It is not about the top speed but eliminating the slow sections.. If all the NEC NYPS - WASH was 125 MPH capable then enroute time would be just over 2 hours. The 150 MPH improvements /trenton - Newark would give that 2 hours.
In a word, no.
I worked in intermodal marketing and I'll tell you that if you give me a 40 MPH schedule between Chicago and Memphis (500 miles), the railroad will dominate the lane. Ship it on Monday afternoon and get it reliably delivered Tuesday morning, that's the key. Reasonably fast and reliable.
Faster service cost more and therefor reduces the railroad's advantage over trucking. You're never going to beat a truck's time, so sell reasonable time schedules, reliability, and savings. Yes, a truck can go from door to door on the Chicago - Memphis run in eight hours. So what? The vast majority of customers don't need a few hours savings. As long as your service is reliable
La Poste (French Postal Service) used five "half" TGV trainsets painted bright yellow for 31 years.
However, two years ago they retired them for more "standard" rail transport.
http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/freight/last-post-for-french-high-speed-freight-as-postal-tgvs-bow-out.html
Murphy Siding To answer the question posed in your title- not really. Speed of delivering goods is not high on the list of what affects the competitiveness of most goods. It's the relative cost of the delivered goods that’s the deciding factor in whether a product is cost competitive.
To answer the question posed in your title- not really. Speed of delivering goods is not high on the list of what affects the competitiveness of most goods. It's the relative cost of the delivered goods that’s the deciding factor in whether a product is cost competitive.
Fully Agree! Very little freight is that time-sensitive. Reliability, which was a major issue in the "dark days" of the 1970's, is a far-better measure of performance here.
What I do believe would pay large dividends would be to upgrade present-day communter lines to "exurban" status via higher speeds; this would vastly increase he radius around our major cities at which rail passenger services would be competitive.
The private sector won't touch this for reasons which should be obvious; but there ought to be a means via which the benefits of the investment (not only in revenues, but in the increased value of property served) could be determined; but it also should be noted that the development of exurban intermodal terminals, some at a considerable distance from the anchor city would act as a mitigating factor.
The investment, particularly in signaling and dispatching (and as wih the inception of Metroink in Southern California) would be subsantial, so cost-benefit ratios need to reflect this more accurately.
The basic problem with rail passenger service is that the tracks have to be where your are, and go where you need to go.
For most Americans that is the basic problem, most of us don't live in cities, nor do we want to, nor is our typical destination a big city.
I will use my classic example of a car vs air travel. We live in the northern rural suburbs of Baltimore. We have relatives in the Detroit suburbs. I can get in my car and drive to my relatives door in about 8-1/2 hours for a cost of $50-$75 in fuel and food.
But if I want to fly (or take a train) I have to drive my car in the wrong direction for nearly one hour to get to BWI airport. Park it in a place of questionable security (you may drive an old junker but I don't), then wait around the airport for two hours of security checks, etc. Get on the plane (driving I am in Ohio by now), fly to Detroit, rent a car, drive to my relatives home about 1 hour from the airport.
Elapsed time portal to portal - 8-9 hours.......
Expense - a whole bunch more even with some discount air fare, that may have got me "bumped" from the flight.......
Some will say driving is stressfull and tiring - so is anything having to do with an airport.........
So, unless I'm going to Chicago, or LA, or Las Vegas from Baltimore, driving is better and cheaper. 500 miles is the earliest tipping point in favor of other forms of travel.
Now, if you live in city "A", and your work or your pleasure takes you to the heart of city "B", well than OK. But what percentage of the population does that apply to? Pretty small I suspect.
And so as mentioned above why should the rest of us subsidize that?
Freight - I would love to see fewer long haul trucks on the highway and see them instead on flat cars - all you have to do is improve loading/unloading times and train scheduling - AND convince some industries that "just in time" deliveries are actually costing more than they save.
Freight does not have to move fast, it just has to move....not sit around in freight yards for days.......
I know this is spilt milk, but if the government had gotten out of the way of piggyback in 1950 instead of 1983, a whole lot more freight would be on flat cars by now.......
And if we were really interested in highway safety, we would have never allowed the trucks to get this big and heavy......which would have been another incentive for piggyback (or intermodal as we say today).
Sheldon
Careful there Don, you know the OP has been hanging around some of those so-called "transportation planners" who have been out in the back-alleys smoking dope and spending other people's money.
Actually, a good question! There are high hurdles to get over to get 110 mph freight trains operation. Heck, 90 mph would be tough. The freight cars just don't have the suspension or braking of that kind of speed. Also, piling on enough HP to get to 110 mph would be a tough task, as well.
You'd probably need to electrify and get ECP braking everywhere and trash the 3 piece freight truck. While you're at it, might as well build lighter, cheaper and less strong freight cars and go very heavy with DPU.
The economic side of it revolves around the carrying cost of inventory. Is the stuff on the train worth enough to pay for the higher speed?
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I can't really address the productive component, but...competitive? Against what? Trucks? Ships? Other economies?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
In all probability going to 'one-speed' at a somewhat lower speed would give you most of the practical 'benefits'. Many attempts have been made to accelerate the speed of intermodal service, but most of them founder on how to 'monetize' the gains from additional speed, and there are relatively few pieces of cost-effective freight equipment that could run at 110mph technically, let alone 'legally'. To get the one-speed high speed benefit you would need extensive and expensive rebuilding of equipment in the 'general system of transportation' and that money could be spent in many better places than arranging high sustained speed ... or outside the rail industry entirely, since payback for the added freight speed would be so paltry.
On top of this, 110mph passenger ops need long runs of high continuous speed for the time gains to mean anything. If we accomplish HrSR by the usual gradualism (see Charlie hebdo's recent post about German practice) you will be spending an enormous amount for what starts as 5 to 10 minutes quicker corridor speed ... most riders won't give much of a crap but the much more vast non-riding taxpayer base subsiding such 'improvement' certainly will, in ways unlikely to be positive.
Note that there is a serious increase in fuel burn and required suspension and guiding engineering when going from, say, 90mph peak to 110. It is not nearly as pronounced as what's needed for 125mph, but it is nontrivial and some people here may know specific cost numbers for the differential. It would be possible to address some of this with well-designed catenary, but don't expect private money to provide that.
Would an American Higher Speed Railroad Network - Up to 110 mph - Contirbute to Productivity and Competitiveness? As our railroad system is a freight railroad system, additional passenger service in many instances impedes freight operations due to diefferences in freight and passneger speeds. If both operated at 110 mph max, they would then be speed compatible. Would higher freight speeds create more competiveness and productivity for the American economy? Would higher speed compatibility attract passener business both now bound to the road and the air? Would a higher speed railroad (HrSR) system relieve / lessen truck / auto congestion and passenger air congestion? These thoughts from "The Economics and Politics of High-Speed Rail" by Albalate and Gel.
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