Basic Problems with HSR/Interstate Railway System

[P.A.Talbot]

 Harvey, Oltmannd, and fellow Board Members:

Many have mentioned drawbacks and problems with the idea of IRSA.  Does the list below include all areas of potential conflict?  What needs to be added?  I have recently heard that many HSR projects will take 20 years to complete.  I have also heard several say that real HSR improvement (IRSA) will not happen in most of our life time.  Why so long?  What other problems need to be addressed?

 The major obstacles to IRSA (Interstate Railway System Administration) are:

1. An arbitration/mediation committee/panel will need to be formed to decide:

which rail lines will be part of IRSA,

how to compensate existing railroads when their right of ways become federal/regional property.

1. An arbitration/mediation committee/panel will need to be formed to decide national railway operation rules, such as;

signals {use and displays},

hours of service,

developing IRSA/regional rail “maps”,

“Rail Plan” filing procedures,

Where Rail Traffic Control centers will be located, and how staffed.

1. The introduction of “owner operated”, “independent”, and non-union railroad operators, and the friction that will generate between these small companies and the large union railroad operators.

1. How much IRSA funding will come from each state?

1. How much authority will rest with FRA/IRSA, and state DOT’s?

1. How to promote rail travel to the public and businesses that depend of travel;

Disney/Bush Gardens/Atlantic City,

UPS/USPS/FEDEX,

Ski areas/National {state} Parks, spring breakers, sports tournaments.

1. Establishing IRSA fines through an arbitration/mediation committee/panel to deal with companies and crews who;

consistently engage in monopolistic use of IRSA or specific rail routes,

consistently disregard operation rules,

consistently exceed or fail to maintain posted track speeds

consistently deviate from accepted rail plans / change rail plans in route,

consistently break down or block rail routes.

I remember someone (oltmannd?) stating that the idea of IRSA had promise, but that the need for figuring out tolls or fees to support IRSA was in doubt.  How about the below suggestions?

The IRSA (Interstate Railway System Administration) would get at least 50% of its funding for operations based on:

1. Length of train

2. Ave weight of train units [cars]{hazard/high/wide/cripple}

3. Which IRSA rail-routes the train wants to use

4. Speed train wishes to travel

5. Where train enters/exits IRSA{destination}

6. What time of day/week train wishes to travel.

This information would be provided when the company files its “IRSA RAIL PLAN”

All trains wishing to utilize IRSA will be required to file a {federal/regional} “IRSA RAIL PLAN” before moving any type of train.

[oltmannd]

I think it's a terrible idea that gets worse as lines near capacity.

Your points:

1. How you would ever get this out of the courts, I have no idea.  You're not condemning land.  You're confiscating a going concern.

2. This is actually pretty easy.

3. This is not unrelated to the toll you charge and how you broker capacity

4.Why should any funding come from anywhere?  This won't be self-supporting?  The rail network is now.  This wouldn't be better?

5.  As much as they already have and decide to take.  What would be different?

6.  Huh?  Who would be doing the promoting to what end?

7.  These already exist.  What more is needed?

Tolls&Fees:  you are dancing around brokering capacity.  Think about some guy who buys a rather unreliable, but otherwise safe Budd car and wants to joy ride in it.  Think about how to serve local industries.  Think about how an airport would work if it took 3 hours to get a stalled plane off the runway.

[Paul Milenkovic]

At one time at our passenger rail advocacy exhibit at the model train show, we had a poster "Let's Build Interstate II" and it showed a route map for where the trains should go.

Interstate I was not build out of nothingness.  It was the capstone upon what had already become a widespread system of Federal, state highways, and local roads and was the enabler, not the driver of the burgeoning interest in automobiles.  The railroads were on the way out and cars and planes were on the way in before the Interstate amounted to much.

Calling some kind of HSR or near HSR network Interstate II is a kind of cargo cult approach.  Hey, they built an Interstate of roads and everyone and his brother is clogging them with their cars, we can build an Interstate of HSR lines and this will bring a boom in rail travel, right?  Go John Frum U.S.A.!

How about someone check out http://www.lafn.org/~dave/trans/energy/index.html and tell me if they think that simply building HSR without regard to how you get people to the HSR stations (local transit, parking lots on the scale of what they have at airports) will do much of anything.

[beaulieu]

P.A.Talbot

 Harvey, Oltmannd, and fellow Board Members:

Many have mentioned drawbacks and problems with the idea of IRSA.  Does the list below include all areas of potential conflict?  What needs to be added?  I have recently heard that many HSR projects will take 20 years to complete.  I have also heard several say that real HSR improvement (IRSA) will not happen in most of our life time.  Why so long?  What other problems need to be addressed?

 

Your going to have to acquire totally new Rights of Way, forget existing railroad lines, they are unsuitable for many reasons. The Curves are all wrong, the ROW is probably too narrow and is hemmed in by expensive to acquire property. You are not going to want to operate freight over these lines, and if you kick freight off of the existing lines the only place for it is the highways.

 The major obstacles to IRSA (Interstate Railway System Administration) are:

 

1. An arbitration/mediation committee/panel will need to be formed to decide:

[A] which rail lines will be part of IRSA,

[B] how to compensate existing railroads when their right of ways become federal/regional property.

See above

1. An arbitration/mediation committee/panel will need to be formed to decide national railway operation rules, such as;

[A] signals {use and displays},

No mediation required you must dictate requirements, no need to reinvent the wheel, buy one of the best European Systems, all the European Signalling companies have US subsidiaries.

[B] hours of service,

Should be 8 hours, except for extreme circumstances.

[C] developing IRSA/regional rail “maps”,

[D] “Rail Plan” filing procedures,

pass

[E] Where Rail Traffic Control centers will be located, and how staffed.

Minor Issue

1. The introduction of “owner operated”, “independent”, and non-union railroad operators, and the friction that will generate between these small companies and the large union railroad operators.

 Absolutely Not!  No Circus allowed. You seem determined to choose the worst possible course a railroad ROW has little physical resemblance to a highway. Either a quasi-Government Entity or a Franchised Operator with a renewable franchise based on performance.
 

1. How much IRSA funding will come from each state?

1. How much authority will rest with FRA/IRSA, and state DOT’s?

1. How to promote rail travel to the public and businesses that depend of travel;

[A] Disney/Bush Gardens/Atlantic City,

[B] UPS/USPS/FEDEX,

[C] Ski areas/National {state} Parks, spring breakers, sports tournaments.

1. Establishing IRSA fines through an arbitration/mediation committee/panel to deal with companies and crews who;

[A] consistently engage in monopolistic use of IRSA or specific rail routes,

[B] consistently disregard operation rules,

[C] consistently exceed or fail to maintain posted track speeds

[D] consistently deviate from accepted rail plans / change rail plans in route,

[E] consistently break down or block rail routes.

I remember someone (oltmannd?) stating that the idea of IRSA had promise, but that the need for figuring out tolls or fees to support IRSA was in doubt.  How about the below suggestions?

The IRSA (Interstate Railway System Administration) would get at least 50% of its funding for operations based on:

1. Length of train

2. Ave weight of train units [cars]{hazard/high/wide/cripple}

3. Which IRSA rail-routes the train wants to use

4. Speed train wishes to travel

5. Where train enters/exits IRSA{destination}

6. What time of day/week train wishes to travel.

This information would be provided when the company files its “IRSA RAIL PLAN”

All trains wishing to utilize IRSA will be required to file a {federal/regional} “IRSA RAIL PLAN” before moving any type of train.

 

[Paul Milenkovic]

The other popular idea around here is Open Access on the theory that this somehow levels the playing field and makes passenger rail more  -- available, capable, feasibile, and so on.

We do have Open Access on public roads, but there are a number of formal and informal rules.  Just that there is a formal rule "no speeding" or at least going faster than what the police deem too much over the limit on a particular road, there are informal rules such as don't be completely anti-social and drive your Prius in some kind of gas mileage contest down I-94 at 30 MPH.

Were someone to be anti-social in this manner, at least people and get around and pass, although this maneuver increases traffic congestion.  On rails, you are, well, on rails.  You cannot pass unless someone goes into a siding for you.  You cannot even maintain anything near the close separation and hence traffic density of a highway -- that steel wheel on steel rail contact results in longer braking distance, and you never have the option of veering off into another lane or on to the shoulder.

Don Oltmann linked to that fat stack of PowerPoint slides that took forever to download saying pretty much the same thing.  Trains on steel rails are fundamentally a batch mode -- you can move enormous volumes of freight, huge numbers of commuters, if everything and everyone is pretty much going the same place at the same time.  A rail line can handle perhaps more volume of freight and passengers than a road, but it cannot handle anywhere near the volume of departures per hour.  Both the rail line and the highway also suffer from diminished capacity if people want to "do their own thing", whether it is to travel significantly faster or slower than the general traffic.  By the way, those split speed limits I have seen in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan are not a good idea; neither is the wide range of speeds seen on German Autobahns.

We have a defacto passenger-only intercity line in the form of the NEC, brought about by a defacto nationalization in the aftermath of Penn Central.  Don Oltmann tells us the powers that be have pretty much chased the freight traffic off the NEC.  Any kind of Open Access on rails will require some Authority dictating operations in a much more autocratic way than the Highway Patrol does on the roads.

[oltmannd]

Paul Milenkovic

Any kind of Open Access on rails will require some Authority dictating operations in a much more autocratic way than the Highway Patrol does on the roads.

...at best.

[passengerfan]

And why not combine Interstate HSR with the Interstate Highway system. And why do we always think it has to be rail. Why not an elevated system using the median of our highways maybe even Mag-lev. California is commited to HSR using conventional HSR technology for 220 mph sppeeds. With Mag-lev speeds of 350 mph are entirely feasible. Certainly would put alot of people to work building it as well. Imagine being able to travel from New York to Los Angeles in less than 10 hours. Or maybe my age is catching up with me and it is the onset of to many brain cells dying but when I think what I have seen take place in my lifetime why tie ourselves or limit ourselves to conventional rail thinking. Expensive yes but since we already own much of the right of way we certainly would not have to pay for it twice.

Al - in - Stockton

[henry6]

I am one who often advocates thinking outside the box...so I urge total exploration of the pros and cons of this idea.  One of the most difficult places outside the box to for thinking concerns tradition be it geographical in substance like having to go around mountains and water bodies or historical links between two geographical areas.  In passenger service, the latter is easily portrayed in our modern day corridors and old time routes ending in Florida in the winter.  Freight can be best exemplafied in the Anthracite routes of the East, today sans Anthracite.  So do we have to protect and use only those exisitng routes and corridors or can we delegate passenger trains to one and freight to another?  Can and should we abandon a route entirely while establishing a totally new route elsewhere?  We must carefully plan transportation structure--physical and otherwise--with both an eye for future situations and uses and still not entirely throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[beaulieu]

passengerfan

And why not combine Interstate HSR with the Interstate Highway system. And why do we always think it has to be rail. Why not an elevated system using the median of our highways maybe even Mag-lev. California is commited to HSR using conventional HSR technology for 220 mph sppeeds. With Mag-lev speeds of 350 mph are entirely feasible. Certainly would put alot of people to work building it as well. Imagine being able to travel from New York to Los Angeles in less than 10 hours. Or maybe my age is catching up with me and it is the onset of to many brain cells dying but when I think what I have seen take place in my lifetime why tie ourselves or limit ourselves to conventional rail thinking. Expensive yes but since we already own much of the right of way we certainly would not have to pay for it twice.

Al - in - Stockton

 

The 220 mph limitation for HSR is an economic limitation based on the amount of electricity need to power the trainset, which in turn is about 98 percent driven by aerodynamic drag, not rolling resistance. This is based on the passenger cabin dimensions. Mag-Lev would do nothing to mitigate this. As far as elevating the tracks this is no panacea either, you save weight in the train by moving the propulsion out of the train, but the total weight of the track structure has to be increased to compensate. Acela is as heavy as it is because of crash-worthyness considerations, as the proposed HSR would not connect with the outside rail system, there would not be the need for as heavy construction. The French AGV and the German Velaro both carry more passengers and are lighter than Acela.

[Paul Milenkovic]

Are there not maintenance-cost limitations on HSR speed?  One is that you have to maintain rail and wheel profiles along with the compliance (spring rates) of suspension parts to high tolerance to prevent lowering the critical speed, the speed at which wheel hunting sets in.  I read that the TGV has a special wheel shop that can take an entire articulated train set and true the wheels without uncoupling the train.

The other aspect is that the dynamic forces, the track pounding if you will, goes up at least with the square of the speed, it may increase at a higher rate if one operates in proximity to the critical speed.  The faster you go, the more wear and tear on the track as well as vehicle suspension parts.  There are also dynamic effects on the catenary to consider.

Have "they" (i.e. those Europeans and Japanese who are reputed to be much more advanced in railroad tech) come up with solutions to the critical speed problem that they can operate HSR with lower levels of maintenance?  Otherwise I would consider track, truck, and wheel maintenance to be expenses that increase with the square of speed, not just the cost of the electricity.

One of the reputed advantages maglev over duo-rail is that in principle the maglev is non-contacting and the high-speed version has a considerable air gap between train and track, and that maglev could in principle be much lower in maintenance, especially compared with duo-rail at the upper limit of HSR speeds.  Don't know if anyone has enough experience with maglev to back this up, or if it introduces maintenance concerns of its own.  By the metric of HSR, highways should be low maintenance because it is not necessary to maintain a precision-machined profile of the road surface and keep a pair of rails in gauge, but road surfaces break down under the influence of weather and the pounding of primarily truck levels of axle load and need major repairs.

As to the energy usage, there was a recent Nova PBS TV show showing HSR trains scooting under wind turbines, suggesting that California will get abundant electricity from non-fossil sources to power networks of HSR.  Water power and electric trains were always a good match, but wind power?

I remember also reading in Railway Age back a while that one impediment to mainline electrification is that freight railroads want to run their trains on their own time and don't want the burden of demand charges for electricity during peak times interfering with train scheduling.  Given that wind turbines are a highly variable source, I can see matching wind turbine power to charging of batteries in plug-in hybrid cars, but I am highly skeptical of wind turbines as a primary power source for scheduled HSR -- that anyone would tolerate variations in the number of trains dispatched or their operating speed in response to wind variation.

[henry6]

I believe there are a lot of points of no return or diminished returns in high speed rail that are overlooked by the glitz and glamour of the term!

[Anonymous]

Texas has more wind generated electric energy than any other state.  It has doubled in the last two years, and the plans call for it to double again in the next two years.  However, for every megawatt of wind power Texas power generators produce they need a megawatt of standby convention power generation, or they need interruptible contracts with their major users in case the wind fails.  And it does!

Last February the wind unexpectedly stopped blowing in those areas of Texas where most of the wind farms are located.  At the same time several of the major generators had some of their units off-line for overhaul.  As a result the system operator had to scramble to find enough power to prevent a system shutdown.  It was close.  The only thing that prevented a crash was an agreement by several major users to shut down for a day or so.  They were probably not happy. 

California's electric utilities will need to expand their system capacity to provide the juice needed by the California High Speed Rail Project.  This should result in an interesting battle between the utilities and the environmentalists.  They have fought every plan to expand California's electric grid for as long as I can remember.  As a result California has to import a significant amount of peaking power from Arizona and New Mexico.  Needless to say, the Arizona and New Mexico power companies charge a pretty penny for it. 

Apparently the cost to expand California's electric grid to meet the needs of the high speed rail project has not been factored into the estimated cost of the project.  Makes me wonder what other costs have been overlooked.   

[passengerfan]

For once I have to totally agree with Sam 1 re the electrical power. Wind generation is not the answer I personally witness almost daily the wind generators on the Altamont Pass and they are without the much needed wind many hours daily. It is usually not until afternoon that they begin generating power and then late at night they all come to a stop again. These particular wind farms are already causimng major concerns with bird lovers as the farm is constructed in the middle of the Pacific Coast flyway and hundreds of migrating birds are being killed monthly. There is already court action pending to have these and other California wind farms shut down during the bird migrating seasons.

California has shut down and mothballed several Nuclear power plants that could solve some of our growing power needs if they were to be brought back in line. We would employ far more people building new Nuclear power plants than all of the proposed wind farms combined with the Solar energy fields proposed.

California already has a solar energy producing farm in place at the junction of highways 395 and 58. Every time I pass this monster that takes up hundreds of acres I cringe as it is probably the ugliest blot on the landscape produced by man. Maintenance costs must be extremely high as I see certain rows shut down daily while crews clean the mirror like panels. I understand every time it rains or snows they have to be cleaned before returning to service. Yes it is in the Mojave Desert and it rains or snows rarely but dust storms which are quite common wreak havoc with the system as well.

If the California HSR is built they have not addressed where the power is coming from. This state will not permit any more coal generating stations, nor will they permit the construction of the Auburn Dam that was first proposed some thirty years ago. Some of our brain dead enviromentalists have proposed tidal power such as France has but it was pointed out to them we do not have the tides in California for this purpose. I believe the only place in California that does have high enough tides is Humboldt county and it is pretty remote from California population centers.

If the Save the Birds (SOBs) campaign wins in court the wind farms will be closed for three months each year 6 weeks in the spring and 6 weeks in the fall. I for one have come to the conclusion that Nuclear power plants are Californias only answer for HSR and the states growing power needs. Yes we have a number of new gas powered generating stations but they do not produce enough power either. Also they are not that cheap to operate.

I prefer that we seriously look at Mag-Lev as a serious alternative to conventional HSR thinking. It is my understanding that those systems use no more power than conventional rail and require less maintenance. There are numerous sites in Japan, Germany and China that already have test Maglev in place and have figures to show they do not draw more power than conventional HSR and require less maintenance.

Al - in - Stockton