What are your opinions on passenger rail in America? Should something be done about it? Should it be left to commuter services, or what SHOULD be it's role?
How should it work?

I think passenger rail in America is in dire need of help. There needs to be an alternative to air travel, both for redundancy, for instance a series of bad storms that tie up air traffic, as well as to provide an alternative for people who don't like to fly. I also think it might prove beneifciall to the airlines if done right.

Amtrak is backward - they own the trains but not the track. That is like having the government own the airplanes and do all the flying, while letting provate companies own teh airspace and airports. Then expect them to coordinate the air traffic control themselves. What it SHOULD be is that Amtrak owns the rail infrastructure. They can designated certian routes for frieght only, passengers only, or combination. They should do all the traffic control, too. Let the private companies run the train service itself. Even let the airlines run train service. They can provide flights to key cities, and provide connecting service to smaller ones. This lets some of the smaller cities that can't support regular flights get service.

I also think they need to seriously upgrade the equipment. Acela is quite a popular service. Ironically, it does not run on a different route or anything - it is just a modern train versus teh ancient metroliner service. It shows that simply upgrading the service will bring in new passengers

Lastly, I think they need to refocus. Instead of long distance cross country routes, they should be thinking city to city. They need to tie in with existing road and airports - lines should service airports directly and then llink out to nearby communities and cities. I would love to see auto ferrys - utilizing a much quicker way of loading cars than the current autotrain, and use them to service routes of about 6- 12 hours driving time. Have a terminal outside the city itself but in the metropolitan region where traffic originates, and then connect to nearby regions. And market not just for end to end users but as a way to cut down on driving time mid journey - you would maybe drive an hour to the station, take teh aurto ferry for the bulk of the 8 hour trip, and then drive the last hour to your destination. This means putting stations not off the highways but near them.

I agree that passenger rail needs help. I also agree with the point of needing city to city transport. The train takes too long for long distance travel, but if shorter trips (< 500 miles) were easier and public transportation within the cities was better then rail could be very successful. The massive amounts of money being spent on highways needs to be redirected into mass transit, both inter-city and intra-city. Good luck with the presidency and much of congress owned by the oil companies, though.

If you had proper HSR like in Japan, France and Germany, or maglev like the UK will hopefully have soon you'd see coast-to-coast journey times shorter than those by plane once everything is factored in!

I think passenger rail in the U.S. is best served for short distances in high density areas. Otherwise light rail connections throughout a city and high speed rail links to the airports are best for our country. I think air travel serves it's purpose much better than what a cross country high speed rail system could do.

I agree that coast to coast high speed rail is not only unrealistic due to the extreem length, but also lacks the need. Coast to Coast travel is not particularly large except between NYC and LA, and some of the east coast cities and San Fran. Even if you did have flat out high speed rail it would be too slow compared to air travel to draw enough customers. Even if you had a good maglev service that operate at jet speeds, you are still talking terrain and route deviation enough to make it take longer, and there simply isn't enought traffic there to suppor the costs of it.

The real intercity markets are mostly the East Cost cties - not just the Bos-Wash corridor, but also reaching aAtlants, some of the mid-sized cities in the south, and the cities in Ohio and Indiana. Other markets include Florida, The west coast, and Texas/Southern Rockies. That was what I was refering to as a global perspective - Ait travel works best for really long distances, especially thin toutes, time critical isssues, and larger city pairs. Rail would provide better service to medium sized cities on a more regional basis, where air travel doesn't perform that well.

Since America covers everyone from Alaska to Argentina....I will throw my two cents in.

Mexico and not the US or Canada will be the next market. Mexico is due for a high speed train between Guadalajara and Mexico City by I believe 2006 or so.

Chile also has a very healthy passenger train system.

If you had proper HSR like in Japan, France and Germany, or maglev like the UK will hopefully have soon you'd see coast-to-coast journey times shorter than those by plane once everything is factored in!


Coast to coast is not a realistic option for HSR or maglev... it's still too slow to be competative with air travel.

HSR could be succesfull though in a couple of densely populated corridors though... most importantly of course Boston - NYC - WashDC, but also around Chicago or in California. Hopefully that will happen one day...

rail transit in america should be expanded and funding as well as benefits should go towards those who develop rail. Regional clusters are best, air is more efficient for anything over 500 miles or so.

The problem is America(n)s lack of interest/identification with rail. We have such a car-bubble mentality that its hard to get it going in a lot of cities. Florida voted down a HSR from Tampa-Orlando-Miami (almost 10 million in that triangle) and then Miami and Miami Beach voted for localized lightrail but have already voted to delay critical portions of it by several years.

If Americans could ever love light rail or streetcars (again) it would be so much more efficient economically and environmentally.

I think we should focus in the near term on expanding capacity and capability of the existing network and implement true high speed rail when we build up passenger volume. Along the lines of what John Barriger proposed 50 years ago in his book "Super Railroads for a Dynamic American Economy." More recently Gil Carmichael has proposed "Interstate II."

The money squandered in Iraq would have done wonders if it had been invested on our own infrastructure instead. I would suggest the creation of infrastucture bonds that would be similar to tax free municipal bonds. The loss of tax revenue should be made up for by a tariff on oil imports of around $10 bbl to encourage energy independence, at our present level of oil imports that would raise about 40 billion dollars per year. Congress had proposed the issuance of 71 billion dollars of such bonds, the revenues lost would only amount to a few billion dollars per year but figure there are more than just railways to invest in to make the US energy independent.

I would shoot for about half of the 40 billion dollars being used to make up for the infrastructure bonds, leaving about 20 billion dollars to spend directly. That could be spent on new lines such as the "Loree Line" across northern Pennsylvannia. It could also build some tunnels that would eliminate bottlenecks, Amtrak could own these and would play the tenant to the railroads, reversing the existing role.

An 8 mile tunnel could be built in the Blue Mountains of Oregon that would replace 26 miles of climbing and twisting track with 8 miles of level straight track. Some of the worst stretches of line could become the best. A tunnel of similar length could make the old Milwaukee Line across the Bitteroot Mountains of Idaho/Montana a shortcut between Spokane and the east. Altamont Pass, Siskiyou Pass, Stampede Pass are just a few areas where tunnels no longer than the existing Stevens Pass tunnel could vastly inprove America's railway network. A tunnel matching the one being built in Switzerland could transform the I-5 corridor between Los Angeles and the Central Valley.

Investing in our railways could obviate the need to spend greater sums on our highway system, such as the proposal to add 4 truck lanes to I-81 in western Virginia. Removing the trucks to the rails would also save a lot of wear and tear on the highways, each truck causes damage equal to that caused by several thousand cars.

FAQ: The Rail Solution vs. the STAR Solution

What are the problems with I-81?
· Quite simply, there are many more trucks than the highway was designed for. Truck traffic has increased up to 200% on some sections of I-81 in the past four years alone. The number of trucks is almost three times what I-81 was designed to carry.
Drivers are fearful and accidents are frequent.
Instead of being modernized, the rail system in the I-81 corridor has been downgraded so that it can no longer handle its share of the traffic.

What solution does VDOT’s proposed contractor, STAR Solutions, offer?
· VDOT is negotiating with Halliburton Corporation-led STAR Solutions based on their proposal to enlarge I-81 to 8-12 lanes. Four lanes would be exclusively for truck use, separated from other lanes by a “rumble strip.” “Jersey barriers” would separate the on-coming truck lanes from each other.
· Cars would be restricted to the outer two “mixed lanes; trucks would also use these lanes.
· Tolls of up to $128 for entire 325-mile route were originally proposed just for trucks, but Virginia’s Sec. of Transportation Whitt Clement stated that 60% of the toll revenue stream must come from cars.

What’s wrong with STAR Solution’s proposed solution?
· Air pollution and noise due to the projected doubling and tripling of truck traffic would jump dramatically. Diesel emissions ironically would be trapped by our beautiful ridge and valley topography.
· Public health would deteriorate as childhood asthma and adult respiratory disease increase in proportion to increased ozone, particulate, and nitrous oxide emissions.
· The chance for catastrophic accidents would be great, especially if larger trucks with triple trailers are allowed.
· The beautiful Valley of Virginia and Mountain Empire of Southwest Virginia would forever be marred with soundwalls and a gigantic industrialized highway replete with truck service strip development.
· Historic sites would be lost or encroached upon.
· Agriculture and forestry would suffer from loss of land and ozone pollution.
· Wildlife would be increasingly stressed, it’s populations fragmented, resulting in increased danger from vehicle-animal collisions.
How would the Halliburton-STAR Solution proposal affect the regional economy?
· Tolls collected from trucks are projected at $4-6 billion through 2020, an expense that will encourage shippers to find alternate routes, reducing projected revenue and clogging other roads such as Routes 11, 29, I-79, and I-95/85.
· Local shippers and commuting residents, who have no alternative route, will be forced to pay the tolls.
· Manufacturers and other large shippers will find it more costly to do business in our region and may move to other locations to do business.
· Tourism and other leisure traffic will diminish as travelers will avoid I-81 during the 15- year construction period and because of it’s industrialized character.
· In short, businesses that depend on truck traffic and tourism will find it harder to survive.
· Financing this project will put Virginia at risk. If truck tolls do not meet optimistic projections the project will go into default, and Virginia’s credit will suffer. VDOT’s own spokesperson said “if there is a hiccup in the traffic, or if there is a hiccup in toll revenue, that would cause very grave concern among bond rating agencies.”
· Other projects in the state will find it difficult or impossible to get funding as this project hogs capital and highway funds. In fact, the STAR proposal would forbid VDOT to make any other highway or rail improvements that might compete for I-81 traffic.

So, is there a better solution? Yes, definitely!
· Improve I-81 in the few places where it really needs improvement and accident rates are high.
· Upgrade rail lines paralleling I-81 from Harrisburg, PA to Knoxville, TN to dual track, high-speed “steel interstate” for both freight and passenger service. The freight service would be schedule and truck-time competitive to offer “just-in-time” deliveries, using truck service on either end of the rail route.
· Operate a variety of high speed intermodal shipping options- similar to those in other countries we compete with economically - which allow trucks or just their trailers to use the new high-speed rail lines, reducing truck costs and diverting thru-truck traffic from I-81 altogether.
· Demonstrating real vision and a remarkable consensus of local officials, 40 counties, cities, towns, and planning commissions in the Virginia I-81 corridor voted resolutions opposing the STAR-Halliburton proposal outright, opposing any proposal that relies on tolls, or supporting a major role for rail.

What are the advantages of this alternative solution?
· Traffic safety and congestion on I-81 would be drastically improved.
· Cost of the improvements to the rail system and necessary highway improvements are estimated at about one half of the STAR proposal and no or much reduced highway tolls would be required. Construction time would also be halved.
· The additional cost to trucks for using the rail system would be offset by reduced operating costs. Drivers would also have more options: either riding on the train with a more productive rest break (the load is still moving); or driving more short trips to a rail terminal with the opportunity for regular time at home.
· The convenience of “dock to dock” deliveries now provided by trucks would continue.
· The western and Southwest Virginia would become more attractive to potential industries, supportive of existing businesses and the travel industry.
· There would be far less impact on I-81 traffic and businesses using that asset during the construction period. Exporting the construction to the rail line would be safer and less frustrating for all drivers.
· Virginia would experience a savings (net of truck license and use taxes) of $.05 in interstate maintenance costs for every truck mile diverted to rail.
· Other transportation improvement projects in Virginia would be neither prohibited nor impacted negatively. Specter of a super-sized I-81 “white elephant” would be avoided.
· Pollution, noise, agricultural and business land loss, and dependence on foreign oil would be reduced, not increased.
· A balanced system of highway and modern rail would provide travelers the option of taking the train instead of driving, and greater transportation flexibility during emergencies.
· The valleys and mountains of Virginia would continue to be one of the most attractive and historic places in the nation.
· The railroad would have six times the capacity of its anticipated initial load, compared to the STAR plan, which will be saturated when completed.

Why doesn’t VDOT just build a railroad then?
· Alaska’s Congressman Don Young, powerful Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, wants to build his pet project: an experimental highway for trucks only right here along I-81 in Virginia to showcase to Congress.
· STAR Solutions, the Halliburton Corporation-led construction consortium, proposed just such a truck-lane “solution” to VDOT under the Virginia’s new public/private transportation act.
· In return, Young has inserted into the House omnibus transportation bill $900 million in federal tax funds as the first of two installments to subsidize this I-81 truckway.
· According to the Washington Post, ethically-blind Halliburton and other partners in STAR Solutions contributed to Don Young’s campaign fund.
· Further, the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s I-81 Advisory Panel, stacked with VDOT loyalists, chose the STAR proposal for further study, with the qualification that the federal government subsidize the $13 billion cost of the STAR proposal. Converting a free public interstate highway, built by taxpayers, into a toll road from which private companies would speculatively profit, would be a first in U.S. history.
· VDOT has entered into contract negotiations with STAR, despite the fact that the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) has not been conducted and what project is to be built, if any, is yet to be decided.
· This proposal second only in scope to Boston’s disastrous Big Dig has some of the same cast of characters-STAR Solutions member Parsons-Brinckerhoff was sued by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts this March for allegedly hiding the knowledge in the early 1990s that costs and completion timelines on the Big Dig would double.
· VDOT hired a former STAR Solutions partner, Vanasse, Hangen, Brustlin, Inc., to conduct portions of the Environmental Impact Study for the project.
· At the I-81 Advisory Panel hearing when the panel recommended STAR Solutions, only the competing plans were discussed. Contractors were not parsed on whether they are financially stable enough to undertake such a project, have a reliable history of ethical behavior, consistently bring contracts to completion on time and within budget constraints, or have the flexibility to build whatever comes out of the EIS as the final “build” scenario.
· Halliburton’s financial stability-it’s KBR subsidiary filed for bankruptcy in December, not Halliburton or the other contractors ethical behavior-Halliburton was fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission in August for accounting for project cost overruns as profits without requesting acceptance from its customers; KBR is being investigated by the U.S. Government for its accounting of its Iraq operations and several whistle blowers are accusing the company of fraud.
· If you think Halliburton can’t get sufficient access on Capitol Hill, consider that U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s brother, Randolph DeLay, sole proprietor of Public/Private Strategies Inc., is also a principal in the STAR consortium.
· As STAR partner law firm, McGuire Woods’ own advertising slogan puts it “Relationships that drive results.” Relationships on this project appear far too cozy. Does this sound like a contractor you would hire to build the largest public construction project in Virginia’s history? Do they appear to have the interest of Virginians at heart?
· Now Congressman Young’s truckway earmark is before a House-Senate conference committee. Virginia’s Senator Warner is a committee conferee. Virginia’s congressional delegation is sorely tempted by the thought of “free” federal pork behind this project, even though no local constituencies support the proposal.
· Virginia House members are afraid to oppose Chairman Young for fear of being punished by having future transportation projects excluded from the federal budget.
· How can half a billion dollars start a $13 billion project? It can’t. The other $12 billion will be paid for by tolls on those of us who drive I-81 or pay Virginia taxes. Once started, there will be no stopping this gargantuan project, even if it costs twice as much and takes twice as long as planned, as the planners of the “Big Dig” experienced.
· Now Congressman Young’s truckway earmark is before a House-Senate conference committee. Virginia’s Senator Warner is a committee conferee; the “free” federal pork behind this project sorely tempts him and other members of Virginia’s congressional delegation, even though no local constituencies support the proposal. Virginia House members are afraid to oppose Chairman Young for fear of being punished by having future transportation projects excluded from the federal budget.
· Virginia’s Secretary of Transportation Whitt Clement says that auto drivers would have to pay 60% of the $13 billion in tolls needed to pay off this scheme, even though all agree that it is truck congestion driving this expansion proposal. Is that fair?

MAXIMIZE RAIL, MINIMIZE ROAD EXPANSION

August 11, 2004

As the Commonwealth of Virginia considers how to cope with ever-increasing traffic on I-81, it is important to make the wisest choice, which will best serve Virginia and the Nation for the long-term.

VDOT has chosen to evaluate the STAR plan, to expand I-81 by adding four new “trucks only” lanes, for an estimated total cost of $13 billion. We submit that this plan is shortsighted and will have many adverse consequences. It makes only minimal use of rail to deal with increasing truck traffic.

We propose that an alternative plan, which makes much greater use of rail and reduces dependence on highway expansion, can be accomplished at less cost, faster, and with far greater benefit to the public.

It is important to start with some current facts related to I-81:
· Current truck traffic on I-81 is roughly 40% of total traffic. 1
· Current average daily truck traffic on I-81 is 14,000 trucks/day 2, or 5.1 million trucks/year.
· 70% of all the trucks on I-81 are on trips of over 500 miles, called “long-haul” trips. 3
· Total long-haul truck traffic on I-81 is thus approximately 9,800 vehicles/day.
· Trucking companies find that on trips over 500 miles, it is attractive for them to use intermodal rail if the service meets three criteria: a.) Equal door-to-door transit time, b.) Convenience and c.) Reliability. 4
· The predominant long-haul truck traffic in the I-81 corridor flows through Harrisburg, PA, following I-81 and I-40 to Memphis, TN, or I-81, I-75 and I-59 to New Orleans. 5
· If intermodal service meeting the three criteria listed in (5) were available to the corridor described in (6), a large share of the long-haul truck traffic would voluntarily divert to the intermodal rail service. How much is uncertain. The SJR-55 Report6 suggests that, “total divertible traffic was over 2 million trucks annually”(based on 1996 data). Reebie7 suggests a diversion potential of 28.2 to 30.3% of average daily truck traffic, or 1.4 million trucks annually. Averaging these two estimates, we get a potential diversion of 1.7 million trucks/year, or 4,550 trucks/day, or 46% of all long-haul trucks.
· Diverting 46% of all long-haul trucks from I-81 would certainly be beneficial, but we submit that this estimate is too conservative. The rail investments proposed in Reebie are modest (around $7 billion for the entire NS corridor and just $2.6-2.8 billion in Virginia.8) Intermodal service in the 2,000 mile Chicago/Los Angeles corridor currently captures “as much as 80% of all truck traffic.”9 We submit that an even more modern railroad could capture at least 65% of all long-haul truck traffic in the 1100-mile Harrisburg/New Orleans corridor or the 900-mile Harrisburg/Memphis corridor.
· If this could be accomplished, it would represent a 46% decrease in truck traffic on I-81.
· On the hilly terrain, which is characteristic of I-81 in VA, a tractor-trailer in effect displaces 3-6 passenger cars10. Together with such a significant reduction in truck traffic a corridor rail enhancement reduces the need for additional lanes of pavement. Instead of adding four or more lanes over the entire 325-mile length of I-81, it should be possible to add lanes only where congestion concentrates and where trucks can’t maintain speed while climbing hills.

The modest “Virginia-only” rail improvements in the STAR plan, and also discussed in Reebie 9, project a diversion of trucks to intermodal rail of 500,000 per year, or 1,369/day, or just 15% of current long-haul trucks.

It is doubtful that much diversion will be achieved by the proposed improvements, which are limited to adding passing sidings and signaling to the line from Front Royal to Manassas, and a few other upgrades. By using the Roanoke-Lynchburg-Manassas “Piedmont” line, the rail route is 65 miles longer in VA than I-81. Further, with only 1,369 trucks/day, and a train carrying 50 trucks, that yields just 27 train departures each day, or roughly one every two hours in each direction. These trains will occasion additional delay of up to two hours and further erode rail’s ability to compete with highway trucks for speed of service.

It is clear that to make a significant contribution in reducing truck traffic in the I-81 corridor, intermodal rail needs to be very successful. Modest measures to improve rail, although better than no rail improvements, will not have impact sufficient to mitigate highway congestion.

What rail enhancements will be required to make intermodal rail very successful in attracting trucks from I-81?

· A modern, dual-track, high speed rail line, grade separated from all road crossings, capable of carrying intermodal and passenger trains at average speeds of 60-80 mph along Norfolk Southern’s line between Harrisburg and Knoxville TN, and possibly beyond to Memphis and New Orleans. RAIL Solution calls this high-performance railroad the Steel Interstate.

· The Steel Interstate needs to closely parallel the highway corridor, avoiding unnecessary mileage. The Valley Route is much preferable to the Piedmont Route in this regard.

· Strategically located transfer facilities along this rail line, probably near the I-64 and I-77 interchanges and Roanoke, as well as in other states.

· Railroad equipment that offers an “open intermodal technology,” capable of handling all highway trailers, complete trucks or containers, and facilities capable of loading and unloading them quickly. The intermodal trains would be expected to carry 50 equivalent truckloads each.


TABLE 1
COMPARISON OF STAR AND RAIL SOLUTION PLANS

STAR RAIL SOLUTION
Cost: (Virginia only) Investment in highway Investment in rail (VA) Trucks/year diverted to rail, based on current traffic % Of trucks diverted to rail Trucks/year capacity of rail improvement Total trucks/year on I-81 currently Trucks/year on I-81 in 2020 * Trucks/year on rail in 2020 * Total fuel usage for trucks and rail, for I-81 traffic in Virginia, in 2020, gallons Est. year of completion, Highway improvements Rail improvements $13 billion $0.5 billion 0.5 million 10% 0.5 million 5.1 million 9.7 million 0.5 million 534 million 2019 2008 $1.8 - 7.0 billion $3.6 billion 2.35 million 46% 10.5 million 5.1 million 5.5 million 4.7 million 376 million 2014 2010
* Assumes total truck volume doubles from 2004 to 2020

Financing the improved infrastructure of the Steel Interstate:

The capital investment necessary to upgrade the railroad infrastructure, estimated to cost $3.6 Billion in Virginia alone, is beyond the capability of NS to leverage. Investment must come from the public, from state or federal government or a combination of the two, which could further leverage private monies. All investments would be repaid over time by a rail car user fee.

For the RAIL Solution proposal to be successful it must be profitable for the long-haul truckers to use it; it must be profitable for the railroad operator generating the revenue to pay back the public and private investment over a reasonable length of time.

A rough analysis by RAIL Solution shows that with the diversions we predict, current truck operating costs, and current rates that railroads charge for intermodal service, truckers and railroad operators can make a profit and still pay a user fee for the new infrastructure that will reimburse the capital investment over thirty years.

What advantages will accrue from the proposed Maximized Rail/Minimized
Road Plan?

· Less expansion of I-81: Since the Steel Interstate will handle a large portion of long-haul truck traffic, the need to expand I-81 will greatly diminish. Detailed traffic analysis is needed to determine necessary upgrades to the highway, but it is believed that adding a lane in congested areas, adding a climbing lane where necessary for trucks on hills, adding safety and enforcement measures already planned by VDOT may suffice for the long term. It appears certain that the necessary upgrades to I-81 will not exceed the addition of a single lane in each direction for the full 325 miles in VA.

· Lower cost: The cost of rail improvements proposed here, as estimated by RAIL Solution experts, is $3.6 billion. Without knowing what I-81 improvements will be necessary, it is hard to estimate their cost. But if the full addition of a 3rd lane is taken as a high limit, then Fluor’s estimates of $1.8 billion, later revised to $7 billion, may be used as an upper cost limit. Thus the total cost for rail and highway improvements in VA could be expected to fall between $5.4 and $10.6 billion.
Obviously, both rail and highway investment will be needed in other states in the corridor, but their results should be similar to what we’ve shown for Virginia: Lower cost by maximizing rail and minimizing highway expansion.

· Reduced land use: If the land use of the STAR 8-lane plan is reduced to 6 lanes or less, it will require far less land acquisition. For the addition of two lanes, much of the addition can be done in the existing median, owned by the state. But with the STAR plan, additional lanes and truck lane separation areas require adding land outside the existing right-of-way. Additional land condemnation under this plan nearly doubles the original Interstate footprint.
The railroad will use NS right of way where practical. Elsewhere, it will require only a 40 ft. ROW.

· Improved fuel economy: An intermodal train uses roughly 1/3 as much fuel as a highway tractor-trailer per ton-mile transported.10 The potential savings is 158 million gallons/yr. of fuel in Virginia alone.

· Reduced air pollution, resulting from reduced fuel consumption. Air pollution in the I-81 corridor is already a concern, with several cities, including Winchester and Roanoke, designated as borderline non-attainment areas. Reduced air pollution has both significant and measurable public health and economic benefits. Enhanced rail capacity reduces Virginia’s exposure to the introduction of Mexican trucks with inferior regulation and maintenance.

· RAIL Solution’s proposed dual-track Steel Interstate railway will have the capability of handling trains with 5-minute headways, or 288 trains/day in each direction. That is six times the 45 trains/day in each direction needed to carry the projected 4,550 diversions/day. So the railroad will have six times the capacity of its expected initial load. Compare this with the STAR plan, which will be saturated when completed.

· Removing trucks from the highway will result in fewer accidents and toxic release incidents because railroads have a superior safety record. Rail freight traffic separation is true freight separation, not mere “rumble strip” separation. Fewer accidents will occur on the Interstate because of fewer trucks. Not to be discounted, fewer accidents will occur on the Interstate because of reduced construction time.

· Removing trucks from the highway reduces highway maintenance cost. The net cost of maintenance less user fees is $.05/truck mile11. Thus, diversion of 1.7 million trucks/yr will save the State $27.6 million annually. Also the State may be eligible for federal interstate maintenance monies if it is able to avoid highway tolling or reduce the amount of time that a toll is imposed.

· Attractive intermodal service in the I-81 corridor will reduce long-haul
shipping costs, improving the economy and industrial recruitment prospects of the region it serves.

· The improved rail line offers the potential of high-speed passenger rail
service in the I-81 corridor. This could improve tourist business in the region.

· Redundancy: Statistics prove the growing dependence of the economy of eastern United States on I-81 trucking. This makes I-81 an inviting target for terrorist attack. President Eisenhower initiated the Interstate System to meet
a national security need. The addition of the Steel Interstate, parallel to the
I-81 corridor and its extensions into the Mid-South, will provide a second
artery, enhancing our national security.


What the NEPA review should be sure to include:

· That public investment /financing could produce a sufficiently upgraded and improved rail line paralleling I-81 to permit rail intermodal operations to handle a meaningful volume of the trucking now on I-81, such that a lesser investment in highway infrastructure would be needed or justified.

· That a useful analysis of rail vs. highway investments cannot be meaningfully undertaken based on the 325 miles within Virginia alone and with no consideration of the impacts on adjacent states. Such convergent analysis shortchanges the rail option and is not in keeping with VDOT’s more activist approach (requesting a waiver from the Federal Highway Administration regulations in order to impose tolls) for the STAR Solutions plan. Since the transportation congestion problem is a multi-state problem, a multi-state approach is required. VDOT should work in collaboration with other state transportation departments to determine the least costly and most effective transportation improvement concept for the corridor.

· That financing availability aside, the desirability of a truly improved rail line in the I-81 corridor meeting the standards of a 21st Century Steel Interstate, be analyzed for its effectiveness and competitiveness in moving much of the freight traffic now and in the future along the I-81 corridor.

· That the financial and environmental costs and benefits be evaluated between providing future truck carrying capacity with truck-only highway lanes and providing that same capacity with a super railroad instead, thus requiring limited highway improvements.

· That in addition to modal analysis traditionally performed to see which shipments logically move by truck and which by rail, the NEPA analysis needs to include non-traditional forms of intermodal service, using concepts such as the “E<x>pressway” service in use on the Canadian Pacific RR or the truck ferry (Rolling Highway) as used in Europe.

· That no environmental assessment can be complete without acknowledgment that petroleum prices (fuel costs) may be much higher in 2035 and disproportionately impact over-the-road trucking. World petroleum demand is currently equal to production capacity and will inevitably outstrip supply.

· That the potentially adverse effects of tolling be fully evaluated regarding the impact on other roads and highways exposed to increased traffic avoiding tolls on I-81, and with regard to the potentially severe adverse impact on business, commerce, and tourism in western and Southwest Virginia (including economically distressed jurisdictions) compared to other areas served by non-tolled highways. Additional analysis should address the probable diversion to rail due to tolls and the capacity of rail to handle this diversion.

The whole rail infrastructure in this country is archaic at best, and I would even venture to say not worth much rehabilitation. Heavy freight and pasenger rail/light freight don't mix, and shouldn't have to mix. The first thing to do is to build a true nation-wide rail infrastructure, not privately owned but run like the airways and airports, with traffic control and private operators. A simple twin-track layout is not going to cut it - 4 lines in the major locations. There should be a separate network that handles passenger, car and truck rail-ferries, and light freight, with heavy freight getting it's own lines.

The problem is that road construction projects involve many companies, with many people getting their hands in on it. Rail projects really are quite limited in scope, and not that many companies are ready to take advantage of it. Which means that the companies and politicians aren't particularly motivated to do it.

The program John Barriger outlined in "Super-Railroads; Fora Dynamic American Economy" back in 1955 would have provided for 40,000 miles of Super-Railroads. Most of it would have been upgrades of the existing lines, but 4000 miles would have required entirely new alignments. Total program cost in 1955 was 20 billion dollars. With the exception of mountains and terminal areas he called a ruling grade of 0.5% and curves of 1 degree minimum radius (and ideally 0 degrees 30 minutes to reduce the need for super elevation of the tracks to no more than 3 inches).

I think that with electrification we could allow for greater greater ruling grades since the energy lost in braking can be fed back into the system rather than being disippated as heat. If you can find this book you will find it very informative, my copy was found via the internet. Some of the results that would allowed for a 20 car passenger train to travel between New York and Boston or Washington DC in 2.5 hours, New York and Chicago in 12 hours, and Chicago and the Pacific Coast in 30 hours. Freight up to 500 miles away would have been delivered on a next morning basis.

Passenger trains would have traveled at up to 100 mph, and averaged 70 mph between terminals (which beats the Acela between Boston and New York) using F unit locomotives and streamliner cars of the era. He demonstrated how much more important it was to raise the average speed than the maximum, the Acela today illustrates his point, between Boston and NYC it averages 65 mph, and only runs at it top speed of 150 mph for a few miles along the border of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Freights would have been limited to 70 mph and averaged 50 mph terminal to terminal. These would have been merchandise freights like the old Pacemakers and Eagle Merchandise. At that time the average boxcar limited the maximum speed to 50 mph while the locomotives could easily handle 70 mph, so most freight cars were obsolete.

Most freight ton-miles today are in slow moving bulk good unit trains (coal/ore/grain) which would travel at 15 to 30 mph, this would be the traffic that is hard to mix with fast freight, intermodal, overland RO/RO ferry and passenger trains.

He also mentioned that 2 tracks could handle 4 times the traffic of a single track, 3 tracks 9 times as much and 4 tracks would handle 16 times the traffic of the single line. You would also need to incorporate cab signaling on these lines to maximize capacity.

I think his program would be valid today, we need to move freight using less energy, electification would allow the bulk of it to move totally independent of oil imports. The higher speed of intermodal and overland RO/RO ferry trains would strip freight from the highways to the rails. And for now we could concentrate on using passenger trains to compete with the auto rather than the airliner.

Far more passenger miles go by the highway than the airway anyway, in particular for shorter distance travel. 70 mph end to end speed would beat the speed of a car, in greater comfort and with better amenities. Overland RO/RO ferry trains could travel 700 to 800 miles overnight. A lot of package freight could travel at the speed of passenger trains, allowing priority goods to travel coast to coast in under 2 days time.

I think his program would be valid today, we need to move freight using less energy, electification would allow the bulk of it to move totally independent of oil imports. The higher speed of intermodal and overland RO/RO ferry trains would strip freight from the highways to the rails. And for now we could concentrate on using passenger trains to compete with the auto rather than the airliner.

And there you go - compete with the oil industry (which gets its supply from overseas but the corporations are based right here), and the auto industry, which is the culmination of pawning off...er, private investment in transportation.

And there you go - compete with the oil industry (which gets its supply from overseas but the corporations are based right here), and the auto industry, which is the culmination of pawning off...er, private investment in transportation.
And the supply of oil is subsidized by tax dollars spent to defend the oil supply, about 60 billion dollars while we import 4 billion barrels per year, works out to a subsidy of $15 per bbl. Socialize the cost, privatize the benefit.

When we built the interstates we spent far more on public infrastructure as a percent of national wealth than we do today. The original financing model of a gasoline tax was good but it failed to address the burden that was imposed after 1971 when the US began to assume responsibily for defense "East of Suez." Imposition of a tariff on oil imports would correct this and would encourage new domestic sources, substitutes and more efficient utilization of petroleum.

Funding for Super-Railroads should be financed this way. If the roadbeds were owned by the federal government they would pay no property tax, this siphons off several hundred million dollars a year that could be invested in the railways. Property taxes on rail rights of way offer a perverse incentive to minimize fixed plant and were a contributing factor in shedding capacity. New Jersey actually taxed a railroad into bankruptcy back in seventies!

Improvement to fixed plant from electrification would result in higher property taxes, this works against achieving energy independence.

Which long distance passenger trains are electric in the USA?

is there a map of the network??

Which long distance passenger trains are electric in the USA?
The only ones are in the northeast corridor between Washington DC, Philedelphia, New York and Boston. It used to only extend as far as New Haven, Connecticut but it was extended all the way to Boston for the Acela. There are also a few electrified suburban railways, around New York, Philedelphia and Chicago.

Formerly we did have a few other electrifications, the best examples being the Milwaukee Road from Harlowtown, Montana to Avery, Idaho, and Othell to Tacoma in Washington. That was a 3000 VDC electrification which came down in 1974, now the route itself does not exist, taken up after 1980. The Great Northern, Virginian and Norfolk and Western had stretches of electrified mainline that were removed in the two decades following WW2.

The Milwaukee Road used some locomotives that were originally built for the USSR, they were nicknamed "Little Joes" in reference to Josef Stalin. The was a railway in you area which also purchased a few of them, I think known as the "Paulista?"

some one mentioned Canada above (I won't yell), but we have the same problem as you guys do with rail. Everything is too far away for almost all the country. It really is cheaper and quicker to fly for trips than it is to take a train. Suburban commuter rails are great, but a national (/international) network is pointless; and would get little support from Canada West (Ontario and Quebec may, but they're different)

some one mentioned Canada above (I won't yell), but we have the same problem as you guys do with rail. Everything is too far away for almost all the country. It really is cheaper and quicker to fly for trips than it is to take a train. Suburban commuter rails are great, but a national (/international) network is pointless; and would get little support from Canada West (Ontario and Quebec may, but they're different)
The CP service I mentioned runs in the Windsor-Toronto-Montreal corridor. For intermodal freight the problem is not going long distance, but rather short distance. Rail has a larger share of traffic between the West Coast and the Midwest, but for distances of a few hundred miles it has very little share. A major reason is the time and expense at both terminals makes a short haul non-competitive.

An overland RO/RO rail ferry will address this. In the US there is 9 times as much freight that moves less than 1000 miles than travels over 1000 miles. Rail has negligible share of the former, and about a third of the latter. When asked why he robbed banks Willie Sutton replied, "because that's where the money is."

The rails at present are best at moving unit trains from a loading terminal to a discharging terminal. It is not much of stretch to substitute a trainload of coal going from Montana to Texas with a trainload of self loading trucks traveling 500 miles overnight from the outskirts of Indianapolis to Atlanta's. The expense of fuel and tires, road fees, wear and tear avoided with the driver arriving refreshed. From a half dozen points freight could be distributed to the areas of the US having the bulk of our population.

Imagine those railway lines being electrified and you see the US being able to move the bulk of her freight free of imported oil.

As for passenger traffic, the competition is not the jetliner, it is the auto. Here again the majority of all trips are shorter distances. Several types of trains are needed.
1.) Intercity runs of a few hundred miles between major cities, on an hourly basis in both directions, for example Chicago to Cinncinatti.
2.) Overnight RO/RO ferry trains, these do not exist yet as I would like to see them. There are some shuttle trains in Europe that are close, but they would need sleeping cars and run long distance. A route could be from the Portland area to central California, I would find it useful (I live in Seattle).

If I need to go to New York I'll fly.

The only ones are in the northeast corridor between Washington DC, Philedelphia, New York and Boston. It used to only extend as far as New Haven, Connecticut but it was extended all the way to Boston for the Acela. There are also a few electrified suburban railways, around New York, Philedelphia and Chicago.

Formerly we did have a few other electrifications, the best examples being the Milwaukee Road from Harlowtown, Montana to Avery, Idaho, and Othell to Tacoma in Washington. That was a 3000 VDC electrification which came down in 1974, now the route itself does not exist, taken up after 1980. The Great Northern, Virginian and Norfolk and Western had stretches of electrified mainline that were removed in the two decades following WW2.

Thanks for the info! So those other commuter lines in the West are all diesels?

Another question: how many people use long distance rail in the USA? What´s the percentage in relation to other means of transportation?

The Milwaukee Road used some locomotives that were originally built for the USSR, they were nicknamed "Little Joes" in reference to Josef Stalin. The was a railway in you area which also purchased a few of them, I think known as the "Paulista?"

Really? Yes, there was a railroad called Paulista here in São Paulo, Im gonna try and find out about little joes here. Unfortunately all passenger rail in Brazil has been dismantled in the past 20 years, except for two or three lines.

Thanks for the info! So those other commuter lines in the West are all diesels?
Yes, however there are proposals to electrify the line that runs between San Fransisco and San Jose.

Another question: how many people use long distance rail in the USA? What´s the percentage in relation to other means of transportation?
A very low percentage, I think about 5 billion passenger miles per year, in 1945 at the peak it was nearly 100 billion. To put that in perspective the airlines in the US handle about 700 billion passenger miles per year, and the highways handle several trillion. So it would be less than one percent.

Really? Yes, there was a railroad called Paulista here in São Paulo, Im gonna try and find out about little joes here. Unfortunately all passenger rail in Brazil has been dismantled in the past 20 years, except for two or three lines.
I'm not able to post HTML yet so I will give a few links:
http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~efbrazil/russa_pb.html
http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~efbrazil/russa_pb.html
http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~efbrazil/cpef_delect.html
That is a sad thing to see, it gives me a sense of deja vu. I recall in 1973 our family was returning home from vacation through Montana on I-90. At one point the Milwaukee Road ran parallel to the freeway and as luck would have it a freight train pulled by a "Little Joe" was going our way. We ran alongside for miles, that was so cool.

Later that year we had the Arab oil embargo and I thought how lucky the Milwaukee Road was to be using electricity rather than oil. How wrong I was, the next year they tore it out, I can still remember reading it in the newspaper and thinking we were stepping back from the future.

I fear that we realize too late how awful it was to sidelines rail travel infavor of the car. :(

the powerful auto and oil indistries in this country pretty much killed any chance european type of sophisticated rail system but that's what happens when you have politicians easily influenced by guys in fancy suits and gobs of campaign contributions.

ain't that the sad truth. :no:

I can see several markets where this could be turned around. Unfortunately, I think the likelihood of seeing an advanced railroad network nationwide is slimmer than slim. :(

http://www.washarp.org/SmCascadeTrain.gif

Just read up on vB code, here's a shot. This has been proposed by the WARP (Washington Association of Rail Passengers).

I still believe that one of the reasons why our rail system has so many problems is that it is built for freight traffic, not passenger traffic. FRA regulations won't let european style lightweight trains run on the same lines as the freight traffic. Perhaps we need two networks - one for freight and one solely for passenger and real light freight. Maybe even have them different gauges.

yep, time to bring out the fra bashing article
http://www.ebbc.org/rail/fra.html
a good read

What are your opinions on passenger rail in America? Should something be done about it? Should it be left to commuter services, or what SHOULD be it's role?
How should it work?

America NEEDS a passenger rail system. Too many people count on air traffic to get them from point A to point B. Starting from Portland, Maine to Anchorage, Alaska, thiswill clear air and highway traffic very.

http://www.chebeague.org/powellmcgillicuddy/socialstudieslinks/usa/blankusamap2.jpg
*If anyone can do a red line going to each city I say, that would be great.

Starting from St. Louis, there will be8 destinations. 1 going south, 1 going to the southest, 1 going to the east and so on.

South will start heading towards Jefferson City, there it will branch off to 2 rails. 1 going to Memphis and 1 going to Tulsa. Tulsa will go to Oklahoma City and Memphis will go to Little Rock. Oklahoma will split off goin to San Antonio and Dallas. Little Rock will head to Jackson. Dallas will head to Houston and San Antonio will head to Austin. Jackson will head to Baton Rouge. Houson will head to Bronwnsville and so will Austins.

Southeast will start heading to Nashville. Nashville will split going to Atlanta and Huntsville. Atlanta will go to Savannah and Huntsville will head to Montgomery.Savannah will head to Jacksonville. Montgomery will split in 2 going to Mobile and Pensacola. Jacksonville will head to orlando and split going to Miami and Tampa. Pensacola will head to Tallahassee and then to Jacksonville.

East will head to Louisville. Next going to Frankfurt. Franfurt will split going to Charleston and Charlotte. Chalesto will head to Richmond and Charlotte will split goint to Columbia and Ralaigh. Richmondwill then head to Washington DC.

Northeast will start of going to Springfield. It will then split going to Chicago and Indianapolis. Indianapolis will then split going to Detroit and Cincinnatti. Cincinnatti will head to Columbus and then to Cleveland. Cleveland will split to Pittsburg and Buffalo. Pittsburg will got to Philidelphia and Buffalo will go to Rochester. Phelidelphia will split going to Dover and NYC. Rochester will head to Syracuse. NYC will head to Hartford. Syracuse will head to Willington. Hartford will head to Boston. Willington will head to Albany. Boston will head to Concord. Albany wil head to Montpelier. Concord will head to Augusta and so will Montpelier's rail.

I'll be back with more.

the US is too large for an extensive coast to coast passenger system so thats definitely not feasbile. What are are the smaller projects such as Californias and Florida HSR proprosals within the states that can compete with air travel in terms of cost, speed, and efficiency

If China can do it, so can we.

yep, time to bring out the fra bashing article
http://www.ebbc.org/rail/fra.html
a good read
Excellent article, thanks for posting it. Some of the original streamliners would not be legal under the FRA rules, just about all of the prewar Zephers and UP city trains.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/CD-07_City_of_Denver.jpg/300px-CD-07_City_of_Denver.jpg
Photo of the UP's 1936 City of Denver, a pair of 1200 hp locomotive pulled 10 cars between Chicago and Denver at an average speed of 66 mph. Under FRA rules this train would be illegal.

Here is an older article about rail transit in Indianapolis. i agree that a nationwide high speed rail system is unrealistic, but there is no excuse for the absence of a high-speed rail system connecting Chicago and the nearby big cities.

I live in Japan now, with an amazing rail system. The high speed rail (shinkanse) here was the LAST part of the system to be built. A high speed system in the US must have smaller feeders as well to be successful.

Article on Indianapolis rail then and now...

http://www.nuvo.net/archive/oldarts/articlex1917.html

How did we go from best to worst?
By Mark Andrews

Jun 5, 2002, 12:26pm

“The best public transportation in the world!” That’s what many said about Indianapolis in the 1940s. In the year 2002, it’s hard to imagine that Indy could ever have made such a claim.

How did Indianapolis’ public transportation work at the height of its “glory days”?

Let’s say that it’s Saturday, June 1, 1946. The time is 7 a.m. You have made arrangements to have lunch with a friend in Chicago at noon. In order to do so, you must first go to the corner of 16th and Central to pick up your jacket from the dry cleaners. Your task is to then go to the corner of Main and Madison in Greenwood where you are to rendezvous with a friend who is going to return the $10 he owes you. You must then go back downtown to catch a train to get you to Chicago’s Union Station by noon. Your only mode of getting around is by public transportation.

Could you have done it? Let’s see ...

At exactly 7 a.m., you begin from Monument Circle and walk to the bus stop and board electric trolley bus No. 47 CENTRAL which ran every two minutes. You arrive at 16th and Central at 7:14 a.m. You pay your dry cleaning bill and just as quickly, you board an inbound No. 47 and are back downtown by 7:26 a.m. You then walk to the Traction Terminal interurban shed near the corner of Illinois and Market where you catch the electric commuter train that departs for Greenwood at 8:10.

Traveling at speeds of up to 75 mph, you arrive in Greenwood at 8:36 a.m. This particular line, in fact, was the very first electrically powered commuter line in the world, beginning operation on Jan. 1, 1901.

You meet your friend and quickly have your $10 in hand. Your returning commuter train pulls up to the platform at 8:45. You are back at the Traction Terminal at 9:10 a.m. You then walk to Union Station where you board the Monon Line’s 9:30 train for Chicago, which followed the route now holding the “Monon Trail.” Speeding along at 75-100 mph, you pull into Chicago’s Union Station at exactly 11:58 a.m., two minutes ahead of your goal.

Your total travel time was four hours and 58 minutes. You paid out a total of 14 cents for the trolley; $1 for the interurban round trip; $8 for your ticket to Chicago and back. And your total round trip cost would have been $9.14.
Unfortunately, you would not be able to make the same trip within the same amount of time in the year 2002. If you began at Monument Circle on a Saturday morning in June of 2002, you would have a 30 minute wait between IndyGo buses serving the area of 16th and Central. There are 50 minute intervals between buses serving Main and Madison in Greenwood. The same trip now by public transportation could take up to three and a half hours, compared to the two hours and 38 minutes in 1946.

And when you arrived at Union Station, you would be informed that the only Amtrak train to Chicago had already pulled out of the station at 5:30 a.m. You would have to wait until 5:30 on Sunday morning to ride to Chicago by rail.
It will take Amtrak about five and a half hours to get to Chicago’s Union Station. There are segments of track where the allotted speed for the train is 5 mph. You will arrive at Chicago Union Station at about 11:45 a.m. on Sunday, almost 24 hours late for your appointment.

Your total round trip will cost you $3 on IndyGo, and roughly $55 on Amtrak.
You would spend a grand total of $58 and 28 hours and 45 minutes to get to Chicago. Again, in 1946, those numbers would have been $9.14 and four hours and 58 minutes.

So, what happened? How could our public transportation services have deteriorated so much in only 56 years? How could Indy’s public transportation service have gone so quickly from best to worst in only 56 years?

In 1955, I was in kindergarten. I couldn’t wait to walk to school because along the way I would be able to watch as the electric trolley buses would make the sparks fly from the intersected overhead wires at the corner of South East and Minnesota on the near-Southside. That was a big thrill for a 4 year old.
Back then, public transportation was a source of awe and wonder for me. And with good reason! Even in 1955, there were still many electrically powered trolley bus lines, operated then by Indianapolis Railways Incorporated. The average wait between city buses in Indy at that time was 12-15 minutes. That compared to IndyGo’s current average of 50 minutes between buses. So then, again, we might ask, “What happened?” What could possibly have gone so wrong with public transportation in Indianapolis?”

I can remember asking my grandma why the city’s streetcar lines were dismantled. She replied — as she herself had been told — that the rails that once carried the city’s many streetcars and interurbans had been pulled up in order to be turned into bullets so that America could win World War II. I believed that to be true because Grandma told me so. And Grandma also believed that to be true because the local government had said so.

The Streetcar Conspiracy

This brings us to the dark agenda known as the “Streetcar Conspiracy.” This was the effort by General Motors, Firestone Tires and Standard Oil (of Indiana) to persuade America’s municipalities to dismantle their electric streetcar and trolley bus lines in favor of GM built, Firestone equipped, Standard Oil fueled diesel buses.

The whole issue finally did make its way to federal court, and after years of testimony and debate, the court ruled that GM, Firestone and Standard Oil were indeed guilty of conspiring to lobby and promote their products in the nation’s city halls at the expense of America’s very convenient, very affordable, very popular electric public transportation services. Following a few slaps on the wrist, the three corporations continued with their business as usual.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Indianapolis was “Motown” — “The Motor City.” This was due mainly to the city’s status as the nation’s rail hub. Indianapolis became the manufacture and assembly center for America’s burgeoning automobile industry, producing classics such as the Stutz Bearcat and the Deusenberg. The automobile manufacturers eventually came to the conclusion that they could more cheaply produce their autos in Detroit where the ore barges deposited their loads from the Minnesota mines, coming by way of the Great Lakes, and thus avoid the rail shipping costs. (The Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built for the sole purpose of providing Indy’s auto manufacturers with a place where their latest engines and models could be safely tested.)

By the time the Streetcar Conspiracy reared its head in Indianapolis (in the early 1940s), the auto industry already had more than the required number of lobbyists to persuade the city fathers to join them in their conspiracy. And so Indianapolis went “off track” from having one of the nation’s best public transportation services and went, instead, to its unflattering position in 2002 as having one of America’s worst transit systems.

The last streetcar to run in Indianapolis went from Broad Ripple Park to the corner of 16th and College in the summer of 1953. The city’s last electric trolley bus line was dismantled in 1957. The City-County Council voted in favor of creating the Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation, which took over the privately-owned city bus system in 1975, renaming it “Metro.”

Metro changed its name to “IndyGo” in 1998. Lack of commitment on the part of civic leaders over the many years — and the apathy and disinterest of the (would-be) riding public — have led to Indianapolis’ public transportation deterioration.

Is there any hope for improving the situation?

Looking ahead

It is a demographic fact that the city of Indianapolis grew and developed along the rail lines of the 19th and 20th centuries. The current patterns of urban sprawl are still closely attached to these rail beds. Many involved in local civic planning (as well as many in local government) have long envisioned a light rail network in the metropolitan area that utilizes many of these existing rail beds. Designs for the new mid-field terminal at Indianapolis International Airport include plans for a light rail station to be operational by the time of the terminal’s opening in 2007. Mayor Peterson has repeatedly expressed his support for public transportation, and has made light rail one of the goals of his administration.

The Metropolitan Planning Organization is looking into possibilities for light rail services in the region, using the facilities at the Beech Grove Amtrak yards as the storage and maintenance center for the trains. Among IndyGo’s plans are a new transit center connected to Union Station at Capitol and South Street, and an electric bus line to circulate passengers in the downtown area. Considering these possibilities, we can allow ourselves the luxury of imagining how our public transportation might come to work in the next few years.

Let’s say that it’s Friday,
June 1, 2007.
You want to meet a friend from out of town who is flying into Indianapolis International, arriving there at 8 a.m. You drive from your Franklin Township home to the light rail terminal station attached to the Amtrak yards near the corner of South Arlington and Churchman Avenue. This is known as the TRAX rail terminal. “TRAX” is the name given to the light rail service — a contraction of the words “TRAnsit” and “eXpress.” You park your car at the station’s (free) “park ’n’ ride” lot at exactly 7:23 a.m. The lot is quickly filling with the cars of the regular morning commuters. IndyGo buses are bringing passengers from as far south as Southport and Greenwood to transfer to the trains. Many bicyclists have locked their bikes in the secure bike racks.

You deposit your $3 into the automated ticket teller, and receive your “day pass” which is valid on all IndyGo services for 24 hours. The electrically powered two-car train is resting along side the platform, overhead wires providing the connection. You hear the familiar “tone” over the station’s P.A. system, indicating that the train will depart in one minute. Trains leave the terminal (headed for Union Station and Indianapolis International) every six minutes during rush hours, every 10 minutes through the day and evening hours. This line operates 24 hours a day, every day.

You quickly board and take your seat. At exactly 7:25, the train’s doors close and you feel the gentle tug as the No. 2 car in which you are riding is pulled by the first. A recorded female voice greets the passengers. “Welcome aboard TRAX: IndyGo light rail TRAnsit eXpress. Our first station stop is Emerson Avenue. Transfer here for route 56 EMERSON CROSSTOWN and route 16 BEECH GROVE.” The same message is repeated in Spanish for the benefit of Hispanic passengers as the city’s Hispanic population now exceeds 500,000.
Suspended screen monitors display information for the hearing impaired, as well as plot the train’s progress along the route. Within two minutes, your train pulls into the Emerson Avenue station, elevated over the street. You notice that your two-car train is already half full (170 seat capacity) even before the second wave of riders comes through the doors.

Sixty more passengers board the train at Emerson, most having transferred from bus lines. Following the 10 second (standard) wait, the doors again close, and the train moves on to the next station at Raymond and Sherman. The line is built parallel to the Conrail tracks into Union Station. The train’s speed approaches 45 mph as it glides smoothly — and almost silently — across the welded rail trackage.

At 7:29 a.m. the automated female voice announces your arrival (bi-lingually) as you pull into the Raymond/Sherman station. Seventy-five more passengers board, having transferred from IndyGo bus routes, and also from the park ’n’ ride lot that draws most of its traffic from drivers coming to the station from Southeastern Marion County and Shelby County, having exited from I-74.
It is now “standing room only” as the doors close and the train makes its way to the next two elevated stations, over Keystone Avenue, and then onto the station at State and English. By the time you arrive at the first downtown stop (Conseco station), the train is carrying over 300 passengers.
The voice announces, “This is Conseco station, exit here for Conseco Fieldhouse, Eli Lilly and the City-County Building. Our next stop is the IndyGo transit center at Union Station ... Passengers continuing on to Indianapolis International Airport will please remain on board.”

You pull into Union Station at 7:37 a.m., 12 minutes following your departure from the Beech Grove terminal. Most of the passengers exit at the transit center, but many more also board there; most are headed for the airport.
At 7:38 a.m., you roll out of the station toward the airport, traveling along side the Conrail tracks, and making station stops at the zoo/White River Parkway, Belmont Avenue, Warman Avenue, Holt Road, Lynhurst and Park Fletcher. The lighting inside the rail car suddenly seems to get brighter as the train begins its descent into the underground tunnel that takes it to its airport terminal subway station. The (by now) very familiar female voice announces your arrival in English and Spanish, and (this time) also in French and Japanese. You arrive at Indianapolis International Airport at 7:50 a.m., 25 minutes after leaving the Beech Grove park ’n’ ride and 10 minutes ahead of your friend’s arrival.

You very graciously pay for your friend’s rail fare as the two of you head for your car at the Beech Grove TRAX terminal. As you head to the city, your friend observes, “This is the best public transportation in the world!”

Where have we heard that before?

With the running of that first Greenwood interurban on Jan. 1, 1901, the concept of light rail was born in Indianapolis along the tracks that now parallel Madison Avenue on the city’s Southside. It would only be reasonable that Indy would re-invest in light rail.

After all, we invented it.

I still believe that one of the reasons why our rail system has so many problems is that it is built for freight traffic, not passenger traffic. FRA regulations won't let european style lightweight trains run on the same lines as the freight traffic. Perhaps we need two networks - one for freight and one solely for passenger and real light freight. Maybe even have them different gauges.
Interesting idea about different gauges. At one time the Erie railroad had a 6 foot gauge mainline between New Jersey and Chicago, too bad we did not select that as standard gauge. When twinstack cars went into use it was the only line which could handle them to the east coast as a result.

I think carload and bulk (coal/ore/grain) unit trains could be segregated, with the intermodal, fast freight, overland RO/RO rail ferries and poassenger trains having a separate network. On a 3 or 4 track main they could even share the main line, the NYC had 4 track mains with 2 tracks for passenger and the other 2 for freight. The Pacemaker freight service traveled on the passenger tracks, it was kind of a highspeed unit train made up of boxcars which delivered lcl freight.

We had a lot areas where there were duplicate right of ways, for example the NYC and the Pennsylvannia paralleled each other routes in many areas, a lot of duplicate lines were pulled up when they merged.

In other areas we have routes that were severed completely such as the Rock Islands "Choctaw" route between Amarillo and Memphis. This could be bought up by the federal government and upgraded for 70 mph freight and 100 mph passenger trains. Little Rock and Oklahoma City lay along this route.

I read today where the state of New Mexico has purchased the BNSF line over Raton Pass Between Belem, NM and Trinidad Colorado, they hope to have passenger service between Albuquerque and Denver some day. A few years ago I visited Colorado Springs and you can see where a rail line has been pulled up, it went north to Denver and south to Pueblo. That would cover most of the required distance, leaving a short gap between Pueblo and Trinidad.

We have quite a number of areas where abandoned or downgraded lines could be rebuilt for service.

Here is an older article about rail transit in Indianapolis. i agree that a nationwide high speed rail system is unrealistic, but there is no excuse for the absence of a high-speed rail system connecting Chicago and the nearby big cities.

I live in Japan now, with an amazing rail system. The high speed rail (shinkanse) here was the LAST part of the system to be built. A high speed system in the US must have smaller feeders as well to be successful.

Article on Indianapolis rail then and now...

...It would only be reasonable that Indy would re-invest in light rail.

After all, we invented it.

Interesting article, I've also spend a great deal of time in Japan and am amazed at some of the private railways which began as interurban's, and they keep getting better! For work I travel on the Keinan line between Moriguchi and Kadoma (Kansai region around Osaka), its only 2 stops but I've traveled the entire line in my off time including several branches.

There is a branch which travels to the town of Uji (with a temple shown on the 10 yen coin). 1997 was the first time I visited, in 2000 I went again and they had built a beautiful new station.

In Kyoto there was a line which traveled on the surface from a terminal at Sanjo station eastward to Lake Biwa, with in a few years it had been relocated to a subway which it shares with other subway trains.

The tempo of operation is amazing to see. Where the branchline to Uji meets the Keihan mainline there are 6 tracks IIRC. The eastmost pair handle the Uji branch trains, of the remaining 4 tracks the the inside pair handle both express and limited express trains with the other 2 handling locals. The local and express tracks in each direction share a platform, making transfers very easy.

You can watch as a local pull into the outside track and waits, a few minutes later the express arrives and the passengers can transfer bewteen trains. Then the express will leave, followed shortly by the local. This is where the mainline is only 2 tracks, closer to Osaka it is a 4 track main. This shows what is possible with light rail lines in the future.

In Japan people seem to have higher expectations which begets higher results. In the US we seem to settle for low expectations and end up with low results. The one flaw I see with the article is the bilingual PA system, a nation which sets higher expectations of its railway system will set higher expectations for immigrants, that they assimilate to us rather than we assimilate to them. Its hard to be a first rate nation when you become balkanized, Japan has not balkanized and they seem far ahead of us in many aspects. If the US is a first world nation they must be zero world nation.

The Indianapolis Interurban Terminal.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/INCORP/interurbanrail/office.JPG
"Of all the words on tongue and pen the saddest are what might have been."

A few thoughts on a potential "new" route for freight into New England.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/1901_CNE_map.jpg/597px-1901_CNE_map.jpg

The actual line was not nearly so straight as shown by the map, this was rather common practice for railraods back in the day. Their lines would always be shown as thick, solid, straight lines while the competions routes would be thin wiggling lines. Nonetheless it does show the possibilities of this route, which was part of a greater Poughkeepsie Bridge Route.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f6/Poughkeepsie_Bridge_Route.gif

This would form an ideal trunk for the flow of freight between New England and the southeastern US with one major revision. In the area where the line crosses the New Jersey-Pennsylvannia border traffic should flow over the line leading to Harrisburg and then flow south. This would allow freight to flow independent of the northeast corridor.

You will also note that the lines passes through Easton, Pennsylvannia, this just happens to be where the Loree Line began (it ended near Pittsburgh).

There would be little demand for passenger service along this route, it would be be reserved for freight. New England has little demand for bulk unit train freight service, and most of that can be supplied by the existing routes or coastwise shipping. The new route could handle carload, intermodal and lcl freight to and from all the major population centers of New England, as far as northern Maine.

A good deal of civil engineering would be required to bring the route into service, for example construction of a new bridge at Poughkeepsie. The existing bridge caught fire in 1974 and has been out of service ever since, just as well since it would not be up to the task. Something along the order of the bridge across the Firth of Forth or at Quebec City would be needed.

The Central New England route would also require work, several tunnels would shorten the distance and reduce grades, none of them would be as long as the existing 8 mile tunnel built across Stevens Pass in 1929.

A few notes on the Loree line;

This was the brainchild of Leonor F. Loree, president of the Delaware & Hudson. It was to begin in Easton, Pennsylvania and travel 283 miles across that state to a point just outside Pittsburgh. The steepest grade in either direction would have been no more than 0.4%, and it was also the most direct route. New York and Chicago are 830 miles apart by the Loree line, versus 908 miles by the Pennsylvania, 960 by the New York Central, 978 by Baltimore & Ohio and 999 by way of the Erie railroad.

This was in the early twenties when the ICC had been pushing the consolidation of the American railways into 19 systems, including four in the northeast. Loree proposed this line as part of a plan to create a fifth system based on his D&H. In 1925 the cost was estimated at $260,000,000 dollars, equal to several billion dollars today.

It would have included several lengthy tunnels and high level crossing of some rivers along the route such as the Susquehanna. With electrification and restriction of the line to high speed freight and passenger trains steeper grades could be tolerated, with commensurate decrease in construction costs.

Information is from the book "Railroad for Tomorrow" by Edward Hungerford, published in 1945 by Kalmbach.

A few thoughts on a modern lcl (Less Than Carload) freight service.

A cubic container roughly 8 feet cubed would be used, it would be similar in configuration to the PODS (Portable On Demand Storage) containers which can be delivered any, loaded and then removed and used for storage.

http://www.spartech.com/images/hpde-sheet.jpg

It could be transported by truck, rail or air. By rail it travel on a car that would be articulated to save on the number of trucks required, as on a twinstack container car, for example 3 cars joined together riding on 4 trucks. Each separate section would be at least 48 feet long, able to accomodate 6 container bays each. Each bay would be accessable by door, ideally 2 bays would share a door allowing for the transport of double length containers that could be transported by a rigid frame truck as shown.

http://www.newamericancastle.com/images/spotlight/PODS/PODS-1.jpg

A 16 foot double bay would allow most automobiles to be transported. Loading of containers would be via forklifting or rolling containers on and off (each bay would have wheels in the floor similar to those found aboard cargo aircraft. As with the existing containers units built to handle liquids and bulk cargoes could be used, for example to deliver flour to a bakery. In addition some types of equipment could designed to be compatible with this system for easy transport, such as HVAC systems mounted on buildings.

These containers could also be used by other companies such as FedEx and UPS to transport their shipments, something pioneered by the old railway Express Agency.

http://www.hankstruckpictures.com/pix/trucks/szalus/38_international_ad.jpg

Each customer could have containers customized to their needs, for instance one to deliver large rolls of paper for printing presses.

The railcars should be capable of running at the same speeds as a passenger train, and could even join the consist of some passenger trains. Or passenger cars could be added to the consist of these high speed lcl trains.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/hep10/nhs/hipricorridors/hipri-big.jpg

A number of the NHS High Priority Corridors (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/hep10/nhs/hipricorridors/hpcor.html) have parallel rail routes or at least have rail lines connecting their end points. An example would be the (3) East-West Transamerica Corridor commencing from the Hampton Roads, going by way of Roanoke and ending up in New Mexico, going through Amarillo along the way.

Amarillo is on the BNSF transcontinental mainline which is already in very good shape, nearly all double tracked (with plans to close the few remaining gaps). A lot of intermodal traffic flows on this line between California and the Midwest. At one time Amarillo was a gateway from this line to Memphis via the Rock Islands "Choctaw Route," but this was severed in 1980 with the bankruptcy of the Rock Island. (http://www.simpson.edu/~RITS/histories/TTS37/system.gif)

Further east the short route between Nashville and Knoxville on the old Tennessee Central Railway (http://deckard.mc.duke.edu/~cef/Maps/TC-MapMin.html) has also been cut, but plans are underway to rebuild the missing link. (http://weeklywire.com/ww/06-19-00/knox_cover.html)

From line between Knoxville to Roanoke is on the route which has been proposed (http://www.nationalcorridors.org/df/df04052004.shtml#Roanoke) for upgrading as far as Harrisburg.

Interesting article, I've also spend a great deal of time in Japan and am amazed at some of the private railways which began as interurban's, and they keep getting better! For work I travel on the Keinan line between Moriguchi and Kadoma (Kansai region around Osaka), its only 2 stops but I've traveled the entire line in my off time including several branches.

There is a branch which travels to the town of Uji (with a temple shown on the 10 yen coin). 1997 was the first time I visited, in 2000 I went again and they had built a beautiful new station.

In Kyoto there was a line which traveled on the surface from a terminal at Sanjo station eastward to Lake Biwa, with in a few years it had been relocated to a subway which it shares with other subway trains.

The tempo of operation is amazing to see. Where the branchline to Uji meets the Keihan mainline there are 6 tracks IIRC. The eastmost pair handle the Uji branch trains, of the remaining 4 tracks the the inside pair handle both express and limited express trains with the other 2 handling locals. The local and express tracks in each direction share a platform, making transfers very easy.

You can watch as a local pull into the outside track and waits, a few minutes later the express arrives and the passengers can transfer bewteen trains. Then the express will leave, followed shortly by the local. This is where the mainline is only 2 tracks, closer to Osaka it is a 4 track main. This shows what is possible with light rail lines in the future.

In Japan people seem to have higher expectations which begets higher results. In the US we seem to settle for low expectations and end up with low results. The one flaw I see with the article is the bilingual PA system, a nation which sets higher expectations of its railway system will set higher expectations for immigrants, that they assimilate to us rather than we assimilate to them. Its hard to be a first rate nation when you become balkanized, Japan has not balkanized and they seem far ahead of us in many aspects. If the US is a first world nation they must be zero world nation.

The Indianapolis Interurban Terminal.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/INCORP/interurbanrail/office.JPG
"Of all the words on tongue and pen the saddest are what might have been."

@Frank--
I think there are a couple of reasons that the Japanese passenger rail system is in much better shape than the American. High expectations are definitely one reason.

Japanese rail companies and the government have consistently funded improvements (not necessarily expansion) over the past 50 years. In many families, it is rare to have two cars.

Even in the suburbs, parking is often unavailable. Dad (almost always) takes the train to work, and Mom keeps the car during the day.

Gasoline is also quite expensive here, compared to the US, although the gap has narrowed in the past year.

Highways are also all toll here, and the narrow streets in most of Japan mean that fast driving is definitely not an option. That cant be said in most of the US...

I think that any expansion of rail in bigger car-dependent cities would have to be coupled with a reduction in car-capacity (either by reducing lanes or not expanding in the face of growth), to push people to transit. The cities will then build around it.

Highways are also all toll here, and the narrow streets in most of Japan mean that fast driving is definitely not an option. That cant be said in most of the US...

I think that any expansion of rail in bigger car-dependent cities would have to be coupled with a reduction in car-capacity (either by reducing lanes or not expanding in the face of growth), to push people to transit. The cities will then build around it.

I think the philosophy should be to attract people to transit rather them push them to it, and I think the auto and transit should be viewed as complimentary to each other. The US over past several decades has failed to invest in all sorts of infrastructure for several decades, including both highways and rail. Investing in both would allow shared ROW such as the T-REX (http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/septoct01/trex.htm) project in Denver, this is how many of our urban freeways should have built to begin with.

This type of construction would also allow for future conversion to automated rapid transit in the future. We also need to address why transit projects in the US have such high costs compared to other nations. (http://zierke.com/shasta_route/pages/43transit.html) An example is the River Line DMU (http://www.lightrailnow.org/news/n_nj002.htm) in New Jersey compared with the Metrosur (http://manicnetpreacher.blogspot.com/2005/04/tunnels.html) of Madrid.

Transit in Japan or Singapore is easier to use than in the US, and that is even considering that I do not speak Japanese! I am free to take long trips in Japan that I would not dare attempt in the US. In Seattle we have a bus tunnel beneath the city (actually shut down right now). A few years ago we were parked in the south end of town and took the bus through the tunnel up to Westlake Mall on a Saturday. Amazingly it shut down at 6:00PM (and never opened on Sundays) and we were forced to find our way back on another bus that ran on the surface, which took some doing.

In Singapore I can go to bus stop and they will have a sign telling each bus which stops there, and listing destinations and telling you which buses you can take to get there. Complete freedom to travel. I bought a pass in Singapore that you merely scan getting on and off the bus or MRT to deduct the cost of your ride, it even takes into account transfers so you pay only the extra cost of continuing your trip rather than paying for 2 separate trips.

My daughter is in college and wanted to take the bus, after 2 months she gave it up. She did not mind the extra time but the Byzantine rules that went with the monthly pass. She also wished to make other journeys on the card but finding information on the complete sytem is like pulling teeth. I'd like to take someone who runs a system like Singapore or in Japan and see what results they could get with an American transit system.

Yes, however there are proposals to electrify the line that runs between San Fransisco and San Jose.

A very low percentage, I think about 5 billion passenger miles per year, in 1945 at the peak it was nearly 100 billion. To put that in perspective the airlines in the US handle about 700 billion passenger miles per year, and the highways handle several trillion. So it would be less than one percent.

Yeah, cuz trains never appear on movies, it´s like they don´t exist.

I'm not able to post HTML yet so I will give a few links:
http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~efbrazil/russa_pb.html
http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~efbrazil/russa_pb.html
http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~efbrazil/cpef_delect.html
That is a sad thing to see, it gives me a sense of deja vu. I recall in 1973 our family was returning home from vacation through Montana on I-90. At one point the Milwaukee Road ran parallel to the freeway and as luck would have it a freight train pulled by a "Little Joe" was going our way. We ran alongside for miles, that was so cool.

Great, thanks for the links!

Later that year we had the Arab oil embargo and I thought how lucky the Milwaukee Road was to be using electricity rather than oil. How wrong I was, the next year they tore it out, I can still remember reading it in the newspaper and thinking we were stepping back from the future.

That was the time we implemented the Alcohol for Cars program in Brazil, but unfortunately scrapped most railroads, so today we have virtually no passenger trains.

A network of passenger trains is being promoted by the Midwest High Speed Rail Association. (http://www.midwesthsr.org/about.htm)

http://www.midwesthsr.org/graphics/midwest_hub_map_10_24_05.gif

For a larger image click here, (http://www.midwesthsr.org/promote_Strong.htm) then click on the map for magnification. One of the groups proposals is the Abe Lincoln Express (http://www.midwesthsr.org/lincoln.htm) which would connect Chicago and St Louis 5 times a day. This follows the incremental approach and would allow for expansion in the future.

The federal government should set a policy of creating grade separation where ever a US Highway crosses a designated high speed corridor. Even if it is a single track the overpass (or underpass) should allow for a 4 track main in the future with electrification at 25,000 volts. In addition finacial aid and encouragement should be given to do the same with state and local highways and arterials.

As can be seen by the map the network is focused upon Chicago which would be logical given it relative size in the area. Future upgrades should connect other cities independently of Chicago, for example a line line between Indianapolis to Dayton would allow the former a highspeed connection to Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

The line between Chicago and Indianapolis would make an excellent conversion to a true high speed line delivering TGV and Shinkansen levels of service. On this stretch of line it could then improve service between Chicago and several other points such as Cinncinatti, Louisville and Dayton, and even further points such as Nashville.

The feeder bus lines could be converted to DMU, providing this can be done at German levels of cost rather that to costs of several recent examples closer to home. Then we could see something like the Talent (http://zierke.com/web-page/foaming/first/pages/01trying.html) in service along the old route of the Crandic Comets. (http://www.crandic.com/stellent2/groups/public/documents/pub/cr2_hi_000176.hcsp#P-4_0)

Through Iowa they make use of the Iowa Interstate Railroad. (http://www.iaisrr.com/) This uses the old mainline of the Rock Island Railroad and passes through Des Moines, Iowa, the largest city between Chicago and Omaha. Amtrak trains are currently routed to the south between these 2 points, missing Des Moines. This line presents an opportunity to create a higher speed rail line connecting Chicago-Des Moines-Omaha, leaving most of the existing traffic on the present UP mainline.
http://www.iaisrr.com/map_med01.gifhttp://www.iaisrr.com/map_med02.gifhttp://www.iaisrr.com/map_med03.gif

Really great idea, and a nice plan, but it still seems a bit like an overgrown commuter rail system still. It's cool for those people going to and from Chicago, but what about everyone else? What about connecting other cities? A good transportation system will drive business and development, and I think that the plan shown really only works for Chicago workers and business, and probably would be ignored by everyone else. That's why the idea of having local states control rail in their area is, I think a bad idea.

The problem with this proposal is, what do people do once they arive at their destination? In Europe, you get on a high speed train in Madrid, and you can get off in Seville which has a great bus network as well as regional train network. Better yet, in a couple of years, high speed rail will connect Madrid and Barcelona, two cities with fantastic subway networks. Or an even better example is London and Paris, which have some of the largest public transport networks in the world.

If I take the train from Des Moine to Omaha, I will need to rent a car because there is no real public transportation (we know how Americans approach buses). So, what is the use of taking a train if I have to rent a car once I reach my destination?

DonQui, I agree with you. This is what I was thinking about US public transportation all the time. I live in DC-Baltimore area. DC and Baltimore are about 35 miles apart. It is like northern Tokyo and Yokohama. However, DC and Baltimore are pretty much two different cities while Tokyo functions together with Yokohama. DC metro and bus transportation are actually very good by the American standard. However, Baltimore public transportation is not well organized. I often travel between Georgetown in DC and Mount Vernon in Baltimore. It takes only 90 to 100 minutes by car. But if I use train and bus, it would take more than three hours, probably close to four hours. At the current gas price, it costs far less by car than by train and bus. Then what is the point of using public transportation?

Expanding the public transportation in US is very difficult. The low population density is partially blamed on about the failure of public transportation in US. For example, there is a big residential area in Towson, north of Baltimore. However, the houses there are rather big and sparsely built, which means that even though we build train network there, there are not many people living around each station and there shouldn't be many passengers using the service. As a matter of fact if we can build nice metro rail connecting from north of Towson through Penn Station and Baltimore harbor to Fells Point and there are train services every 15 minutes from 6AM to 1AM, this train service should be very convenient for many people living in both downtown Baltimore and Towson. However, I doubt if this kind of project economically makes sense. But I would say that we need to think about the public transportation system from down-to-top rather than from top-to-down if we are really serious about it.

In a way you can say that the city planning in US is a result of cheap oil. Even in Japan there are some sprawls in north of Tokyo, which is pretty much the result of popularity of private cars. In the era of cheap oil, freight transportation business by train hasn't been able to compete well with the business by truck and ship in Japan either. But as we already know, the era of cheap oil is ending. The city structure and the mode of transportation will be forced to change anyway. The transition would be hard because it will cost much more then than now to build nice train systems. Then the failure of building good public transportation system might be the result of errors of governmental policy to keep the gas tax low and to let car makers to make a lot of profits.

Really great idea, and a nice plan, but it still seems a bit like an overgrown commuter rail system still. It's cool for those people going to and from Chicago, but what about everyone else? What about connecting other cities? A good transportation system will drive business and development, and I think that the plan shown really only works for Chicago workers and business, and probably would be ignored by everyone else. That's why the idea of having local states control rail in their area is, I think a bad idea.
That was why I made the suggestion that Indianapolis be connected to Dayton, in addition Indianapolis to St Louis would allow more travel patterns. The NYC and Pennsylvania Railrods each had a line connecting these points, this was consolidated into a single line by Conrail.

You are correct that this needs to be a federal program in the long run, but the initial phases may well be local, just as the Pennsylvania Turnpike preceded the Interstate Highway System by twenty years. High priority corridors such as the Avenue of the Saints (http://www.modot.org/northeast/61_27AveofSts.htm) should be paralleled by upgraded rail lines to handle freight at up to 70mph and passenger at 100mph.

The problem with this proposal is, what do people do once they arive at their destination? In Europe, you get on a high speed train in Madrid, and you can get off in Seville which has a great bus network as well as regional train network. Better yet, in a couple of years, high speed rail will connect Madrid and Barcelona, two cities with fantastic subway networks. Or an even better example is London and Paris, which have some of the largest public transport networks in the world.

If I take the train from Des Moine to Omaha, I will need to rent a car because there is no real public transportation (we know how Americans approach buses). So, what is the use of taking a train if I have to rent a car once I reach my destination?
Europe spent decades building their public transport infrastructure, we cannot expect the same results overnight. Unlike Europe I think we would need to have a greater emphasis on travel with the auto using RO/RO overland ferry trains. Something like the trains used to shuttle passengers below Alpine passes but traveling greater distances with overnight accomodations.

Personally I would find such a train which departed the outskirts of Seattle and traveled overnight to Bozeman, Montana very useful. Traveling to a city which has good public transport would also make a passenger train a better option, such as going from Des Moines to Chicago. I drove to Portland last year and it ended up that the places I visited were all next to light rail lines with the exception of a museum in McMinnville to the southwest.

One thing against such a trip is getting to downtown Seattle and parking, there is a station closer with good parking in Everett but most of the trains do not run north of Seattle. In the long run the service should be hourly in both directions between Vancouver BC and Portland running on electrified trackage. It will take time to achieve this of course but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Changing a trend at three percent a year yields big results in the long term. We did not get hooked on imported oil overnight, it happened incrementally. Right now we import 4 billion barrels of oil per year, we won't be weaned off of it overnight. Reducing oil imports by three percent per year is a reasonable goal and in a decade the results will be dramatic. Whatever gets us there is a good thing, better fuel economy, synthetic fuel and substitutes to using oil (rail electrification) is worthwhile.

We spent, prior to Iraq, sixty billion defense dollars per year to assure the flow of oil from the Middle East even though most of our oil imports are obtained elsewhere. A $15 bbl import tariff on oil would yield 60 billion dollars per annum at present levels of consumption and serve to discourage oil imports while raising money to spend on infrastructure to make us less dependent upon imported oil.

As the oil imports are brought down the tariff would need to go up to raise the same revenue. For example importing three billion barrels of oil per year would require a $20 bbl tariff to compensate for the oil defense costs. At a certain time you will reach the point where it is no longer possible to raise the funds to pay for defense of the Mideast oil supply, but that will be because imports are so low that defending the supply will no longer be needed (at least for the US).

Currently US import 60-65% of oil from Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Venezuela. Canadian and Mexican oil fields have peaked recently. According to Mr. Simmons (a famous oil investor in Texas and a former advisor for Mr. Bush), Saudi Arabia oil fields peaked last year. US oil fields peaked in 1971. Since then US oil production has decreased year by year. US generate only 3-4% of electricity from oil. Therefore construction of coal and nuclear power plants does not help to reduce oil consumption (US are currently constructing about 100 coal-fired power plants and one nuclear power plant). US import about 30% of natural gas from Canada and Mexico. However, natural gas has already peaked in North America. Therefore US government is trying to build liquid natural gas facility in several places. The biggest natural gas reserves in the world are located in Russia and Middle East. Therefore US will have to import a lot of LNG from those countries very soon. Russia already used their natural gas reserves to give a wake-up call to Europe last week. US are not a favorite country in most of Middle East countries.

Since I am not a geologist, I am not in a position to evaluate the whole issues about oil peak. For those who are interested in this line of issues, please refer to some websites (http://www.theoildrum.com/, http://www.peakoil.ie/) and withdraw your own conclusions. Although US major media is silent about oil peak issue, BBC in UK and several major networks in Europe and Australia already reported the issue on air. As far as I see, it would be very difficult for US to be independent of imported oil. It seems to me that international geopolitical games revolving around oil have already started.

But still energy conservation is very important. In Europe about 60 to 70% of gas price is tax while in US only about 20% is tax. Therefore US gas price is far cheaper than European gas price although the gas price without tax is not much different between US and Europe. High gas price encourages Europeans to use small cars and mass transportation. European governments have spent the money on development of mass transportation systems. Europeans have worked on this policy step by step. Therefore people could adjust their life style gradually. On the contrary, US will have to do the same with a very short notice. People who bought big SUVs cannot sell their cars for small cars immediately. People who bought big Mac mansions in suburbia cannot sell their houses for small houses in downtown immediately. The city planning in US makes very difficult for Americans to be energy-efficient.

Strandk, that was a very good post. Since I use Frank J. Sprague (http://www.simviation.com/gallery/77D16%20GAZLM%20VC8%20BMA%20EGGW.jpg) as my nom de plume I must point out that nuclear energy can in fact replace oil imports via railway electrification. This is from replacing the oil used by our railroads, plus the oil used by transportation that is shifted to rail. Substituting trackless trolleys for buses has the same potential.

A $15 per bbl tariff on oil will also prevent any synthetic oil producers in the US from being strangled in the crib by OPEC, as Saudi Arabia did to the oil shale industry back in 1985.

I think Russia provided a valuable refresher course on the dangers of becoming dependent upon other nations for energy. A lot of our natural gas is actually being used to generate electricity, that is very wasteful. A tariff on LNG imports would keep us from getting in the same spot as we are with oil imports, anyway LNG tankers are a disaster waiting to happen.

There are numerous oil rigs in USA where workers collect small amount of oil each by each in very inefficient manners. At the current oil price this kind of business is very viable. Canadian oil shale is getting attentions because high oil price makes exploitation of oil shale economically competitive. However, oil shale business is very energy-intensive. It requires a lot of heat generated by natural gas whose reserve is now dwindling in North America. There is even an idea to build nuclear reactors for oil shale fields. The problem of the exploitation of small oil fields or oil shale is that we cannot expect a lot of oil from these oil fields. No matter how much money and efforts we spend, the amount of oil that we can get is getting smaller and smaller when oil fields get depleted. This is the fundamental problem derived from oil peak. Tariff is meaningless because we just don't have a lot of oil under the ground.

Therefore there are only two ways to deal with this problem, alternative energy and energy conservation. What you are suggesting is exactly what France and Japan are trying to do. France has 63 nuclear reactors (75% of electricity comes from nuclear energy. They are planning to add another one reactor by 2020) and good train systems. Japan has 56 nuclear reactors and is still constructing nuclear reactors (They said that they would double the power generation from nuclear reactors by 2050) and has probably the best train system in the world. When they need to reduce the number of cars, they could do without a lot of pains because of their good mass transportation systems. I saw energy news about the energy conservation plan in Japan. They said that they would aim to cut 30% of energy consumption by 2030.

US have entertained big advantages having a lot of oil, natural gas, and coal. Therefore if US have put comparable effort to France or Japan, US energy situation should have been much better than energy situations of any other countries. However, US have not done anything since Mr. Carter tried to start up the energy program. US wasted thirty years.

This is a Department of Energy-commissioned report of February 2005, "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management" by Dr. Hirsch. If you are not familiar with this report, this website will help you to understand it (http://globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/615).











In the world of ideology of free economy, only viable way to force people to change their life styles is to change the price of merchandize. High oil price does the job in this case.

By the way, I have a movie of a "Russa" of FEPASA in action. If someone here has some interess on it, just ask!

The problem of Amtrak is that is a system based on poorer versions of the luxury trains of *fourty*, fifty years ago. Why, except a tourist, railfan or some happy children will want to travel, for an example, in the Southeast Chief, instead of flying between Chicago and LA?

Actually tariffs will encourage both conservation, substitution and alternative energy such as silviculture (http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/trees.html), thermal depolymerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization) and cellusose ethanol. (http://zfacts.com/p/85.html) Oil in and of itself has no intrinsic value, it is only a means to something else rather than an ends. Oil only has value due to the investment of massive amounts of both public and private capital.

Up to a point the public capital invested in making oil useful was collected mainly from the users of the oil, eg gas taxes for roads. Assuming the burden of defense "East of Suez" in the decade following 1971 changed this. At the time getting involved in the Mideast was seen as a strategic distraction from the main event and the US prefered supporting the "twin pillars" of Imperial Iran and Saudi Arabia to direct involvement. With the winding down of the Cold War the Mideast now seems to be the raison d’être of our defense rather than a mere sideshow.

In peacetime this reached the point where we spent sixty billion dollars per year to assure the free flow of oil from the Mideast. Even were a tariff to fail to reduce America's oil imports by a single drop it would still be worthwhile in that it would raise the revenue to cover these costs from where the costs are incured. Considering the number of years oil imports have gotten a free ride courtesy of the US treasury a tariff of $15 per bbl would actually be too low.

Right now we have 150,000 Americans deployed to Iraq, imagine what we could achieve if 150,000 Americans were erecting overhead catenary, laying extra track, building new railway lines and tunnels.

About 70% of oil is consumed for transportation in USA. More than 90% of it is used for car transportation. The rest is for airplanes. Energy used for train transportation is negligible compared with other modes of transportation. Therefore if we can replace all the gas guzzling cars with small hybrid cars, we should be able to cut the oil consumption by up to 20%. It is even better if we can use mass transportation on the scale of Japan. Then we could reduce oil consumption by another 20%. I think that Mr. Simmons was also talking about the number such as 20 to 30% oil consumption cut in one of his interviews. However, as I wrote, people who bought big SUVs cannot sell their cars for small cars immediately, and people who bought big Mac mansions in suburbia cannot sell their houses for small houses in downtown immediately. It takes time to change our lifestyle. But the time is limited. Even after this grandiose effort, US will still have to import a lot of oil.

There are many debates about biofuels in many websites (http://peakoil.com/index.php, http://www.theoildrum.com/). As far as I know, the availability of biofuels as alternatives for oil is very limited. If you think about coal and oil as the result of accumulation of solar energy for million of years, it is pretty natural that the energy that can be harvested from plants on the yearly basis is very limited. China started to construct two coal liquification plants. Japan started to construct a pilot gas-to-liquid plant which will be applied to gas fields in Indonesia. If you check out the Hirsh report, you will know that US government is considering everything including coal liquification plants. Dr. Hirsh is an expert in this field who used to work for Mr. Schlesinger, a former Secretary of Energy, Defense, and so on. Recently Mr. Schlesinger made a speech about the grave situation of energy at the congress. Any debates on this issue must start from the opinions of experts such as Dr. Hirsh.

Mr. Sprague, I agree with you about deployment of US military for infrastructure construction. Actually I was thinking about the same thing for a long time. The US government might start considering this when the situation is getting more desperate than now. Some people say that we need a plan like 'Manhattan project' to deal with this problem. Once we reach to some point, I think that we will start something very aggressive including deployment of military for infrastructure construction.

Thanks for the links, that was very interesting. I found the Hirsh Report (http://aafservices.com/costanzo/Commentary/hirsch0502.pdf) (pdf) and found it very interesting. They used estimated peak oil at 100 MM bpd but figured it could run 20% either way. Ken Deffeyes has gone on record as saying it already occured this past Thanksgiving (http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html).

Rails do at present consume only about 1.5% of our oil, most of the saving from electrification would come from shifting long haul freight to rail, of course it will take more than just electrifiction to be able to handle the traffic, more lines with multiple track, better signaling and realignments. Trucking consumes 16% of our oil so shifting half of our trucking ton-miles to rail could yield a savings approaching 10%.

I found the section on coal to liquids most interesting, the report stated that the Sasol 3 plant went on line threes after the decision to build it was made. The report estimated that five 100,000 bpd plants could be built per year, 4 years after the decision to construct them was made, on a crash program basis similar to to the synthetic rubber industry we built in WW2. It also carried the caveat that the US may end up exporting coal to another nation such as China to have it converted into liquid fuels. That would be very wasteful due to all the oil consumed in shipping.

In fact the one weakness I can spot in the report is that it had no mention of the oil used in shipping goods across the ocean that can be made nearer to the consumer. Sending a shipload of iron ore from Australia to South Korea, and then shipping the autos made from that ore to the US uses far more fuel than if the iron ore was sent to the US in the first place.

Finally I was thinking about your scenario of all the McMansion owners in exburbia unable to maintain their lifestyle after peak oil. Considering the vast investment that would be lost if they abandoned their homes it would be worthwhile for them to develop mass transit to protect their homes, in particular if the projects can be implemented for Spanish or Norwegian levels of cost rather than recent US experience (http://zierke.com/shasta_route/pages/43transit.html). Say their suburb has 5000 homes (each costing an average of $400,000) located 10 miles from rapid transit. A ten mile line such as the Gardermoen line (http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/gardermoen/) "should" be doable for about 113 million dollars. That would be for a double tracked and electrified line with some degree of tunneling involved. Their houses would represent two billion dollars in value. If their suburb happens to have a rails to trails pathway they can do a trails to rails program and come up with something like the Ammertalbahn (http://zierke.com/shasta_route/pages/44reactivate.html) for even less. In the past several trolley lines were built to promote real estate values, the present system in Cleveland began this way.

The problem of Amtrak is that is a system based on poorer versions of the luxury trains of *fourty*, fifty years ago. Why, except a tourist, railfan or some happy children will want to travel, for an example, in the Southeast Chief, instead of flying between Chicago and LA?

I agree, there's really no point in taking rail for long distances unles you live between Washington, DC and Boston, MA. Then again in that case maybe flying or driving is better. At least with trains you don't have traffic jams.....or I don't think they do.



Aside from Amtrak, we need to figure out a rail solution for cities with lots of suburban sprawl. I recently took a flight from Houston to Austin and it was really sad because my drive home from the airport was a little over an hour while the flight was 30 minutes. I would gladly take a train to the airport if we had one. I'd have someone drop me off at a local station and hop on. No paying a shitload of money for gas, airport parking or taxi's.

I agree, there's really no point in taking rail for long distances unles you live between Washington, DC and Boston, MA. Then again in that case maybe flying or driving is better. At least with trains you don't have traffic jams.....or I don't think they do.

Aside from Amtrak, we need to figure out a rail solution for cities with lots of suburban sprawl. I recently took a flight from Houston to Austin and it was really sad because my drive home from the airport was a little over an hour while the flight was 30 minutes. I would gladly take a train to the airport if we had one. I'd have someone drop me off at a local station and hop on. No paying a shitload of money for gas, airport parking or taxi's.

Houston is about 160 miles from Austin by a former SP line (this was in a 1948 rail atlas, I'm assuming the line is still intact). Figuring you were able to run a train between the two with a top speed of 110mph you could probably average 80mph end to end. That would make a trip of 160 miles in two hours time. That is of course over optomistic considering the condition of most track in the US but shows what could be achieved with moderate upgrades rather than going for TGV levels of service in one step.

Another posters on this thread have pointed out that intercity passenger rail in the US will be hampered by lack of good public transport. This will be less of a handicap if at least one of the cities on a route has good public transport. Using the DOT's High Speed Rail Corridors (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/High-Speed_Rail_Corridor_Designations.png) as a starting point we find some routes that would have this.

I would suggest that Amtraks coach fleet be redeployed to give good service on a few corridors rather than poor service on a larger route system. The routes must be no more than a few hundred miles long and have a large population base to draw from, with at least one point having go public transport. In deference to political reality in the US the benefits must be national in scope. To cut to the chase, if a majority of states benefit from this support can be had in the senate.

I would suggest phase one to include:
Northeast Corridor, with the southern end extended into Virginia as far as Richmond.
Southeast Corridor, reoriented to focus upon Atlanta in a Birmingham-Atlanta-Greenville-Charlotte service.
South Central Corridor, phase one would be Oklahoma City-Dallas-Austin-San Antonio.
Midwest Network would focus upon Chicago with routes begining in Milwaukee to Chicago and then going either to St Louis or via Indianapolis to Cinncinatti or Louisville.
California should include an interstate component of Los Angeles-Las Vegas.
Pacific Northwest would be the existing route.
The goal should be to offer hourly or at least every other hour service between all points during the day. Twentyfive states would benefit from this service.

Amtrak's sleeper cars should be redeployed to create overland RO/RO car ferries running overnight. An example of a route would be running east from Denver to the Kansas side of the Missouri River.

It may also be expedient to create daylight trains running greater distances to serve more states such as a Butte-Pocatello-Salt Lake City run. Amtrak's car fleet has poor utilization, it should be possible to get at least twice the revenue miles than is done at the present time with existing equipment.

Aside from Amtrak, we need to figure out a rail solution for cities with lots of suburban sprawl. I recently took a flight from Houston to Austin and it was really sad because my drive home from the airport was a little over an hour while the flight was 30 minutes.

Try flying from JFK to Boston during the evening push. Spend 40 minutes taxying around JFK. Spend 35 minutes in the air.

The Ohio Hub Train System (pdf) (http://www.tmacog.org/Cleveland_Hub_Brochure.pdf) would meet the system Midwest High Speed Rail Association at Toledo and Cincinnati, actually sharing track between Toledo and Cleveland.

http://www.ecocitycleveland.org/transportation/rail/images_rail/cleve_hub.jpg
http://www.midwesthsr.org/graphics/midwest_hub_map_10_24_05.gif
With a network like this in place the addition of more links such as Dayton-Indianapolis-St Louis allows for many more city pairs to be connected. Likewise for the projected Columbus-Pittsburgh link which would also tie in with the Keystone corridor. The projected line between Toledo and Columbus could continue south to Charleston, West Virginia to allow it access to the network.

Not each city pair would need to be connected directly to make longer journeys possible, for instance a journey between Buffalo and St Louis could be make by a combination of Buffalo-Cleveland, Cleveland-Indianapolis and Indianapolis-St Louis trains. Of course at this distance the trip would not be competitive with the airlines but if the travel was between intermediate points such as Erie, Pennsylvannia to Terre Haute, Indiana it would be a different matter.

Anyway I think for now passenger trains need to worry more about competing with autos than planes, and the lines should also function to relieve freight from the highways. Since the bulk of the passenger travel will during the day while a lot of freight travels overnight it may be possible to have higher speed operation during the day for passenger trains.

Also any ROW around large cities should allow for at last four tracks to allow for commuter trains.

I take the train alot to Chicago from stl and the serice is normaly great and takes just as long as a car and is only around 45 dollars roundtrip. Now when i go places like back home to Wichita or KC its still cheaper then a plane but the rail lines are in bad shape and the travel time is a bit longer and some of the stations are jokes, like the one here in stl. HOW in the hell does a city this size and at one time have the largest rail termional in the world not have anything better then a shack? Or my home town not even have amtrak run there? you have to drive a half hour north to newton kansas to get on the train and it only runs every 10 or 12 hours.
Also the trains are always full and i can hardly ever find a place to sit on either trains.

you have to drive a half hour north to newton kansas to get on the train and it only runs every 10 or 12 hours. :eek: In the Netherlands on all railway's there is at least every hour a train. In densed area's every 15 minutes.

Only on international connections there are less trains: Amsterdam - Paris runs 6 times a day, and the trains from Amsterdam directly to Germany (and Poland) runs just 3 times a day...

I take the train alot to Chicago from stl and the serice is normaly great and takes just as long as a car and is only around 45 dollars roundtrip. Now when i go places like back home to Wichita or KC its still cheaper then a plane but the rail lines are in bad shape and the travel time is a bit longer and some of the stations are jokes, like the one here in stl. HOW in the hell does a city this size and at one time have the largest rail termional in the world not have anything better then a shack? Or my home town not even have amtrak run there? you have to drive a half hour north to newton kansas to get on the train and it only runs every 10 or 12 hours.
Also the trains are always full and i can hardly ever find a place to sit on either trains.
That was a beautiful station and they turned into a mall and left St Louis with an Amshack. Done properly it should be restored for use as a train station, with commuter trains and inter-city trains connecting to Chicago, Indianapolis, Louisville, Memphis and Kansas City at hourly intervals. Probably even some longer runs to other destinations like Oklahoma City, Dallas-Ft Worth, Atlanta and the twin cities.

If you can find an old atlas (pre WW2) you will find that they usually had a page which showed distance by rail between major cities across the US. I am using a reprint of a 1948 railroad atlas by Rand McNally. St Louis was the hub a well developed network. At one time we had three separate railroads that connected St Louis to Kansas City directly, one of those lines should be preserved and upgraded for passenger and express freight traffic. Wichita could be served as part of an Oklahoma City-Wichita-Topeka-Kansas City route.

Probing Question: Why don't we have high-speed trains in the U.S.?
Thursday, April 27, 2006

By Lisa Duchene
Research/Penn State

The next time you need to get to New York or Washington, D.C., think how much easier it would be if high-speed trains were as common here as they are in Europe. Such trains would leave every hour and get you to your destination -- even right to the airport -- on time and faster than driving.

Here in the United States, high-speed trains are fantasy, but not in Europe or Japan. Eurostar trains run on the hour, speeding London passengers at up to 186 mph to Paris in about two and a half hours, for about $266 round trip. Trains between Barcelona and Madrid soon will reach 210 mph.

Japan's high-speed trains, the world's first, have linked Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka since 1964. The shinkansen, or "bullet" trains now reach speeds of more than 186 mph, shuttling riders from Tokyo to Osaka in two and a half hours, for about $120 each way.

Here, Amtrak's Acela Express makes the trip from Washington, D.C., to Boston in about six and a half hours for about $321 round trip. The Acela typically runs at speeds up to 120 to 130 mph and on one short stretch at 150 mph, speeds that make it the fastest train in America but are considered slow by global standards.

Why are we so far behind?

The answer is simple, said John Spychalski, professor of supply chain management in Penn State's Smeal College of Business. The U.S. government won't pay for high-speed trains.

"(High-speed train service) is not going to be built by private enterprise, no more than the interstate highway system was built by private enterprise," Spychalski explained. "The U.S. would not have the air-transport system developed to where it is today without public-sector involvement."

A lack of political support at the federal and state levels keeps Amtrak in an annual battle just to survive, ensuring that high-speed train service is not available in most of the country, said Spychalski.

This political vacuum has been consistent over many decades among both Republicans and Democrats, he noted, and has its roots in public attitudes.

"What does the average person know of high-speed rail? Very little," Spychalski said. "Their mindset is centered on two things they know: autos and airplanes." Where trains are seen as a quaint part of our history, Americans view their cars as status symbols, an extension of ego and class distinction.

Over the 20-year period from 1978 to 1999, federal spending on rail travel totaled $18.3 billion, about 3.6 percent of total transportation spending. In the same period, the nation spent $251.5 billion on highways (49.9 percent), and $114 billion on air (22.6 percent). During these two decades, spending on rail dropped 1.9 percent annually as spending on every other transportation mode increased annually up to 10 percent, according to a recent report from the Mineta Transportation Institute.

Last year, President Bush proposed zero funding for Amtrak, but then signed Congress' final budget with $1.3 billion for rail service. This year, Bush proposed cutting Amtrak's budget back to $900 million. Amtrak officials say they need $1.6 billion to operate at the current level and can't afford to make any progress.

"Funding of Amtrak is always hard-scrabble," said Spychalski. "Amtrak is always trying to catch up."

The benefits of high-speed train service, he explained, would include relieving pressure on the air traffic control system in crowded regions like New England, California and Chicago by getting passengers city-to-city faster than air flights.

Environmentally, rail uses the least land to move the most people, and high-speed trains promise better air quality, he added.

Traveling by rail is safer than traveling by car, Spychalski says. Plus, rail tends to be less vulnerable to severe weather and to terrorism.

The better-linked a rail system is to autos and air -- i.e. the rail stations at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and Frankfurt's Airport -- the more valuable it is, said Spychalski. "We need to look at the transport system from a total system perspective and look at how the air, rail and road relate to each other."

Despite the political barriers, there are some U.S. rail success stories, said Spychalski. They include restoration of rail service between Boston and Portland, Maine, and both inter-city and commuter rail passenger services serving key areas within California. Ridership is increasing in both places.

Here in Pennsylvania, the state and Amtrak are working on a $100 million project to make train service between Harrisburg and Philadelphia faster, safer and more convenient.

The many benefits of high-speed rail and these success stories keep Spychalski hopeful that someday U.S. trains will eventually climb that political mountain, just like the Little Engine that Could.

***

John Spychalski is professor of supply chain management in the Smeal College of Business and editor of Transportation Journal. He works on projects at the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, is working on a European freight rail project and serves as chairman of the board of the Centre County Area Transportation Authority. He can be reached at jcs2@psu.edu via e-mail.

ANALYSIS-US rails say will thrive even if U.S. economy won't
By Nick Carey

CHICAGO, Aug 7 (Reuters) - When railroads reported second -quarter earnings last month, their stocks took a battering.

Not because they missed expectations -- in some cases, they outperformed -- but because investors feared a coming economic slowdown could hit their future earnings.

But the idea that railroad fortunes move in lock-step with the economy could be outdated. Some say railroads will continue to grow even if the economy weakens, boosted by rising imports from China, soaring demand for coal and ethanol, plus pricing power not seen for decades.

"We are far less dependent on the economy than we were a decade ago," said Wick Moorman, chief executive of railroad Norfolk Southern Corp. . "Unfortunately there are some people in the market who have not yet embraced that idea."

Shares of Union Pacific Corp. fell nearly 3 percent on July 20, despite earnings results well above expectations. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. fell nearly 8 percent on July 25, helped partly by package delivery company United Parcel Service Inc. , which missed analysts' forecasts and warned of a moderating economy that same day.

Worries of a U.S. economic slowdown had many investors scrambling to sell. Conventional wisdom has it that the railroads are a bellwether of the U.S. economy. If economic activity slows, fewer goods move by train.

But that thinking may no longer apply, making railroad shares attractive buys at current valuations.

"We're still in the middle of a rail renaissance," said Tony Hatch of New York-based ABH Consulting. "Unfortunately, the only way to prove that the railroads will keep growing in a weakening economy is to experience a slowdown."

HELPED BY IMPORTS, TRUCKING WOES, OIL PRICES

Hatch and others believe that as the United States shifts its manufacturing base overseas, rising imports of cheap consumer goods from developing nations such as China will continue to grow, even as the U.S. economy slows.

"If there is an economic slowdown we should see an improvement in that (import) business as people will be looking for lower-cost goods," said Matthew Rose, CEO of U.S. railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. .

Soaring demand for coal from power plants is another source of growth for the rails, as natural gas becomes increasingly expensive. Oil prices are expected to remain high.

High fuel prices have also helped the railroads take market share from trucking companies, which are less fuel-efficient and more costly to operate. Adding to the trucking industry's woes is a growing shortage of drivers.

Also tied to the issue of oil is ethanol; demand for the biofuel is on the rise because U.S. refiners are now using it as a cleaner gasoline additive instead of water-polluting MTBE.

All these trends have contributed to record rail profits.

"While the railroads still carry goods such as autos and chemicals that are cyclical, more than half of what they carry cannot be considered dependent on economic cycles," said Peter Smith, an analyst at Morningstar.

To be sure, there is still a hefty chunk of rail business that remains susceptible to economic slowdowns, but that is being offset by another another crucial benefit for the rails -- steadily improving pricing power.

PRICING POWER

For more than 20 years after the deregulation of the U.S. railroads in 1980, prices for hauling goods declined in real terms. Facing tight capacity and soaring demand over the past few years, in 2005 railroads hiked prices by at least 10 percent.

Fresh price hikes have followed this year and some rail executives have indicated more are in the pipeline.

"The pricing renaissance of the railroads means they have the best pricing power we've seen for a quarter of a century," said Ken Hoexter, an analyst at Merrill Lynch. "Even if growth moderates, we should see that pricing story continue because of tight capacity."

"We remain confident about these stocks," he added, "though some investors will only be convinced by sustainable profit growth in the next few quarters despite a weakening economy."

Believers like Hoexter and Hatch say now is a good time to buy railroad stocks because they are cheap.

Union Pacific Corp. is trading 16.7 times earnings, BNSF is trading under 15 times earnings, Norfolk Southern is at 13.3 and CSX Corp. is below 13.6. The sector average is just under 21 times earnings.

"These stocks are trading at near trough multiples," Hoexter said.

In a July 27 research note Bear Stearns analyst Edward Wolfe reiterated the investment bank's "overweight" rating on Norfolk Southern, CSX and BNSF.

"(T)his group remains near its historical low-end valuation despite the best fundamentals...," he wrote.

Good article hkskyline! Thanks for your research and sharing! :cheers:

is passenger travel still valuable to the rail companies? or is revenue mostly based on freight

The private rail companies only rely on freight...

Passenger Rail is operated by the Public-owned Amtrak, which isn't that hot outside the Northeast US in revenues.

Amtrak is really bad. Oi.

Amtrak is really bad. Oi.

I think that this article is mostly talking about Chicago's freight rail...
Well, it all depends, but I would say yes, it doesn't look too good the way it is heading! But I heard that there are some sort of HSR underway that might pick up the slack of amtrak tho, so we will see!
BTW, Metra on the other hand is do fairly well servering as Chicagoland commuter rail which IMHO, should also upgrade its existing technology should they like to continuing attract even higher ridership when the oil prices are at major concerns for the drivers! :) :cheers: :runaway:

Yea, Metra is pretty decent.
Could be a bit cheaper though. A bit expensive for a college student. lol

Intercity passenger rail is handled by the nationalized Amtrak, which isn't doing good anywhere, but it has almost no public support. Commuter rail (suburbs to city center) is actually faring OK, even though it is practically all public. It tends to get overlooked, particularly because it does such short runs with only basic accomodations. But I think at some point we might see two nearby cities combine, and perhaps then we might see a resurgence in passenger rail in the US.

I don't think any of the HSR proposals are particularly strong. The government unfortunately is not standing behind them, passenger rail is drastically over-regulated, and the dominance of freight railroads all conspire against it.

Intercity passenger rail is handled by the nationalized Amtrak, which isn't doing good anywhere, but it has almost no public support. Commuter rail (suburbs to city center) is actually faring OK, even though it is practically all public. It tends to get overlooked, particularly because it does such short runs with only basic accomodations. But I think at some point we might see two nearby cities combine, and perhaps then we might see a resurgence in passenger rail in the US.

I don't think any of the HSR proposals are particularly strong. The government unfortunately is not standing behind them, passenger rail is drastically over-regulated, and the dominance of freight railroads all conspire against it.
But think about it tho, with the oil prices going nuts, the airfares are most likely to hike up due to its heavy reliance on gas and since HSR doesn't require gas, I think that government should think about the future NOW more so than ever! It isn't just good for the people, it is good for the national economy overall, unless we come to some sort of alternative energy plan, HSR seems to be well fit into the future long haul commuter rail area! :) :cheers:

In the US, oil is still a major fuel source for electricity.

Having said that, I do think it is high time, in fact after todays events, I think it is now desperation time, for the US to build an alternative transportation system. But in order for that to happen, there has to be some major changes:

1) The railroad regulations need serious, drastic overhaul. I am thinking totally new agency, everything.

2) We need national support for them. This means national support for lines and stations. A national control system. And a national organization. I think we need to build a new gauge and lay new lines - forget about trying to reuse old trakc.

3) We need to stop proping the airline industry up in deference to other forms of transportation

4) We need to stop this idea of individual payment of transportation. It is a medieval system of class control, keeping the rich rich and poor poor, preventing the poor people form getting around and getting ahead, and discouraging the mobilization of citizens.

5) We need to tell the frieght industry to go stick it - railroads aren't there to just serve them. They have been granted enourmous amounts of land, with the idea that they would help the people. By discouraging passenger traffic they are not living up to that promise, and I think they need to be held accountable for it.

Newspaper: Rail security lapses rampant across U.S.
16 January 2007

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Train lines that carry hazardous shipments have little or no police presence and shoddy security that makes them easy targets for terrorists, according to a newspaper investigation.

During a several-month, nationwide investigation, a reporter with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review was able to penetrate 48 hazardous chemical plants and the freight lines that service them. The reporter, who left his business cards on the cars, was never questioned when he climbed trains, photographed derailing levers and peeked into signaling boxes that control rail traffic, the newspaper reported in a series of stories that began Sunday.

"What you uncovered is a criminal tragedy, and it's a criminal tragedy that's just waiting to happen. It's also criminal what we haven't done about this," U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., told the newspaper. Biden has sponsored legislation to revamp rail security nationwide and pledged to hold hearings on the issue.

The newspaper visited rail lines from Seattle to New Jersey that had been documented by the Federal Railroad Administration since 2003 for defects in security. The newspaper found that little, if anything, had changed since those first reports were issued.

In Las Vegas, the Tribune-Review reporter reached 11 hazmat tankers either inside plants or along rail tracks. As a result of the findings, the Nevada Homeland Security Commission said it is investigating security shortfalls.

"Closing gates, making sure workers and guards and police are aware of our chemicals, that's important," Commission Supervisor Larry Casey said. "Unfortunately, the farther we get from 9/11, the more people forget about staying vigilant."

The Tribune-Review reporter left about 100 business cards on Union Pacific hazmat tankers from Las Vegas to Seattle.

"Our only statement is that we believe what you did is dangerous and we strongly encourage people to stay away from railroad tracks," Jim Barnes, a spokesman for Union Pacific railroad, told the newspaper.

Among other things, the newspaper also found defects or lapses in security in several other areas, including:

--In Atlanta, the reporter climbed aboard unguarded stores of deadly insecticides, flammable petroleum distillates and acetone. Atlanta and Georgia homeland security officials declined to comment on the newspaper's findings.

--Despite security cameras, roving patrols and high fences at Pioneer America's Tacoma, Wash., bleach plant, the reporter walked past rail switching levers and safety chocks to access a railcar filled with chlorine that was sitting outside the railyard gates. Pioneer's plant manager said police did patrol the area.

--In the New Jersey suburbs abutting New York City, the Tribune-Review found the toughest chemical plant security of anywhere, but was still able to enter 12 chemical facilities or railroads. Richard Canas, director of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, said the state is vigilant about protecting its rail lines but there are some vulnerabilities.

Nancy Wilson, vice president and director of security for the Association of American Railroads, said freight security has improved since 2001 but more must be done. There is about 240,000 miles of unprotected railroad line in the U.S.

"You've got to remember the open architecture of railroads. We're not static facilities. We cannot protect every railcar, every rail yard or every customer's facility all the time," said Wilson, whose organization represents haulers who handle about 90 percent of the nation's hazmat truck cars.

Homeland Security officials and the association said there's no indication that terrorists are plotting any rail attacks in the U.S.

"To me, this is a no-brainer for terrorists in Atlanta or anywhere else," Sal DePasquale, a Georgia State University expert on counterterrorism and retired security director for chemical titan Georgia Pacific, told the newspaper. "It's toxic material. It's unprotected. If you're a railroad or a chemical plant and you won't have someone ready to kill the adversary ready to attack your plant, then what can you do?"

keeping the homeland secure my ass.

Amtrak exec says it can keep long-distance trains
By John Crawley

WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Amtrak can operate more efficiently and maintain its long distance service, but success of the U.S. national rail system is going to depend heavily on state investment, Amtrak's president said on Tuesday.

Alexander Kummant told reporters at Union Station, where senators unveiled a rail investment proposal, he has no plans to undo the financially weak but politically backed network of trains that operate outside the flagship Northeast line.

Kummant said his view is to sustain the long-distance service but not preserve the business practices that have led to huge annual losses on trains that sprawl across the West, Midwest and South on tracks owned by freight railroads.

Ten to 15 years in the future, Kummant hopes Amtrak service throughout the country would be underpinned by billions of dollars in state capital invested in short-haul corridors that connect cities but also stop in smaller locales. He believes that highway and air congestion, coupled with high fuel costs, will drive rail development.

"I would say look at corridor conversion -- where can you take a long-distance train and break that into multiple state corridors where it makes sense?" Kummant said. "We want to approach that carefully but meaningfully."

Kummant, a former freight rail executive, also says he hopes to wring more cost savings out from operations.

Amtrak, a for-profit federal corporation, has muddled along for 35 years with annual federal subsidies that barely keep its trains in service and its infrastructure in good condition.

It has lurched from crisis to crisis, almost shutting down once before the Bush administration strong-armed business and operating reforms to save money. The changes fueled expectations Amtrak would slash popular but poorly performing long-distance routes.

Some of the administration's reform proposals, those that would have dismantled Amtrak and offered some of its routes to the highest bidder, have faltered. But two points remain and underpin the leading congressional rail funding proposal -- more state support and greater efficiency.

"We can't keep asking Amtrak to operate like a business while we string along the company year to year," said Sen. Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican.

The $19.2 billion plan by Lott and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, would provide $3.2 billion annually for Amtrak over six years. The rest would help states finance capital for rail development.

In other words, "we are poor give us more money"

If the states that don't want to cough up don't see the value of Amtrak, fine, let them pay with congestion and traffic. No need to have Amtrak begging them to provide services that they don't want.

The highway network is more than capable of connecting people across the country anyway.

But what happens is that one state is able to hold rail service hostage for the other states. All you need is one state that wants to promote it's highway building an dmaintenance industry and oil industry, and they can easilly stop the trains runnig through by destroying the infrastructure.

But what happens is that one state is able to hold rail service hostage for the other states. All you need is one state that wants to promote it's highway building an dmaintenance industry and oil industry, and they can easilly stop the trains runnig through by destroying the infrastructure.
That would only be a real problem in the Northeastern US, as further west the states are too geographically huge to have that concern, some border town cases aside (like Kansas City and St. Louis). No one is going to spend more than 4 hours on a train, which given the pathetic state of our railways would mean probably traveling at best, at best, 320 km/200 miles on average. In a lot of states further west, you could be on a route for 200 miles and still be in the same state. :yes:

amtrak should just focus on the NE and chicago seeing as that's its bread and butter.

The US is not Europe. Cities are far apart and the country is huge. The focus should be improving air travel and having regional hubs to develop comprehensive highway connections (which is already there with the Interstate).

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.

No one is going to spend more than 4 hours on a train,

People easily spend 6+ hours to sit on a plane to go from the east coast to the west coast. And that's being stuck in a airline seat that is barely wide enough to fit in and you can't really get up and move around. Now compare that to something like an Acela coach, which has wider, comfortable seats, you can get up, walk around, go sit in a lounge car, watch the scenery passing by. It's a lot more pleasant place to spend your trip, and people would be willing to put up with longer journeys in trade for better comfort.

While that kind of distance may not work in a few western states, by and large your real rail states are going to be the area around the Great Lakes and Atlantic Seaboard, and the west coast. The vast open west isn't too friendly to rail OR air travel. Just not enough people except in certain cities.

The US is not Europe. Cities are far apart and the country is huge. The focus should be improving air travel and having regional hubs to develop comprehensive highway connections (which is already there with the Interstate).

not in the northeast and upper midwest but the rest of the country...yeah.

not in the northeast and upper midwest but the rest of the country...yeah.

Even in the Northeast, the Acela was supposed to show HSR works in the US, but due to technical faults, it has flopped quite badly. Competition from buses and the car is very intense, while the leisure traveler may not be willing to fork out the extra cash for Acela anyway. It's not a common mode of transport like Thalys, Eurostar, or TGV, etc.

Ironically, the Acela does quite well, and has been proven with recent spate of problems they had where they weren't using the high-speed (supposedly) trainsets, that people still liked the trains as long as the level of service was up there. Unfortunately Air Travel is showing some of it's weaknesses, and most of those are in places such as the northeast and Atlantic and Pacific coast, where High Speed Trains would be most beneficial. As much as everyone talks about the sprawl of the west, a large part of hte country where transportation is needed has close enough density to warrant trains.

http://photos.yahoo.com/manilaborn66

oops sorry

Even in the Northeast, the Acela was supposed to show HSR works in the US, but due to technical faults, it has flopped quite badly. Competition from buses and the car is very intense, while the leisure traveler may not be willing to fork out the extra cash for Acela anyway. It's not a common mode of transport like Thalys, Eurostar, or TGV, etc.
So as opposed to trying to see what could be done differently, you condemn us to having to take buses?

:crazy:

A Boston-New York-DC service travening the ~800 km in between these three services in 4 hours would KILL the airline traffic in between both cities. This would not be an astronomically fast service, averaging 200 km/h (about 125 miles per hour), but that alone would be enough to ensure that highspeed works in the North East. Push the envelope and try to get that to three hours, then shuttles between the three cities would cease. Connect this high speed line to airports, and I tell you that this could be one of the most sucessful high speed lines in the world.

It does not happen because people have the mentality that you are espousing, "well we tried a half-ass attempt at it and it sucks, let's get back on the highways."

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).
There is a proposed high speed rail system for California: http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/. It's been talked about for at least ten years now, and whether it will ever happen is anyone's guess.

The maximum speeds of hs-trains are already above 500 km/h!
Not in regular passenger service. The normal maximum speed on most high speed systems ATM is 300 kph, and there is a 40 km section of the LGV Mediterranee between Aix-en-Provence and Avignon stations in southern France where 320 kph is currently being tested to determine its effect on trains and track. The results of this have given SNCF the confidence to allow 320 kph on the LGV Est, the new high speed line between Paris and (ultimately) Strasbourg in eastern France, which is due to open this year. They hope that the maximum speed can be increased to 350-360 kph eventually, not just on this line but on other existing high speed lines too. Where you mentioned the "above 500 km/h" speed you may be thinking of the world train speed record for steel wheels on steel rails, which stands at 515 kph, set by a TGV Atlantique train in May, 1990. Note that this unit was modified for the attempt, was comprised of only 3 carriages (plus the two power cars), and these modifications were reversed afterwards, before the train reverted to normal service.

People easily spend 6+ hours to sit on a plane to go from the east coast to the west coast.
Maybe but that's the fastest option available to them, so they endure it. BTW, does "6+ hours" include check-in, waiting to board and collecting luggage at arrival? I would think that a flight from east coast to west coast (or visa versa) would take about 4 hours. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Even in the Northeast, the Acela was supposed to show HSR works in the US, but due to technical faults, it has flopped quite badly.
Why did Amtrak decide to have a new train (admittedly based on the TGV) designed and built from scratch when they could have purchased off the shelf an existing, tried and proven high speed train, modified for local conditions if necessary? It probably would have been cheaper and could have been brought into service sooner. They even tested the Swedish X2000 tilt train and German ICE in the early 1990s. Were neither of these found suitable?

A Boston-New York-DC service travening the ~800 km in between these three services in 4 hours would KILL the airline traffic in between both cities. This would not be an astronomically fast service, averaging 200 km/h (about 125 miles per hour), but that alone would be enough to ensure that highspeed works in the North East. Push the envelope and try to get that to three hours, then shuttles between the three cities would cease. Connect this high speed line to airports, and I tell you that this could be one of the most sucessful high speed lines in the world.
This would still require trains to be sped up quite a bit, seeing that currently Washington DC to New York takes about 3 hours, and New York to Boston about the same or more (correct me if I'm wrong). How would this be done? Straightening out sections of track with tight curves, bypassing cities, improving signalling, general upgrading of track, or something else?

Maybe but that's the fastest option available to them, so they endure it. BTW, does "6+ hours" include check-in, waiting to board and collecting luggage at arrival? I would think that a flight from east coast to west coast (or visa versa) would take about 4 hours. Correct me if I'm wrong.


Actual flight time varies according to the actual cities and direction (the jet stream has an effect), but 6 hours is a good approximation of flying time. In many cases though, that's a direct flight - many people make connections which add at least another two hours or more into the flight time. That time is air time, and doesn't include time spent checking in at the airport, getting your luggage, or driving to the airport. Most airports in the US are located fairly far from the city center, and take some time to get to the city.

There is a proposed high speed rail system for California: http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/.

Why did Amtrak decide to have a new train (admittedly based on the TGV) designed and built from scratch when they could have purchased off the shelf an existing, tried and proven high speed train, modified for local conditions if necessary? It probably would have been cheaper and could have been brought into service sooner. They even tested the Swedish X2000 tilt train and German ICE in the early 1990s. Were neither of these found suitable?



There are more stringent crash test because european trains don't face billion-tonne denser-than-the-center-of-the-sun freight locomtoives to possibly have a collission with, therefore any train had to be adapted.

There are more stringent crash test because european trains don't face billion-tonne denser-than-the-center-of-the-sun freight locomtoives to possibly have a collission with, therefore any train had to be adapted.
That applies where freight and passenger trains share the same tracks. Do any freight trains operate on the Northeast Corridor, where the Acela train operates?

Therefore, if the U.S. ever bit the bullet and built high speed lines for use only by passenger trains i.e. not by freight trains, these regulations would not apply, I presume.

Freight does operate on the Northest Corridor. As far as if the track were completely dedicated, well that is a bit of a question. Theoretically the FRA will issue waivers if traffic is seperated by space or time, but only up to a point. Even if they were totally separated, the regulations would still be more stringent.

The US is not Europe. Cities are far apart and the country is huge. The focus should be improving air travel and having regional hubs to develop comprehensive highway connections (which is already there with the Interstate).

In fact Europe and the US are approximately equal in area (I guess some people will debate what is and is not 'Europe") and have more or less equivalent populations.

My country has an equivalent area too, but not by any means an equivalent population. Europe is investing vastly in rail infrastructure: AMTRAK is struggling to stay alive. This has little to do with population density.

More significantly, "Radio National' here today reported that last Century's emissions would heat the world for one thousand years to come .... even if we turned off our pen-lights.

And God Created Cadillacs ...

In fact Europe and the US are approximately equal in area (I guess some people will debate what is and is not 'Europe") and have more or less equivalent populations.

My country has an equivalent area too, but not by any means an equivalent population. Europe is investing vastly in rail infrastructure: AMTRAK is struggling to stay alive. This has little to do with population density.

More significantly, "Radio National' here today reported that last Century's emissions would heat the world for one thousand years to come .... even if we turned off our pen-lights.

And God Created Cadillacs ...

While Europe and US share about the same area, Europe is home to over 700 million people while the US just surpassed 300 million.

More information by country : http://epp.eurostat.cec.eu.int/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-NK-05-015/EN/KS-NK-05-015-EN.PDF

If there is enough density, then the client base will be adequate to support the railway. If that happens, who cares if the government stops funding, because the operator will still turn a profit with their revenues already.

Size yes, population, no,

USA Area 9,631,420 km² (3rd1) 3,718,695 sq mi
Population 2007 estimate 301,049,000

Europe 10,400,000 square kilometres (4,010,000 sq mi)
Population 710,000,000

^I think a comparisson between the EU area and the continental area (48 states) of the US would be more interesting:

US(48 states) Area : 7,884,254 km²
Population: 301,049,000
Density 38/km²

EU Area: 4,325,675 km²
Population: 493,000,000
Density 114/km²

So is Australia already counted as part of the US ? :ohno:

From here, population-wise, India, & China are big nations. Indonesia is big too. Brazil? USA? Europe?

I hadn't really kept track of the population statistics, but quite seriously, the story I heard from national radio in the last two weeks was that Europeans were so degenerate that they couldn't even breed any more ... try www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint .

So is Australia already counted as part of the US ? :ohno:

Uh?!?



but quite seriously, the story I heard from national radio in the last two weeks was that Europeans were so degenerate that they couldn't even breed any more ... try www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint .

Yeah, right... we lost that abbility because a whitch cursed us!! :nuts:

Hum, that must be the crappest national television ever if it broadcasted trash like that...
:bash:

^^ :lol:

Well the fact behind tht news is that the native European population is getting old....like in Japan. Unlike the immigrants who are relatively young compared to the native white population in European countries are reproducing in lesser numbers.

Uh?!?





Yeah, right... we lost that abbility because a whitch cursed us!! :nuts:

Hum, that must be the crappest national television ever if it broadcasted trash like that...
:bash:

It's actually a radio program ... I wasn't saying that I agreed with that view, just that you get a lot of Europe-bashing in the media these days.

To give my national broadcaster the credit it deserves, this particular program was put in the schedule to present a 'conservative' view to offset the alleged left-wing bias of the programming as a whole.

I hadn't really kept track of the population statistics, but quite seriously, the story I heard from national radio in the last two weeks was that Europeans were so degenerate that they couldn't even breed any more ... try www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint .

Speaking as a European, breeding is beneath us. Instead we adopt and nurture the foreign infidels, so that they can feed us soup in our old age, while we watch ozzy soaps. But then I don't really keep track of the population statistics....

Ha, hahahahahahahahaha.....don't worry, there are plenty of african immigrants waiting to get into the EU....a population crisis could be quickly absolved.

Deal to buy historic Grand Canyon Railway accepted
25 January 2007

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) - The owners of the fabled Grand Canyon Railway have accepted a buyout offer from one of the nation's biggest national park contractors.

Xanterra Parks & Resorts will take over the assets of the railroad company, including the trains, rail route from Williams to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel, an RV park, restaurant and several real estate parcels in Williams. The amount of the bid was not disclosed.

Xanterra runs lodges, restaurants and other concessions at national parks and state parks and resorts, including Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Crater Lake, Death Valley and Petrified Forest national parks.

"Xanterra is exactly the type of organization we hoped would purchase the railway. It's a well-run operation and we are looking forward to being a part of it," said W. David Chambers, president of Grand Canyon Railway.

The railway has two steam engines and 29 cars currently in service, plus six diesel engines and 14 cars not currently used.

The railway was shuttered for nearly 20 years before Paradise Valley residents Max and Thelma Biegert reopened it in 1989. In the early 1900s, it was the main mode of transportation to the Grand Canyon.

The Biegerts put the operation up for sale last year and announced a tentative deal with Xanterra in September. The deal still requires approval from the National Park Service.

i want to know if Amtrak can sepearted like JR in Japan i mean JR wasn't JR it was actually JNR (Japan National Railways) then around the 1980's it became JR (Japan Railways) and sepreated them by regions i am wondering if Amtrak can do the same since its not working to well if its united you know like Northeast Amtrak, Southwest Amtrak,Southeast Amtrak, Midwest Amtrak, South Amtrak, Rocky Amtrak, Amtrak Cailfornia (Currently exists), Pacific Northwest Amtrak like that i mean and Central Amtrak, anyways like that will help Amtrak and can also bring High Speed Rail to the United States

i want to know if Amtrak can sepearted like JR in Japan i mean JR wasn't JR it was actually JNR (Japan National Railways) then around the 1980's it became JR (Japan Railways) and sepreated them by regions i am wondering if Amtrak can do the same since its not working to well if its united you know like Northeast Amtrak, Southwest Amtrak,Southeast Amtrak, Midwest Amtrak, South Amtrak, Rocky Amtrak, Amtrak Cailfornia (Currently exists), Pacific Northwest Amtrak like that i mean and Central Amtrak, anyways like that will help Amtrak and can also bring High Speed Rail to the United States

Wasn't it because the various regional passengers railways were collapsing that Amtrak was created?

Ask Margaret Thatcher ... she knew.

i mean not to destroy amtrak i mean to sepreate them by Regions but still keep the amtrak name like i said before by regions like how Japan did with JR East, JR West, JR Central, JR Shiouku, JR Kynushu, and JR Hokkidao like that i mean to sepearte Amtrak to Regions and that Amtrak will be more profitable that way

JR is private.
Amtrak is owned by government.

Actually, Amtrak is de facto private - but its stock is wholly owned by the U.S. government.

Honestly, I don't know what's keeping Washington back from nationalizing Amtrak. I say go for it.

Amtrak Struggles With Late Trains
27 February 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Capitol Limited, an Amtrak train from Chicago, is scheduled to arrive in Washington every day at 1:30 p.m. But frequent rider Edda Ramos knows better than to make plans for the afternoon or evening.

She knows a late arrival -- sometimes by an hour or two, sometimes by seven or eight -- "is the one thing you can count on."

The 764-mile route is among Amtrak's most dismal performers, with just 11 percent of trains arriving within 30 minutes of their scheduled time last year. But the problem exists to one degree or another on the majority of Amtrak routes.

The main reason: In most of the country, the national passenger railroad operates on tracks owned by freight railroads, and the tracks are badly congested.

With freight traffic soaring in recent years, Amtrak's never-stellar on-time performance declined to an average of 68 percent last year, its worst showing since the 1970s. When the routes where Amtrak owns the tracks are excluded, the on-time performance last year fell to 61 percent.

Even the lawmakers who vote on Amtrak's subsidies of more than $1 billion annually have gotten caught in the holdups. Earlier this month, House Democrats traveling to a retreat in Williamsburg, Va., arrived two hours late after getting stuck behind a CSX freight train with engine trouble.

Alex Kummant, who took over as Amtrak's president in September, has made improving on-time performance a priority. A former executive at Union Pacific Corp. -- a freight railroad long considered hostile to Amtrak -- he says the relationship between Amtrak and the freight railroads is inherently complicated.

"It is an intersection of a subsidized structure with a truly private-sector structure, so how do you coexist?" he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Kummant doesn't blame the freight railroads for most delays, saying they need government help to make the capital investments necessary to cope with soaring volumes.

But passenger advocates and others accuse the freight railroads of failing to live up to their end of a bargain struck in 1970, when Congress agreed to let the railroads unload the passenger service they said was dragging them down. In exchange, the railroads were required to give priority on their tracks to trains run by a new national passenger railroad. Amtrak pays modest fees for use of the tracks.

Amtrak performs far better on the Northeast corridor, where it owns the tracks. Last year, 85 percent of its high-speed Acela Express trains between Boston and Washington arrived within 10 minutes of their scheduled time.

But where Amtrak depends on the freight railroads, the picture is far gloomier, and the Capitol Limited is not even the worst case. The Coast Starlight, which runs between Seattle and Los Angeles, had an on-time performance of 4 percent in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. For the California Zephyr, connecting Chicago and San Francisco, the figure was 7 percent. In the current fiscal year, the California Zephyr has not once arrived on time.

"The resulting damage to Amtrak's brand, reputation and repeat business is potentially devastating," Amtrak's former acting president, David Hughes, wrote in a letter last summer to the federal Surface Transportation Board.

The freight railroads say they do the best they can and are investing heavily in capacity improvements. In its own letter to the board, CSX Corp. said Amtrak should add more time to its schedules to reflect reality.

There is little incentive for the railroads to help Amtrak arrive on time, because the fees that Amtrak pays to use the tracks are paltry in relation to the billions of dollars the freight lines take in. Nor are there any real consequences for failing to accommodate Amtrak. A bill in the Senate calls for establishing penalties.

In the last fiscal year, Amtrak paid all of its host railroads $90 million -- including about $15.5 million in rewards for on-time performance. If Amtrak had performed better, the railroads could have earned an additional $74.5 million in incentives.

Kummant said he believes the freight railroads are making a good-faith effort. But he said track capacity has become maxed out as freight traffic has soared in recent years, thanks to increased demand for coal and a growing reliance on rail.

That, in turn, has worn out the tracks, forcing Amtrak trains that normally travel 79 mph to slow to as little as 20 mph. Much of the rail network is single-tracked, meaning trains going in one direction have to pull over onto sidings to let trains coming the other way pass.

But Kummant said the situation has shown some improvement in recent months. And in what he called a sign of better relations, he has been given a sneak peak at the railroads' capital plans, and "they're nothing short of stunning."

To further speed up improvements, the freight industry is lobbying for federal tax credits for investments in track and other infrastructure to expand capacity.

One late arrival of the Capitol Limited last week showed how complicated the issue is. The train lost several hours because of "freight interference" on Norfolk Southern Corp.'s tracks between Chicago and Toledo, Ohio. But its problems actually started when it left Chicago an hour and a half late because of mechanical problems, thus missing its time slot. It arrived at Washington's Union Station 3 1/2 hours late.

The late arrival was frustrating for Ramos, 44, who started riding the Capitol Limited last year to visit relatives in Chicago. The Washington resident takes the train to avoid airport security hassles, but said she wouldn't risk it for business travel.

"I would be fired!" she said.

Story from UWM campus news online
By: Rebecca Kontowicz

Construction will begin two years after funding is approved. If the bill passes this year, the rail will be complete by 2010, said Randy Wade, Wisconsin DOT passenger rail manager.

Students and commuters traveling between Milwaukee and Madison can either drive or hop on the Badger Bus, but if a new federal bill goes through, they could have one more option: a train.

The Milwaukee to Madison High Speed Rail initiative relies on S.294, a bill proposed by U.S. Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Trent Lott last week, asking for $12 billion in federal funding for nationwide Amtrak services over the next six years.

The Milwaukee to Madison High Speed Rail corridor is part of the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, a nine-state coalition to connect the region with high speed passenger rail service. It includes Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri and Minnesota. The network stems from Chicago and extends 3,000 miles.

According to Randy Wade, Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) passenger rail manager, the cost of the rail, which would be an extension of Amtrak’s Hiawatha service between Milwaukee and Chicago, is now set at $316 million. About $227 million would go toward infrastructure, including the track, controls and running devices and $89 million toward new equipment.

If the bill is passed by Congress, the Wisconsin DOT would then apply for a federal/state cost share ratio of 80/20. Eighty percent of the rail’s funding would be provided by federal funding, while the remaining 20 percent, around $63 million, would be paid for with state funds, Wade said.

Construction will begin two years after funding is approved. If the bill passes this year, the rail will be complete by 2010, Wade said.

“(High-speed rails) give residents another mobility choice that is predictable, dependable and affordable, for pleasure, business and family travel,” said Marc Magliari, Amtrak’s spokesman.

An executive summary of the project, which can be viewed at dot.wisconsin.gov, states that another benefit of high-speed rail is that it minimizes the environmental impact of travel. High-speed rails create less pollution than cars, airplanes and other modes of transportation. Rails also unite and benefit the economy of the connected regions, the site continues.

For these reasons, the already existing Amtrak Hiawatha service is successful. According to Wade, ridership has dramatically increased within the last few years. From 2004-2005 it increased at only 0.8 percent but jumped to a 10 percent increase in 2005-2006.

The Hiawatha currently runs seven roundtrips Monday through Saturday and six on Sundays from Milwaukee to Chicago. Speeds peak around 79 mph, with a one-way trip lasting about 90 minutes, Magliari said. Speeds between Milwaukee and Madison are estimated at up to 110 mph.

“The Hiawatha service has the best on time performance of any Amtrak in the U.S. outside of California,” Wade said.

Hiawatha currently makes stops at Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport; Sturtevant, Wis.; Glenview, Ill.; and Chicago. The extension would create additional stops in Brookfield, Oconomowoc, Watertown and Madison.

According to Magliari, it is too early to determine the cost of operation and fare as they are yet to be negotiated. However, he said it is relatively safe to assume that fare will be in the same range as Hiawatha’s current price of $21 for a one-way ticket to Chicago.

At this point, the State of Wisconsin Department of Transportation owns the 32-mile corridor extending from Watertown to Madison. Preliminary engineering and an environmental assessment have already been completed, but the status of the project relies on federal funding.

From Chicago Tribune

Tribune staff report
Published March 5, 2007, 8:22 PM CST


A new study evaluating the possible resumption of passenger trains from Chicago to Rockford and Dubuque reported Monday that travel times would not be any faster than driving, but the rail service would help reduce traffic congestion on highways.

The study, conducted by Amtrak at the request of Illinois transportation officials, also laid out preliminary cost estimates for the first time.

Up to $62 million would be needed to improve the railroad infrastructure, but that does not include costs for railcars, locomotives or stations, the study said.

Operating costs to run a single daily round trip between Chicago and Dubuque via Rockford were estimated at less than $5 million annually.

The study mentioned travel times of about two hours between Chicago and Rockford, and less than 4½ hours between Chicago and Dubuque.

It has been more than 25 years since the last passenger train service from Chicago through northwestern Illinois ended. Amtrak Black Hawk trains ran through Rockford and Freeport to Galena and Dubuque from 1974 to 1981 using the former Illinois Central route.

Officials at the Illinois Department of Transportation said they received the study Monday from Amtrak and needed time to review it before commenting.

Direct link to Amtrak:

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/am2Copy/News_Release_Popup&c=am2Copy&cid=1093554079196

The general population growth along the eastern portion of this corridor has been strong over the past decade, but passenger train service formerly provided by Amtrak ceased in 1981. Highway traffic volumes on Interstate 90 (Northwest Tollway) between Chicago and Rockford are significant; with frequent backups the closer one gets to Chicago. Rockford is a major residential and commercial center and the largest metropolitan area in Illinois without passenger rail service. Between Rockford and the O'Hare Airport area, many new residential developments have been established. Further west, Galena is a significant destination city for tourism, especially during the summer and fall. At Dubuque, there is an aggressive plan underway to redevelop the downtown property along the Mississippi River.

Following receipt of the study request, a number of alternative rail routes were identified as candidates for this service. Physical evaluations of the routes were conducted with host railroad personnel, including inspections, assessments of capital needs, and identification of operational challenges. Revenue/ridership forecasts were determined based on recommended schedules, and estimates of cost to operate the service were developed. The goal was to prepare a high-level and objective report of the findings, in response to IDOT's request, for further discussion.

Three alternative routes were identified as potentially feasible for establishment of Amtrak service between Chicago and Rockford, with only one route being practical between Rockford and Dubuque. An electronic version of the map showing the alternatives in .jpg format is available from Amtrak Media Relations, Chicago. Each requires a different level of capital investment to make the service a practical reality.

Although there have been general discussions and field inspections with the host freight railroads, the specific infrastructure improvement proposals, draft schedules and other railroad-related comments have not been negotiated or agreed to with the host freight railroads and reflect only the findings and best judgment recommendations of the study team. Should further progression of one of the alternative proposals be desired, detailed discussions and negotiations will have to be initiated with those rail carriers (emphasis added).

There is a map link on the Amtrak page that would be useful. Too bad I get an error when i click on it. :(

Government increases railroad track inspections with new rail cars
16 May 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two new railroad cars will examine tracks around the country in an effort to detect flaws and prevent derailments, federal railroad officials said Wednesday.

The custom inspection cars will use laser technology to find problems such as tracks that have been bent, or have the wrong distance between them. They are being added to the Federal Railroad Administration's fleet of three existing cars and will enable the agency to inspect three times as much track annually, or nearly 100,000 miles of track per year.

"Finding track problems and getting them fixed before a train accident occurs is key to safeguarding communities," Joseph Boardman, head of the railroad administration said in a prepared statement.

Over the coming months, the cars will inspect railroad lines owned by Norfolk Southern Corp., CSX Corp., Union Pacific Corp. and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., an agency spokesman said.

Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office said federal railroad officials have made progress toward identifying the most dangerous parts of the nation's rail system in the wake of several accidents, but more work needs to be done to evaluate the effectiveness of that effort.

While the railroad administration has developed ways to measure safety in such areas as accidents caused by human errors, track defects and equipment problems, it does not have ways to evaluate the success of its inspection and enforcement programs, the report found. The report also said inspectors are only able to examine less than 1 percent of the rail system every year.

Amtrak says computer flaw caused 2006 outage between DC and NYC
23 February 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) - A faulty computer control was at the root of a massive power outage last year that shut down the Washington-to-New York City rail corridor for more than two hours during the morning rush, Amtrak said Friday.

Nearly nine months after the May 25 incident that stranded riders on 112 trains operated by Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, Philadelphia's SEPTA and Maryland's MARC, Amtrak issued its final report on the incident and said procedures are in place to ensure such an incident does not occur again.

Amtrak, which owns and operates the northeast corridor, said the conclusions stem from an investigation by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., or NERC, a self-regulatory organization of the electric industry.

The events leading up to the outage began two days before, when Amtrak reduced the power capacity at one of six substations serving the corridor in order to do maintenance. After the problem was fixed, Amtrak employees tried to restore output to full capacity, but a computerized control never implemented the command, according to a joint report by Amtrak and NERC.

"When we got into the rush hours, we needed the capacity we thought we had and it just wasn't there," said Bob Verhelle, Amtrak's deputy chief engineer.

The other substations attempted to compensate, but were severely overloaded during peak demand, which led them to shut down, Amtrak said.

Verhelle said the computer that incorrectly kept the power off has been reprogrammed and that from now on all six substations will be manned during rush hour. In addition, Amtrak has learned from the manufacturer of the substation that it can perform maintenance without reducing capacity.

In another new measure, Amtrak has stationed a diesel locomotive in New Jersey at the entrance to the tunnel to New York that can pull out any train that gets stuck, spokeswoman Karina Romero said.

Three NJ Transit trains and one Amtrak train were stuck in that tunnel during the May outage.

NJ Transit had 45 trains disrupted by the outage, the most of any agency. NJ Transit is satisfied with the investigation, spokesman Dan Stessel said.

"We ... believe that Amtrak is taking the appropriate steps to prevent a reoccurrence," he said.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called the report proof that budget cuts were hurting Amtrak.

"The administration needs to stop playing games with Amtrak's funding and instead give it the resources it needs to survive and grow," he said in a statement. "Without it, this report shows us next blackout or accident could be far worse."

For fiscal 2008, President Bush had proposed $800 million for Amtrak. The railroad has requested $1.53 billion.

------

Associated Press Writer Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.

So all this misery was due to someone forgetting to turn on a power station?

How very like Amtrak.

:|

Police: Diabetic Man Missing After Being Kicked Off Train

PHOENIX -- A 65-year-old St. Louis man is missing after Amtrak personnel, mistaking his diabetic shock for drunk and disorderly behavior, kicked him off a train in the middle of a national forest, according to police in Williams, Ariz.

# SURVEY: Did Amtrak Do The Right Thing?

Police said Roosevelt Sims was headed to Los Angeles but was asked to leave the train shortly before 10 p.m. Sunday at a railroad crossing five miles outside Williams.

"He was let off in the middle of a national forest, which is about 800,000 acres of beautiful pine trees," Lt. Mike Graham said.

Police said there is no train station or running water at the crossing, which is about two miles from the nearest road, at an elevation of about 8,000 feet.

Amtrak personnel told police dispatchers that Sims was drunk and unruly.

The Sims family said Sims is diabetic and was going into shock.

Sims' brother, Brian Mason, said his family tried to call Sims on his cell phone that night, but Sims was incoherent.

When officers arrived at the crossing, police said, Sims ran into the woods, leaving his luggage and medication behind.

Cell phone records show that Sims' phone was last used in Litchfield Park, Ariz., 180 miles from Williams.

Williams police told CBS 5 that Amtrak has used the abandoned crossing as a drop-off site in the past. Graham said that whether drunk or not, no one should be dropped off there.

"You don't put anyone off in an area like that," Graham said.

Amtrak said the company is looking into the matter.

"I just want to find him," Mason said. "I'm not mad at anybody."

"I want to find a way to make sure he's OK," Mason added.

"Our thoughts and prayers are that there's no way he's out there in those woods," Graham said.

Wow... someone is gonna get sued, if not charged criminally. Hope the guy is okay.

I think it's ridiculous that Amtrak is late so often. Today I looked at the train status and it was late about 4 hours in Arkansas coming from Chicago. I was about 2.5 hours late arriving into Chicago back in January. Now if I plan any trips on Amtrak I'll know to leave about 8 hours space in between trains.

I was upset if the train was late 10 minutes in Korea. In Japan, forget about it. Always on time.

Speaking of terrible train service in the west I was appalled to learn that TxDOT destroyed 20 miles of track in Houston that could have been used for commuters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Highway_Construction
"In 1992, Union Pacific agreed to sell the 20-mile strip of rail for roughly $75 million to TxDOT. Over time, the freight railway running beside the freeway was demolished, providing extra space for future construction."

What I can't understand is that the US has (or had) numerous competing rail networks ... and hence should, even today, have alternate routes available, at least, say along your Eastern seaboard, and, I'd think between New York & Chicago. We don't have that luxury here in Australia, since, with about 1/15th of your population in an area equivalent to your forty-eight contiguous states, allowing multiple private companies to build competing parallel lines was not a luxury we could afford (someone will call me a commo here, but never mind).

Now, my question is: you have all these easements ... and tracks, which I understand are often not all very-well maintained. How many alternate routes are there, say, from NYC to Chicago, or NYC to Boston ?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v294/ooompaloompa123/transport/maps-schematic/North_American_Rail.jpg

Isn't it possible to find one route for high speed traffic (and maybe upgrade it!) and one (or more) for freight ? At least out of Melbourne here, long-distance freight runs on separate tracks from regional fast rail. Someone above quoted trains being 7- 8 hours late between Chicago & NYC. We have similar services (I suppose) between Sydney & Melbourne, but the expectation is, that if you take the overnight train, you'll get there in the morning.

i once tried to take amtrak from oakland, jack london square, ca to san luis obispo - prob. a dist of about 250-300 miles. when i got to the station, they told me the train was 9 hours late (the trip itself was about 5 hours). i told them, fuck it, ill drive.
everytime after that, i took the amtrak BUS. travel time was cut by OVER AN HOUR, and in the half dozen times i made the trip, it was never late.

of course rail COULD work in the usa, even long distance lines. but it would require way way too much $$ to bring everything up to standards. cmon, guys, we got to spend our $ on more important things, like iraq.

^^ Pretty bad. But it could be fixed for a fraction of the cost of your Iraq War.

Why does Amtrak sit in Dallas and Fort Worth for less than an hour each? They're supposed to arrive in Dallas at 12pm and leave at 12:20. Then they arrive in FTW at 1:55pm and leave at 2:40. Is it to change crews? Or to magically catch up when they're behind schedule? It seems odd that they have breaks 2 cities in a row. I haven't ridden Amtrak at these stops, so is it possible that there's so many people that want to get on and off that it takes that long?

^^ Wouldn't happen in Europe.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/453056,CST-FIN-Amtrak03.article

Upscale rail -- on Amtrak
TRAIN TRAVEL | Luxury service rolls out in Nov.

July 3, 2007
BY SARAH KARUSH

Mahogany interiors, five-course meals and personal butler service will be available on several Amtrak routes starting this fall, as the national passenger railroad embarks on a new partnership with GrandLuxe Rail Journeys.

The companies have teamed up to attach seven special GrandLuxe cars to regularly scheduled Amtrak trains. More than 90 departures are scheduled from November to early January.

• The new service, dubbed GrandLuxe Limited, will be available between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area, Chicago and Los Angeles and Washington and Miami.

Limited trips are also scheduled between Washington and Chicago, from Denver to San Francisco, from Denver to Chicago and from Chicago to Albuquerque.
For Amtrak, the partnership will be a moneymaker, company spokesman Cliff Black said. He declined to say exactly how much privately held GrandLuxe is paying the government-owned corporation.

The project marks the first time Amtrak is providing regularly scheduled private rail services.

''We like the opportunity to experiment with creative marketing approaches,'' Black said. ''Anything that elevates the profile of passenger-train service is beneficial to Amtrak.''

The arrangement allows Evergreen, Colo.-based GrandLuxe, formerly known as American Orient Express, to bring its brand of luxury to a wider group of potential customers in a more affordable format.

Tickets for the two- and three-day GrandLuxe Limited trips will range in price from $789 to $2,499. In contrast, GrandLuxe's regular tours take seven to 10 days and range in price from about $4,000 to $8,000 per person.

For its longer trips, GrandLuxe operates one 21-car train that consists of old passenger cars from the 1940s and 1950s -- a time when train travel had not yet been overshadowed by the rise of the interstate highway system and commercial aviation. The cars have been refurbished to conform to modern standards and to add ''a level of luxury that never existed,'' said Christina Messa, vice president of marketing for GrandLuxe.

For the Amtrak partnership, GrandLuxe will split its train in three. Each segment will have a dining car and a lounge car and have room for 47 passengers, Messa said. It will operate completely separately from the Amtrak portion of the train.

GrandLuxe passengers will not be able to get off at intermediate stops because of limitations such as platform length, though the companies said that could change.

Amtrak will operate the same number of cars it normally would, but in some cases it might have to add an extra locomotive, Black said. The companies said they could expand the partnership if it is successful.

GrandLuxe trains tend to appeal to older travelers, and Messa said she expected the new Amtrak routes to do the same.

Tom Weakley, 64, has ridden GrandLuxe trains 16 times since retiring from a job in the drug wholesaling industry. He said he relishes being pampered on board the train. A butler brings coffee in the morning. In the afternoon, there are cocktails in the lounge car.

The lounge cars themselves vary: One features a baby grand piano; another, used for particularly scenic routes, is surrounded by glass.

Dinners are long and unhurried -- an opportunity to make friends with fellow passengers, said Weakley, of Indianapolis.

''Did I mention the complimentary wine?'' he added. ''And they don't limit you to one glass.''

AP

$789 to $2,499 ? for one to two day trip?
What a joke, just a rip off. For the wealthy traveller only! Plus no doubt the obligatory $100 tip.

I still don't see how they are going to cope with poor routes, long delays and cancellations, and Amtrak equipment breakdowns. Will they be using head-end power?

Amtrak isn't that great.

I took it the Acela from New York to Boston. Supposedly, while in Connecticut, the speed goes as low as 150 km/h. And, we spent more time in New Haven than expected, so it took almost 5-6 hours.

I'm never taking Amtrak again, this was not the only time I had a bad time with it. If it's in it's current form, I'll either take the cheaper bus or the faster plane.

The US is not Europe. Cities are far apart and the country is huge. The focus should be improving air travel and having regional hubs to develop comprehensive highway connections (which is already there with the Interstate).

US is not Europe yes, but you have several considerable regions that would be very well suited for a good and tight railservice. The east coast and Chicago area being just examples. A considerable part of your overall population lives in those regions.

Railways offer an energy efficiency when being properly run cars can only dream of. This argument alone will soon force you to get something done. Or do you think you will continue to have the means of wasting rescources for many decades to come?

US is not Europe yes, but you have several considerable regions that would be very well suited for a good and tight railservice. The east coast and Chicago area being just examples. A considerable part of your overall population lives in those regions.

Railways offer an energy efficiency when being properly run cars can only dream of. This argument alone will soon force you to get something done. Or do you think you will continue to have the means of wasting rescources for many decades to come?

For many years I have agreed with you, and you are completely correct. :applause:

However you are suggesting a simplistic solution to almost 100 years of very bitter political debate about national transportation politics.

The easiest way for Amtrak to get more revenue is by putting a connection from Los Angeles to Bakersfield and from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Right now, if I wanted to go to Sacramento from Las Angeles, I could either take a 24 HOUR trip along the coast, or take a bus to Bakersfield and have about a 2 hour trip. I don't want to take a bus or drive to Bakersfield, so a train trip for me is out of the question. The sad part is, this is true for the Bay Area cities as well. LAX does not require a bus, so even though it is crowded, people still go there. There is no reason to not build that extension.

As for Las Vegas, there are currently only 2 ways to get there, plane and car. There is always traffic on the I-15 and the plane is expensive. Amtrak really needs to extend to Las Vegas, imagine the ridership that they would get from there.

If Schwarzenegger would stop being such a pain and give California High Speed Rail a chance, then it would show that passenger rail works in this country. The state needs it badly the way the airports are overcrowding. I'm tired of driving through I-5 with all the trucks through the valley because I don't want to pay for airfare, we need a train with reasonable times already.

I agree that train travel does not work in all parts of the country, but it would work in areas where cities are close together and people go between all the time. SF-LA, LA-SD, LA-Phoenix, Dallas-Houston, NY-Boston, etc.

The easiest way for Amtrak to get more revenue is by putting a connection from Los Angeles to Bakersfield and from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Right now, if I wanted to go to Sacramento from Las Angeles, I could either take a 24 HOUR trip along the coast, or take a bus to Bakersfield and have about a 2 hour trip. I don't want to take a bus or drive to Bakersfield, so a train trip for me is out of the question. The sad part is, this is true for the Bay Area cities as well. LAX does not require a bus, so even though it is crowded, people still go there. There is no reason to not build that extension.

As for Las Vegas, there are currently only 2 ways to get there, plane and car. There is always traffic on the I-15 and the plane is expensive. Amtrak really needs to extend to Las Vegas, imagine the ridership that they would get from there.

If Schwarzenegger would stop being such a pain and give California High Speed Rail a chance, then it would show that passenger rail works in this country. The state needs it badly the way the airports are overcrowding. I'm tired of driving through I-5 with all the trucks through the valley because I don't want to pay for airfare, we need a train with reasonable times already.

I agree that train travel does not work in all parts of the country, but it would work in areas where cities are close together and people go between all the time. SF-LA, LA-SD, LA-Phoenix, Dallas-Houston, NY-Boston, etc.

Just a few minor obstacles :) :ohno: :) : the Tehachapi mountains, the San Bernardino mountains and the San Andreas fault.

One of the major reasons for California High Speed rail delays is percieved cost of building tunnels through both sets of mountains and across the San Andreas fault. Both technically feasible from the engineering point of view but business case is daunting. :shocked:

By the way don't expect any more space on the existing tracks for passengers as both passes, Cajon and Tehachapi, are already over crowded. :bash:

I suggest that anyone interested in the future of AMtrak should read Dan Phillips column in "the August 2007 issue of Trans Magasine". I have enjoyed Don's long term commentary on both passenger an freight iissues but this month I found his comment particularilly disturbing and challenging.

I think that we should take his comments to heart and search "doable solutions" to improving our railraods and in particular we need to start proding our elected leaders to start to lead and develope a real, integrated national transportation policy. In particular we should integrate passenger railroad funding with all other forms of transport funding, roads, air traffic and transit, to eliminate all the "rice bowls" which are fighting for a piece of the pie.

The main problem is that Amtrak sucks miserably, but at the moment there's nothing viable to replace it with. If Amtrak's assets were put on the auction block, Canadian and Mexican railroads would buy everything up for a pittance and leave the country with a generation's worth of rolling stock paid for by American taxpayers. Amtrak can't be allowed to go under until at least two or three large states have viable regional rail systems of their own that would be both interested and able to buy Amtrak's assets so they'd at least remain in the US after the sale. Florida seems to be making its way towards becoming one of those states. Michigan seems to be another. If Michigan, Illinois, and possibly Indiana, Ohio, and/or Wisconsin manage to pull off the creation of a regional intermediate-speed rail network along with Florida, Amtrak will be as good as dead the next time it has a financial crisis.

Alternatively, someone might form a new company to buy Amtrak's assets and continue running their long-distance trains, but eliminate all the small-town stops along the way and run the whole thing more like a cruise ship. In other words, you could still take a train from Chicago to San Francisco along the historic route, but the train might only stop in Denver and Salt Lake City along the way. Or from Boston to Miami, with stops only at New York, Philly, DC, Orlando, and Miami (relying on Florida's own rail network to get anywhere else in the state)

Just a few minor obstacles :) :ohno: :) : the Tehachapi mountains, the San Bernardino mountains and the San Andreas fault.

One of the major reasons for California High Speed rail delays is percieved cost of building tunnels through both sets of mountains and across the San Andreas fault. Both technically feasible from the engineering point of view but business case is daunting. :shocked:

By the way don't expect any more space on the existing tracks for passengers as both passes, Cajon and Tehachapi, are already over crowded. :bash:

Even though that's all true, my points are still valid and it's a major reason why ridership remains at its current level in California. It may be expensive, but something needs to be done.

I agree amtrak is often late, but I find it is predicatbly late. I use this site to figure out how late my train is likely to be:

http://www.amtrakdelays.com

plus you can always check the status of a train through their website.

Even though that's all true, my points are still valid and it's a major reason why ridership remains at its current level in California. It may be expensive, but something needs to be done.

The last time I visited California, I was stunned by the extent to which travel to and from the Los Angeles basin was becoming seriously constrained by the states failure to invest in both highways and railroads across the mountains. California needs to prepare for some serious investment in new railroads and new highways between the Central Valley and the Los Angeles basin. The California HSR is only a start. The state needs at least one if not two new double track freight railroads as well.

The last time I visited California, I was stunned by the extent to which travel to and from the Los Angeles basin was becoming seriously constrained by the states failure to invest in both highways and railroads across the mountains. California needs to prepare for some serious investment in new railroads and new highways between the Central Valley and the Los Angeles basin. The California HSR is only a start. The state needs at least one if not two new double track freight railroads as well.

Los Angeles is doing work in the basin with the Alameda Corridor East, but I agree, there is not enough to go north. The 5 and 15 are congested, and the 101 is a long way. I don't care how it's done, but there needs to be a rail line straight to Bakersfield that can be used by passenger rail. I refuse to take a 24 hour train trip to Sacramento or ride a bus to Bakersfield. I assume most Angelenos feel the same, which is why they would rather go through LAX traffic.

The barrier between California's two main Metropoli will always be there and will always be a challenge, I think what exists is all that will be there unless High Speed is approved, and that creates brand new designated high speed lines outside of the urban areas and grade separations within those areas. All the planning is there, but the money isn't. As for Amtrak, the paper last week was just saying how convenient it was to go from San Diego to LA for a nice weekend trip, apparently the Pacific Surfliner is very popular, but all Amtrak in California is substantially funded by the state as most stock is owned by the state, hence Amtrak California. As for the Northeast, they're dense, trains make sense there and are a very practical option considering the proximity of cities.

I rode Amtrak to Portland from Seattle or to Seattle from Portland few times in the past year. It saved me a lot of gas money. I enjoyed it as well. Only three cons about Amtrak trains from my experience... My trains always arrive to Portland late than planned which messed up my plans sometime. Some trains I rode were very uncomfortable because of very old chairs, tiny restroom, and smell. Their foods are somewhat overpriced. The train between Seattle and Portland usually takes up four hours. If you drive on I-5 freeway from Seattle to Portland without traffic, it would be three hours. Will I ride it again? Sure, it save money but I have to be patient with their services. I think Seattle and Portland should work together to build high speed train route to improve its system.

It's great to go to San Diego because there aren't really any barriers. It would work between Los Angeles and San Francisco, but we need to put up money for tunnels and high speed rail. I just wish that the governor would let us vote on it instead of taking away the choice from us.

Chances are, they wouldn't even need to build a high-speed train route to cut the travel time by at least an hour. In all likelihood, most of the delays were caused by the Amtrak train sitting on a siding while a freight train crawled by (in theory, Amtrack trains are officially supposed to be given "priority", but that almost never happens in the real world). Even marginal tracks can sustain 79mph speeds. Continuous welded rail (CWR) with in-cab signals and robust quadrant-barrier crossing gates can handle 110mph. Amtrak's own trains could do 120mph without breaking a sweat if they were allowed to run that fast.

One big problem Amtrak faces on host railroads is the fact that freight doesn't really run on any hard timetable. Freight railroads (especially out west) queue up mile-long slow-moving trains that all need to run in the same general direction, then dispatch them all at once in waves under a timetable that doesn't get solidified until literally minutes before the first train leaves. The problem is, when Amtrak needs to run in the opposite direction as a wave of mile-long trains heading in the opposite direction, it ends up getting sidetracked and massively delayed every few miles.

One HUGE difference between freight operations in the US and Europe is speed and train length. In America, freight trains almost never break 25mph, and frequently exceed a half-mile in length. In Europe, freight trains tend to be shorter and faster. That's another reason why grade crossings are a bigger problem in the US than in Europe. In Europe, if you get stuck at a crossing, it'll probably be for a minute or two. In America, you can turn off your car, walk to BK a quarter-block away to buy lunch, and probably return to your car while the train is still creeping across the crossing at speeds slower than you can actually walk (which brings up another thing... I was shocked to find out how common it is in the US for railroads to have manual switches and literally have the train follow someone walking 1/4 mile ahead of it to throw the switches by hand before the train arrives. I saw it happen firsthand a few months ago on a trip to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As the train crawled through downtown, there was a guy walking in front of it with a crank that he used to move the switches. I just kind of stood on the skybridge over the tracks with my jaw hanging open while the guy threw two switches as the train sat in the middle of the city's main arterial through downtown blocking traffic in both directions for about 5 minutes).

I agree with you.

Amtrak would be much faster, and viable, if we created HSR lines. Other than cost and lack of space, I don't why this can't be done in the Northeast Corridor where there is a market for it. Freight traffic is also a problem for certain commuter rail systems.

The situation is even more laugable here in the Northeast where Freight trains are rarely used. There are literally hundreds of kilometers of railroads that are just rotting away.

I agree. It would be nice if USA got separate railways for commuters, Amtraks and fleights and let them move faster and arrive on time.

Why did Amtrak decide to have a new train (admittedly based on the TGV) designed and built from scratch when they could have purchased off the shelf an existing, tried and proven high speed train, modified for local conditions if necessary? It probably would have been cheaper and could have been brought into service sooner. They even tested the Swedish X2000 tilt train and German ICE in the early 1990s. Were neither of these found suitable?

The Acela isn't actually based much on the TGV. It only bears some similarities (the only part taken from the TGV are the asynchronous motors, I think). There are a few reasons why you can't just put a TGV on the Northeast Corridor. One of them is due to difference in electric standards. The NEC is home to about three or four different currents that the TGV is not adapted to, not withstanding that the US uses 60Hz rather than 50Hz in Europe. The NEC from New York to Boston utilises 25kV 60Hz AC, while New York-Washington DC uses 11.66kV 60Hz AC with a number of different frequencies mixed in there (at the time TGVs did not have adaption systems). Another big problem is the difference in standard platform height. I don't know why, but American stations have high platforms, while all European ones are low. The TGV could not open its doors as half of it would be underneath the platform. Finally, the NEC is much tighter and not customised like LGV. The TGV is not tilting and could not fit on certain sections, such as Metro-North propery in Westchester and Connecticut.

Not to mention the most important reason at all: FRA regulations require that any train running on tracks where there's even the slightest possibility of encountering a freight train have to be capable of surviving a head-on collision with one at full speed. The only way a real TGV could legally run on American tracks -- with passengers, at least -- is if there were no possibility at all of encountering a freight train on them.

The biggest problem with the FRA rules is their complete lack of common sense. For instance, suppose you have a passenger train that has its own tracks for 200 miles of a 210 mile trip, but uses existing tracks shared with freight trains for the first and last 5 miles (because they might run through a densely-developed area where building brand new tracks might cost $100 million/mile or more). Under FRA rules, even if the passenger train would never, ever exceed 79mph along those shared tracks, the fact that it runs at 150mph anywhere along its route means it has to be capable of surviving a 150mph head-on collision with a mile-long coal train . Even if it has its own right-of-way for 248 of those 250 miles, and ONLY shares a 2 mile causeway limited to 40mph along the causeway, the 150mph crash rules still apply. It's absolutely insane. That's part of the reason why Amtrak had so many problems with Acela trains... they're so incredibly heavy and massive, the parts they use (axles, wheels, etc) get subjected to stresses that don't exist anywhere else in the world. For all intents and purposes, trains faster than 150mph are impossible in America, because they'd literally destroy their own tracks. The tracks would be subjected to more wear, tear, and abuse in one month than TGV tracks experience in a decade.

I recently took a trip up to Rhode Island from New Jersey (by road, yes, that's bad of me, but Amtrak was booked at the time) and it took about 3 hours and 45 minutes to complete. For some reason, it takes 3 hours and 35 minutes to go from Metropark, NJ to Providence, RI. That seems a lot longer than it should be. However, I did some math and I found how long it would take for an Acela to go from Washington, DC to Boston at a certain rate:

Averaging 75mph - 6.093 hours (current time)
Averaging 100mph - 4.570 hours
Averaging 110mph - 4.154 hours
Averaging 120mph - 3.808 hours
Averaging 125mph - 3.656 hours (standard high-speed)
Averaging 130mph - 3.515 hours
Averaging 140mph - 3.264 hours
Averaging 150mph - 3.046 hours (highest possible speed)

This means that a train averaging 125mph, the average high-speed rail speed, could complete a journey along the entire Northeast Corridor in the same time as it would currently take for the Acela to go from New York to Boston. That's kind of sad.

Acela trains... they're so incredibly heavy and massive, the parts they use (axles, wheels, etc) get subjected to stresses that don't exist anywhere else in the world. For all intents and purposes, trains faster than 150mph are impossible in America, because they'd literally destroy their own tracks. The tracks would be subjected to more wear, tear, and abuse in one month than TGV tracks experience in a decade.

Do you have links to sources or engineering information? It seems interesting.

All aboard the booze choo-choo! Amtrak offers drinks promotion
1 August 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) - Amtrak is trying to gin up new business by offering $100 in free alcohol to customers on some overnight trains.

The national passenger rail company is making the unusual offer to promote a new high-end service being offered on a trial basis for certain sleeper car trips.

Members of Amtrak's guest rewards program -- the railroad equivalent of frequent fliers -- can get a $100 per person credit for alcohol between November and January.

The offer of free drinks comes on top of the dinner wine that is already included in the cost of a ticket for GrandLuxe trips on the California Zephyr -- chugging between Chicago and San Francisco -- the Southwest Chief between Chicago and Los Angeles, or the Silver Meteor between Washington, D.C., and Miami or Orlando, Fla.

At about $6 for a house wine or $7 for a top-shelf scotch, that credit could fuel a long ride. The credit would not go nearly as far for, say, a $250 bottle of Dom Perignon -- also available.

Christina Messa, vice president of marketing for GrandLuxe, said the drinks promotion is part of an effort to revive some of the luxury of old-fashioned, cross-country train trips.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving questioned whether $100 in free alcohol was too much.

"This sounds like a lot of credit toward possible overindulging," said MADD spokeswoman Misty Moyse.

GrandLuxe offers separate cars, with their own private dining and lounge sections, attached to regular Amtrak trains. Tickets for such trips range from $789 per person for a two-day, one night trip on the East Coast to $1,599 or higher for three days and two nights for travel to or from the West Coast.

Amtrak spokeswoman Karina Morero said the goal is to entice people to try the new, high-end sleeper car service. The free alcohol promotion "is a test run so we're going to see how our passengers respond to it," she said.

In Long Island, N.Y., the commuter rail company considered ending alcohol service out of concern some passengers might disembark at their destination and drive home while they were drunk. The proposal was shelved after some patrons opposed the idea.

Portland train station could become home to market-style vendors
19 August 2007

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - In several years you may be able to go to Union Station to catch a salmon, Pike Place Market-style, along with your train.

A group hoping to start a public food market in Portland says the city-owned train station is its top pick for a site.

Some city officials are intrigued by the idea and are eager to find new uses for the aging station in addition to Amtrak train service. But the city is far from committing to filling station space with a market, which faces problems that include raising millions of dollars in private funds and dealing with Amtrak's space and security needs.

The space and security worries can be managed with careful planning, said Ron Paul, consulting director of The Historic Portland Public Market Foundation, which is working to give the city its own Pike Place-like market opening in 2012 or later.

"There are some challenges both in the amount of square footage that it (Union Station) will ultimately yield and in the organization of the market," he said.

A recently finished architectural study found a way to craft more than 31,000 square feet of market space by straddling Amtrak's operations in the main hall. The $25,000 study was funded by a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant. Paul has gone over details with City Commissioner Dan Saltzman and staff from the Office of Sustainable Development, which Saltzman oversees.

South of the central hall, the market would stretch into space now filled with bathrooms, offices, a train-passenger waiting room and maybe Wilf's Restaurant, which could move into a separate annex building just south of the station. North of the hall, the market would go into building space now used for baggage and move outside into space that would be covered and turned into an entry.

"It's not ideal in that normally you'd want your market spaces more consolidated," without the passenger-hall's interruption, said Joseph Readdy with Mahlum Architects, who led the feasibility study. "But it does function."

A market could fit 25 to 30 vendors in that station space, selling everything from fresh produce to meat, baked goods, even distilled spirits, Paul said. Some storage and planned food wholesale work might have to go across the tracks, he said.

The market has looked at several other spaces, including the nearby Greyhound station and a federal building at 511 N.W. Broadway St. But Paul said he was lured to the station by TriMet's decision to run two MAX light-rail lines by Union Station: the Yellow Line to North Portland and the under-construction Green Line from Clackamas County. Riders from those areas, which have too few places to buy fresh foods, could pick up food on their way home from working downtown, Paul said.

Union Station also serves almost a half-million Amtrak riders a year. Paul hopes to get about triple that number of shoppers in the market in a year.

Still, the Union Station plan has drawbacks. Stricter train security could be a headache for market-goers, though Paul said he's planning for some tighter security rules. Historic rules and the building design limit the flexibility of the space.

Union Station needs $30 million to $40 million worth of work, including seismic upgrades and repairing water damage, to prepare for new tenants. After that work was done, Paul's group would have to raise $6 million to $8 million in private funds to install the market.

The city, meanwhile, has made no commitment to putting a market in the station. The Portland Development Commission is trying to find new ways to use the building and pay for repairs, said Lew Bowers, a PDC senior project manager. There could be other uses for that building, perhaps combining Amtrak, Greyhound buses and other transport services in one spot, he said.

Bowers sees the station's use as part of a bigger question: What to do with a "Broadway Corridor" that includes the 511 Broadway Building, privately owned Greyhound building, several nearby city-owned blocks and acres owned by the U.S. Postal Service. That's 20-plus blocks held by three or four owners, "which is pretty unusual for downtown Portland," Bowers said. "We see an incredible opportunity for this area."

Figuring out a way to get more money out of the train station is part of that. Updating the station probably hinges on including the land in a planned extension of the River District Urban Renewal Area, which could channel bond money to the project. The PDC also would love to find a long-term owner for the station, Bowers said. That could be the city of Portland, he said, or it could be a private owner. Some public-private partnership is the most likely outcome for the station.

"We need to have the discussion on more detail around this whole corridor," and get community input and City Council approval before deciding how to deal with the station, Bowers said.

to bring this back which is cool

anyways i hear of a rail service to miami florida which will be like a hotel on wheels with amtrak i read it on the newspaper

Amtrak's really disappointed me. They were great in the 1980s, so-so throughout the 90s, and nowadays from getting as far as only telephoning their enquiry line they appear psycho (really, really astonishing). ouch, the manner they took with a foreign tourist, ouch

is the sunset limited running to orlando florida i need to know because i am traveling one day

^ hmm, have u tried the amtrak website? ;)

well the thing is i did but when i checked on wikipedia they show a sign that it used to run to florida

i was wondering why they show that and on the amtrak site it says that the sunset limited runs to orlando florida

well the thing is i did but when i checked on wikipedia they show a sign that it used to run to florida

i was wondering why they show that and on the amtrak site it says that the sunset limited runs to orlando florida

Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.
You, once again, did not do your research.

Since Katrina, the Sunset Limited has not run east of New Orleans and I will be mildly surprised it it ever does run to Florida again.

that sucks that means that east of new orleans there is no rail service i think Sunset limited should come back to Orlando Florida i think it should

that sucks that means that east of new orleans there is no rail service i think Sunset limited should come back to Orlando Florida i think it should

Wishful thinking!:ohno: :ohno:
Unfortunately it had relatively low patronage on a single track route with very heavy freight volume.

It often ran days late

then double track the sunset limited route then i mean what will happen to the communites without rail service i mean how will people get around better without sunset limited now i can't go to LA on the sunset limited anymore i thought they repaired that part of track

Amtrak Booming In The NE US




http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118781538275205642.html




Airplanes are getting stuck in lots of traffic jams this summer, but Amtrak is on a roll.

Ridership on the passenger rail system is up 6% so far this year, the biggest jump since the late 1970s. On the Acela Express, trains that run at higher speeds between Washington, New York and Boston, the number of riders has surged 20% over the past 10 months. That's enough new passengers to fill 2,000 Boeing 757 jets.

Richard Rosen, who heads a pharmacy-fulfillment company in Boston, is making as many of his trips to New York as possible on the Acela.


Flying to New York, with traffic to and from La Guardia Airport, flight delays and security lines, has become "an absolute horror show," he says. A recent one-hour flight turned into four hours of exasperation. Mr. Rosen says the Acela, which takes about 3½ hours to get from Boston's Back Bay Station to Pennsylvania Station in midtown Manhattan, is more comfortable and reliable. "The train is much better, and you can do your work and use your cellphone during the whole trip," he says.

While airlines are running later and with more delays than ever -- a third of flights arrived late at La Guardia Airport between June 1 and Aug. 15, according to Flightstats.com -- Acela's performance is improving. The train is running on time 88% of the time, so far this year -- up from 84% a year ago. It was 90% on time in June. With Amtrak selling every seat on some Acela trains in peak travel periods, Amtrak recently added another weekday Acela round trip between New York and Washington to keep up with growing demand. The new train dropped all but one stop, Philadelphia, shaving 15 minutes off the normal 2¾-hour, five-stop New York-Washington trip.

All this represents a big change for Amtrak, the perennial Rodney Dangerfield of passenger transportation, which has faced scathing criticism in recent years for late trains and poor service. The Bush administration has in recent years tried to cut or eliminate its federal subsidies, which total $1.3 billion in 2007. And allies of the White House remain harsh critics. "Amtrak still needs to change its way of doing business," says Joseph Boardman, the Bush administration's top rail official as head of the Federal Railroad Administration and an Amtrak board member.

The Bush administration has repeatedly called for a major overhaul of Amtrak that would turn over Amtrak's Washington-New York-Boston Northeast Corridor to the states along the route. Amtrak would become a pure passenger rail operating company that would then compete for state contracts to provide intercity passenger rail service. The administration plan would create a long-term partnership where states determine passenger rail needs and the federal government provides matching funds similar to highways and transit.
[photo]
Since 2000, high-speed trains between Washington, New York and Boston have eroded airlines' market share.

But Amtrak's success lately isn't confined to the Northeast. While the railroad's long-distance trains continue to suffer from lengthy delays, its ridership is up sharply on some improved state-supported corridors, including Chicago-St. Louis, up 53% in the 10 months through July.

The improved service is being noticed by Amtrak's supporters in Congress and helping tilt the odds in the railroad's favor on more funding for future improvements.

"This means a lot of goodwill in the bank for Amtrak among policy makers for increasing its funds and expanding service," says Rep. James Oberstar, a Democrat from Minnesota, who heads the House transportation committee. "The dynamics have shifted in favor of a strong future for Amtrak."

The House recently passed a fiscal 2008 funding bill with $1.4 billion for Amtrak plus $50 million to match state funding of capital projects. The Senate is considering Amtrak funding of $1.37 billion plus $100 million for the capital program.

Airlines, of course, have their own ideas of how best to improve travel in the Northeast. Many of them are actively supporting a federal government proposal to replace the current air-traffic-control system with a more modern one that allows more flights. The Next Generation air-traffic-control system is estimated to cost nearly $40 billion and take until 2025 to be fully implemented, says the Air Transport Association.

"If that is taken care of, a lot of the problems we have today will be eliminated," says a spokesman for US Airways Group Inc., Tempe, Ariz., which operates one of the two hourly air-shuttle services between Washington, New York and Boston. A spokeswoman for JetBlue Airways Corp., Forest Hills, N.Y., says it's wrong for tax dollars to be used to subsidize Amtrak passenger trains "when a modernized air-traffic-control system is not yet in place or even funded."

But some big names in the airline industry are supporting Amtrak by calling for the U.S. to do what governments in Europe and Asia have long done -- building high-speed train lines for short-distance travelers and freeing up runway space for long-distance flights.

"You have to begin to put the infrastructure in place to put in high-speed trains," says Gordon Bethune, who retired in 2004 as chief executive of Continental Airlines Inc. "It should be a national priority. If the French can do it, why can't we?"

Another airline-industry legend Robert Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines parent AMR Corp., says improvements to Amtrak's network in the Northeast are one of the best ways to reduce aviation gridlock.
[right]

Since Amtrak introduced higher speed Acela trains in 2000, the railroad's share of the 10,000 daily plane or train passengers traveling between Washington and New York has grown to 54% from 45%. The Acela runs as fast as 135 miles per hour between New York and Washington. It reaches its top 150 mph speed on a small part of the route between New York and Boston. Amtrak's share of the Boston-New York air-rail market is also up, but by a lower amount.

Chris Gremski, who manages travel for the New York-based Open Society Institute, investor George Soros's charitable foundation, says a significant number of the foundation's employees have switched to Acela from air shuttles between New York and Washington. Airport security lines and flight delays are wiping out the time savings of the plane, he says, and Acela is cheaper (the one-way nondiscounted fare for the New York-Washington Acela is $199, compared with $324 for the air shuttle).

Mr. Gremski says some employees also are using the train because they think it is more fuel-efficient and less polluting than the plane.

But there are definite limits to how much more Acela can do. Alex Kummant, Amtrak's president and CEO, said in a presentation recently that Amtrak is constrained by the size of the Acela fleet, which numbers 20 trains. If he had his druthers, Mr. Kummant said Amtrak would be able to add cars to Acela trains to meet demand, rather than being limited to 304 passengers by Acela's fixed complement of six cars and two locomotives.

Acela will never clock the steady 180 mph speeds reached by the fastest European and Japanese trains as they travel on dedicated tracks from city to city. On the Northeast Corridor, Acela is stuck with curvy tracks that it must share with freight and commuter trains. Space for more and faster trains is limited particularly in New York, where the Northeast Corridor squeezes down to just two tracks under the Hudson River.

Still, for $625 million in upgrades to tracks, equipment, signals and electrical power systems, Amtrak could shave 15 minutes from the Acela's 2¾-hour schedule between New York and Washington, Mr. Kummant told Congress last month. Further time savings would come at a higher cost. Mr. Kummant says that to save an additional 10 minutes would cost $7 billion for new tunnels in New York and Baltimore, new bridges at other locations and track upgrades at five stations.

Truly high-speed rail requires a straighter, dedicated line built to highly exacting standards. David Gunn, who was fired as president of Amtrak in 2005 after a policy dispute, put it bluntly: "If you really want a super-zippy train from Washington to New York, you have to build another railroad."

yes you hear amtrak is booming awsome its becoming successful then ever i mean it seems awsome Amtrak is getting the step ahead and then high speed rail can be built and all that will be possible to be built

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-07-11-amtrak-high-speed_n.htm

Amtrak president: High-speed rail would cost billions

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even if it spent $7 billion on track upgrades, Amtrak couldn't reduce the travel time between Washington and New York to less than 2 hours and 20 minutes, which is only 25 minutes less than the trip now takes, the company's president told Congress on Wednesday.

The statement by Alex Kummant came during a presentation on the federally funded railroad's capital needs. During the hearing, members of the House transportation committee expressed frustration about the lack of truly high-speed rail service in the U.S.

The closest thing Amtrak has to high-speed service is the Acela Express, the railroad's premier Washington-Boston train, which travels at an average speed of 82 miles per hour and reaches 150 mph in parts of Rhode Island and Connecticut. In other parts of the country, where Amtrak runs trains on congested tracks owned by the freight railroads, speeds can be far slower and delays are frequent.

But even on the northeast corridor, it would be impossible to maintain speeds of 125 to 150 mph on the entire route using the current infrastructure, which Amtrak shares with numerous commuter lines and some freight carriers, Kummant has said. Such speeds — which could cut the trip from Washington to New York down to about an hour and a half — would require a dedicated line, he reiterated Wednesday.

"We'd be very enthusiastic about a major high-speed corridor," Kummant told the rail subcommittee. "Our reality is the system we run today."
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Wednesday | Washington | Amtrak

The Washington-New York segment currently takes 2 hours and 45 minutes on the Acela. Investing $625 million in upgrades would allow Amtrak to reduce that time to 2 ½ hours. A full overhaul, including several new tunnels and bridges, would cost $7 billion, but even that would only achieve a trip time of 2 hours and 20 minutes, with an average speed of 97 mph, Kummant said.

Building a dedicated line for high-speed service like France's TGV would cost $10 billion, and that doesn't even include the amount that would have to be spent on real estate acquisition in some of the most urbanized parts of the country, Kummant said.

Rep. John Mica of Florida, the ranking Republican on the transportation committee, has long advocated creating European-style high-speed rail on the northeast corridor with private capital. On Wednesday, he estimated such a project would cost $32 billion.

Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn., said that while there was no consensus on how high-speed service should be achieved, "that we get there is something that I think no one can dispute anymore."

But Kummant cautioned that overseeing a $32 billion project would be a serious challenge for Amtrak without significant changes in the organization. The railroad is better equipped to handle projects in the vicinity of $200 million.

"If you wrote us a check today, if I were you, I would be very wary of the execution," he said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published

then double track the sunset limited route then i mean what will happen to the communites without rail service i mean how will people get around better without sunset limited now i can't go to LA on the sunset limited anymore i thought they repaired that part of track

We Drive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yeah but owning a car is expansive i mean not only the buying of the car but also insurance is a pain in the ass and gas is expansive too

I wouldn't say it's "booming"...Amtrak operates in the NE corridor in an area densely populated. Anywhere in the US (except the Bay Area, in which Amtrak runs the commuter service) Amtrak is expensive and slow. Travel by air is still cheaper and faster.

of course rail COULD work in the usa, even long distance lines. but it would require way way too much $$ to bring everything up to standards. cmon, guys, we got to spend our $ on more important things, like iraq.

:lol: :puke: :lol:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070909/ap_on_bi_ge/tracking_amtrak;_ylt=Ajwbx_.uDo1jXQCgRM3mClus0NUE

Amtrak expects to hit ridership records

By JIM SUHR, AP Business Writer
Sun Sep 9, 2:17 PM ET

ABOARD AMTRAK'S LINCOLN SERVICE - The Illinois cornfields whizzing past Mark Hardacre's view from the Amtrak cafe car had nothing on the memorable splendor the Australian had already taken in on his trans-America adventure — the Pacific Ocean so vast and blue off California's coast. The emerald green of the Northwest forests. The majesty of the snowcapped Rockies.

But the cheery man from New South Wales was impressed with a couple of things he'd not seen in three previous Amtrak treks across this nation's rails over the past two decades — Americans seeming to outnumber tourists, and far fewer empty seats.

"It's good to see the Americans starting to use their trains, because if they don't use them they'll lose them," Hardacre, 53, said recently as Amtrak click-clacked its way from St. Louis to Chicago, one leg of his monthlong sightseeing trip with his wife, Janice.

To Amtrak, it's proof that despite vexing challenges, it's on the right track.

The money-losing service, which relies heavily on government funding, says it is riding higher, illustrated by the hundreds of thousands of additional riders flocking to expanded routes in Illinois and California. Amtrak anticipates its fifth-straight record year for ridership nationwide, helped by high gasoline prices and congested highways and airports that seem to have encouraged people to keep their vehicles parked.

But Amtrak's headaches remain, and the biggest is funding. The service has never been out of the red since its launch in 1971, meaning it must rely on government handouts year after year.

In trying to hash out the federal budget for next year, Congress is weighing how much U.S. taxpayers should underwrite the passenger service. Amtrak has requested $1.53 billion, nearly twice the amount the Bush Administration wants to give it. In the past, Bush has proposed giving the service nothing.

A House appropriations committee recently agreed to boost Amtrak's federal funding to $1.4 billion — a modest increase from the service's $1.3 billion in government help — while a Senate panel has endorsed spending $1.37 billion. But Bush has promised to veto any spending bills exceeding his budget requests, forcing Amtrak to slice service if the president makes good on his threat.

Amtrak says the lack of stable funding holds it back, leaving it unable to commit to infrastructure improvements. It still uses some equipment dating back half a century and cannot add new rail cars it says it can easily fill on some routes.

The service also continues to be nagged by travel delays, mostly because it must share the tracks with freight haulers that own the rails and charge Amtrak a modest fee — $90 million in the last fiscal year — for using them. With freight traffic soaring in recent years, Amtrak's on-time performance slid to an average of 68 percent last year, its worst showing since the 1970s.

"There's room for improvement, and we're looking for it," said Marc Magliari, an Amtrak spokesman.

Since taking over as Amtrak's president last September, Alex Kummant repeatedly has said the U.S. should embrace rail travel at a time of growing transportation needs and high oil prices. He said he's always wondered "why the Amtrak debate is so emotional and at times acrimonious."

The easy answer is money.

Amtrak has more than $3.3 billion in debt — largely tied to equipment leases. Amtrak's operating losses for 2005 topped $550 million, and its struggles along certain routes continue: The iconic Sunset Limited train between New Orleans and Los Angeles, for instance, loses 62 cents per passenger mile.

Amtrak officials are pinning their hopes on the bipartisan Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, which would authorize $3.3 billion for operating expenses and $4.9 billion for capital improvements over the life of the bill, from 2008 to 2012.

"We can't keep asking Amtrak to operate like a business while we string the company along year to year," Sen. Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican sponsoring the bill with Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, said in January.

The haggling over funding comes as Amtrak's ridership flourishes. Passengers for the fiscal year that ended last September numbered 24.3 million, setting a record for the fourth year in a row when comparing the same routes along the 21,000-mile system serving 500 stations in 46 states and Washington, D.C.

Between last October and March, Amtrak's riders numbered 14.3 million, up 5 percent over the previous year and sailing toward another record.

At least some of that growth might be tied to the investment by Illinois and 13 other states in short-distance corridors Amtrak otherwise wouldn't offer, essentially paying for service where they see a need.

Last fall, Amtrak added two state-financed roundtrips between St. Louis and Chicago and one apiece between from Quincy and Carbondale to the Windy City. Ridership spiked by 189,823 for the first two-thirds of this fiscal year, bringing the total passenger count in the state to 670,605.

Amtrak chalks it up to convenience.

Before adding the trains between St. Louis and Chicago, for example, the day's first Amtrak reached St. Louis about 2:30 p.m., just 45 minutes before the last train out, commonly forcing riders to spend the night.

But since last year's expansion, Amtrak's first arrival in St. Louis from Chicago is about noon, and the last train leaves for Chicago five hours later, enabling Chicagoans to attend a St. Louis Rams or Cardinals game or visit the cultural sites for an afternoon and head back the same day.

Before the expansion, the only departure times out of Carbondale for Chicago were 3 a.m. and 4 p.m. The state added a breakfast-time departure, and ridership blossomed.

To William Rechtenwald, it's a real bargain. The journalism teacher at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale takes Amtrak several times a year to Chicago, finding the service comfortable enough, roughly $100 per round trip cheaper than driving and less hassle than maneuvering through congested freeways.

"I'm a fan of Amtrak," he said. "It's a much wiser choice than driving."

Magliari said Amtrak's expansion was important to ridership gains.

"Instead of turning people away, we now are able to put them on trains," Magliari said. "We've always found around the country that frequency drives ridership."

That's proven true in California. Just months after eight trains were added to the state-subsidized Amtrak service between Sacramento and the Bay Area, officials say ridership on that "Capitol Corridor" continues climbing. Ridership on the 170-mile service now with 32 trains was nearly 1.3 million in 2005, nearly triple the 460,000 passengers who rode those rails eight years ago. Administrators credit more options for passengers, with 16 round-trip trains a day a far cry from the three offered in 1991.

With no federal funding to call upon, the Capitol Corridor — the third-busiest rail line in the Amtrak system — was built and runs solely with state and local funds.

Amtrak and its state partners are pondering more routes, if there's enough money.

To the Midwest High Speed Rail Association's Rick Harnish, Amtrak's time is now.

"The era of cheap oil is over, and we have to find ways to take costs out of the system. There should be a lot more trains running, and they should be faster," he said. "If ridership is growing this strongly with the kind of delays they get, just think of what kind of response they'd get if they ran on time.
"It's not rocket science," he said. "It's just about providing a good product."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070909/ap_on_bi_ge/high_speed_rail;_ylt=AqIjsWKokBQQWEd04JOP4Oxv24cA

Gas costs spark high-speed rail interest

By JAN DENNIS, Associated Press Writer
Sun Sep 9, 2:11 PM ET

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. - Seven hours after boarding a train in Kansas City, Douglas Lewandowski finally arrived at Chicago's Union Station — rested after the 500-mile trip but anxious to get home to Elkhart, Ind.

"How long it takes on these trains is so frustrating," said Lewandowski, 55. "I'd be more likely to take more trains if they were faster, but I'm afraid I'll be six feet under before that ever happens."

While sleek new passenger trains streak through Europe, Japan and other corners of the world at speeds nearing 200 mph, most U.S. passenger trains chug along at little more than highway speeds — slowed by a half-century of federal preference for spending on roads and airports.

But advocates say millions of Americans may be ready to embrace high-speed rail for everything from business travel to vacations because of soaring gas prices, airport delays and congested freeways that slow travel and contribute to air pollution.

"We have to change these things really fast. The era of cheap oil is over," said Rick Harnish, executive director of the nonprofit Midwest High Speed Rail Association. "People want choices in how they travel, and it's time for the states and feds to start providing those."

Still, getting trains moving fast enough, and in enough places, to entice travelers is a funding and logistical challenge.

Track and safety improvements for already-proposed projects could cost billions of dollars — and require reprioritizing of federal transportation funds.

Congress is considering a six-year Amtrak funding bill co-sponsored by 40 senators that would provide the first matching federal grants for rail projects. The measure proposes $100 million in first-year grants, paltry considering that California alone needs $40 billion for a mammoth bullet train project that would link San Francisco and Sacramento with Los Angeles and San Diego.

Some argue federal money would be better spent to research electric-powered cars and other cutting-edge travel alternatives, rather than the ribbons of steel that triggered America's westward expansion in the 1800s.

"Solutions to our current problems have to be found, not imposed from previous centuries. High-speed rail is just a polished version of 19th century technology," said William Garrison, co-author of "Tomorrow's Transportation" and a retired civil engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

But supporters contend high-speed trains could be an important alternative, rivaling even air travel once home-to-airport travel times and delays cause by airport security measures are taken into account.

A new European rail line that hits speeds up to 199 mph has cut the 292-mile ride between Paris and Frankfurt from 6 hours and 15 minutes to 3 1/2 hours. At those speeds, the 260-mile ride between Chicago and St. Louis would drop from 5 1/2 hours to just over 3 hours.

"They'd have to go awful fast. When I go somewhere I like to get there in a hurry, not take all day," John Wilson, 79, said while waiting for his son's plane at an airport in Bloomington, Ill.

Few envision U.S. high-speed rail would stretch coast to coast or match the dizzying speeds of other countries in the next few decades, even if Congress approves the matching funds for intercity rail projects.

Instead, supporters see most trains running at about 110 mph between major cities 200 to 300 miles apart, similar to Amtrak's Acela line that trimmed about a half-hour from the usual 4-hour trip from Boston to New York and about 15 minutes from the three-hour ride from New York to Washington.

The six-year-old Acela Express is the only U.S. rail line that tops the 125 mph considered "high speed" by international standards. And even supporters concede it barely qualifies, hitting its maximum 150 mph for less than 20 miles from Boston to Washington, D.C., and averaging just 86 mph over the full 456-mile run.

Even so, Acela's ridership rose 20 percent in May as gasoline prices topped $3 a gallon nationwide, said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Cole. Nationally, Amtrak is poised for its fifth straight year of ridership gains this year, said Marc Magliari, a spokesman for the railroad.

Ridership was up nearly 18 percent through May on a Pennsylvania line that bumped speeds from 90 mph to 110 mph last October, cutting 15 to 30 minutes off the two-hour ride from Philadelphia to Harrisburg.

States across the country have gambled on increased interest in rail travel, investing millions of their own dollars in studies and construction for high-speed projects that helped launch about a half-dozen routes that now run above 90 mph.

Illinois has sunk about $80 million into track and crossing improvements over a decade, but has finished less than half of a planned high-speed route from Chicago to St. Louis that would shave 90 minutes off the current 5 1/2-hour train ride.

Completing the estimated $400 million project will take years, but is projected to boost ridership from 300,000 last year to 1.2 million, said George Weber, chief of the Illinois Department of Transportation's passenger rail division.

Weber said trains could begin running at 110 mph by 2009 on 120 miles of the 280-mile route after the state recently settled on safety technology that will ensure faster trains can coexist with cars and slow-moving freight traffic that shares the line.

"To think this state (Illinois) has known for 10 years how to get Chicago-to-St. Louis to three hours and 45 minutes, and we kind of languish at five and a half to six hours," Harnish said. "Imagine what difference that would make to the St. Louis economy if you could get to Chicago by train (that much quicker)."

California has proposed the nation's most ambitious plan: a 700-mile electric-powered train that would run at up to 220 mph from San Francisco to San Diego, cutting the roughly 9-hour drive to about 3 1/2 hours.

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association said recent forecasts show the system carrying up to 117 million passengers a year by 2030.

The massive project, which would lay all new track, could complete its first phase from San Francisco to Los Angeles within 15 years if voters approve a $10 billion bond issue scheduled for next year. But the vote has been pushed back twice and could be postponed again because of worries that it could hinder the state's bonding authority for roads, schools and other projects.

"How can we say we can't afford this in California, the biggest state in the country, when these systems are being built all over the world? ... It's a matter of priority," said Dan Leavitt, deputy director of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

John Spychalski, a transportation expert and professor at Penn State University, says high-speed rail will continue to languish unless lawmakers provide the same financial backing as highways and air travel. He said some could be swayed if high-profile projects such as California's succeed.

"I don't think there's any question that it would help build momentum for making this kind of service a reality where it makes sense to have it," Spychalski said. "There just needs to be a political will, and right now not enough elected officials see it as a viable alternative."

___

Associated Press writers Michael Tarm in Chicago and Jim Suhr in St. Louis contributed to this report.

This relates to the above:

http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/

Grand Central Terminal:

http://gammablog.com/gammablablog/images/5-04/5-28cm/grand-central-terminal.jpg


http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/northamerica/images/grandcentralterminal01.jpg

It's a good step to make trains work a little faster. But a separate infrastructure needs to be built to allow faster speeds. Grade crossings are also a concern.

There is a section of the wolverine line in Michigan that plans to run at 110 mph w/o electrification - that is, with diesel engines on full throttle, similar to Britain's HST. Actually, all of the P42s and F59PHIs can do it - the only issues hindering this are the curves, freight, and crossings. And to straighten these things out can cost a lot of money too. But probably not as much money as an entirely new high-speed rail line.

Still I'd be pretty darn happy if either this or HSR is implemented here on the West Coast (second-highest, third-highest ridership, anyone?).

The US is not Europe. Cities are far apart and the country is huge. The focus should be improving air travel and having regional hubs to develop comprehensive highway connections (which is already there with the Interstate).

Thats not the case for the hot spots like the East Coast and even for California either. Those distances there between major cities are perfectly within a reasonable range.

Geography is not an excuse in those areas, not a working one. Its simply a lack of will. Its a cultural and political decision of the people and the politicians, not one because of a lack of possibilities.

Even in the Northeast, the Acela was supposed to show HSR works in the US, but due to technical faults, it has flopped quite badly. Competition from buses and the car is very intense, while the leisure traveler may not be willing to fork out the extra cash for Acela anyway. It's not a common mode of transport like Thalys, Eurostar, or TGV, etc.

First of all, Acela is only a "high speed light" train. Secondly it runs on ancient tracks.

But one of the worst factors is: The US features totally weird and outdated as well as inappropriate security guidelines for trains. The Acela bases on the TGV technology. But you know what the difference is? The Acela is double as heavy as the TGV. Not because the French producer thought this might be fun but because irrational raillaws in the US from the steam age demand that the train must not deform when it crashes.

Look at the victim numbers caused by the TGV in France and then tell me how this joke of a double as heavy train could be legitimized. This law would need an urgent change, up to modern standards.

Until then the Acela and all other alikes will have to endure the unofficial name "Tank on rails"

I've always wished that here in the US, the powers that be would build a 'Bullet' train system, comprable to the type seen in parts of Europe and Japan. If I could design the system, I would start in an area where I think the population would be the most receptive to it. I think the best area here in the States would be the northeast 'Megopolis,' which for those of you who arent familiar, is the massive urban area consisting of Boston/NYC/Philadelphia/Baltimore/DC. I think a bullet train would be ideal for that area and I would base it on the Express/Local system with two train options:
1. Express - This train would include all major stops - Boston - Grand Central Terminal - Philly - DC.
2. Local - Boston - New Haven - Grand Central Terminal - Philly - Baltimore - DC.

I would build the system so that the trains would have connections to each cities respective train/bus systems. What would you do?....and what areas in the States do you think would be best?

I don't know about the rest of the country, but we over here already do have quite a extensive system.

Problem is...it's mostly abandoned or rarely used for freight. Only 1 of the rail lines used here is actually used for passenger rail even though there are so much rail lines here.

Anyway, I agree with your options, except it would be cool to add HSR spurs, to some of the cities in the Northeast Corridor outside the direct line. Like this:

From Washington: Line to Richmond
From Philly: Lines to Atlantic City, Harrisburg, and Allentown
From New York: Lines to Albany, Long Island and Allentown/Scranton
From New Haven: line to Hartford/Springfield
From Boston: Lines to Worcester/Springfield, Portland, and Manchester/Concord, NH.

That would never happen, but it's possible. I am not sure about Manchester, but all the other cities on the list already have rail lines existing, some used and others abandoned.

A Portland-Seattle-Vancouver line would connect three growing cities with prosperous, transit-using centers that happen to be ideal distances from each other.

We have decent (5 per day?) slower service from Seattle to Portland now, and a little service (2 per day?) to Vancouver. The first step is adding a few more per day to those routes. But HSR is very difficult because we don't have Hartford's plethora of rail ROW, and creating new ROW would be extraordinarily difficult and expensive.

This is a map I drew up a few months ago for North American HSR. Looking back, its not perfect, as I would add a line to Halifax from Quebec City, and cover western Mexico. Colours indicate priority/speed of the route.

1. Red
2. Blue
3. Green

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/2550/narailmaphf2.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=narailmaphf2.jpg)

(The line cutoff at the bottom would go to Panama City, and the one at the top to Edmonton)

it's a good start, at least.
www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov

For here in the midwest, it would have to stop in every city with a population of 10'000 or higher, same for the rest of the country.

I've always wished that here in the US, the powers that be would build a 'Bullet' train system, comprable to the type seen in parts of Europe and Japan. If I could design the system, I would start in an area where I think the population would be the most receptive to it. I think the best area here in the States would be the northeast 'Megopolis,' which for those of you who arent familiar, is the massive urban area consisting of Boston/NYC/Philadelphia/Baltimore/DC. I think a bullet train would be ideal for that area and I would base it on the Express/Local system with two train options:
1. Express - This train would include all major stops - Boston - Grand Central Terminal - Philly - DC.
2. Local - Boston - New Haven - Grand Central Terminal - Philly - Baltimore - DC.

I would build the system so that the trains would have connections to each cities respective train/bus systems. What would you do?....and what areas in the States do you think would be best?

The Acela express already travels at speed up to 150 mph between Boston and DC with very few stops (Penn station in NY instead of Grand Central). The stations are already connected to local subway and commuter lines in each city. The trip takes about 6 hours. Probably faster than a car under good traffic conditions, and way more comfortable than a plane. Cutting the time in half would be really expensive.

well,in europe you have a following system(at least in Germany):
U-Bahn or subway which covers most of the city,sometimes even the suburbs!
S-Bahn or suburban rail network,which covers the city and the surrounding area,sometimes goes as far as 50 km from the city!
then you have following train systems:regional,IC(intercity) and ICE,(TGV in France),which is a high speed trail connecting major cities throughout Europe!i personally think its one of the best systems(i don't no the japanese one),but its very effective and fast!i think the US should model its system after this,but it obviously won't,since they believe in "American exceptionalism":ohno:!

many cities in the US are too low-density for rail travel within cities, but high-speed trains would be very convenient between major cities linking them together, especially in places like texas where there's 4 major cities within 300 miles of each other

well,in europe you have a following system(at least in Germany):
U-Bahn or subway which covers most of the city,sometimes even the suburbs!
S-Bahn or suburban rail network,which covers the city and the surrounding area,sometimes goes as far as 50 km from the city!
then you have following train systems:regional,IC(intercity) and ICE,(TGV in France),which is a high speed trail connecting major cities throughout Europe!i personally think its one of the best systems(i don't no the japanese one),but its very effective and fast!i think the US should model its system after this,but it obviously won't,since they believe in "American exceptionalism":ohno:!

America is making great strides to get mass transit.
NA and EU are layed out differently, and they have for hundreds of years.

The Acela express already travels at speed up to 150 mph between Boston and DC with very few stops (Penn station in NY instead of Grand Central). The stations are already connected to local subway and commuter lines in each city. The trip takes about 6 hours. Probably faster than a car under good traffic conditions, and way more comfortable than a plane. Cutting the time in half would be really expensive.

Really??.....I never knew about this. How much does it cost?

America is making great strides to get mass transit.
NA and EU are layed out differently, and they have for hundreds of years.

i don't see much of this though!

Please don't ruin this thread, it's actually quite a good subject.

Please don't ruin this thread, it's actually quite a good subject.

i'm not ruining it,but i'm just saying that i don't think the US is doing enough for PT!for example,the chicago el should get renovated,its slow and the wagons are old!!

It's not...the US rail system is a joke, true, that's why we are thinking of hypothetical ideas.

Telling stuff we already know isn't helping though.

It's not...the US rail system is a joke, true, that's why we are thinking of hypothetical ideas.

Telling stuff we already know isn't helping though.

so i maked an idea!another idea is:the US should start build an high-speed rail network,like the ICE or shinkanzen linking the major systems..currently the US only have one route,but i think they could build following routes:NYC-Philadelphia-Pittsburgh-Cleveland-Chicago and Chicago-Detroit-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec city!

The Acela express already travels at speed up to 150 mph between Boston and DC with very few stops (Penn station in NY instead of Grand Central). The stations are already connected to local subway and commuter lines in each city. The trip takes about 6 hours. Probably faster than a car under good traffic conditions, and way more comfortable than a plane. Cutting the time in half would be really expensive.

The Acela one reaches 150 mph on a very short distance. The average speed is only about 70 mph, which less than half of the newest high-speed rail lines elsewhere. It would be really expensive to cut time in half, but probably well worth it. Trains should be able to outcompete planes in that corridor, which would both be better for the environment and relieve airport congestion.

I've taken the Japanese bullet trains between Kyoto and Tokyo and the LGV between Paris and Lyon. The LGV is more like an airplane, you need to make reservations etc. The japanese bullet trains are like a subway, you just get on and find a seat. Both beat anything in the US. If we had a government with some vision, we could invest in already existing technology and eliminate the overcrowding which is making so many of our airports impossible.

A good start would be a Chicago to New York line with stops in Toledo(with connector to Detroit); Cleveland; Pittsburgh; Philly; and central N.J. this could easily be extended to Boston. Second line from NY to Miami with stops in Philly; Wilmington; Baltimore; DC; Richmond; Charlotte: Atlanta: Savannah; Jacksonville; Orlando(with branch to Tampa); Fort Lauderdale; Miami.

West coast could connect LA; SanDiego; Palm Springs; and Las Vegas then extend to San Francisco; Sacremento; Portland; and Seattle. Eventually the areas in between could be filled in. The problem is the rail right of ways are generally reserved for slow frieghts. That's one of the reason AmTrak sucks even more than it has to. I believe government intervention is required to provide the US with a modern train system.

The Acela one reaches 150 mph on a very short distance. The average speed is only about 70 mph, which less than half of the newest high-speed rail lines elsewhere. It would be really expensive to cut time in half, but probably well worth it. Trains should be able to outcompete planes in that corridor, which would both be better for the environment and relieve airport congestion.

Yes....I agree with you. I think that bullet trains would better serve regionally. Once you start to deal with distances over 500 miles, it makes more sense to fly. Distances between several major cities in this country are just too far. I think regional lines would be great for Boston/NYC/Philly/DC and their respective metro areas. I also think that Miami/Ft. Lauderdale/Orlando/Tampa would be great, Chicago/Cleveland/Columbus, Houston/Dallas/San Antonio, San Diego/LA/Vegas, San Fran/Portland/Seattle. Also, second lines for NYC/Albany/Montreal, Seattle/Vancouver etc....

Yes....I agree with you. I think that bullet trains would better serve regionally. Once you start to deal with distances over 500 miles, it makes more sense to fly. Distances between several major cities in this country are just too far.

I won't be so sure about that, the major advancements that is achieved with maglev technology would make 500miles or 800 Km an hour and a half ride within two decades. Considering that it would take at least that much time to get it planned, approved, and procure the land to start construction, I think it would be safe to say that optimal distance for plane travel would be pushed up to 1200 miles or 1900Km once a network is completed.

This summer when I was in Taiwan I rode on the new Taiwan High Speed Rail system. It runs between Taipei and Kaohsiung at 300 km/h. It's not the fastest in the world, but is pretty effective. The ride was completely smooth and no beverages spilled. There were also express and local trains that stop at major/minor stations. And the stations, OMG, they were spectacular! It was like a super-modern airport terminal minus the hassles of security. We can use the THSR and Japan's Shinkansen as a good example for a future USHSR system. Stay tuned for my idea (it will be specatular).....

Until the FRA has some sense and drops a ton of the Tier II regulations such as train mass, Acela's not advancing any time soon. Anything higher than 150mph will actually destroy the tracks because the Acela is so heavy.

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/2550/narailmaphf2.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=narailmaphf2.jpg)
nice job, I never thought of going through Canada to go from NY to Detroit. Instead I would have gone through Cininati.


I think the main problem is that HST wins over plane for travels under 3-4hrs, let's say 1,000 km max.
In this regard I would write off many lines in blue or green through the american west and do more networks in densely populated states like California (with two or three lines around LA), Texas (Dalla Houston, Dallas Austin Sacramento), Florida or in the north east.

Also usually a HSR network must be thought of as two sets of lines, the new ones, and the old ones that must be improved (and electrified in the US) in order to reach the many cities close to the HS lines but not on the lines.
But of course this would take a lot of time to consider all options and draw something good.
Also, it is very important to think of the possible interconnexions between train and plane, et make those lines go through some big airports so that connecting flights get replaced with connecting trains.

If you could design a sophisticated rail system for US cities...
Why bother? :) It's not like duh USA has any clue as to what it does... ... ...in life.
:nuts:

Sophisticated (ooo! the word gives me goosy goosebumps!) is just some alien in 'mericuh.....

Why bother? :) It's not like duh USA has any clue as to what it does... ... ...in life.
:nuts:

Sophisticated (ooo! the word gives me goosy goosebumps!) is just some alien in 'mericuh.....

And the award for Biggest Douche Bag goes to.....you guessed it folks!!....trainrover!! This award is given to him because of his outstanding ability to leave lightening fast, bolded, super-enlarged posts that outline his truly moronic, backwards way of thinking. The lack of reasoning or intelligence is impressive folks!! Way to leave a childish post trainrover!!....I'm sure someone out there is proud of you!! Folks.....make sure to throw him a tip next time you see him working behind the counter at Tim Hortons...I think he recommends the Apple Fritter...oh excuse me trainrover...the Beignet aux pommes. In closing, I'd like to further nominate him for the Slinky Award. This award is given to people that pretty much serve no purpose, but are fun to watch roll down a flight of stairs....just like a Slinky!!
:banana: :banana:

:applause:

F***ing Canadians...., it's no wonder why they smoke so much pot and end up in gay marriages.

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^^^^^^
Laughing Americans

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/am2Copy/News_Release_Page&c=am2Copy&cid=1178294057347&ssid=180


October 23, 2007
Annual Amtrak Ridership Sets All-Time Record; Fifth Straight Year of Increases

Ridership Tops 25.8 Million, $1.5 Billion in Passenger Revenue
WASHINGTON — Amtrak ridership in Fiscal Year 2007 increased to 25,847,531, marking the fifth straight year of gains and setting a record for the most passengers using Amtrak trains since the National Railroad Passenger Corporation started operations in 1971.

This total, for the period October 1, 2006-September 30, 2007, topped the 24,306,965 for the previous 12 months and is greater than the passenger count of 25.03 million reached in 2004, before Amtrak transitioned some services to a commuter rail operator.

Total ticket revenue for the fiscal year, $1.5 billion was an 11 percent increase over the $1.37 billion in FY06. If other income from contract services is included, the railroad's total revenue was $2.2 billion for the fiscal year.

"Highway and airway congestion, volatile fuel prices, increasing environmental awareness, and a need for transportation links between growing communities, are some of the factors that make intercity passenger rail extremely relevant in today's world," said Alex Kummant, President and CEO of Amtrak. "Combined with the efforts of the hardworking men and women of Amtrak who make our service work, our investment in the Northeast Corridor is paying dividends with improved on-time performance (OTP), and that draws in more ridership and revenue.

"Our record setting ridership and ticket revenue in FY07 indicate the stage is set for Amtrak to take on a role as not only a contributor to the nation's transportation network, but as a leader among modes," he added.

East Highlights

Revenue growth was the greatest in the Northeast, where revenue reached $829.3 million, a 14 percent increase over last year's ticket revenue.

The popularity of the Acela Express service continued in FY07 as is evidenced by the 20 percent increase in ridership (3.1 million passengers) and 23 percent climb in ticket revenue ($403.5 million) versus last year. Acela Express service saw an increase in OTP, frequently surpassing its goal of 90 percent. At year-end, the OTP for Acela Express was 87.8 percent, up more than three percent over the same period last year. The popularity and high demand for this service also prompted the creation in July of another weekday Acela Express round trip between New York and Washington.

Regional Service ridership continues also to rise: 6.6 million passengers rode Regional trains in FY07, an increase of 1.2 percent. Additionally, Regional passenger ticket revenue for period rose 7.2 percent.

The Keystone Service, which operates between Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York City experienced significant growth with a 20.7 percent increase in ridership, reaching 988,454 in FY07. Moreover, ticket revenue increased by nearly 30 percent, to $20,582,838.

Last fall, Amtrak and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation with support from the Federal Transit Administration, introduced all-electric service with speeds up to 110 mph on the Keystone Corridor, which has reduced travel times between Harrisburg and Philadelphia and Harrisburg and New York City by between 15 and 45 minutes. Weekday roundtrips have also increased from 11 to 14 — with ten traveling through to New York.

The Downeaster, operating daily between Portland, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts, added a fifth round trip to its service this past August. The service achieved a seven percent increase in ridership in FY07, reaching 361,634. The Downeaster also brought in $4.8 million in ticket revenue, a 5.3 percent increase from a year ago.

Central Highlights

Huge gains are tied to increased frequencies in Illinois, with the three routes between Chicago and downstate communities showing large increases. The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) has more than doubled the size of its contract with Amtrak, providing three of the five round-trips on the Chicago-St. Louis corridor and two round-trips each on the Carbondale and Quincy routes, starting late last October.

On the Chicago-St. Louis Lincoln Service corridor, ridership on state trains more than doubled, rising by 108 percent, while total ridership on the corridor rose by 42 percent to 477,888. Ridership between Chicago and Carbondale, the route the Illini and Saluki trains share with the City of New Orleans, is up by 67.4 percent for the state-supported trains and 46 percent for the corridor, totaling 263,809. For the Chicago-Galesburg-Quincy route of the Illinois Zephyr, Carl Sandburg and other trains, ridership has gained 41.4 percent for the state-sponsored trains and 33 percent for the route, with 194,535 passengers.

Also from the Amtrak hub in Chicago is the Hiawatha Service, with up to seven daily round-trips sponsored by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation with IDOT. Nearly 600,000 passengers rode the trains between Milwaukee and Chicago last year, an increase of 2.6 percent.

The state-supported routes in Michigan — Grand Rapids-St. Joseph-Chicago Pere Marquette and the Port Huron-East Lansing-Chicago Blue Water — also posted increases. Ridership on the Pere Marquette was up 2.8 percent and on the Blue Water, 3.1 percent.

West Highlights

California's Capitol Corridor service which operates between Auburn and San Jose, carried more than 1.4 million passengers in FY07, a 15 percent increase over the same period last year. Ticket revenue topped $18 million, a 21 percent increase over the previous 12 months. In addition, the San Diego-San Luis Obispo Pacific Surfliner, showed a nine percent increase in ticket revenue, reaching more than $46 million.

National Highlights

Among the trains on the Amtrak national network, the Empire Builder is again the most popular overnight train. With more than a half-million passengers, the daily Chicago-St. Paul-Seattle/Portland train showed an increase of 1.6 percent.

Also, the Auto Train, which operates between the Washington, D.C and Orlando areas, posted a ridership increase of five percent from last year.

Long-distance trains recording above-average ridership performances include the New Orleans-Tucson-Los Angeles Sunset Limited (up 22.1 percent), Chicago-Albuquerque-Los Angeles Southwest Chief (up 5.4 percent) and Chicago-Memphis-New Orleans City of New Orleans (up 3 percent). In addition, the New York-Miami Silver Service trains (Silver Meteor-Silver Star) achieved ridership gains of 6.9 and 5.7 percent respectively and the Palmetto's passenger number jumped by 7.5 percent over the previous 12 months.

Having read some of the comments here you would think things were totally different in Europe, believe me we do have some of the same issues.

People still use planes and coaches to get around Europe.

Go to Victoria Coach Station in London and it will be full of East Europeans taking the European equivalent of the Greyhound home.

We have a network of coaches and buses just like America, which stretches right across Europe.

Taking the train is great if you are going from London to Paris or Brussels etc but not if you are going to Southern Europe or somewhere like Moscow, as by the time you change trains numerous times or have paid for ticket on a sleeper train it becomes more expensive than flying would have in the first place and takes a good deal longer.

A lot of people drive across Europe from the UK taking the high speed ferry routes such as Seacat from Dover (50 mins) to France, and the Eurostar Trains also takes cars (35 mins)

There is a limit on how far it is viable to travel by train before the plane becomes the more sensible option.

Cheap Airlines such as Easyjet and Ryanair etc have revolutionised European Travel and it now costs very little to fly between most European destinations.











:)

Finally the US Senate is looking at boosting rail service investment.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119379172012276995.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news


For Amtrak, the Climate Changes
By Christopher Conkey and Daniel Machalaba
Word Count: 821
Momentum is growing in Congress to bolster Amtrak and help states expand rail service as lawmakers grow concerned over global warming, transportation gridlock and high oil prices.

In what may signal a reversal of fortune for the nation's intercity passenger-rail network, the Senate yesterday approved a six-year, $11.4 billion bill that would authorize nearly $2 billion a year in Amtrak funding, up from roughly $1.3 billion now. The measure passed by a 70-22 vote.

The bulk of the bill's funding would go toward operating expenses and capital projects, but $1.8 billion would be devoted to paying off debt, and $1.4 ...

^

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-10-30-3111648298_x.htm

Hey the USA Today has the same article for FREE

^^

About damn time. Other nations already have electrified passenger rail systems and we're still polluting the air with cars and airplanes. I mean, Japan had the Shinkansen back in the '60s, and we had just bombed the hell out of them (no offense). We are falling behind. :ohno:

Guys, don't diss all Canadians for this troll.

Anyway, this is how my plan would look on a map. Black line is the Northeast corridor, which could be further improved in areas to make speed faster, and the red lines are the spur lines that I was talking about.

Come to think about it, extending lines to Pittsburgh, Buffalo/Rochester, and Montreal don't look too bad, although that will never happen in itself. Many of these red spur lines would need MAJOR work. I am not sure about the other ones, but the Hartford-New Haven line is not even electrified yet.


http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/8526/karte7245gn8.gif

Guys, don't diss all Canadians for this troll.

Come to think about it, extending lines to Pittsburgh, Buffalo/Rochester, and Montreal don't look too bad, although that will never happen in itself. Many of these red spur lines would need MAJOR work. I am not sure about the other ones, but the Hartford-New Haven line is not even electrified yet.

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/8526/karte7245gn8.gif

I was thinking of a route from New York - Buffalo - Toronto - Montreal route and maybe a branch route from Toronto to Detroit.
It will definitely create a stronger US-Canada economic bloc and revitalize Detroit.

I mean, Japan had the Shinkansen back in the '60s, and we had just bombed the hell out of them.

I think that they (along with the Europeans) had high-speed rail years ago in part BECAUSE we bombed the hell out of them. They had a fresh slate to start out with.

Guys, don't diss all Canadians for this troll.

Anyway, this is how my plan would look on a map. Black line is the Northeast corridor, which could be further improved in areas to make speed faster, and the red lines are the spur lines that I was talking about.

Come to think about it, extending lines to Pittsburgh, Buffalo/Rochester, and Montreal don't look too bad, although that will never happen in itself. Many of these red spur lines would need MAJOR work. I am not sure about the other ones, but the Hartford-New Haven line is not even electrified yet.



I certainly wasnt implying anything negative about Canadians....I was just leaving a comment about him as an individual. I love Canada and I'm actually part French Canadian.
Anyway, I think your idea looks great. What I would do, additionally, is add another line from Albany to Montreal. It would be awesome to take a bullet train from NYC to Montreal and vice versa....two great cities better connected!!

One of the current problems WRT the USA-Canada border (ie, involving Seattle-Vancouver, NYC-Albany-Montreal and Buffalo-Hamilton-Detroit routes) is that for some-odd reason, the USA's border guards are very hostile to those crossing it by rail.

Until there is an EU-style customs union and 'open' border put into place, I don't foresee that changing anytime soon.

:ohno:

OTOH, with the way commercial aviation is fast becoming an insurmountable hassle, domestic routes in the 500-1000 km range seem to me to be primed and ready for some sort of high-speed passenger rail development (even routes as long as NYC-Chicago) - if the money can be politically found to develop them. Those routes were ALL operated at amazing rail speeds and service quality and frequency before air travel become popular, too.

As for freight rail service in North America - it is going great guns and many routes are operating above capacity. The private freight railroad companies are now constantly investing incredible amounts of money into upgrading and expanding their systems to handle it all.

Current rail freight and passenger activity patterns are directly opposite between North America and the EU.

Mike

Yeah, except for the obvious reasons (for money and the drive to do it), there isn't that much of a reason why all these cities are already connected better. They have rail already.

HSR to Toronto and Detroit does sound like a great idea. If it ever happens (which it likely will not), we could even connect the hypothetical HSR network in the East Coast, to the plans in the Midwest! :bow:

We have more roller coasters than rail networks here. People in the "United States of Whoremerica" view rail as an amusement ride and not as a necessity. The Northeastern US and Chicago are less car dependent than the rest of the nation.

The Acela only goes 70 mph along the CT shore and that could be improved. It's already competitve with air for Bos-NYC; NYC Philly; NYC-DC; Pilly-DC. All of the largest cities in the northeast have extensive commuter rail and Bos, NYC and DC have large subway systems. Regional (slower) trains already ply the routes mentioned by 10rot in PA, VA and new Eng. Has anyone ever taken the Acela or a commuter rail line? Boston alone has something like 13 lines some of which go over 50 miles.

Dallas/San Antonio/Houston definitely needs a rail link, but the next problem is that the cities are so big that you would need a car once you got there. Dallas has the largest in-city public transportation system and even it doesn't reach many places. Houston is so monstrous that even the city bus system doesn't go into the suburbs much.

If there was competent public transportation in those cities, the trains would be full every weekend.

Texas is so flat and open high speed rail could be cost effective to build. The trains could stop once in each city at a station with bus, rental and zip cars. It could work but since air is so fast and driving is pretty easy getting to the center of the city won't have the benefits it has in the northeast or europe.

I liked monkeyronin's plan. Very comprehensive, well thought out.


F***ing Canadians...., it's no wonder why they smoke so much pot and end up in gay marriages.

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^^^^^^
Laughing Americans

We have a new winner for the biggest douchebag award! :banana:

In Minnesota there have been talks of starting a new rail line between Minneapolis and Duluth, and would probably be operated by Amtrak. Trains would first run at 79mph, then 110 in the future, and eventually 125.

We have a new winner for the biggest douchebag award! :banana:

OMG! Thank you so much! I am so honored to receive this award! I would like to thank..........okay, enough of that.


Some problems I find with monkeyronin's plan is there aren't enough east-west lines, only one that runs along I-80 (I think). A line along I-90 would be nice, and maybe extending the I-15 line north to Calgary (assuming security shit cools down at the borders).

Step 1. Create a single corporation owning all trackage in the entire country including most yards.

The US government comes in with $20 billion in share capital and owns 51% of the new corporation. Railroads get shares after the value of their trackage.

This new USRailways charges railroads for use. Any railroad can haul freight anywhere in the US for a change.

Impose a tax on long distance trucking say 300+ miles. They ruin our highways with their weights and clog the roads.

This tax, along with railway usage charges and federal and state contributions would go towards maintaining, improving and expanding trackage.

2. Dissolve Amtrack into regional entities with the States in each region having controlling rights.

A. Northeast
B. Great Lakes and Upper Midwest
C. Atlantic South
D. Florida
E. Gulf, Central South and Texas
F. Mountain West
G. California
H. Pacific Northwest

the future rail system would be primarily based on regional and not long-haul services.

Passenger rail services are given priority over freight services during daylight hours.

Investment in core routes. If the regional entities contribute 25% of investment the federal government is required to contribute the remainding 75%.

3. Impose a tax on short haul flying (under 350 miles) when there is a competing rail service. Connecting passengers, say you are flying from London to Boston via Newark, are except. The New York-Boston-Washington shuttle would be taxed heavily for example and the number of regional jets clogging or major airports would plummet.

this short haul tax would go directly to subsidize the competing rail service.


It would take a few years to build up but I feel these steps would get the US going in a positive direction on rail.

The Acela only goes 70 mph along the CT shore and that could be improved. It's already competitve with air for Bos-NYC; NYC Philly; NYC-DC; Pilly-DC. All of the largest cities in the northeast have extensive commuter rail and Bos, NYC and DC have large subway systems. Regional (slower) trains already ply the routes mentioned by 10rot in PA, VA and new Eng. Has anyone ever taken the Acela or a commuter rail line? Boston alone has something like 13 lines some of which go over 50 miles.

I have taken the Acela before from New York to Boston. It's OK, but I don't consider it to be in the league of the HSR networks in Europe and Japan. But it definitely has the potential to be great, if the government spent more money on uprgrading it.

Acela in Connecticut needs a MAJOR rehaul. It has grade crossings (or did?) in the New London area, and the rail between New Haven and New Rochelle, NY, which is owned by Metro North and not Amtrak, has the slowest speed on the entire system. The railroad in CT also doesn't allow tilting. In general currently, it's not HSR especially here.

As for the regional spur lines, they still need to be improved. I am not sure about how fast the trains on MBTA go because I never have been on it, but the Hartford-Springfield line needs major work. At this moment, I don't believe that it could take regular commuter rail. :ohno:

^^

Pretty much the same ideas as in Parade Magazine this Sunday:


A Better Way To Travel?
By Peter Richmond
Published: November 4, 2007

EDITOR'S NOTE: After our November 4 issue went to press, the Senate approved the Lautenberg-Lott Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act on October 30. The bill is now before the House.

American spent about 3.7 billion hours stuck in traffic last year, burning gasoline whose price had soared by 60%. At the airports, security lines snake endlessly, runways are choked, and delays are common. One recent study found that, between January and August 2007, one in four flights arrived late; 159 flights were kept on the tarmac for more than three hours in August. As a result, more than half of U.S. businesses augment commercial air travel with expensive corporate jets and charters. Isn’t there a better way?

One solution is staring us in the face. Many transportation experts insist that the best answer to transportation gridlock is efficient intercity rail travel. Trains use one-fifth less energy than cars or planes. They run in bad weather. They’re business-efficient and tourist-friendly. Yet, since the early 1960's—with the exception of the Northeast Corridor, from Boston to Washington, D.C.—railroad transportation in the U.S. has become largely irrelevant. For most Americans, train travel from city to city remains an afterthought. And for good reason: Our national rail system is inadequate, relying on aging equipment and a shrinking route-map. The system sorely lacks both financial resources and government support.

“The transportation funding mechanism is skewed toward highway construction,” says James RePass, principal executive of the National Corridors Initiative, a transportation advocacy group. “The game is rigged against rail.”

In contrast, the rest of the industrialized world is investing heavily in its train systems. From border to border, Europe is wiring itself for high-speed rail. The result? Decreased emissions and increased productivity. Some predict the eventual obsolescence of air travel on the continent.

How did we fall so far behind? Blame it on our love affair with the automobile and a historical antipathy of legislators for subsidizing the nation’s railroads. Our government’s disdain for trains began with FDR, who in the late 1930s turned his back on fat-cat railroad barons asking for federal handouts. Two decades later, President Eisenhower certified our commitment to cars when he built the interstate highway system.

The current administration has been particularly unfriendly. Amtrak, which is federally funded, received just $1.3 billion last year—the same as 25 years ago. Compare that to the $40 billion allocated for highways and the $14 billion for airlines in 2006. For the 2008 fiscal year, the Bush Administration pro- posed just $800 million for the railroad—a $500 million cut from 2007. In 2005, the President proposed pulling the plug entirely on Amtrak’s subsidy.

Critics of federal funding for Amtrak argue that, since it was created by Congress in 1970, the railroad has never turned a profit and serves only a small percentage of intercity travelers. They believe the system is a waste of taxpayer money. But Amtrak’s advocates in Congress point out that passenger rail systems around the world operate with government assistance. Others add that the government subsidizes our highway system and supports many aspects of passenger air travel.

“I’m amazed at the rancor about our numbers—they are so small,” says Alex Kummant, Amtrak’s CEO. “ It costs about $1.50 for every man, woman and child to sustain this network—one cup of coffee per person. Look at highway congestion, environmental issues, the capacity of airline travel. For city-to-city transportation, we need passenger rail.”

As our airways and highways have slowed down, demand for train travel has been increasing. In fact, Amtrak ridership was up for the fifth year in a row, reaching record levels—despite the fact that a third of trains arrived late last year. In the Northeast, since Amtrak introduced higher-speed Acela trains in 2000, the railroad’s share of 10,000 daily commuters between Washington, D.C., and New York City increased from 45% to 54%.

“Train travel is the thing for a one-day business trip,” says Malcolm Edgerton, a Chicago architect who travels often from Chicago to Springfield on Amtrak for work. A recent trip, he said, “would have meant seven hours of driving, and I would have been exhausted. Instead, I left in the morning, did work on the train, got there at noon, did my thing, even had time to visit a museum. Then, on the way back, I drank Scotch in the bar car and traded stories with a salesman and another architect. The round trip was $40.”

Experts predict that, with the population climbing well past 300 million, the demand for travel will only grow. Severe weather will further add to the transportation turmoil, leading travelers to look for alternatives to air travel. Witness the Midwestern storms last winter that forced the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights in two days in Chicago and St. Louis.

An efficient Amtrak, suggests New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, could have carried riders through those squalls in style: “How wonderful is it to get on a train, look outside at the snow and say, ‘ Ho, ho, ho, here we go’?”

The key to improvements may be federal incentives for state investment, say train watchers of all stripes. They point to two successful projects that relied heavily on state funding. Amtrak recently expanded service from Chicago to downstate Illinois and St. Louis, where ridership is up about 50%, and major improvements were made to the Philadelphia-Harrisburg line.

In light of those successes, the newly Democratic-controlled House approved $50 million in matching funds for state Amtrak projects, and the Senate approved a similar program for $100 million. “We are on the edge of a revolution in thinking and the thinking of policy-makers of the future of transportation,” says Rep. James Oberstar (D., Minn.), who heads the House transportation and infrastructure committee. “And that future is filled with high-speed, reliable rail service.”& amp; amp; amp; amp; lt; br>
Now Congress is considering legislation that would allow the trains to rebuild. The Lautenberg-Lott Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, designed to completely overhaul the system, may reach the Senate floor this session. The legislation would commit $10 billion over four years to develop high-speed, short-haul rail corridors modeled on the European city-to-city routes. They could run between Washington, D.C., and Charlotte, N.C.; Portland and Seattle; Chicago and Detroit; Miami and Jacksonville, Fla.

“We’re sick and tired, and we’re not going to take it anymore,” says Frank Lautenberg, who co-sponsored the Senate bill. “We spend money on all other means of transportation, but we already have the best thing right in our hand.”

Private-sector involvement also could boost service and revenues. Amtrak CEO Alex Kummant would like to see private, high-end luxury trains tacked onto Amtrak’s. Others suggest putting some of Amtrak’s routes out for private bidding.

“It’s not a nostalgic thing, like, ‘Let’s save the old choo-choo,’ ” insists Lou Drummeter, a sleeping-car attendant on Amtrak’s Washington-Chicago Capitol Limited for 20 years. “It’s a 21st-century answer to our transportation problems. People want an alternative.”

Acela Turned Into Rolling Billboard
7 November 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) - Perennially cash-strapped Amtrak has found a new way to generate revenue -- by turning an entire train into a moving billboard.

A train used on the Acela Express, the railroad's premium Boston-Washington service, will be wrapped in an advertisement for the History Channel's "1968 with Tom Brokaw," a two-hour special scheduled to air Dec. 9.

It's the first time an entire Amtrak train has been wrapped and the first time the technique has been used at all on the Acela, said Cliff Black, a spokesman for the railroad. He declined to say how much the History Channel was paying for the privilege.

The wrapped train, which will run up and down the northeast corridor from Nov. 12 to Dec. 9, will feature recognizable images from 1968 -- including the faces of Martin Luther King Jr., Bob Dylan, Richard Nixon, Robert F. Kennedy, Arlo Guthrie and Goldie Hawn -- said Steve Feder, president of Corporate Image Media, which helps Amtrak market advertising opportunities.

The vinyl wrap will appear on both sides of the train's two locomotives and six cars. It will be visible from the outside but won't impede the view out the windows, Amtrak said Tuesday. Posters advertising Brokaw's program will also appear inside the wrapped train.

Wrapped buses and subway cars have become a popular advertising platform in recent years, and Amtrak has done it with individual rail cars and locomotives. In one creative application, the railroad dressed a locomotive as a Toyota Tundra, making it look as if the pickup was towing the train.

Feder said Amtrak has proceeded somewhat cautiously when it comes to train wraps because it won't accept just any advertiser. The History Channel is something that would appeal to the business traveler that the Acela service is aimed at, he noted.

But Amtrak has more to worry about that in its reputation with travelers. The federally subsidized company must also take care not anger anyone on Capitol Hill with such deals.

"The History Channel has a stellar reputation for its programming," Black said. "We think this is a good fit, politically and commercially."

Black noted that Congress has encouraged Amtrak to be creative about generating revenue and thus should be pleased with the deal.

I think that they (along with the Europeans) had high-speed rail years ago in part BECAUSE we bombed the hell out of them. They had a fresh slate to start out with.

It doesn't have anything to do with being "Bombed the hell out".
It is a sign of commitment to provide the people a better faster and cleaner means of transportation with scalability to the next century.
The Tokaido Shinkansen route was a new route created from scratch completely seperated from the old tokaido line.(which is still in use today)

Now we are developing a new system, the maglev system that will usher Japan beyond the 22nd century in ultra speed public transportation that will take minimum impact from ever rising price of oil.

Tri-ring is right. It is all about commitment. There is a lack of commitment here. For the price of the Iraq boondoggle, we could've laid HSR track all the way around the United States twice over. That puts things in perspective.

AP Interview: Outgoing board chairman says Amtrak back on track
20 November 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) - Amtrak has restored its credibility and is not the financial basket case it was five years ago, the national passenger railroad's outgoing chairman said.

But David Laney, whom President Bush did not nominate for another term on the board, told The Associated Press that there are probably some in the White House who would have preferred to see Amtrak eliminated.

Laney's five-year term as a member of the board of directors expires at the end of November. At its Nov. 8 meeting, the board chose Donna McLean, a transportation consultant and a board member since July 2006, to replace him as chairman. Laney had served as chairman since 2003.

As a Bush appointee, Laney initially was greeted warily by Amtrak supporters. But the Texas lawyer said his record shows he worked with the company's interest in mind.

"I do think we've rebuilt and re-established credibility," Laney said in a telephone interview.

His one regret, he said, was Amtrak's failure to resolve a protracted labor dispute. Most Amtrak workers have been without a contract since the end of 1999. The National Mediation Board released the parties from mediation earlier this month, setting in motion a series of events that could force a deal or allow workers to strike. Laney predicted a deal would be reached early next year.

Laney joined the board just after a financial crisis that was solved only when the Department of Transportation made an emergency loan of $100 million to the railroad. Laney said he was able to put stricter financial controls in place and pointed to the reduction in the company's long-term debt from $4 billion in 2002 to less than $3.5 billion.

But Laney said he didn't know if the administration was pleased with the results.

"They don't talk to me," he said. "There's probably some people over there who think I should have wiped Amtrak off the map, but that wasn't my job."

Amtrak's biggest critics say long-distance passenger rail -- particularly trips that take more than a day -- is an anachronism and that shorter trips could be run more effectively by the private sector.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said he could not discuss why Laney was not reappointed because it is a personnel matter.

As for Amtrak's existence, he said: "The administration believes that if properly reformed Amtrak's intercity passenger rail system can be an important component of our nation's transportation network, particularly on our most congested intercity corridors."

Fiscal conservatives say Amtrak continues to eat up too many taxpayer dollars -- $1.3 billion last year.

The Heritage Foundation's Ron Utt said Laney made Amtrak more businesslike but that more transparency was needed and labor costs remained excessive.

Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, said Laney turned out to be a better chairman than most rail supporters expected.

He said Amtrak supporters were nervous when Laney considered breaking off the busy northeast corridor to be managed separately from the rest of Amtrak. But Capon said Laney allowed the idea "to die gracefully."

Laney said he looked at the northeast corridor scenarios out of a responsibility to "turn over every rock possible to find an advantage for Amtrak." But separating the corridor didn't make sense and it's doubtful anyone could run it better than Amtrak, he said.

Capon called McLean, a former assistant secretary for budget and programs at the Department of Transportation, an "unknown quantity." Her election comes as the makeup of Amtrak's board is shifting. Bush nominated three new people to the board last week to replace Laney and others.

McLean did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. But in a news release announcing her election, McLean said Laney had improved Amtrak's business model, accountability and service.

"Amtrak's relevance in the national transportation mix has never been stronger, with record ridership and revenues being achieved for the last several fiscal years," she said.

Amtrak President Alex Kummant, hired more than a year ago, has said Amtrak's future lies frequently traveled, medium-distance routes. He said the company is reevaluating long-distance routes, which are expensive to maintain and tend to carry fewer passengers.

But Amtrak has put off making radical changes, which would likely anger members of Congress.

The railroad has taken heat for failing to restore service east of New Orleans on the Sunset Limited, which until Hurricane Katrina went from Orlando to Los Angeles. Freight service was restored on the line long ago, but Amtrak has maintained the truncated route and kept silent on its future plans

Laney confirmed what most Amtrak watchers have long suspected. "You wont see the Sunset Limited east of New Orleans, and there will be changes west," he said.

Still, Laney said some long-distance routes have potential. The Chicago-New York service, for example, could be popular if the trains were on time. For that to happen, Amtrak would need to cooperate with CSX Corp., which owns the track, to ease a bottleneck in Indiana, he said.

I'm glad to hear that Amtrak is finally starting to do so well. Now we just need to change some laws so Amtrak can go faster. Then we can raise the gas tax and expand Amtrak and finally get a real rail system in the US.

Out of curiosity has Amtrak ever considered spliting herself into a regional companies to match specific needs of the region?

I believe Amtrak trying to meet every single need from the people on the west coast to the east coast with everything in between is too cumbersome and unrealistic since the people's on NEC demand is very different from say mid-west states.

If divided, each regional company could concentrate resources to tailor the needs of the region making more efficient investments.
This may sound like backward thinking to some people but the way I see it, Amktrak trying to cater universal service just seems meaningless at this point.

I think Amtrak does that to a limited extent. I'm no expert, but don't some state governments, eg, California, provide funding to run certain services, such as the inter-city service (not commuter rail).

Splitting Amtrak into separate corporations is not going to work - it would be too complex, and would probably involve a split along state lines - you'd end up with some states prepared to fund services and others not.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071222/ap_on_bi_ge/tracking_amtrak;_ylt=AueqKtR6MKZXYfZvyuf1DUis0NUE

Riding high? Amtrak sees ridership rise

By JIM SUHR, AP Business Writer
1 hour, 27 minutes ago


ABOARD AMTRAK'S LINCOLN SERVICE - The Illinois cornfields whizzing past Mark Hardacre's view from the Amtrak cafe car had nothing on the memorable splendor the Australian had already taken in on his trans-America adventure — the Pacific Ocean so vast and blue off California's coast. The emerald green of the Northwest forests. The majesty of the snowcapped Rockies.

But the cheery man from New South Wales was breathless about seeing a couple of things he'd not seen in his three previous Amtrak treks across this nation's rails over the past two decades — Americans seeming to outnumber tourists, and far fewer empty seats.

"It's good to see the Americans starting to use their trains, because if they don't use them they'll lose them," Hardacre, 53, said recently as Amtrak click-clacked its way from St. Louis to Chicago, just one leg of his monthlong sightseeing trip with his wife, Janice.

To Amtrak, it's proof that despite vexing challenges, it's on the right track.

The money-losing service, which relies heavily on government funding, says it is riding higher, illustrated by the hundreds of thousands of additional riders flocking to expanded routes in Illinois and California. Amtrak is chugging toward its fifth-straight record year for ridership nationwide, helped by high gasoline prices and congested highways and airports that seem to have encouraged people to keep their vehicles parked.

But Amtrak's headaches remain, and the biggest is funding. The service has never been out of the red since its launch in 1971, meaning it must rely on government handouts year after year.

In trying to hash out the federal budget for next year, Congress is weighing how much U.S. taxpayers should underwrite the passenger service. Amtrak has requested $1.53 billion, nearly twice the amount the Bush Administration wants to give it. In the past, Bush has proposed giving the service nothing.

A House appropriations committee recently agreed to boost Amtrak's federal funding to $1.4 billion — a modest increase from the service's $1.3 billion in government help — while a Senate panel has endorsed spending $1.37 billion. But Bush has promised to veto any spending bills exceeding his budget requests, forcing Amtrak to slice service if the president makes good on his threat.

Amtrak says the elusiveness of stable funding holds it back, leaving it unable to commit to infrastructure improvements, get past having to use using some equipment dating back half a century or add new rail cars it says it can easily fill on some routes.

The service also continues to be nagged by travel delays, mostly tied to having to share the tracks with freight haulers that own the rails and charge Amtrak a modest fee — $90 million in the last fiscal year — for using them. With freight traffic soaring in recent years, Amtrak's on-time performance slid to an average of 68 percent last year, its worst showing since the 1970s.

"There's room for improvement, and we're looking for it," said Marc Magliari, an Amtrak spokesman.

Since taking over as Amtrak's president last September, Alex Kummant has stumped that the U.S. should embrace rail travel at a time of growing transportation needs and high oil prices. He said he's always wondered "why the Amtrak debate is so emotional and at times acrimonious."

The easy answer is money.

Amtrak has more than $3.3 billion in debt — largely tied to equipment leases. Amtrak's operating losses for 2005 topped $550 million, and its struggles along certain routes continue: The iconic Sunset Limited train between New Orleans and Los Angeles, for instance, loses 62 cents per passenger mile.

Amtrak officials are pinning their hopes on the bipartisan Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, which would authorize $3.3 billion for operating expenses and $4.9 billion for capital improvements over the life of the bill, from 2008 to 2012.

"We can't keep asking Amtrak to operate like a business while we string the company along year to year," Sen. Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican sponsoring the bill with Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, said in January.

The haggling over funding comes as Amtrak's ridership flourishes. Passengers for the fiscal year that ended last September numbered 24.3 million, setting a record for the fourth year in a row when comparing the same routes along the 21,000-mile system serving 500 stations in 46 states and Washington, D.C.

Between last October and March, Amtrak's riders numbered 14.3 million, up 5 percent over the previous year and sailing toward another record.

At least some of that growth might be tied to the investment by Illinois and 13 other states in short-distance corridors Amtrak otherwise wouldn't offer, essentially paying for service where they see a need.

Last fall, Amtrak added two state-financed round-trips between St. Louis and Chicago and one apiece between from Quincy and Carbondale to the Windy City. Ridership spiked by 189,823 for the first two-thirds of this fiscal year, bringing the total passenger count in the state to 670,605.

To William Rechtenwald, it's a real bargain. The journalism teacher at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale takes Amtrak several times a year to Chicago, finding the service comfortable enough, at roughly $100 round-trip cheaper than driving and tolls, and less hassle than maneuvering through congested freeways.

"I'm a fan of Amtrak," he said. "It's a much wiser choice than driving."

"Instead of turning people away, we now are able to put them on trains," Magliari said. "We've always found around the country that frequency drives ridership."

That's proven true in California. Just months after eight trains were added to the state-subsidized Amtrak service between Sacramento and the Bay Area, officials say ridership on that "Capitol Corridor" continues climbing. Ridership on the 170-mile service now with 32 trains was nearly 1.3 million in 2005, nearly triple the 460,000 passengers who rode those rails eight years ago. Administrators credit their giving passengers more options, with 16 round-trip trains a day a far cry from the three offered in 1991.

With no federal funding to call upon, the Capitol Corridor — the nation's third-busiest rail line in the Amtrak system — was built and runs solely with state and local funds.

Amtrak and its state partners are pondering more routes, if there's money to pull it off.

To the Midwest High Speed Rail Association's Rick Harnish, Amtrak's time is now.

"The era of cheap oil is over, and we have to find ways to take costs out of the system. There should be a lot more trains running, and they should be faster," he said. "If ridership is growing this strongly with the kind of delays they get, just think of what kind of response they'd get if they ran on time.

"It's not rocket science," he said. "It's just about providing a good product."

___

On the Net:

Amtrak, http://www.amtrak.com

National Association of Railroad Passengers, http://www.narprail.org

Midwest High Speed Rail Association, http://www.midwesthsr.org
..

Amtrak needs to be destroyed and replaced with a reliable, regional, electric high-speed rail system (after the govt changes the weight requirements for trains which is absolutely ridiculous). Amtrak is probably the worst travel experience I've ever had in my life. It's absolutely dreadful!

^^ It is expensive, too.

^^ It is expensive, too.

Yeah for something like Amtrak I should be paying 12 bucks and not 60.:bash:

So as opposed to trying to see what could be done differently, you condemn us to having to take buses?

:crazy:

A Boston-New York-DC service travening the ~800 km in between these three services in 4 hours would KILL the airline traffic in between both cities. This would not be an astronomically fast service, averaging 200 km/h (about 125 miles per hour), but that alone would be enough to ensure that highspeed works in the North East. Push the envelope and try to get that to three hours, then shuttles between the three cities would cease. Connect this high speed line to airports, and I tell you that this could be one of the most sucessful high speed lines in the world.

It does not happen because people have the mentality that you are espousing, "well we tried a half-ass attempt at it and it sucks, let's get back on the highways."


This is a very good point you made half ass trains between Boston & New York, take that it must slow down to 30 mph from Groton,CT thru New London because of a bad curve / tracks / bridge that is 100 years old.

A better solution would have been and should be a maglev train from Boston to New York which at the speeds in china 265 mph would be less then 1 hour to NYC down the middle of a rebuilt I-95. Say 6AM, 7AM 8AM non stop trains

Now think of that same system have a few keys for stops on say the 6:30 AM, 7:30Am and 8:30AM train stops at Providence, New London, New Haven, Stratford.

But solutions to these problems will never happen until we get rid of the Aholes who have no vision of the future. Most of the people making these decisions are backed by the Auto Big oil highway / airline lobbyist. Yet look at china or should I say look at it in 10-20 years when they have a high speed rail network and a first class economy while we are saying what happened to ours !!!.

Along with real high speed inter city trains, we also need hub and spoke monorails that follow along our existing highways with beltway loops that connect the spokes. ( example Boston’s RT 128 )
:bash:

Can you post a link to this article from Dan Phillips ?

I recently took a trip up to Rhode Island from New Jersey (by road, yes, that's bad of me, but Amtrak was booked at the time) and it took about 3 hours and 45 minutes to complete. For some reason, it takes 3 hours and 35 minutes to go from Metropark, NJ to Providence, RI. That seems a lot longer than it should be. However, I did some math and I found how long it would take for an Acela to go from Washington, DC to Boston at a certain rate:

Averaging 75mph - 6.093 hours (current time)
Averaging 100mph - 4.570 hours
Averaging 110mph - 4.154 hours
Averaging 120mph - 3.808 hours
Averaging 125mph - 3.656 hours (standard high-speed)
Averaging 130mph - 3.515 hours
Averaging 140mph - 3.264 hours
Averaging 150mph - 3.046 hours (highest possible speed)

This means that a train averaging 125mph, the average high-speed rail speed, could complete a journey along the entire Northeast Corridor in the same time as it would currently take for the Acela to go from New York to Boston. That's kind of sad.
Now think how sad it is to see china have a maglev train that runs at 265 mph !! Now think of that same solution from NYC to Boston ( 235 miles ) do the math !! Why are we being left behind the rest of the world !! And we are wasting billions of $$ on a war just so oil compaines can have a big source of OIL !!!

Amtrak needs to stop trying to be an airline. There are people, of course, who prefer to travel cross-country by train, but they don't do it as a matter of convenience, only preference. The rest of America, on the other hand, either (1) would never take the train long-distance, because it takes too long, or (2) would rather take the bus, because it's cheaper, has more stops, and doesn't sell out. What Amtrak is trying to do is get more Type 1 passengers, rather than Type 2.

Greyhound runs about 1250 buses around the clock, to all parts of the country, and they're always full - and that doesn't count other, more local bus companies. Greyhound's ticket prices stay the same until one week before travel, and they tell you in advance what the last-minute price will be. If more people buy tickets than can fit in the bus, they don't say they're sold out, but simply add another bus to the route.

But, everybody knows that taking the bus is an unpleasant ordeal, at least if you're traveling long-distance. Nearly everybody out there would much rather sit in the comfort of a train than wake up at 3 AM to the arc-sodium lights of a truck stop. As they say: you don't ride the dog, the dog rides you. So what's the advantage? As I said, buying a ticket is hassle- and worry-free, and they run almost everywhere in the country. The slow progress doesn't bother them, the condition of the stations doesn't matter to them; what matters is that they can buy a ticket on short notice to wherever they need to go, and it won't break the bank to do so.

Amtrak could serve these people's needs by having a more local focus - stop trying to be an airline, and start trying to be a bus company. Add stops to the route, even if it slows the route down. Keep a reserve of rail cars at various locations to add to the string if too many people buy tickets. Eliminate reservation-only trains from the network. If giving Newton (KS) some daytime departures means people traveling Chicago - L.A. have to change trains, then make them change trains.

Flying long-distance will always be faster and more schedule-friendly than taking the train, so much of the flying population will never be swayed. But there are thousands of people on the bus who would much rather take the train, so let's try and serve THEIR needs instead.

Try flying from JFK to Boston during the evening push. Spend 40 minutes taxying around JFK. Spend 35 minutes in the air.
The problems with NYC JFK & LaGuardia airports is the taxis lobby will not allow a rail solution!!

What is needed in NYC is an airport monorail that runs between these two airports with stops at a main lines coming out of NYC.

I took the Amtrak Acela from Boston to NYC to pickup an international flight during a snow storm and it was a joke getting from Grand Central out to JFK, I think I took 3 trains and a bus. In Hong Kong I took a cab from my hotel to Central Station where I did an airport check in of my bags and my boarding pass and then boarded the train and in 45 minutes I was at the airport.

HSR should be constructed in regional networks which could then connect to each other. NEC, Midwest, SE, FL, and Texas Triangle could make one killer system, and they'd all be built by different states budgets. CAHSR and NW are going to be system all on their own just because they're so disconnected from the rest of any other possible HSR.

There should still be regular long distance trains though, and lots of them. Plenty of people still use LD service. All North American countries should get their systems up to world class. After that, have service between countries(Chicago-Mexico City?). There are a lot of successful cross border bus services.

i looked at Chicago Union Station and i believe that High Speed Rail can call to that Station

it can be electrifed like Randolph Station and since it is a thru station it benefits for the other locations to be reached with Electifitcation

I believe that HSR has potential in a few places in North America:

- Northeast Corridor
Boston, Providence, New Haven, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Norfolk
- Canadian Corridor
Detroit, Windsor, London, Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal, Trois-Rivieres, Quebec City
- California Corridor
San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, Ontario, San Bernardino, Fresno, Modesto, San Jose, San Francisco
- Pacific Northwest Corridor
Vancouver, Everett, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Eugene, maybe Sacremento and San Francisco
- Southern Corridor
Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Daytona Beach, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Savannah, Atlanta, Charlotte
- East Midwest Corridor
Chicago, Gary, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Erie, Buffalo, maybe Albany and NYC
- South Midwest Corridor
Chicago, Joliet, Peoria, Springfield, St. Louis, Jefferson City, Kansas City, Topeka, Wichita
- North Midwest Corridor
Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, La Crosse, Green Bay, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Duluth

Beyond that, for long distances Amtrak would smart to forget about the speed travel, and make rail the way to travel if you want to go substantial distances. Yeah, you can get there faster on the plane, but it will be more enjoyable on the train. With that in mind, make substantial bedrooms on trains, observation/dome cars for the view, luxurious compartments and all the refinements economically possible. Have all trains offer the auto train deal where you bring your car along if you want - which is easy, just add covered auto carrier cars on the ends of trains.

As for the moving of freight on rail, the USA moves vastly more freight on rail in American than in Europe, because the private companies have been battling for traffic for ages. This ain't the 1970s, the railroads make mountains of money and work beautifully, hauling freight nationwide. What might help is a nationally-owned freight rail line that rivals the private carriers.

As for the high-speeds, the TGV system developed bi-level trainsets. This would be good to do for the intercity lines.

Adding to this, I would reccommend that the passenger trains try to gain back the lustre of yesteryear. So, you get clean trains with good service and excellent surroundings, a part of your vacation rather than being on the way to it. International trains would be cool, too.

Oh, and get back the great names. Why Amtrak never ran the 20th Century Limited name is beyond me. But here's a better idea - an ultra-luxury 21st Century Limited, but instead of Chicago to NYC go for NYC to LA.

u must include Sacramento in your California Corridor, it will branch off in the mid-Central Valley for the Bay Area and Sacramento regions separately.

otherwise yes, i agree with these corridors very much.

HRS has huge feasibility in the US, but no potential thanks to the stranglehold of the oil companies. they dont want people using electric-powered trains to travel long distances, they want them traveling those distances in Chevy Suburbans and Greyhound buses! :bash:

u must include Sacramento in your California Corridor, it will branch off in the mid-Central Valley for the Bay Area and Sacramento regions separately.

I actually had the idea of Frisco being the link between California and Pacific NW, which puts Sacremento on the Pacific NW, between Redding and San Francisco.

I actually had the idea of Frisco being the link between California and Pacific NW, which puts Sacremento on the Pacific NW, between Redding and San Francisco.

you know, a west coast corridor would be great. it would need to branch off before SF and Sacramento and rejoin afterwards, but it could easily stretch from the Canadian to Mexican borders. :yes:

you have a great idea to the Rail Corridors

for the Chicago Union Station will be electirified with improved overhead wires for the HSR that will run to it since its a thru station it will benefits north, west, east, and south destinitations by Rail and it will provide HSR as well

that would be awsome and Chicago Union Station will look more cleaner and more grander then ever

North and South Stations to be connected by a connection railway which will be Part of the High Speed railway as well the North and South Link when will this happen???

South Florida Rail Corridor to be electrified from MIC and beyond currently uses Amtrak, Tri Rail, CSX and in the future HSR as well also between hialeah market and MIC built a new bridge with two tracks

HSR from Sacramento/San Fran area of Cali to Eugene isn't worth it. There's too much nothing in between. Let it just be Vancouver-Eugene and San Diego-San Fran/Sacramento. As far as bi-levels go, it works as long as theirs no height limit. Penn Station in NYC has a height limit b/c of the Hudson River tunnels. NJT had to specially design their bi-levels. Also, auto train on every train doesn't make sense. Between what stations will it operate on these other lines? Remember, the current Auto Train only makes ONE stop in SC to change crews.

I personally think the only other auto train services should be directed towards Florida and MAYBE southern Cali.

HSR can operate between those multiple corridors. Say, Chicago-Quebec, or NY-Atlanta. Not because most will use it between the two end points, but b/c there are people who would be in one corridor who want to get to another(say, DC to Atlanta, Charlotte to NY, or Chicago to Toronto)

I think passenger rail in the U.S. is best served for short distances in high density areas. Otherwise light rail connections throughout a city and high speed rail links to the airports are best for our country. I think air travel serves it's purpose much better than what a cross country high speed rail system could do.

Density isn't an issue. You build the HSR, the density comes from it. You don't want to wait for density first, because then the land is too expensive to afford construction.