New High Speed Rail proposal

[MikeM]

The US Public Interest Research Group has released a new study / proposal which aims to link all major US cities between 100 - 500 miles with high speed rail lines. A brief overview with a map of their proposal is here, with links to to the whole study. Overall an interesting read, although probably a bit ambitious given the current funding for rail right now. But I think it's interesting to see the proposal out there, it has to help move the dialog forward particularly with younger people who may lack the exposure to classic rail service many of us "geezers" take for granted.

Any thoughts?

 

[DowneasterPassenger]

Poor Wyoming and North Dakota can't get no respect.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

It's interesting seeing them talking about reducing automobile trips and saving oil.

My suspicion is that if you divert trips from automobiles to rail, there are potential automobile trips not currently being taken due to congestion which will be taken in the future (possibly after homes are built in places where building a home would currently not make sense due to the road congestion).

And if Tesla Motors succeeds at making the lithium ion battery powered car commonplace, diverting automobile trips to rail will have zero long term impact on oil consumption.

If you're really focused on minimizing long term oil consumption, what actually matters is making the trains capable of 500 MPH operation so that a New York City to Los Angeles traveler won't consider taking an oil consuming airplane instead of the train. On the other hand, if you eliminate oil consumption by automobiles and short haul airline flights, there's a good chance we can produce enough oil in the US for the longer haul domestic flights and international flights, and stop importing oil.

It's disappointing that the report doesn't talk more about 220+ MPH service. I was hoping they were proposing a network of 220+ MPH track interconnecting the country, but they seem more focused on recapping the existing 79 MPH etc plans.

 

[MikeM]

Poor Wyoming and North Dakota can't get no respect.

Indeed. My home town of Green River Wyoming will have to wait for another day for high speed rail. Then again, with a state population equal to many metro areas it isn't exactly crowded either...

 

[George Harris]

And if Tesla Motors succeeds at making the lithium ion battery powered car commonplace, diverting automobile trips to rail will have zero long term impact on oil consumption.

And how is the electricity to charge the battery being generated?

If you're really focused on minimizing long term oil consumption, what actually matters is making the trains capable of 500 MPH operation so that a New York City to Los Angeles traveler won't consider taking an oil consuming airplane instead of the train. On the other hand, if you eliminate oil consumption by automobiles and short haul airline flights, there's a good chance we can produce enough oil in the US for the longer haul domestic flights and international flights, and stop importing oil.
It's disappointing that the report doesn't talk more about 220+ MPH service. I was hoping they were proposing a network of 220+ MPH track interconnecting the country, but they seem more focused on recapping the existing 79 MPH etc plans.

Let's try for the 200 mph or slightly better, and make sure the lines are built so that the speed is capped by equipment and such, which can be changed relatively easy, and not by alignment which difficult ot near impossible to change once it is built.

We have to first and foremost get ONE line built somewhere in this country, so that it becomes obvious to the densest minds (usually those owned by politicans) that these things are useful and should be built.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

And if Tesla Motors succeeds at making the lithium ion battery powered car commonplace, diverting automobile trips to rail will have zero long term impact on oil consumption.

And how is the electricity to charge the battery being generated?

Very little of the electricity generated for the grid comes from oil. If we're concerned about energy's impact on our national trade balance, it is very likely that switching automobiles to the electric grid will eliminate the majority of our energy imports.

The Cape Wind project is expected to reduce fuel consumption by a plant that consumes a mix of bunker oil and natural gas (and which is somewhat unusual for using bunker oil); I assume that the bunker oil is most of what they are hoping to offset.

If we keep burning coal, it is quite possible that a significant fraction of the battery charging will use excess electricity that's generated by coal plants at night that currently goes unused, because coal plants do not ramp their energy production up and down quickly. Nuclear plants have the same issues.

If we invest in intermittent generation sources such as wind and solar, having batteries that can be told to charge themselves only when there is a surplus of energy from these intermittent sources is likely to improve our ability to effectively use the energy from the intermittent sources.

There is also the long term question of whether a technology such as fool's gold solar panels will dramatically reduce the cost of electricity, something that should be kept in mind by those who think trains should be limited to some arbitrary speed because of the cost of electricity.

 

[birdy]

A pretty unimpressive plan. Lots of HSR through Arizona. That's good. Phoenix and Las Vegas are well-suited. But none through Texas? None in Georgia to Charlotte? Apparently no discussion whatsoever about the possibility of cross-border routes with Canada. "We can't hope to match China's 300 billion commitment through 2020"? We have 3.5 times the GDP of China. You would never know it to hear all the poor mouthing that goes on. We most certainly could match their plan if that were a discrete goal for some reason. Posing this as some kind of competition though, is dumb. Merely, we need to recognize that we have choke points that could use HSR recognize that we can easily afford the cost and then build a few. The airports are then used more rationally for long-haul travel which is where they excel. The scalability of HSR eases the pressure on our highways at least long-term, gives us better all-weather travel capability in the upper mid-west and offers a third option to medium distance travelers. Billing it as some kind of all-purpose environmental panacea is misleading.

 

[George Harris]

A pretty unimpressive plan. Lots of HSR through Arizona. That's good. Phoenix and Las Vegas are well-suited. But none through Texas? None in Georgia to Charlotte? Apparently no discussion whatsoever about the possibility of cross-border routes with Canada. "We can't hope to match China's 300 billion commitment through 2020"?

A lot of this phoney logic nonsense leaves me wanting to scream.

Who cares whether we have more or less miles and run faster or slower than they do in China -or France - or Germany - or elsewhere? The question is, what is appropriate for us? I think a lot more in the way of high speed and also medium and lower speed rail would be highly beneficial. But, let's base it on what we need, not what is done somewhere else.

As for logical system planning: That is notable primarily by its absense. There should be some sort of national level study of travel patterns and the system built accordingly, not the current cook up a scheme out of pure hyperbole and then try to justify it through nonsense studies done by the governor's or mayor's brother-in-law.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

Billing it as some kind of all-purpose environmental panacea is misleading.

Yes.

I tend to think that the two biggest potential applications of HSR are:

1) Airplane replacement.

2) Enabling commutes over distances that currently take too long to travel on a daily basis.

The environmentalists seem to think the second is a bad thing. Yet the second seems like the most effective way that can be imagined to entice commuters out of single occupancy automobiles (which is not entirely without environmental benefits), and it also promotes much higher usage which ought to make it easier to justify construction in the first place.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

Who cares whether we have more or less miles and run faster or slower than they do in China -or France - or Germany - or elsewhere? The question is, what is appropriate for us? I think a lot more in the way of high speed and also medium and lower speed rail would be highly beneficial. But, let's base it on what we need, not what is done somewhere else.

I think I mostly agree with you here, except that I think examples of what is done elsewhere can be useful counterarguments when someone claims that something would be too expensive to be done in the US.

Need is an interesting thing to sort out. The residents of San Francisco do seem to have survived somehow prior to the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Does that mean the Golden Gate Bridge should never have been built?

As for logical system planning: That is notable primarily by its absense. There should be some sort of national level study of travel patterns and the system built accordingly, not the current cook up a scheme out of pure hyperbole and then try to justify it through nonsense studies done by the governor's or mayor's brother-in-law.

If you're talking about studying existing travel patterns and finding ways to use rail to ease congestion, that may be viable. But that may tend to focus on airplane replacement, and not high speed commuting. Governments and consultants hired by governments do not tend to be noted for being the leaders in recognizing the new opportunities offered by new technologies.

 

[birdy]

"If you're talking about studying existing travel patterns and finding ways to use rail to ease congestion, that may be viable. But that may tend to focus on airplane replacement, and not high speed commuting. Governments and consultants hired by governments do not tend to be noted for being the leaders in recognizing the new opportunities offered by new technologies"

Well, high speed commuter rail only got started in the last six months with the Javelin system in Britain. To be sure, HSR has created an unintended new market of affluent commuters. No doubt its a big part of the future use of these systems. But its hard to predict or to sell what the purpose might be. For example, a HSR between Tulsa and OKC, or NO and Baton Rouge, would probably engender a considerable amount of commuting. But it would be hard to create a credible study predicting the usage patterns or traffic growth, let alone side benefits. It would be harder still to use this as a justification. "Rich" people using the rail. Further environmental degradation. City people demanding services at the expense of country people. Its really only limited to the imagination of Randal O'Toole and the Cato Institute.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I've sometimes found myself thinking about what sort of commuting patterns we might see with an Albany to New York City high speed commuter rail system. If you run 20 trains an hour, 1000 commuters to the train, and have four hours of peak travel in each direction, that's only 80,000 commuters a day on your double track railroad. If you're trying to revitalize Albany's economy, is letting 5%-10% of the residents of the greater Albany area commute to New York City enough?

Package delivery services currently have to follow an overnight model, except for the really expensive courier services. Would high speed rail enable same day service for short enough distances, and would that turn out to be valuable?

 

[birdy]

I don't know about Albany, but a reasonable commute time from the Hudson valley would be a sensation.

 

[ferroequineologist]

I don't know about Albany, but a reasonable commute time from the Hudson valley would be a sensation.

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Life in Michigan for the past 50 years has read of great promised high speed trains to operate between Chicago and Detroit. At present the highest speed limit is 79 mph, and that on the Amtrak owned portion of the route, a total distance of about 73 miles, hardly what would decrease travel times to something better than driving it.

The railroad can only advance to the limitation put on its funding, and please do not tell me that Amtrak is the only mode of transportation getting governmental funding! China, France, GB, whoever, TVG, if you want something you need the plans, funds, and guts to set a goal and stick to it, sorry, but in America that stick-to-it-tiveness is gone poof.

When Amtrak began they were alloted 2000 cars, a far cry from the thousands more cars the regular railroads had at their disposal before May 1, 1971. Equipment is the need, not wild super high speed trains that would plug along here at speeds of 60 mph, but common passenger coaches and sleepers that can operate up to 100 mph, build that before learning to run with the Gazelles.

 

[AlanB]

Life in Michigan for the past 50 years has read of great promised high speed trains to operate between Chicago and Detroit. At present the highest speed limit is 79 mph, and that on the Amtrak owned portion of the route, a total distance of about 73 miles, hardly what would decrease travel times to something better than driving it.

Um sorry, but no.

First, Amtrak currently owns 95 miles of track in Michigan. At present, the top speed on that track is 95 MPH, or at least it was earlier this year. It is supposed to be raised to 105 MPH before the year is out and may already be in progress. And thanks to some Stimulus funds, it should go to 110 MPH by the end of next year.

It will however take considerably more monies to push things faster than 110 MPH, as that is currently the upper limit for a diesel locomotive.

 

[jis]

It will however take considerably more monies to push things faster than 110 MPH, as that is currently the upper limit for a diesel locomotive.

And for all practical purposes it also requires shutting down all grade crossings.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

It will however take considerably more monies to push things faster than 110 MPH, as that is currently the upper limit for a diesel locomotive.

NJT has ordered a batch of dual mode diesel/catenary locomotives that will be geared for 125 MPH operation. It would be very interesting to build a test train that had one dual mode locomotive on each end of the train (instead of using a Non Powered Control Unit on one end), and a set of the same type and number of coaches seen on the typical Amtrak Michigan train, and see if that could get up to 125 MPH on some appropriate part of the Northeast Corridor with both dual mode locomotives in diesel mode.

(If that succeeds, the experiment could also be repeated with just one of the dual mode locomotives and a typical NPCU.)

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

And for all practical purposes it also requires shutting down all grade crossings.

Somehow, finding the funding to eliminate all grade crossings from the Interstate Highway system has never been a challenge. Why are Amtrak routes so different?

 

[Eric S]

It will however take considerably more monies to push things faster than 110 MPH, as that is currently the upper limit for a diesel locomotive.

NJT has ordered a batch of dual mode diesel/catenary locomotives that will be geared for 125 MPH operation. It would be very interesting to build a test train that had one dual mode locomotive on each end of the train (instead of using a Non Powered Control Unit on one end), and a set of the same type and number of coaches seen on the typical Amtrak Michigan train, and see if that could get up to 125 MPH on some appropriate part of the Northeast Corridor with both dual mode locomotives in diesel mode.

(If that succeeds, the experiment could also be repeated with just one of the dual mode locomotives and a typical NPCU.)

Regarding the dual mode locomotives NJT (and I believe AMT in Montreal?) has ordered, are they designed to operate at 125mph when in either diesel or electric mode, or just when in electric mode?

 

[AlanB]

It will however take considerably more monies to push things faster than 110 MPH, as that is currently the upper limit for a diesel locomotive.

NJT has ordered a batch of dual mode diesel/catenary locomotives that will be geared for 125 MPH operation. It would be very interesting to build a test train that had one dual mode locomotive on each end of the train (instead of using a Non Powered Control Unit on one end), and a set of the same type and number of coaches seen on the typical Amtrak Michigan train, and see if that could get up to 125 MPH on some appropriate part of the Northeast Corridor with both dual mode locomotives in diesel mode.

(If that succeeds, the experiment could also be repeated with just one of the dual mode locomotives and a typical NPCU.)

Regarding the dual mode locomotives NJT (and I believe AMT in Montreal?) has ordered, are they designed to operate at 125mph when in either diesel or electric mode, or just when in electric mode?

It's only capable of 125 MPH when in electric mode. In electric mode the engine can produce 5,360 HP with the traction motors. In diesel mode it can only produce 4,200 HP.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

It's only capable of 125 MPH when in electric mode. In electric mode the engine can produce 5,360 HP with the traction motors. In diesel mode it can only produce 4,200 HP.

If you put one on each end of a train, you'll have 8400 HP available in diesel mode, and I'm under the impression that the typical 125 MPH NJT train both has less than 8400 HP available and has more wind drag and weight than a typical Amtrak Michigan set (or even an Amtrak Michigan set with a P42 on both ends instead of the more typical P42 and NPCU).

I'm also not sure if we're correctly accounting for the power that HEP takes away from the traction motors in single locomotive trains.

 

[AlanB]

It's only capable of 125 MPH when in electric mode. In electric mode the engine can produce 5,360 HP with the traction motors. In diesel mode it can only produce 4,200 HP.

If you put one on each end of a train, you'll have 8400 HP available in diesel mode, and I'm under the impression that the typical 125 MPH NJT train both has less than 8400 HP available and has more wind drag and weight than a typical Amtrak Michigan set (or even an Amtrak Michigan set with a P42 on both ends instead of the more typical P42 and NPCU).

Doesn't work like that. Yes, with two locos you can accelerate faster since you have more powered wheels pushing/pulling the train along faster. But that's where the advantage ends. Each engine still only has 4,200 HP available for it's traction motors. You can't turn the traction motors any faster since you still have the same amount of power within the engine. You can't combine the power output from the two engine's and then provide all that power to the traction motors of just one of the two engines.

No matter how you slice it, each engine will still have a maximum of 4,200 HP to push through its traction motors. Therefore you can't turn the traction motors as fast as you can with overhead cat power, which produces 5,360 HP for the traction motors. The loss of more than 1,100 HP precludes the idea of doing 125 even with two engines.

I'm also not sure if we're correctly accounting for the power that HEP takes away from the traction motors in single locomotive trains.

Those numbers are direct from Bombardier's (the builder) fact sheets. So if they aren't properly accounting for HEP, God help NJT as there will be huge problems.

 

[Ispolkom]

Poor Wyoming and North Dakota can't get no respect.

I actually read a proposal for High Speed Rail in North Dakota, proposing a U-shaped route Dickinson-Fargo-Grand Forks-Williston. The writer thought that travelers going from, say Bismarck to Williston would be happy to go via Fargo. Sort of like how I'm going from Denver to Minot next month via Sacramento and Portland. That proposal had about as much chance of coming to fruition than this.

 

[jis]

And for all practical purposes it also requires shutting down all grade crossings.

Somehow, finding the funding to eliminate all grade crossings from the Interstate Highway system has never been a challenge. Why are Amtrak routes so different?

Ask your congressman

 

[jis]

It's only capable of 125 MPH when in electric mode. In electric mode the engine can produce 5,360 HP with the traction motors. In diesel mode it can only produce 4,200 HP.

If you put one on each end of a train, you'll have 8400 HP available in diesel mode, and I'm under the impression that the typical 125 MPH NJT train both has less than 8400 HP available and has more wind drag and weight than a typical Amtrak Michigan set (or even an Amtrak Michigan set with a P42 on both ends instead of the more typical P42 and NPCU).

I'm also not sure if we're correctly accounting for the power that HEP takes away from the traction motors in single locomotive trains.

Come again? NJT currently has 125mp trains? That is certainly news to me. Where?