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Does the United States need high speed rail?
Does the United States need high speed rail?
In California last week the California state Assembly and Senate passed $4.6 billion in funding for high speed rail enabling construction. However the debate over high speed rail continues with even many of its supporters worried about all the mistakes that have been made. To start with the first phase of construction is going to take place in the central valley creating a railway to nowhere until it connects major cities where there may actually be a market. The path of the railway has also been hijacked by political considerations with a costly detour to Fresno rather than going straight between Los Angeles and San Francisco. California is also perilously close to bankruptcy meaning that the only way the project can be funded is by increasing taxes – something which will be decided in November when voters get to decide if they should raise the sales tax and income taxes on high earners. The project could therefore still hangs in the balance.
Meanwhile Amtrak, the company that runs passenger services in the United States, has released a report on the redevelopment of the rail line in the North East corridor from Washington DC to Boston. This would partially be an improvement of existing lines but would mostly mean building new lines as there is a need for more capacity. Trains would by 2040 be able to travel from New York to Boston in 94 minutes. However the cost would be $151billion and a republican congress is unlikely to be willing to provide any funding.
Debatabase debate: This House would create a national high speed rail system in the U.S. http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/politics-economics/house-would-create-national-high-speed-rail-system-us
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/10/usa-newyork-amtrak-idUSL2E8I9ER920120710
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/saunders/article/California-high-speed-rail-on-wrong-track-3694563.php
45 weeks 13 hours ago
The United States should also think about whether it should be going with normal high speed railways - there are today some working maglevs that are faster and therefore better able to compete, would it not make more sense to leap ahead? Presumably the wish was to have the network link in with existing railways even though they are not as well used for passengers as in many other countries around the world.
One of the most expensive bit of building a railway, high speed or not, is getting through the cities. The existing railways can provide that for you if they just speed through the countryside. This wouldnt work for a maglev because they cannot just rip up the old railway and put a maglev there because of all th freight that already goes down those lines.
That said I know absolutely nothing about the Californian High Speed rail.
45 weeks 8 hours ago
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I am surprised no one has yet worked out how to have normal train wheels on a maglev - sure the train would need to slow down considerably to make the transfer but if the train was going to be running over tracks used for freignt trains then it could not go very fast anyway.
Frankly if at all possible you really want to avoid having mixed role tracks - Freight trains in the US mostly run at less than 50mph so what would be the point in having a high speed train if it is simply going to get caught behind a freight train trundling through the city? If the high speed line is ever to be viable it needs all of its capacity used by high speed services.
44 weeks 6 days ago
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Honestly I do not know enough about US rail use to say for sure but it would not seem unreasonable for the lines to be able to be used for freight at night and reserved during the day, which is basically what happens in the UK on normal lines. Or even just for windows during the day depending on the frequency. I was assuming that the old sections would be upgraided to say 100 mph running as well rather than trundling ever so slowly through the suburbs. It ought to be remembered that even if the trains are slowed down by the cities they would still have the edge on planes, very few cities have their airport in the middle, most stations are!
I am not opposing building brand new lines into the heart of the city but in practical terms it is expensive, in order to get high speed off the ground it is therefore sensible to start with the long fast sections that really matter and then see if it is worthwhile burrowing miles and miles of tunnels (which surely is what we are talking about here).
Equally there are many places it would be worth running a high speed train a day to but not lots and lots of them, in which case they need to be able to use the normal lines. As many of the TGVs do.
If the high speed trains to Leeds and Manchester ever happen, I will be very unhappy if I have to change trains at Leeds to get to Edinburgh rather than have it run at 125mph up the ECML. Of course Im very likely to still have to change at Waverley for Aberdeen but some things you have to accept!
44 weeks 5 days ago
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It would then be much cheaper simply to upgrade the lines to the maximum possible 125 mph like the UK has and then only build cheap high speed sections over areas of flat cheap land so keeping construction down to a minimum.
If you are going to have freight running at night then when will all the engineering works and checking that the line is ok take place?
44 weeks 5 days ago
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on sunday! twas ever thus!
But I think you are misinterprating me here. Im not going to run high speed trains over more than a tiny fraction of the current freight lines, you divert as much as you can, that which cannot goes at night. I was just thinking of the Eurostar, it has been running since 1994, 13 years longer than it would have if it had to run into London on its own tracks.
44 weeks 5 days ago
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If there is demand the market would build it without subsidy, and if the market does not build it then that is probably because there is not the demand to make it viable! America is supposed to be the home of the free market and should not be engaging in providing large taxpayer subsidies to construct a rail network that may well never be completed and will almost certainly never really be used.
The situation in the United States is very different to that of Europe; cities are further apart for a start so it is not a good place to build high speed rail. Does anyone really think that Americans will get out of their cars to travel by train? If they were going to trains would not have been abandoned in the first place!
44 weeks 5 days ago
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The United States is not seriously thinking of creating a whole high speed network; both the current projects in California and in the North East Corridor are in areas where there are several large cities close together - similar to what has been the case in other countries that have successfully adopted high speed rail. It is these medium distances that HSR is best for - where it is much faster than the car but the delays added to planes for things like check in mean that the plane is also slower.
The really big difference in the United States is that there is much less in the way of feeder infrastructure. Many more people travel on local trains and subway networks in Europe - these networks deliver you to the main railway station so making high speed rail an obvious link into a broader network.
44 weeks 1 day ago
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Does the United States need high speed rail? Yes. Does it need this high speed rail? No.
The Californian rail system in particular seems to be going out of its way to be costly and so fail. It would make much more sense to keep the line from going out of its way to other population centres like fresno as the importance of high speed rail is in getting people between main cities quicky so why slow the journey down? It will simply make the network less competitive against planes that are unlikely to go via Fresno.
The United States should also think about whether it should be going with normal high speed railways - there are today some working maglevs that are faster and therefore better able to compete, would it not make more sense to leap ahead? Presumably the wish was to have the network link in with existing railways even though they are not as well used for passengers as in many other countries around the world.