shiny new train in California

[fizzball]

I'd say congrats on Prop 1A if I wasn't so mad about the most politically-charged prop on the ballot.

EDIT: then I'm sure this can be moved! Unless the placement of the post is more important than its subject. Criminy. it's not like mods are exactly ignoring posts today... :unsure:

 

[George Harris]

If we waited for the perfect situation we would have nothing. Ever heard the phrase "Striving for the perfect destroying the good?" It may not be great, but I'll take it and be happy.

As of 9:49 PST this morning:

1A - Safe, Reliable High-Speed Train Bond Act

YES: 4,959,358 52.3%

NO: 4,535,334 47.7%

The above from http://vote.sos.ca.gov/props/index.html which is the Califronia State Secty of State web site.

 

[fizzball]

Why is this in the "Commuter" category? It is NOT a commuter railroad, nor is it intended to be unless you count travel between places 200 plus miles apart as "commutes"

Because I didn't look in Misc, but knew it was non-Amtrak?

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

Because I didn't look in Misc, but knew it was non-Amtrak?

How do you know California won't hire Amtrak to operate it, as they have done for the Capitol Corridor?

How do you know that Amtrak will never operate high speed trains from Los Angeles to Portland, OR or from San Francisco to Las Vegas via Los Angeles across this track?

 

[birdy]

Sounds great. Maybe you all can get some economic stimulus money to extend the line. Some questions for you railheads, though:

1. How much juice does such a train use? As best I can figure, its maybe 3.3 Mwh for a larger, faster, train, pulling 600 or so passengers. Is that right? If so, that implies a fuel cost of about 300 bucks per three hour trip. (train is its own distribution system, so the cost is close to wholesale I assume).

2. When do airplanes start being competitive with 200 Mph train? 350 miles or so? Has anyone done a study to figure out where the break points are on this? What if the train moves at 230 or so. Does that change the equation a lot, or a little?

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

2. When do airplanes start being competitive with 200 Mph train? 350 miles or so? Has anyone done a study to figure out where the break points are on this? What if the train moves at 230 or so. Does that change the equation a lot, or a little?

Competitive in what sense?

If we stopped importing petroleum (which would require us to cut 60% of flights and automobile miles if we can't make biofuels or batteries work), an electric train is a lot easier to find power for than an airplane.

I suspect wind resistance is the major factor in either case, though it's possible that the lower density at high altitudes makes a difference here. On the other hand, raw speed isn't the only factor; a large chunk of the cost of fuel for a jet flight is the time spent at low altitude, which doesn't vary much with the trip distance.

I think the places where airplanes are really attractive are those where building high speed track is not cost effective. That mostly means areas with low population density.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

I'd say its more like a thousand miles. If we have a non-stop train averaging 200 mph over mainly the Broadway (New York, Trenton, North Philly, Harrisburg, Altoona, Pittsburgh, Chicago) with straightened out track to allow it to average that, lets say it would be 900 miles, which would take 4.5 hours. The flight would take, lets say, 2 hours. Between getting from midtown Manhattan to the airport, checking baggage, security, picking up baggage in Chicago, and getting to downtown Chicago, that would probably easily take another 2.5 hours.

 

[birdy]

2. When do airplanes start being competitive with 200 Mph train? 350 miles or so? Has anyone done a study to figure out where the break points are on this? What if the train moves at 230 or so. Does that change the equation a lot, or a little?

Competitive in what sense?

If we stopped importing petroleum (which would require us to cut 60% of flights and automobile miles if we can't make biofuels or batteries work), an electric train is a lot easier to find power for than an airplane.

I suspect wind resistance is the major factor in either case, though it's possible that the lower density at high altitudes makes a difference here. On the other hand, raw speed isn't the only factor; a large chunk of the cost of fuel for a jet flight is the time spent at low altitude, which doesn't vary much with the trip distance.

I think the places where airplanes are really attractive are those where building high speed track is not cost effective. That mostly means areas with low population density.

'Competitive' in the sense of beating the airline competition for passengers. For example, its maybe 340 miles from Phoenix AZ to San Diego California, roughly the distance of Paris to Bourdeaux. An hour flight, not counting the considerable time getting to airport and checking in. About 40 non-stops per day on 737s. Assuming a 3 hour high speed train, about like TGV, how many of those flights would you expect to survive after the train gets up and running? At what distance do the customers begin to resist the high speed train and stick with air transport?

How sensitive are the passengers to price? Do they massively switch to save $15 bucks, or do they opt for convenience?

By the way. I was wrong. 3.3 Mwh would be about $200 per hour fuel cost, which I think is hugely cheaper than an airplane anywhere along the curve, roughly $1 for each passenger on our hypothetical Phoenix to San Diego TGV.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

'Competitive' in the sense of beating the airline competition for passengers. For example, its maybe 340 miles from Phoenix AZ to San Diego California, roughly the distance of Paris to Bourdeaux. An hour flight, not counting the considerable time getting to airport and checking in. About 40 non-stops per day on 737s. Assuming a 3 hour high speed train, about like TGV, how many of those flights would you expect to survive after the train gets up and running? At what distance do the customers begin to resist the high speed train and stick with air transport?

The folk wisdom seems to be that if train service will provide three hours or less times between a given city pair, that is sufficient to kill air service completely between that city pair, except perhaps for connecting service (and the examples in the UK I've seen of the connecting flights being viable leave one with the impression that better rail-airport connections might well kill those connecting flights).

I believe it's still possible to fly commercially from the New York City area airports to the Washington, DC airports; that trip is scheduled to be right around 3 hours on the Acela Express. I suspect the issue here is that Amtrak and Congress haven't managed to bring themselves to provide enough seats on the trains on that route to finish killing off the airplanes. (I'm also not sure if there's enough track capacity given the number of trains that would need to be run that would be short enough to fit the platforms and Acela maintenance facilities, but that may well not actually be a problem. The main question is whether the commuter trains would get in the way.)

Chicago to New York City is an example of where 300 MPH as the maximum speed would be desireable; that's about 800 miles, and if a train sustains 300 MPH for most of the route, it should be able to kill airplane flights from New York City to Chicago. The tracks should probably also be extended beyond Chicago Union Station to O'Hare; if some of the trains stopped at every airport terminal, I bet people from New York City who need to fly to someplace that's only reachable via O'Hare would be happy taking the train from New York City to O'Hare. (There would also need to be a reasonable guaranteed connection mechanism for high speed train to airplane transfers.) Given enough high speed track, reaching Chicago in under three hours by train from any of Minneapolis/St Paul, Kansas City, St Louis, Indianapolis, Dayton, Cincinatti, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, and Toledo ought to be possible (and there are probably some other fairly large cities that are possible, too).

If the train takes longer than about three hours, it will still have some ridership, but will start to make smaller dents in airplane ridership. I think one of the passengers I ate lunch with on the Lake Shore Limited heading east last May said he'd spent two days on the previous train, and had probably come from the west coast or somewhere close to the west coast, but the percentage of travelers willing to spend three days on the train is rather small. (Then again, with a 250 MPH average, Boston to Los Angeles ought to be somewhere around 11 or 12 hours. Someone who appreciates the benefits of a sleeping car would find that more desireable than an airplane flight.)

How sensitive are the passengers to price? Do they massively switch to save $15 bucks, or do they opt for convenience?

Depends on the passenger. Among the people I know in the greater Boston area, some prefer the Chinatown buses and others prefer Amtrak when going to New York City. I've heard rumors that there are people who fly between New York City and Boston, but I don't think I know any of them.

By the way. I was wrong. 3.3 Mwh would be about $200 per hour fuel cost, which I think is hugely cheaper than an airplane anywhere along the curve, roughly $1 for each passenger on our hypothetical Phoenix to San Diego TGV.

The real expense with high speed trains is in building the track. I suspect a high speed train from Phoenix to San Diego would travel via the edge of Los Angeles; it's cheaper to make the Phoenix to Los Angeles and Los Angeles to San Diego track a little faster when you're initially building them than it is to build dedicated Phoenix to San Diego track along a path closer to how the crow would fly, and I think that's true even when you factor in the higher electricity cost of going faster along a less direct route to end up with the same overall city to city time. Plus, making the Phoenix to Los Angeles tracks faster will convine more people traveling between Phoenix and San Francisco to take the train instead of the plane, and making the San Diego to Los Angeles tracks faster will probably convince more San Diego to Sacramento travelers to take the train instead of the plane.

And at 18-25 trains an hour in each direction when you have double track and all trains are running at the same speed as all other trains, I don't think there's much risk of the San Diego to Los Angeles or Los Angeles to Phoenix tracks getting saturated. (The California HSR folks figure that a 1300' train can have up to 1600 passengers, though that 1600 passengers probably assumes everyone is in coach class.)

 

[George Harris]

The real 304 meter = 997 feet long 12 car Shinkansen style trains run on the Taiwan High Speed Rail have a seating capacity of 965 people each, with one business class car and 11 coach class cars. Seats to right up behind the operator's cab on both ends. The end to end distance is 211 miles, and local air service has dropped from something like 40 to 60 flights per day to 6. No information on how the more or less parallel existing railroad is doing.

Currently they run 63 trains per day each way on weekdays and 69 trains per day each way on weekends. Schedule can be found at

www.thsrc.com.tw/download/tw/file/timetable_081101_en.pdf Website is www.thsrc.com.tw There is a little box at the top to click on for English if you have trouble reading Standard Chinese.

there will alwasy be a certain contingent of people that will either fly or drive by preference whether or not it is the fastest or most convenient method. There may even be Philadelphia to New York flights for these people for all I know.

Don't know why Phoenix to San Diego is being discussed rather than Phoenix to Los Angeles. That would be the bigger market and more feasible to construct as well. Going straight east from San Diego runs through some very rugged terrain.

Don't know where the 18 to 25 train s per hour comes from. Simple arithmetic: Say even 12 hours per day, that is 200,000 to 300,000 people per day in each direction. Highly unlikely for the demand to be that high. Based on the normal highway lane capacity of about 2000 vehicles per hour and an average of 1.2 people per, car, about what it is, you would have 7 lanes bumper to bumper in each direction.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

The real 304 meter = 997 feet long 12 car Shinkansen style trains run on the Taiwan High Speed Rail have a seating capacity of 965 people each, with one business class car and 11 coach class cars. Seats to right up behind the operator's cab on both ends. The end to end distance is 211 miles, and local air service has dropped from something like 40 to 60 flights per day to 6. No information on how the more or less parallel existing railroad is doing.

Is that a bi-level train?

Don't know where the 18 to 25 train s per hour comes from. Simple arithmetic: Say even 12 hours per day, that is 200,000 to 300,000 people per day in each direction. Highly unlikely for the demand to be that high. Based on the normal highway lane capacity of about 2000 vehicles per hour and an average of 1.2 people per, car, about what it is, you would have 7 lanes bumper to bumper in each direction.

I was thinking about BART and NJT's headways on tracks where multiple routes converge. I would never expect a single intercity passenger route to operate with anywhere near that frequency, but if you think about tracks from New York City to Chicago with spurs to Pittsburgh (possibly with multiple routes continuing beyond Pittsburgh, some serving Cincinatti, others Indianapolis, and yet others Washington, DC), Toledo/Detroit, Cleveland/Erie, and maybe Allentown, as well as various routes beyond New York City that skip the trip through Manhattan, the number of trains per hour that a double track segment can accomdate may become a bit of a limitation in some parts of the country.

Also consider that a lot of travelers might want to bring their automobile on the train if offered that option, and that rapidly decreases the number of people a track segment accomodates. I have lived in five different homes in my lifetime. I'm pretty sure the one in San Diego has the distinction of being the only one that has no local bus service within a mile walk of it. (The bus service near where I lived in Connecticut is pretty uselessly infrequent, but apparently there was once interurban streetcar service within a mile of where I lived there, even though the streetcar system was gone decades before the house I lived in was built).

 

[birdy]

The real 304 meter = 997 feet long 12 car Shinkansen style trains run on the Taiwan High Speed Rail have a seating capacity of 965 people each, with one business class car and 11 coach class cars. Seats to right up behind the operator's cab on both ends. The end to end distance is 211 miles, and local air service has dropped from something like 40 to 60 flights per day to 6. No information on how the more or less parallel existing railroad is doing.
Currently they run 63 trains per day each way on weekdays and 69 trains per day each way on weekends. Schedule can be found at

www.thsrc.com.tw/download/tw/file/timetable_081101_en.pdf Website is www.thsrc.com.tw There is a little box at the top to click on for English if you have trouble reading Standard Chinese.

there will alwasy be a certain contingent of people that will either fly or drive by preference whether or not it is the fastest or most convenient method. There may even be Philadelphia to New York flights for these people for all I know.

Don't know why Phoenix to San Diego is being discussed rather than Phoenix to Los Angeles. That would be the bigger market and more feasible to construct as well. Going straight east from San Diego runs through some very rugged terrain.

Don't know where the 18 to 25 train s per hour comes from. Simple arithmetic: Say even 12 hours per day, that is 200,000 to 300,000 people per day in each direction. Highly unlikely for the demand to be that high. Based on the normal highway lane capacity of about 2000 vehicles per hour and an average of 1.2 people per, car, about what it is, you would have 7 lanes bumper to bumper in each direction.

Thanks George and Joel.

I used Phoenix San Diego as an example because for some reason, it appears to be a busier point to point air corridor than Phoenix to LA, and because of my supposition that right of way acquisition would be cheaper. Also, the prospect of squeezing a few years extra life out of Lindbergh field in San Diego would significantly boost the economic value of the project. Presumably TGV type train would approach San Diego from the south where the topography is much better.

But now I have another question for you all: How much traffic do you have to have to justify a high speed route at all? Assuming the train obliterates 40 737s per day, at 170 passengers per, that's about 10 trains per day each way. (also counting on a modest amount of traffic increase and some traffic competition taking away from private automobiles). Is that enough density for a high speed train by european standards?

Anyway, I hope some rail works its way into the $300 billion stimulus package.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I used Phoenix San Diego as an example because for some reason, it appears to be a busier point to point air corridor than Phoenix to LA, and because of my supposition that right of way acquisition would be cheaper. Also, the prospect of squeezing a few years extra life out of Lindbergh field in San Diego would significantly boost the economic value of the project. Presumably TGV type train would approach San Diego from the south where the topography is much better.

Thinking of rail in terms of point to point routes is probably not the best way to appreciate the full value of rail.

A train can make lots of local stops that would never be pratical with airplanes. On an entirely conventional speed route, the time cost of making a stop at a platform that happens to be along the tracks the train was going to use anyway is simply the time spent decelerating plus the time spent stopped at the platform plus the time spent getting back up to speed, minus the time that would have been spent covering the distance from where the train started decelerating to where it finished accelerating had it not stopped there. On a high speed route, getting to downtown stations at smaller intermediate cities may involve spending more time on conventional speed track, but those routes typically have enough demand for a mix of express and local trains.

Whereas with an airplane, the whole process of landing, unloading, loading, and taking off takes significantly longer (and also has huge fuel cost, because operating a jet at low altitude is very expensive). Making 10 intermediate stops between Chicago and Los Angeles would create a huge increase in the travel time and cost if anyone tried it in a jet (which is why nobody does that).

There are already plans for 220 MPH track running from San Diego to Sacramento (though some seem skeptical that the tracks will ever be built all the way to Sacramento and San Diego). The most cost effective Phoenix to California track connection (ignoring terrain issues) will be the one that gets as many Phoenix to California passengers wanting to take the train. A direct track connection to Los Angeles rather than San Diego will shorten the times from Phoenix to San Francisco and Sacramento, and the Phoenix to San Diego time via the edge of Los Angeles can still be under three hours if the track is built to support fast enough trains.

But now I have another question for you all: How much traffic do you have to have to justify a high speed route at all? Assuming the train obliterates 40 737s per day, at 170 passengers per, that's about 10 trains per day each way. (also counting on a modest amount of traffic increase and some traffic competition taking away from private automobiles). Is that enough density for a high speed train by european standards?

I get the impression that this is about politics and not rational economics.

I also haven't figured out how to calculate the true costs of importing petroleum (which may include the hidden costs of weakening the dollar and increasing our military spending).

Anyway, I hope some rail works its way into the $300 billion stimulus package.

I'm not familiar with a $300 billion stimulus package.

But I do recall reading earlier today that Obama wants to create 2.5 million jobs building infrastructure, and telling your federal legislators and the Obama administration that you want that to include high speed rail would be an excellent idea if that's what you want.

 

[George Harris]

The real 304 meter = 997 feet long 12 car Shinkansen style trains run on the Taiwan High Speed Rail have a seating capacity of 965 people each, with one business class car and 11 coach class cars. Seats to right up behind the operator's cab on both ends. The end to end distance is 211 miles, and local air service has dropped from something like 40 to 60 flights per day to 6. No information on how the more or less parallel existing railroad is doing.

Is that a bi-level train?

Single Level. The Coach class in Shinkansen is 3+2, five across. Cars are wide, 11'-2", or about a foot wider than a standard US coach, even more than a foot wider than European standard coaches which are somewhere under 10 feet wide. Did not seem unreasonably narrow even for my 220+ pound body. The trains were essentially Japanese 700 series standard except the paint job and use of Chinese plus English in the signage instead of Japanese plus English.

While a very fast train will cause a lot of flyers to ride the train, the main transfer is from people that drive themselves, but can figure out ways to do without the car on the other end.

Service to intermediate points is a very big plus for the train.

For a standard Amtrak train that could move at 79 mph, the time cost of a stop is around 3 minuts plus standing time, so say 5 to 8 minutes total.

For the high speed, The sechedule in Taiwan is 25 minutes longer with 8 stops than with three stops. So: five minutes per stop, including standing time of about one minute. With car floor level platforms, boarding is quick. That is with a schedule based on a 300 km/h (186 mph) speed limit that is intended to be achievable by running at 280 km/h (174 mph) if there are no delays. Since the California speed limit will be 220 mph, a stop might cost 1/2 minute to a minute more.

 

[Loren Petrich]

The CA HSR system won't be built for a while; it will need several billion dollars from the Federal Government and from private investors. However, there are some bills introduced in Congress that will provide some money for HSR development, so money from there may be on the way.

But just the same, it will be most welcome. Given how high-speed-rail lines have performed so far, it will take a lot of pressure off of California's airports, because high-speed trains outperform airplanes in passenger convenience for trips of a few hundred mi/km.

For details, check on its official site: http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/ -- it not only has a nice map and lots of video simulations of the proposed system, but also lots of documents about it in the Library section.

-- The first of its lines to be built will be a San Francisco - Anaheim line, running

SF - Millbrae/SFO - Palo Alto - San Jose - Gilroy - Merced Junction - Fresno - Bakersfield - Palmdale - Sylmar - Burbank - Los Angeles - Norwalk - Anaheim

Merced Junction is where I call the place where the line to Merced branches off of the SF-LA line; Merced is a little bit north of it.

Service will be SF - Anaheim, SF - Merced, and Merced - Anaheim locals, SF - SJ - LA - Anaheim expresses, and in-between semi-express service. Express SF - LA time can be as little as 2h 40m with sufficiently fast trains (220 mph top speed).

-- Later extensions:

Merced - Modesto - Stockton - Sacramento

A station at Hanford/Tulare/Visalia, between Fresno and Bakersfield

Anaheim - Irvine

LA - Inland Empire - San Diego

--

The system will need its own tracks for most of its route length, though it will share tracks between SF and SJ, and between LA and Anaheim. In particular, it will share tracks with Caltrain between SF and SJ; the existing right of way will be expanded to 4 tracks for its entire length, and Caltrain will get electrified.

 

[ssugarman]

The real 304 meter = 997 feet long 12 car Shinkansen style trains run on the Taiwan High Speed Rail have a seating capacity of 965 people each, with one business class car and 11 coach class cars. Seats to right up behind the operator's cab on both ends. The end to end distance is 211 miles, and local air service has dropped from something like 40 to 60 flights per day to 6. No information on how the more or less parallel existing railroad is doing.
Currently they run 63 trains per day each way on weekdays and 69 trains per day each way on weekends. Schedule can be found at

www.thsrc.com.tw/download/tw/file/timetable_081101_en.pdf Website is www.thsrc.com.tw There is a little box at the top to click on for English if you have trouble reading Standard Chinese.

there will alwasy be a certain contingent of people that will either fly or drive by preference whether or not it is the fastest or most convenient method. There may even be Philadelphia to New York flights for these people for all I know.

Don't know why Phoenix to San Diego is being discussed rather than Phoenix to Los Angeles. That would be the bigger market and more feasible to construct as well. Going straight east from San Diego runs through some very rugged terrain.

Don't know where the 18 to 25 train s per hour comes from. Simple arithmetic: Say even 12 hours per day, that is 200,000 to 300,000 people per day in each direction. Highly unlikely for the demand to be that high. Based on the normal highway lane capacity of about 2000 vehicles per hour and an average of 1.2 people per, car, about what it is, you would have 7 lanes bumper to bumper in each direction.

Thanks George and Joel.

I used Phoenix San Diego as an example because for some reason, it appears to be a busier point to point air corridor than Phoenix to LA, and because of my supposition that right of way acquisition would be cheaper. Also, the prospect of squeezing a few years extra life out of Lindbergh field in San Diego would significantly boost the economic value of the project. Presumably TGV type train would approach San Diego from the south where the topography is much better.

But now I have another question for you all: How much traffic do you have to have to justify a high speed route at all? Assuming the train obliterates 40 737s per day, at 170 passengers per, that's about 10 trains per day each way. (also counting on a modest amount of traffic increase and some traffic competition taking away from private automobiles). Is that enough density for a high speed train by european standards?

Anyway, I hope some rail works its way into the $300 billion stimulus package.

$300 billion stimulus package... What a joke!

S.Sugarman

California Vacation Lover

 

[George Harris]

But now I have another question for you all: How much traffic do you have to have to justify a high speed route at all? Assuming the train obliterates 40 737s per day, at 170 passengers per, that's about 10 trains per day each way. (also counting on a modest amount of traffic increase and some traffic competition taking away from private automobiles). Is that enough density for a high speed train by European standards?

I have to answer this one with a resounding, "I don't know." Taking your number of full 737's, the number of trains you have is probably low. Also, Any Phoenix - San Diego line should logically be a Tucson - Phoenix - San Diego - and maybe on to Los Angeles line, and some of them should be making other stops as well, say Yuma. There would probably be some number of people that would fly, regardless, but there should be a goodly contingent of former car drivers on the trains which would be a lot more numerous than the gonna fly regardless contingent.

Let's say you are up to around 20 to 25 trains per day. With this number of trains, you should be having hourly service with some trains on the half hour during the heavier demand parts of the day. I would regard this as enough travel demand to justify the line. It might not pay off the capitol cost at any reasonable rate of interest, but it should more than cover the operating costs.

If what I think I know about the geography of the area is anything like correct, the Arizona portion and the eastern part of the California portion should be fairly cheap to build, but you would have lots of tunnels and bridges for about half the distance from San Diego to Yuma. Remember, for a high speed railroad to truly be high speed, it should be as near a straight line as practical, so that means in general you go over, under, or through things rather than around them.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I used Phoenix San Diego as an example because for some reason, it appears to be a busier point to point air corridor than Phoenix to LA, and because of my supposition that right of way acquisition would be cheaper.

Does Phoenix's airport act as a hub for flights involving San Diego to various other places to which LAX has direct flights that wouldn't require going through some other hub, perhaps?

 

[jackal]

I used Phoenix San Diego as an example because for some reason, it appears to be a busier point to point air corridor than Phoenix to LA, and because of my supposition that right of way acquisition would be cheaper.

Does Phoenix's airport act as a hub for flights involving San Diego to various other places to which LAX has direct flights that wouldn't require going through some other hub, perhaps?

You're probably right--PHX is probably a "gateway" to the rest of the country from SAN.

PHX is a hub for US Airways and a focus city for Southwest (who doesn't really have any "hubs," per se).

WN has a sizeable operation at LAX, so there are more nonstop flights from LAX to other cities than from SAN, where many flights probably route through PHX.

LAX is not a hub for US, but again, it being a larger operation, there are probably more nonstop flights from LAX to other cities or to US's other hubs (LAS, CLT, PHX, BOS, etc.) that don't route through PHX.

Would be interesting to find the numbers broken down by airline. That could help the analysis.

Note that if a large number of people transiting between PHX and SAN are connecting from other airlines, those passengers will be much more reluctant to switch that final journey onto a train, since much of the convenience of the train (lack of security, city center station, etc.) will be lost, as they'll already be at the airport and behind security.

However, this could potentially be overcome if the train were fast enough, had an in-terminal station at PHX airport, and if WN and US decided that they could redeploy their assets elsewhere more profitably (as has happened with the longhaul carriers in Europe) and cut back air service on the PHX-SAN city pair (thereby reducing convenience and raising fares, driving people to the train), perhaps even booking the train as a codeshare.

It can be done--Lufthansa sells tickets on DB between Frankfurt and Stuttgart, even though it also serves Stuttgart by air. I did STR-FRA by ICE train on a LH codeshare in 2001 (by choice, of course!), and the transfer from train to terminal at FRA was absolutely seamless--just up an escalator and left, about the same distance as walking to the AirTrain station at EWR. (I think we may have even pre-checked our bags in at the Stuttgart train station.) That seamless, and convenience-oriented Americans just might do it. Any harder (take an AirTrain, shuttle bus, or whatever), and people will just fly.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

If you want to get San Diego passengers onto long haul flights with a train connection, you're probably better off just building a train station at LAX (the airport) and running trains from the San Diego area HSR stations to LAX hourly or so. I imagine using slightly larger planes at LAX to accomodate the extra passengers shouldn't use much if any extra runway capacity.

IIRC, San Diego to the LAX airport is something like a two hour drive, so I suspect it's possible to make that train connection to a one seat airplane ride very competitive with the traditional two airplane leg approach even when you account for the fact that you aren't saving a trip through security with that train leg.

Plus, for people living in the northern part of San Diego (as I did almost twenty years ago), being able to board a train in northern San Diego instead of having to travel south by automobile for a half hour should help with the overall travel times a bit.