UNITED STATES | High Speed Rail

[Manila-X]

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

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

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

[hkskyline]

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

[earthJoker]

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

[Bitxofo]

Of course, YES!!

[Cloudship]

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

[Maxx☢Power]

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

[Alargule]

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

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

[Joka]

The more traffic on rails, the better.

[Mr. Fusion]

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

[jmancuso]

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

[nomarandlee]

Originally Posted by WANCH

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

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

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

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

[BoulderGrad]

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

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

[nomarandlee]

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

[Cloudship]

Originally Posted by nomarandlee

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

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

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

[I-275westcoastfl]

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

[Nefast]

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

[Reivajar]

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

There are some interesting corridors in USA for HSL developing:

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

California, as Nefast has commented.

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

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

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

[Cloudship]

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

[elfabyanos]

Originally Posted by nomarandlee

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

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

[CharlieP]

Originally Posted by elfabyanos

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

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

Copenhagen-Amsterdam-Brussels-Paris-Madrid-Lisbon

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

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