.:ohno:
Focus on the point in hand - you are confusing yourself with irrelevent information. You're arguing maglev can go round corners tighter and faster than conventional trains. Blithering on about the technical requirements for a hypothetical proposition that has no effect on the argument in hand is distracting and unhelpful.
Let's see now, centripetal force a object moving at 700Km in a curve with a radius of 4000m is a whopping 0.96G that's almost the full weight of the engine pushing on side of the rail.
Even if it was somehow able to manage that feat, E=mv^2/2 meaning the engine will have to be twice as strong at the same weight of a engine with a maximum limit of 500Km(without any consideration of air resistance).:nuts:
There is also the consideration of loss in traction between rail and wheel with accumulated velocity.
700km with conventional train for passanger transit?
Yeah, dream on.

I haven't said that a train could be built that could go that fast, I haven't said that it would be possible for passengers to be transported at that speed using conventional rail. It was a hypothetical concentrating solely on cornering forces to illustrate the redundency of the technical abilities of maglev. I give up.

The proof will be in 50 years time when no maglev has been built that corners so tightly the passengers fall over.

Take this engineering disucssion elsewhere -- back on topic please!!

Back on topic please -- which routes do you think could be doable through CT?
Looking at population densities, it would probably makes sense via Hartford. then from Hartford straight to Providence. It is less densely populated than the corridor hugging the Atlantic coast.
http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/figures/1476-072X-5-59-2.jpg

Back on topic please -- which routes do you think could be doable through CT?
Looking at population densities, it would probably makes sense via Hartford. then from Hartford straight to Providence. It is less densely populated than the corridor hugging the Atlantic coast.

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/d/d3/Connecticut_population_map.png

I think bypassing the coast and routing the line up through danbury to hartford would be even better...the route up to New Haven is too slow/congested and there is nowhere to build new tracks. It could follow the interstate up to hartford from NY

I suggest a route bypassing Connecticut altogether. Instead the track would use existing rights of way on Long Island from Long Island City Station to Greenport. This single track has a few curves that would need to be straightened and it must be made into double track, at least. Between Greenport and Westerly, Rhode Island a long bridge or tunnel must be constructed. At Westerly, the new track rejoins the existing NEC.

Advantages:
This track passes mostly through areas that are less built up, so land is less expensive and fewer people will be disturbed than if realigning the existing NEC in Connecticut. The track mostly exists already, so I imagine there are few legal issues. It is also a shorter, more direct route. There is also the possibility of more and faster local services to New York for residents along the track.

bridge/tunnel would be too expensive

I suggest a route bypassing Connecticut altogether. Instead the track would use existing rights of way on Long Island from Long Island City Station to Greenport. This single track has a few curves that would need to be straightened and it must be made into double track, at least. Between Greenport and Westerly, Rhode Island a long bridge or tunnel must be constructed. At Westerly, the new track rejoins the existing NEC.

Advantages:
This track passes mostly through areas that are less built up, so land is less expensive and fewer people will be disturbed than if realigning the existing NEC in Connecticut. The track mostly exists already, so I imagine there are few legal issues. It is also a shorter, more direct route. There is also the possibility of more and faster local services to New York for residents along the track.
Connecticut is an integral part of the NEC, and there is much synergy and traffic between suburban headquarters in Connecticut and the heart of Manhattan. You simply cannot just cut it off.

Low speeds on the NEC are due to curve radii and political infighting.
...
I maintain, bring on the 110mph trains in the US, and the market for HSR will arrive on its own, eventually.
I agree with the second point but for the first I have a good exemple that shows curve radii are not the only problem.

I have a very little experience of the train in the US, one example was an Ann Arbor-Chicago trip. The line is not straight but the main problem is the total lack
-maintenance, we had to slow down for technical reasons and do a couple of mile at 15mph.
-of investment in comfortable trains. It wasn't bad but trains can be made much, much more comfortable than car or plane. Ours was noisy and honking all the time. What should be a seeling argment became the opposite.
-investment in upgraded tracks. This (this is a very personal opinion) should be partly payed for by the states like the roads. Of course you can't go faster than 60 mph if you have no electric barriers and no bridge for crossing and old rails, bad signalling and unsufficient overtaking spots. And the line was not electrified but that's a minor point.

I would suggest a deeply entrenched relationship with oil at every level from car consumer up to oil-rich government over the past 100 years has left a stubborn infrastructural and social blind-spot with public transport.I think it is also cultural. Simply because americans take more seldom the train I guess they see less the interest in investing in it.
And besides of course, the republicans hate Amtrack! (I am not 100% sure but it seems true given their lack of support).

There is also no need to increment rail speeds up slowly - take Spain. Their railways up until the 80s were basically rubbish. Now they're building one of the largest HSR networks in the world, and what has opened so far has been a runaway success.Yes but Spain had to build new tracks since they were wide gauge, ie 1.54m instead of 1.44 (not sure about the figures though).

But Spain is a Mountainous country : If they can do it all the HSR projects int the plains in the us are much more easily doable.

^^ Maybe the EU should fund HSR in the US? That would be funny!

The reason why there isn't HSR in the USA is because of its very low population density and the size of the country. The big cities are dotted all over the place... it just doesn't make sense apart from the north east of the country between Washington, New York and Boston.

Maybe but it's not Mongolia. It's too simple to say the population density isn't high enough - it does after all have 100-lane wide motorways all over the place, to me that's indicitive of a need for HSR. I can think of four areas; NEC, Detoit-Chicago area, Texas, and California.

Detroit and Chicago are as far apart as Paris - Lyon. Toronto is the same distance east of Detroit. In fact Chicago - Detroit - Toronto is the same distance as Paris - Lyon -Marseille, about 450 miles.
San Diego - LA - San Francisco is a little bit further, but still prime HSR distances, with the population density to support it.

I would say it's as much, if not more to do with poor supporting infrastructure (ie connecting railways/bus routes etc), lack of political will, general fear of railways (the last one may not be true!), and that Americans don't (yet) want to get out of their automobiles.

Don't think of the US being low density - think of the US in terms of coridors and states. NJ is dense, as dense or denser than a small euro country. Texas is growing, and will have nearly 50 million by 2050. California will have 50million people by 2040. California is perfect place for HSR - with its growing population and its large areas of low flat farm land in between the population centers.

Other areas include the midwest hub - chicago (9 million) - st louis - detroit - minn. - Indy. Florida, which is growing at a fast pace - Miami - Orlando - Tampa.

So, density is no argument against HSR. You can't look at the entire country density - you must look at certain corridor density.

The reason why there isn't HSR in the USA is because of its very low population density and the size of the country. The big cities are dotted all over the place... it just doesn't make sense apart from the north east of the country between Washington, New York and Boston.
No. There's no HSR in the US because of insufficient funding and political will.

No. There's no HSR in the US because of insufficient funding and political will.

Isn't it also about how american cities is constructed (New York and mabye other cities not included) - A wery small central business district and an enormous sprawl surrounding it, i.e. a structure not suitable for public transport and particular rail. Why build HSR between CBD's when people want's to go from "arbitrary" sprawl area 1 to "arbitrary" sprawl area 2. Where are people going to park their cars downtown?! :) The airport position within the sprawl is as good as the CBD, offer plenty of parking, and the plane goes 900 km/h.

This is about opposite paradigms, the car/plane won in the US and is now inherit US cities and regions. Changing this will cost, and mabye it's not worth it?

^ Yes many cities were designed with dense cores and outside of that it gets less dense, and outside of the city limits it gets suburban style.

Isn't it also about how american cities is constructed (New York and mabye other cities not included) - A wery small central business district and an enormous sprawl surrounding it, i.e. a structure not suitable for public transport and particular rail. Why build HSR between CBD's when people want's to go from "arbitrary" sprawl area 1 to "arbitrary" sprawl area 2. Where are people going to park their cars downtown?! :) The airport position within the sprawl is as good as the CBD, offer plenty of parking, and the plane goes 900 km/h.

This is about opposite paradigms, the car/plane won in the US and is now inherit US cities and regions. Changing this will cost, and mabye it's not worth it?
No. There's no HSR as of yet because of two functions only.... insufficient funding and political will.

However, as you say, there are arguments against HSR. You named one that is probably commonly spoken to among naysayers.

I'd argue that there are probably a handful of corridors where HSR would be very effecient here in the US... the Northeaster corridor, California (San diego-LosAngeles-Central Valley-San Francisco) to name a couple. There may be others too.

I doubt very much there is sufficient rider demand to crisscross the US! Rider trips that are 300-500 miles (approximately) compete very well with air travel. Rider trips covering longer distances on trains, even HSR trains, would simply take too long to be competitive with air travel. And there certainly are not that many tourists or persons scared of planes that would make those HSR trains crossing middle america financially feasible.

110mph is a good speed for travelling within states. Whoever called this "disgusting" should grow up and look at this in context.

The trouble with HSR and America is that your average American is not aware of what HSR can achieve. There is a perception of long distance train travel as something backpackers or the retired do for leisure. I can't imagine Americans, who have become so accustomed to flying, following Europeans and sleeping overnight on a train in order to get a business meeting the next morning.

If the masses of Americans wanted HSR you can be certain the politicians would do something about it. The US government is very reactive to public ("media") opinion.

From my own experience, here in Britain we want HSR. We look with envy at our European counterparts. We upgrade a line to 125mph and build a small new one at 200mph and sell it with bells and whistles whilst France and Germany storm way ahead. To have all our lines 110mph would in my view be a dream. What's holding us back? Part money, part geography and part the complex and (perhaps) overly democratic processes involved in building railways.

110mph is a step in the right direction of improving speed. Some on here shouldn't be so arrogant however and assume that railways are the right direction for transportation in the US. It's geography and population sparsity are vastly different from the Europe.

Connecticut is an integral part of the NEC, and there is much synergy and traffic between suburban headquarters in Connecticut and the heart of Manhattan. You simply cannot just cut it off.

I did not say that traffic would cease through Connecticut. My idea is that local trains (that stop at intermediate stations) would continue along the present tracks in Connecticut. Express trains would take the shorter, faster new route through Long Island.

bridge/tunnel would be too expensive

Three tunnels or bridges of maybe 3+13+5=21 km plus another 30 km of new tracks is certainly expensive, but it must be compared to straightening out the track curves along 200 km of heavily populated Connecticut coastline, which is probably even more expensive and accomplishes less.

I think an inland route would help. Most of the rail in inland Connecticut is north-south however. So a new line would need to be built probably from Danbury, Waterbury, to Hartford. This could connect with the NEC in one of the coastal cities.

Just improving the New Haven-Springfield line may help too. Electrifying it would be start. :|

Looking at population densities, it would probably makes sense via Hartford. then from Hartford straight to Providence. It is less densely populated than the corridor hugging the Atlantic coast.
http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/figures/1476-072X-5-59-2.jpg


:bash::bash::nuts::nuts::nuts:


Nice map, but in a region that 90% white I doubt the black male population over aged 20 is relevent here. Did you even bother to attempt to see what your map displays??

Well, it somewhat is a replica of the population density here. That was the main point.

...and Connecticut is definitely not 90% White.

Back on topic please -- which routes do you think could be doable through CT?
I hope someone reads this, but one thing here is the need for 2 addtional tracks that keep Freight on their own tracks. now as to the route, the current route is fine until you get to New London, then it follows the shoreline and here is when it needs to branch off and follow I-95 once it leaves Groton,CT it should go over a new Railline bridge that crosses the Thames River and connect back up just after you cross the Connecticut River. The curve going in and out Groton & New London requires the train to go only 30 mph. While fixing this sections they could also do major I-95 improvements to better handle current and future traffic.

:bash:I think an inland route would help. Most of the rail in inland Connecticut is north-south however. So a new line would need to be built probably from Danbury, Waterbury, to Hartford. This could connect with the NEC in one of the coastal cities.

Just improving the New Haven-Springfield line may help too. Electrifying it would be start. :|
Maybe a route that went from Worcester MBTA stop and somehow followed I-84 to Hartford and on down to New Haven would be good. Otherwise it would need to run from Worcester MBTA to Springfield and then a run that went to Hartford to New Haven. But New England as a whole needs better mass transit all over. In Connecticut you have I-84, I-91, I-95, I-395, Route 15 and Route 2, traffic with people having to drive their cars to and from work because there is no other choices. A total solution to our troubles with traffic will take good planning, lots of $$ and political will that so far the USA has very little of. The highway lobbyist will come out of the wood work and say negative things about the solutions and the people suggesting it, so they can protect their huge highway contracts. But none of this matters if we keep sending jobs and our $$ out of this country faster then it is coming in.

:bash::bash::nuts::nuts::nuts:


Nice map, but in a region that 90% white I doubt the black male population over aged 20 is relevent here. Did you even bother to attempt to see what your map displays??


Well, it somewhat is a replica of the population density here. That was the main point.

...and Connecticut is definitely not 90% White.
:hi:

Not sure if this is the right place to post this but here's a quick sketch of how high-speed rail in Canada and the US could be built... preferably in a somewhat integrated fashion :)

Google Map link (http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=42.439674,-75.9375&spn=7.24662,14.941406&t=p&z=6&om=0&msid=105767409706846287324.0004443e4457505750374)

Not sure if this is the right place to post this but here's a quick sketch of how high-speed rail in Canada and the US could be built... preferably in a somewhat integrated fashion :)

Google Map link (http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=42.439674,-75.9375&spn=7.24662,14.941406&t=p&z=6&om=0&msid=105767409706846287324.0004443e4457505750374)
Interesting proposal, but:

(1) Northern and Western New York have extremely difficult terrain. It would perhaps be only marginally more expensive to simply build more direct lines that branch from Albany (i.e., NYC-Albany-Toronto; NYC-Albany-Montreal)

(2) Any proposal would involve political suicide in New York State without a good connection between economically depressed upstate with the motor of the NYS economy, Downstate NY including the NYC metropolitan area. So, the NYC-Albany-Toronto direct route would obviously go through Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.

(3) I think that building a connector from the main north east corridor to the NYC-Albany line would allow for, albeit not the most directly route, to have high speed trains go between Boston and Montreal

(a) Boston and Montreal via Albany would be about 3 hours to cover a distance of about 450 miles assuming an average speed of 150 miles per hour which should be reasonable with a designated route of HSR.

Interesting proposal, but:

(3) I think that building a connector from the main north east corridor to the NYC-Albany line would allow for, albeit not the most directly route, to have high speed trains go between Boston and Montreal


That was the first thing I thought looking at the map. If the Boston branch headed straight west to the NY-Canada line, it would add at most 20 minutes, if that, with the obvious benefit of having Boston - Canada services.

I wondered that when plotting the line... I chose to take the more southerly route on the understanding that Boston-NYC traffic would be much higher than Boston-Montreal.

I wondered that when plotting the line... I chose to take the more southerly route on the understanding that Boston-NYC traffic would be much higher than Boston-Montreal.
I don't think perhaps they need to be the same grade, in order to save costs. I agree that Boston and New York would have MUCH more traffic than Boston and Montreal.

But, the way you save costs is that you have a dedicated 320 kph line between Boston and New York via Hartford. From Hartford, you would then have a mixed-traffic 240 kph line that connects with the 320 kph line from New York City to Montreal via Albany.

Overall it was a good attempt. How do you do that with Googlemaps by the way, that was great!

:bash:
Maybe a route that went from Worcester MBTA stop and somehow followed I-84 to Hartford and on down to New Haven would be good. Otherwise it would need to run from Worcester MBTA to Springfield and then a run that went to Hartford to New Haven. But New England as a whole needs better mass transit all over. In Connecticut you have I-84, I-91, I-95, I-395, Route 15 and Route 2, traffic with people having to drive their cars to and from work because there is no other choices. A total solution to our troubles with traffic will take good planning, lots of $$ and political will that so far the USA has very little of. The highway lobbyist will come out of the wood work and say negative things about the solutions and the people suggesting it, so they can protect their huge highway contracts. But none of this matters if we keep sending jobs and our $$ out of this country faster then it is coming in.


Unless the DOT has the balls to build a totally new railroad, the best thing to do is to improve and electrify the railroad between New Haven and Springfield, and then on to Worcester like you said. That way, Hartford would be connected to the MTA and MBTA. I don't think that it would cost much...a spur line to Bradley Intl Airport is entirely possible as well.

A few shots I grabbed while waiting for my train this morning at Carroll Avenue in Michigan City, Indiana:

http://robertpence.com/south_shore/20080122-001.jpg

http://robertpence.com/south_shore/20080122-004.jpg

http://robertpence.com/south_shore/20080122-005.jpg

Nice Pic

Is it just me, or does that train have an amazing number of pantographs?

Nice shots by the way! :)

I don't think perhaps they need to be the same grade, in order to save costs. I agree that Boston and New York would have MUCH more traffic than Boston and Montreal.

But, the way you save costs is that you have a dedicated 320 kph line between Boston and New York via Hartford. From Hartford, you would then have a mixed-traffic 240 kph line that connects with the 320 kph line from New York City to Montreal via Albany.

Overall it was a good attempt. How do you do that with Googlemaps by the way, that was great!

That's a good point about mixed levels of service. Other lines could be electrified/upgraded to cut off corners.

Making maps on Google is easy now: click on "My Maps" and select lines, points or areas and play around :nuts:

Is it just me, or does that train have an amazing number of pantographs?

Nice shots by the way! :)

Two per car; one for each direction of operation. Each car has a control cab, and they're used in married pairs for bi-directional operation. In operation, they always use the pantograph at the forward end.

Most of the cars are powered (1500V DC), but there are some trailers. The trailers have pantographs, too, for heat/air conditioning and lights.

The railroad's web site is here (www.nictd.com).

Unless the DOT has the balls to build a totally new railroad, the best thing to do is to improve and electrify the railroad between New Haven and Springfield, and then on to Worcester like you said. That way, Hartford would be connected to the MTA and MBTA. I don't think that it would cost much...a spur line to Bradley Intl Airport is entirely possible as well.

Well, the best thing to do is to convince a state to do some upgrades on their section. That's the only way Amtrak upgrades have happened so far.

Two per car; one for each direction of operation. Each car has a control cab, and they're used in married pairs for bi-directional operation. In operation, they always use the pantograph at the forward end.

Most of the cars are powered (1500V DC), but there are some trailers. The trailers have pantographs, too, for heat/air conditioning and lights.

The railroad's web site is here (www.nictd.com).

Heh, this cars look like from some kind of fantasy movie :) Mars train.

Two per car; one for each direction of operation. Each car has a control cab, and they're used in married pairs for bi-directional operation. In operation, they always use the pantograph at the forward end.

Most of the cars are powered (1500V DC), but there are some trailers. The trailers have pantographs, too, for heat/air conditioning and lights.

The railroad's web site is here (www.nictd.com).

The thing is that most EMU's in Europe only have 1 pantograph for the whole train, sometimes more if made up of multiple EMU's so it looks strange to see so many on one train.

The thing is that most EMU's in Europe only have 1 pantograph for the whole train, sometimes more if made up of multiple EMU's so it looks strange to see so many on one train.

That's the difference. These are multiple EMUs. They'll operate train lengths anywhere from two to ten cars, depending on the route segment and time of day/passenger loading. They can't operate single cars because the cars only have control cabs in one end, and the railroad doesn't have any place I know of where they can turn a car or train around - no wyes or turntables.

I don't know why they have to have separate pantographs for eastbound or westbound operation, though.

I don't know why they have to have separate pantographs for eastbound or westbound operation, though.

I'm quite sure they only need one but have the second as a spare. These things also create lots of sparks, which can damage roof equipment located right behind. Therefore, when having two pantographs so close to each other, it's usually safer to use the latter one.

I love those pictures! You wouldn't see our track gangs working in that weather.

I love those pictures! You wouldn't see our track gangs working in that weather.

Probably because Brisbane doesn't get that kind of weather (you lucky things) :lol:

The state is funding the commuter rail to Springfield, on Amtrak-used rail. We will have commuter rail by 2010-11. I believe that it will be improved as well, but I have not heard anything about electrification. A few politicians (including the mayor of Hartford) are pushing HSR, with a spur link to the airport.

As for the rail from Springfield to Worcester, I have heard extending it, but there are no concrete plans. But that's in Massachusetts, a state with a more transit-friendly government. It would be a no-brainer to extend MBTA there, IMO.

Can you believe it, the so called HSR for the SE USA - DC-->Charlotte is going to be 110mph top speed? And that may not even happen at all!!! HAHAHAHA, is this some kind of a joke. :ohno: Why don't americans understand what HSR is? Are they that parochial, do they not look beyond their borders? HSR is greater than 150mph. Also, its disgusting that even this lametable 110mph speed train may not happen due to anti-rail, pro-highway idiots and scumbags who are stuck in the past and think rail is for old people or for romantic journeys only. This country needs to wake up. I can't wait for oil to rise, then these people will be singing a different tune!! haha, what creeps!!

If you dare google it, search for HSR south east USA -- prepare to be disgusted.If its any comfort you can always be more disgusted by the danish railway system - all speeds reduced from 110 to 75 mph because of bad tracks.

silly thread. Simple check with wikipedia will tell you that offical designation of high speed rail travel in the United States is > 90mph.

just another my gun is bigger than youurs jealousy contest. Defination in the EU is 124mph. In China is >180km/h

the last 50 years have seen America and Americans become extremely wealthy. with this wealth, americans have become very complacent in their consumption to the point where there are glaring inefficiencies in every aspect of their economy and transportation network. being as resourceful as they are, once the US reaches its "breaking point," you will begin to see more Americans coming to their senses. theyve already reached that point with regard to their use of SUVs and soon enough there will be a change when it comes to seeing high speed rail implemented more widely throughout the country. there will not be an LA-NYC rail line (for the same reason that European business will not travel by rail between Leeds and Milan), but proper high speed rail lines between major cities in areas such as the North East in the next 30 years is not very far fetched at all.

I am very surpirsed that your powers-that-be will not build high speed rail. I guess it is hard ask to build rail infrastructure when flights are so cheap and the support infrastructure is already in place.

Few points here.

The political will IS the key problem, no two ways about it. Miamicanes is trying to argue against it, but he's fighting a losing battle. Flying is a pain in the neck. I know that quite well, especially after 9/11 and the security paranoia that has followed. HSR costs money to build and a lot of it, but its not unfeasible. The reality is that the US federal government alone spends more than $2.5 TRILLION every year. You gonna tell me you cannot ram a bit of that through to help your country's future? Infrastructure problems are endemic in the US, because its expensive and doesn't buy votes. Traffic is a massive problem here, and as others point out, it's just easier to build more roads and airports than to try and get people to use rail lines. This is the same country that when France was building the TGV had most of its rail officials calling for the outright death of passenger rail in North America.

Fixing that is gonna be hard. The last major whack to Americans' habits was when the energy crisis hit in 1973-74. The problem is that people tend to go back to their old habits. So, in order to move people from planes and cars to trains you need to make it a more attractive alternative. 110 mph is not gonna cut it, because Amtrak can do 80 and yet never does, because the freight railways own the tracks and they have been jammed with traffic for a decade. The only way to get the railways to work is to build new right of way - and building one for 110 is often little if any cheaper than building one for 180+, so the point of the medium-speed systems is completely non-existent. It makes no sense.

The NEC has got no issues with freight traffic, since freight movements have been all but banned from the NEC since the Colonial wreck in January 1987. The problem there is that the NEC frequently has trains that cannot move as fast as the Acela can (The Acela is good for 180 miles an hour, but rarely shows it) and there is too many crossings and the curves are too tight. That can be fixed, but costs money.

Other areas include the midwest hub - chicago (9 million) - st louis - detroit - minn. - Indy. Florida, which is growing at a fast pace - Miami - Orlando - Tampa.

So, density is no argument against HSR. You can't look at the entire country density - you must look at certain corridor density.

The hardest issue is that we already have thousands of flights across these regions every day. It's hard to get people to invest in high speed rail when we already have all these highways and airplanes. People are use to them, and they get you where you want to go. People really don't want to spend billions of dollars to connect cities like Minn. to Milwaukee to Chicago to St. Louis with high speed rail. Unless you're traveling between two of them that are directly connected and close - you're just going to take a quick flight from city to city.

For instance Chicago and St. Louis have direct flights daily for $60 that run at least once an hour from before dawn to well into the night. The distance is around 475KM and takes one hour by plane.

I'm not saying I don't agree with you, but there's more to it than all Americans and our government are completely stupid (ok, maybe the government is). I don't own a car, so I just fly everywhere, but I'd certainly take a train if there was one, and it was roughly as quick as flying. The key word is "if".

Most any city in America with more than 75,000 people will have an airport with commercial flights.

I'm from a very rural area in Iowa, and I fly back from Chicago to Cedar Rapids a few times a year (if I don't rent a car). The distance is 340KM, and it takes around 40 minutes in a plane. The city with the airport is only 175,000 in the urban area, but they still operate almost 100 takeoffs/landing every day to 11 different cities around the country. This is a decent amount of service for a small municipal airport in a rural area, last year they saw over 1,000,000 passengers.

We'd have to spend billions of dollars to upgrade the rail infrastructure, and we also see MASSIVE amount of rail freight in the country. We have hundreds of thousands of KM of rail in place, but most of it is very clogged with freight trains. You'd have to build new track to safely move the high speed trains around the freight trains. This is going to cost a ton, and take up land already in use for farms/cities, etc.

USA railroads move over 4 times as much freight as all railroad companies in Western Europe combined. It's very difficult to throw more passanger trains on those already clogged lines. The freight rail in this country has really exploded as the passenger rail greatly diminished. Currently there's not enough room to put all those trains back on the lines, and people are happy with flying - so it's a very difficult issue to confront.

We want our highways built with public funds and have no tolls, but we want our rail to be private and self-sufficient.

Anyone else laugh at the idiocy of John Q. American?

Billion passenger KM's in 2006:

European Union: 371.27
United States: 22.5

Billion-tonne KM in 2006 for rail freight:

United States: 2840,1
European Union: 382,7

Billion passenger KM's in 2006:

European Union: 371.27
United States: 22.5

Billion-tonne KM in 2006 for rail freight:

United States: 2840,1
European Union: 382,7
HSR does not (typically) include freight. ;)

I am very surpirsed that your powers-that-be will not build high speed rail. I guess it is hard ask to build rail infrastructure when flights are so cheap and the support infrastructure is already in place.

no, its hard to build high speed anything when your airlines give so much contributions into congressional campigne funds.

no, its hard to build high speed anything when your airlines give so much contributions into congressional campigne funds.

EXACTLY.
Not to mention the highway lobbies.

The Keystone Corridor in the US is a good example of how lines can be upgraded on limited finances - electrified and upgraded to 110mph (176kph)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Corridor

The South East High Speed Rail Corridor (http://www.sehsr.org/)

the Mid West Regional Rail Initiative,

(http://www.dot.state.mn.us/passengerrail/onepagers/midwest.html)

and the Ohio Hub all follow this 110mph template (albeit using diesel power).

(http://www.dot.state.oh.us/ohiorail/Ohio%20Hub/Website/ordc/index.html).

And despite what was posted earlier in this thread,they all look like serious, achievable schemes.

The trouble with HSR and America is that your average American is not aware of what HSR can achieve.
I disagree -- today's average N American's is agoraphobic (as ever) . . . .

There have been plans to make an HSR from Boston all the way to Montreal. Would be cool, as New England could use some HSR. Too bad Massachusetts has a score of other problems.

I disagree -- today's average N American's is agoraphobic (as ever) . . . .

I agree, but I also find that the Ipod has been the greatest aid to public transit.

So while I really do not care for its isolationist ability, actually deplore them, it has been a great aid to public transit; putting idiotic people in their own little world under the guise of "chilling out" or relaxing.

There have been plans to make an HSR from Boston all the way to Montreal. Would be cool, as New England could use some HSR. Too bad Massachusetts has a score of other problems.

Through Vermont and New Hampshire right? I have a suspicion that will not happen. To damn hilly, low population route, descent distance and Boston sucks, they would rather go straight to NYC. However it will most likely be left to the plane.

I don't know if there are any viable railways that go down that path anyway...maybe there is some, but it would take major reconstruction and as said before, it's not viable enough.

Boston should concentrate on getting a REAL HSR to New York. Acela's ok, but it doesn't cut it.

Through Vermont and New Hampshire right? I have a suspicion that will not happen. To damn hilly, low population route, descent distance and Boston sucks, they would rather go straight to NYC. However it will most likely be left to the plane.

Low population is rather good for high-speed rail-line. Trains don't stop anyway and the less people live along such a rail-line the less resistance there would be.