Passenger

 Seattle's monorail is not a maglev system.

Obama seems to be against all new nuclear power.  A significant and recent development is that Yucca Mountain storage facility and its fancy new 330-mile railroad have been suspended indefinitely.

Mag-Lev may come to fruition at some futuristic time but I don't expect to live long enough to see it. To me it'd just be another people mover akin to commercial aircraft so even if I were around it wouldn't hold much interest for me. I guess I'm too much of a tradionalist, but if it doesn't have steel wheels riding on steel rails it just isn't a train as far as I'm concerned.

Mark

aegrotatio:

 Seattle's monorail is not a maglev system.

 

Obama seems to be against all new nuclear power.  A significant and recent development is that Yucca Mountain storage facility and its fancy new 330-mile railroad have been suspended indefinitely.

I followed all of the hearings on California's HSR from day one and they are selling a white elephant that will never live up to its hype. They are claiming 2-1/2 hours from San Francisco to LA and for the first 50 miles between San Francisco and San Jose they will be sharing tracks with Caltrain and speed will be limited to 100 MPH. Once past Gilroy the trains will climb and tunnel through Pacheco Pass with grades of 3% in some places. The Japanese and French can tell California that grades of 1% are the maximum for HSR as speed drops dramatically on any grade above 1% and that 1% can only be for a short distance.  

Once in the San Joaquin Valley the train should be able to attain its design speed for most of the distance to Bakersfield. Once leaving Bakers field and climing over Tehachapi Pass the grades will once again be 2% or greater. Once past Mojave the train should be able to attain its design speed once again. I would imagine they will have speed restrictions once past Palmdale for most of the remaining way to LA due to the narrow canyons and other mountainous terrain.

If the system selected had been Mag-lev the 2% and 3% grades would have little effect on the overall speed. With todays depressed real estate market the cost of obtaining all of the Right of Way  has dropped dramatically from 16 Billion to 8 Billion. I would imagine that the 8 Billion saved would be enough to install Mag-Lev instead of HSR. The issue of where the power needs are going to come from have not been addressed yet.

Al - in - Stockton

Phoebe Vet:

That is a sad commentary that pretty much describes the United States today.

Some of us are old enough to remember when the US was the technology leader.

Now we are falling behind even former 3rd world countries.  We are even about to retire our space shuttles and pay the Russians to transport our people to and from the Space Station.  If we ever do decide to invest in HSR, we will have to buy the equipment from foreign companies.

It's embarrassing.

 I'm going to quit while I'm ahead before another "Amtrak vs. NASA funding" war starts..

 What if California HSR is multiple-unit like Japanese 'bullet train'?  Would that alleviate the problems on steep grades?

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/corporate/press-kit/VH-71-Brochure.pdf 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VH-71 

These days,they often speak about of the high speed train project on the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor,which was returned back many times since the year of 1984 when the project was discussed for the first time. He was back in 1995,1998 and 2003.

The last time in 2004,the former Canada's Liberal Government of Paul Martin which it was against this project had canceled a $ 400 million to Via Rail fast train to Quebec City-Windsor Corridor. Who is blocking this project it's of cource the airlines and coaches lobbyists who are fiercely against this project to the high speed train. Including the president of Orleans Express a bus company is fiercely against this project and his a staunch supporter of the Canada's Liberal Party.

aegrotatio:

 What if California HSR is multiple-unit like Japanese 'bullet train'?  Would that alleviate the problems on steep grades?

The speed at which you ascend a grade is generally a funciton of HP, not the number of powered axles.

Syltrain:

These days,they often speak about of the high speed train project on the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor,which was returned back many times since the year of 1984 when the project was discussed for the first time. He was back in 1995,1998 and 2003.

The last time in 2004,the former Canada's Liberal Government of Paul Martin which it was against this project had canceled a $ 400 million to Via Rail fast train to Quebec City-Windsor Corridor. Who is blocking this project it's of cource the airlines and coaches lobbyists who are fiercely against this project to the high speed train. Including the president of Orleans Express a bus company is fiercely against this project and his a staunch supporter of the Canada's Liberal Party.

A bus company and an airline against a gov't subsidized construction project that would steal their business?  Shocking!

I think we need to define a new term.  American HSR.  It won't be anything like the European or Asian definition of HSR, since the existing rail network in combination with a highway network that exists in North America is pretty much unique. 

Since, the passenger rail improvements that are likely to come are going to leverage the existing rail network to a great degree, things called HSR by politicians and the press are likely to have 90-110 mph top speeds with avg speeds in the 70 mph range. 

So, maybe, we should just jump on the bandwagon and call this "American HSR" despite the knowledge that this is not what Europeans or the Japanese would call it.  That is, unless you like arguing semantics just for fun!

Good idea.  Let's,just admit that we are no longer leaders and inovators in technology and accept the fact that it is easier to just buy our technology from the rest of the world.

oltmannd:

I think we need to define a new term.  American HSR.  It won't be anything like the European or Asian definition of HSR, since the existing rail network in combination with a highway network that exists in North America is pretty much unique. 

Since, the passenger rail improvements that are likely to come are going to leverage the existing rail network to a great degree, things called HSR by politicians and the press are likely to have 90-110 mph top speeds with avg speeds in the 70 mph range. 

So, maybe, we should just jump on the bandwagon and call this "American HSR" despite the knowledge that this is not what Europeans or the Japanese would call it.  That is, unless you like arguing semantics just for fun!

This is exactly the point I hoped to make when I started this thread.

Mark

KCSfan:

oltmannd:

I think we need to define a new term.  American HSR.  It won't be anything like the European or Asian definition of HSR, since the existing rail network in combination with a highway network that exists in North America is pretty much unique. 

Since, the passenger rail improvements that are likely to come are going to leverage the existing rail network to a great degree, things called HSR by politicians and the press are likely to have 90-110 mph top speeds with avg speeds in the 70 mph range. 

So, maybe, we should just jump on the bandwagon and call this "American HSR" despite the knowledge that this is not what Europeans or the Japanese would call it.  That is, unless you like arguing semantics just for fun!

This is exactly the point I hoped to make when I started this thread.

Mark

Al - in - Stockton

...or we could just drop the word "High" and call it "American Speed Rail".