Why Isn't the U.S. Investing In High-Speed Trains?

[CHamilton]

A Better Way To Travel: Why Isn’t the U.S. Investing In High-Speed Trains?

The U.S. government can no longer delay investing in high-speed rail. Aside from the benefits far outweighing the costs, most of the criticisms against HSR are based upon misconstrued facts. As the U.S. economy is slowly starting to emerge from its recessional shell, now is the perfect opportunity to invest in the future. When facing a disintegrating infrastructure, the United States has two choices that Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania, articulated to an audience in Jacksonville: “Pay now or pay later.”

 

[John Bredin]

Absolutely loved the animation with the article!

 

[Shawn Ryu]

Uneducated voters, selfish NIMBYs, the list goes on and on.

I do think airlines will benefit from high speed rail, though. By code sharing they dont have to use their own plane to serve markets thats too small to fly too.

 

[me_little_me]

A Better Way To Travel: Why Isn’t the U.S. Investing In High-Speed Trains?

The U.S. government can no longer delay investing in high-speed rail. Aside from the benefits far outweighing the costs, most of the criticisms against HSR are based upon misconstrued facts. As the U.S. economy is slowly starting to emerge from its recessional shell, now is the perfect opportunity to invest in the future. When facing a disintegrating infrastructure, the United States has two choices that Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania, articulated to an audience in Jacksonville: “Pay now or pay later.”

Could be that even many of us that support rail believe that running trains at, say, 120mph consistently would be far better bang for the buck than HSR (200+ ?) everywhere except possibly the NE corridor. Pick any long distance or intermediate distance train and change its speed to mostly do 100mph and see what it means. Just spending money on removing urban RR crossings, straightening some curves and improving the roadbed so the train is not doing 30 would make a dramatic improvement at much lower cost. Enforcing Amtrak priority would cost a lot less and would help quite a bit.

I wonder if anyone has done a nationwide Amtrak study analyzing the cost benefit of every potential small improvement (i.e. based on number of passengers and how much time they would save to get to their destination). So removing a specific grade crossing on the Crescent based on how many passenger minutes are saved would be rated against all the others on the same route and all the other routes. Then invest starting with the most cost effective ones.

But then "I won't vote for spending money in Ohio unless we get equal spending here in Alaska" would be the cry heard from Congress.

 

[coldan]

1 money has to come from some ware, Highway and airport funding

2. Not invented her syndrome

 

[cirdan]

Could be that even many of us that support rail believe that running trains at, say, 120mph consistently would be far better bang for the buck than HSR (200+ ?) everywhere except possibly the NE corridor. Pick any long distance or intermediate distance train and change its speed to mostly do 100mph and see what it means. Just spending money on removing urban RR crossings, straightening some curves and improving the roadbed so the train is not doing 30 would make a dramatic improvement at much lower cost. Enforcing Amtrak priority would cost a lot less and would help quite a bit.

I can't remember who it was, but somebody once said "the best way to go fast is to not go slow". You don't need to develop expensive new hardware if you're just raising speeds to use the present equipment at speeds it was actually designed for.

One problem though is getting freight RR support and cooperation on this. Another is track capacity, especially on single track lines.

At the end of the day, it boils down to, do you hand a truckload of cash to a freight RR for doing improvements, and when its finished they still own the line and run it their way and get more benefit out of your improvements than you do while restricting future additional trains etc, or do you spend a bit more and get a line you actually own yourself and can run as you see fit? It doesn't have to be a real high speed line, but in cases there may be abandoned lines parallel to the lines the trainms presently use that may actually be worth bringing back into service and running speeds of 80mph plus on.

 

[George Harris]

Could be that even many of us that support rail believe that running trains at, say, 120mph consistently would be far better bang for the buck than HSR (200+ ?) everywhere except possibly the NE corridor. Pick any long distance or intermediate distance train and change its speed to mostly do 100mph and see what it means. Just spending money on removing urban RR crossings, straightening some curves and improving the roadbed so the train is not doing 30 would make a dramatic improvement at much lower cost. Enforcing Amtrak priority would cost a lot less and would help quite a bit.

I can't remember who it was, but somebody once said "the best way to go fast is to not go slow". You don't need to develop expensive new hardware if you're just raising speeds to use the present equipment at speeds it was actually designed for.

One problem though is getting freight RR support and cooperation on this. Another is track capacity, especially on single track lines.

At the end of the day, it boils down to, do you hand a truckload of cash to a freight RR for doing improvements, and when its finished they still own the line and run it their way and get more benefit out of your improvements than you do while restricting future additional trains etc, or do you spend a bit more and get a line you actually own yourself and can run as you see fit? It doesn't have to be a real high speed line, but in cases there may be abandoned lines parallel to the lines the trainms presently use that may actually be worth bringing back into service and running speeds of 80mph plus on.

If you are giving money to a freight railroad to increase speeds, it better be with a contract that requires the train priorities and speeds you are wanting.

I think I may have been the one you have heard to say "the best way to go fast is to avoid going slow", but I did not originate the saying. I read it in a Railway Gazette article some 20 or more years ago.

As an extrapolation on that, if you can take 1 mile with a speed limit of 25 mph and raise the speed limit to 79 mph, you rerduce you run time by 1 minute 38 seconds, plus time taken to brake and accelerate rather than running through at the higher speed. To get the same benefit (1min 38sec) out of a raised speed limt, you would have to raise 4.6 miles from 79 mph ot 125 mph, and that is not counting that much of this distance would be spent in acceleration and braking, acceleration in particular being a very slow rates at the higher speeds, such that the real distance with the higher speed limit would have to be something on the order of an unbroken 10 miles.

 

[William W.]

In my opinion, the best application for true high speed rail would be in places such as the NE Corridor, the Illinois/Michigan Service areas, and the West Coast. The time savings on LD trains just doesn't seem to be worth the cost to me. If a trip can't be kept to within one day, there doesn't seem to be much point in making the route high speed (they could potentially convert the CL to a day train, with high-speed rail, however). Now, they definitely can make improvements to help the LD trains run on time, and potentially at their designed max speeds. They could also do well to eliminate most at-grade crossings on passenger routes.

 

[jis]

Yeah, but making the current CL route high speed will take many trick ponies and many $$$$$ as a starter.

 

[William W.]

Yeah, but making the current CL route high speed will take many trick ponies and many $$$$$ as a starter.

Indeed it would. I merely pointed out that the CL would be the only LD train that could truly benefit from high-speed rail.

 

[Eric S]

Um, wouldn't plenty of other LD trains benefit from upgraded tracks? (Like the Texas Eagle in IL, the Lake Shore Limited in NY, etc.)

 

[William W.]

Um, wouldn't plenty of other LD trains benefit from upgraded tracks? (Like the Texas Eagle in IL, the Lake Shore Limited in NY, etc.)

They would indeed benefit from track upgrades (every route would).

The point that has been made previously is that there is a difference between higher-speed rail, and "true" high-speed rail.

Higher speed rail can be found on portions of the Illinois and Michigan Service, parts of the Empire Corridor, and parts of the SWC route.

There is a debate as to whether the NE Corridor (and specifically the Acela Express) is truly high speed or not, but when you consider the average speeds along the route, the most that can be said is that the corridor is higher speed.

I would point to these Wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-speed_rail#Definitions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_speed_rail#Definitions

 

[Eric S]

Well aware of the distinction between HSR and HrSR. How do you come to the conclusion that the Capitol Limited is the only LD train that would benefit from high speed rail? I guess I don't understand what distinction you are making between the CL and all other LD trains.

 

[William W.]

Well aware of the distinction between HSR and HrSR. How do you come to the conclusion that the Capitol Limited is the only LD train that would benefit from high speed rail? I guess I don't understand what distinction you are making between the CL and all other LD trains.

If a train has to go overnight, with large amounts of daylight on the day of departure or arrival (even with a conversion to high speed rail), it doesn't really make much sense (at least to me) to make it so. If the idea of high speed rail is to speed up trips, it makes better sense to use the technology on routes where the travel time would be cut from ~8 hours to 3 or 4 hours.

At the end of the day, a long distance train will never be able to beat air travel in terms of time traveled. Even if a train can go 220 MPH, an airplane is still going ~500 MPH. The reason why the Acela does so well is that it offers faster point to point travel than the airlines can (between WAS and NYP). Even though a plane is technically faster, when the fixed time period between getting to the gate, and getting from the gate to your final destination is factored in, the Acela wins due to the relatively short distance between DC and NYC. It can't win though if you are traveling between BOS and WAS, because the total travel time by plane can still beat the total travel time by rail.

If a high speed train still can't beat an airplane for total travel time (including ground transportation, security, etc) it doesn't really make sense to upgrade it to high speed status. It would be a better application of limited resources to make all short and medium distance trains high speed, and upgrade long distance trains to increase reliability, with some smaller speed increases where the benefit is appreciable.

I would personally love to see every train be high speed, but one must consider the benefits (boost in ridership, etc) gained from spending the required hundreds of billions of dollars. High speed conversion carries a very high cost per mile, and just doesn't seem cost effective on routes as long as the ones that go from Chicago to the west coast.

The reason I singled out the Capitol Limited is that (catch me if I'm wrong) it is the shortest and more direct LD train in the entire system. It would seem to me that it would be the best candidate if we were to upgrade a LD to high speed. It could either take the form of a day train, or a later evening to earlier morning train. The latter option could be billed as a combined hotel/transportation means to business travelers. As it stands, the departure time from DC (4PM) and the arrival time into CHI (9AM) are too early and too late, respectively, to be able to market the train in this way. If the departure time could be made 7 or 8 PM, with an arrival time of 6 or 7 AM, the high speed upgrade would be worth it, and with the right business plan, the route could become very successful.

 

[Eric S]

Ah, now I see where you are coming from.

I wonder if the Lake Shore Limited might represent a better option, though (at least among NEC-to-Chicago trains), as it, more than the Capitol Limited, is essentially a long string of interconnected corridors with HrSR (not true HSR, I know) upgrades talked of/proposed/planned/discussed over most of the route.

 

[William W.]

Ah, now I see where you are coming from.

I wonder if the Lake Shore Limited might represent a better option, though (at least among NEC-to-Chicago trains), as it, more than the Capitol Limited, is essentially a long string of interconnected corridors with HrSR (not true HSR, I know) upgrades talked of/proposed/planned/discussed over most of the route.

The issue that I see with the LSL is that it is a longer route (300 miles more) and takes 19 hours as opposed to 17 hours. Since it also has to break off into two sections (to Boston and NYC), that adds even more miles of track that would have to be upgraded. It could be helped with track improvements, but I think that the CL is still a better candidate.

 

[George Harris]

From somewhere in the 1940's or early 1950's up until the early 1960's the fastest train on both the current Lake Shore Limited route, the Twentieth Century Limited, which was the main line of the New York Central and the Broadway Limited which ran on the Pennsylvania Railroad mainline which includes the current Philadelphia to Pittsburg mainline did New York to Chicago in 16 hours 30 minutes. I often wondered why neither line ever ran a fast "daylight" train like the 7:45 to 12:25 Chicago to New Orleans City of Miami of the 1950's and 60's.

It should be relatively low cost to reinstate a 16 hour train on the Lake Shore Limited route. I would suspect that if the route was to have four trains each way appropriately spread through the day with one being approximate 20th Century Limited schedule, and another being a "daylight" train that each train would carry far more people than the LSL does now. Given upgrades to 110 mph and elimination of slow areas where practical, it should be possible to reduce the end to end time to under 15 hours. There are many other places in the northeast, and I mean everything east of the Mississippi River and north of the Mason-Dixon line as northeast, that could be and should be linked by medium speed train until higher speed lines can be built between the points with the heaviest traffic demand.

 

[me_little_me]

Could be that even many of us that support rail believe that running trains at, say, 120mph consistently would be far better bang for the buck than HSR (200+ ?) everywhere except possibly the NE corridor. Pick any long distance or intermediate distance train and change its speed to mostly do 100mph and see what it means. Just spending money on removing urban RR crossings, straightening some curves and improving the roadbed so the train is not doing 30 would make a dramatic improvement at much lower cost. Enforcing Amtrak priority would cost a lot less and would help quite a bit.

I can't remember who it was, but somebody once said "the best way to go fast is to not go slow". You don't need to develop expensive new hardware if you're just raising speeds to use the present equipment at speeds it was actually designed for.

One problem though is getting freight RR support and cooperation on this. Another is track capacity, especially on single track lines.

At the end of the day, it boils down to, do you hand a truckload of cash to a freight RR for doing improvements, and when its finished they still own the line and run it their way and get more benefit out of your improvements than you do while restricting future additional trains etc, or do you spend a bit more and get a line you actually own yourself and can run as you see fit? It doesn't have to be a real high speed line, but in cases there may be abandoned lines parallel to the lines the trainms presently use that may actually be worth bringing back into service and running speeds of 80mph plus on.

There are alternatives. Take the tracks using eminent domain, improve them then let the RRs use them for a fee. Might be cheaper than creating all new track and its associated problems. I don't know if it would be cheaper buying existing property or finding new but it is a third option to finding new or just giving RR tons of cash. More likely an option such as this would work best where there is sufficient passenger service to justify it (like Washington to Richmond, Raleigh to Charlotte, Illinois, ?) rather than say along route of Sunset Limited.

 

[jis]

You cannot "take the tracks using eminent domain". You can pay market value for them and buy them using eminent domain. The only thing you get to do is force such a sale at market price even if the owner is not in a mood to sell. And then of course the question is, who is going to come up with the money, and from where?

Just as a case, what do you suppose the market value is of what remains of the Potomac Yard part of the RF&P? It is a pretty complex question to answer, but the number is unlikely to be a nice small manageable one.

 

[afigg]

The reason I singled out the Capitol Limited is that (catch me if I'm wrong) it is the shortest and more direct LD train in the entire system. It would seem to me that it would be the best candidate if we were to upgrade a LD to high speed.

The issue with upgrading the Capitol Limited route to HSR is there is challenging terrain between DC and Pittsburgh. It would be an expensive HSR corridor to construct and I don't think there is a particularly strong demand for travel over that route. There would be more support and interest in building an HSR corridor from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and then Pittsburgh through a TBD route through Ohio to Chicago. The other logical HSR route from NYC to Chicago is mostly via the route chosen by NY Central long ago. Once those HSR corridors are built, along with many 100s of miles of other HSR corridors, then a DC to Pittsburgh or DC to Ohio HSR corridor can be considered as a fill-in HSR connection line.
You can't use the surviving LD routes as guides to where to build HSR lines. The decisions should be driven by city size and wealth, distance, cost of building the HSR line, market demand, political support and so on.

There are several threads and posts on this forum that have discussed using eminent domain or forcing CSX and NS to sell or turn over tracks to give priority for higher speed passenger trains. I think it should be pointed out that the current market capitalization for CSX is $30.6 billion and NS $31.8 billion. If a consortium of states wanted to obtain control of lines for passenger service, it would not really take that much money to buy up CSX and NS, carefully peel off the assets desired for passenger routes while preserving a robust freight network, and then sell the parceled out freight portion of the company back to the private market. The minority shareholders would have to be fully compensated of course for the assets divided off for passenger train service. Of course, any such attempt to do this by the states would be politically impossible, but when one is talking about investing many billions in HSR and HrSR lines, buying the land and ROW by buying up the companies first may be cheaper.

 

[Ispolkom]

You cannot "take the tracks using eminent domain". You can pay market value for them and buy them using eminent domain. The only thing you get to do is force such a sale at market price even if the owner is not in a mood to sell. And then of course the question is, who is going to come up with the money, and from where?

There's also the claim that local governments can't use eminent domain to gain railroad tracks, under 49 USC 10501. See Soo Line Railroad v City of St. Paul. In that case St. Paul want to condemn part of a right-of-way for a bicycle path, and CP told them to pound sand. A district court agreed. I don't know if this reasoning would have been upheld on appeal, but there you have it.

 

[Eric S]

There are many other places in the northeast, and I mean everything east of the Mississippi River and north of the Mason-Dixon line as northeast, that could be and should be linked by medium speed train until higher speed lines can be built between the points with the heaviest traffic demand.

This right here. Again and again.

 

[jis]

You cannot "take the tracks using eminent domain". You can pay market value for them and buy them using eminent domain. The only thing you get to do is force such a sale at market price even if the owner is not in a mood to sell. And then of course the question is, who is going to come up with the money, and from where?

There's also the claim that local governments can't use eminent domain to gain railroad tracks, under 49 USC 10501. See Soo Line Railroad v City of St. Paul. In that case St. Paul want to condemn part of a right-of-way for a bicycle path, and CP told them to pound sand. A district court agreed. I don't know if this reasoning would have been upheld on appeal, but there you have it.

I don't know the specifics of this case. However, I am thinking that if someone proposed to try to use eminent domain to grab CSX's ROW in NY State, it is not a given that the courts would allow it, based on CSX's argument that it is the lifeline of their business or some such. I have seen eminent domain attempts denied on similar grounds before. I have also seen such being allowed in the face of similar arguments where the courts decided that the argument was specious.

 

[William W.]

I'm generally opposed to the use of eminent domain, unless there are no other options. It doesn't seem right to me to use force to seize the long-held property of a company, and in the process, destroy that company. It seems rather Un-American. It would be one thing if they weren't using the tracks, and at the same time were refusing to sell them, but to seize the core of any railway's business, it just seems wrong.

I was under the impression that true high speed rail would need new tracks anyway. Why bother starting messy fight with the railroads?

 

[jis]

I was under the impression that true high speed rail would need new tracks anyway. Why bother starting messy fight with the railroads?

To construct an ROW where none exists will require application of eminent domain on someone else to create the easement. So are you just partial to eminent domains not being used against railroads or would your rather that eminent domain was not used at all and no new ROWs were created? Gotta make up your mind.