HIGH-SPEED RAIL SERVICE

[RudyRockvilleMD]

I am in favor of high speed rail where it is practical. You need a method to credibly predict ridership. In order for high speed rail to be effective the door-to-door travel time must be equal to or less than that of air travel for the same journey. Trips should be no more than 400 miles, or 500 miles with faster trains. Stops should be few and widely spaced. You need motive power that can accelerate rapidly, and whose top speed is 180 mph or more. At the present time this would dictate the use of electric locomotives since there is no off-the-shelf internal combustion motive power capable of this high a speed or acceleration that I know of. Aside from highly populated corridors high speed rail in the United States is more of a never-never land,

[Wdlgln005]

I think the key to building a HSR system is to have state compacts & concentrate on key corridors, making sure it is done correctly. The NEC still need massive investment, and should not compete with other needs. The Midwest & Chicago hub is another key one. It should not take over an hour for a train to leave the metro area! The work on the Chicago-Detroit and Chicago-St Louis lines must be continued. I'd like to see another leg built Chicago-Indy-Louisville-Nashville. The Kentucky Cardinal was a big joke. Amtrak should have painted it blue & called the thing Thomas.

Next spring, Nashville will begin construction on the first leg of a commuter rail system. We haven't had Amtrak service since the Floridian stopped in the Carter years! It's been fun to see the outer counties pick up their share of the 20% nonfederal cost. The first leg will run east from Nashville to Lebanon, TN, on the tracks of the Nashville & Eastern. THe track thru the mountains east of there have been torn up so there is no direct route to Knoxville.

The powers that be here re looking for a name for the new service. So far, they are undecided between T-Rail or T-Rex. What do you think??

[Anonymous]

In addendum,
I would strongly urge readers of this forum to read Mr Don Clark's postings on this subject. This is a man who posts facts and not just opinions. Read Ed's thoughts, folks this could be done, find your congressman's name and write. By the way Mr Snyder, who is your congressman.

[Anonymous]

Mr Snyder,
If you would care to see all my e-mails to my Congressman Henry Hyde on this very subject, I would be happy to send them to you. I do not just 'bemoan' on this forum, I moan straight to D.C. and if you have read any of my other postings on this forum, you would know I have urged others to do so too.

[Anonymous]

Everyone at this web site knows I support HSR. However, I think it would be best to concentrate on building HSR between the four major population areas first, with a line or two on the west coast. I have even drawn lines on a map of the United States dealing with county population using the 2000 Census. The dark blue color counties have population larger than 100,000. Surely we can build something similar and close to these lines. My map is basically a parralegram with a line from the NEC to Chicago, to Texas, to Florida, and back, around 4,500 miles. I have added other lines which are bascially branches off the backbone parralegram. Some lines on my map are duplicated, I drew them to show that there are choices, for example we really don't need two lines running from Texas to Florida/Georgia, one lline will do. Its the same with the east coast line, one line will do. I prefer a line down to Raleigh and then west to Charolotte on the way to Atlanta(which by the way is not drawn on my map).

As for the price, I have come to the conclusion after serious study that HSR will run around $15 million a mile, less in rural areas and probably more in urban areas. As one can readily see on my map, the population of counties are not very great on the Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountains, whereas east of Kansas City and Dallas the population is quite dense, enough to support HSR.

As for distance, each leg of my parralegram will be in the neighborhood of 800-900 miles. Most of the branches are below 600 miles. Considering that a HSR TGV type train averages over 150 mph, with speeds up to 186 mph, each leg can easily be traveled in 6 hours or less. One trainset on each leg can make 4 trips in a day, two trainsets can make 8 trips in a day, three trainsets can make 12 trips in a day. Instead of the daily service we have today, we can have service in each direction every 2 hours.....Great! This is airline service frequency!

If we built every line I drew, the distance is only 9,000 miles. Cut a few duplicated lines, and the distance will be close to 8,000 miles. Maybe the feds should just build the parralegram and let the states build lines to it. A lot of ifs. But 5,000 miles of HSR rail @ $15 million per mile is $75 billion, 9,000 miles of HSR rail is $135 billion.

I SUPPORT HSR SO MUCH, I SUPPORT A MORATORIUM ON HIGHWAY AND AIRPORT SPENDING FOR TWO YEARS TO BUILD THIS NETWORK. Once it is built quickly, we won't need to spend so much on highways and airports.....

http://homepage.mac.com/donclark/.Public/DonHSR.jpg

[Anonymous]

I would love to see HSR in the USA, and here in Canada. But I know it isn't feasible. You can't compare these countries to Japan and Europe. There, the distance between cities are very short. The airplane is hardly competition for the train. The train is more convinient there, because the system is more established. Also, the time it takes to get to the airport and wait in line and fly the 200 km, you'd be already at your destination if you had taken the train.

However, that's not the case here in North America. While small sections of HSR (Northeast Corridor, Florida, between Edmonton - Calgary) is possible, cross-country HSR is not very realistic. Even if you took the Acela Express at its top speed on brand new tracks from New York to Los Angeles, it would still take about 3 times as long as a plane. Seeing that the cost of plane and train tickets are about the same in North America, the rail is hardly competition for the plane, especially in long distance runs.

Here in Canada, there's a train, called the Canadian. It goes from Toronto to Vancouver in 3 days and 3 nights. 99% of its travellers take the train for pleasure, not for the purpose of getting somewhere. My point is, rail in north america (long distance at least) is becoming more of a tourist attraction, rather than a form of transportation. This may be sad to hear, but it's the har***ruth.

[mudchicken]

I hope I live long enough to see it happen. For all the noise generated, mating elephants would be easier to get results...

[Anonymous]

To Pop of "Scottydog" (and all who think similarly):

While I appreciate your point (i.e., that Iraq is taking all the money), I do not think that is the case at all, regardless of the politics of that war.

The plain fact, as you suggest, is that it could be done. Congress would have to put its back into it, rather than spinning like a top in overdrive at each new will-o-the-wisp that surfaces on the journalistic radar screen.

Money is available in the private capital markets, and the vast majority of it would have to be private money, not public money, in any case (perhaps an 80/20 ratio).
The French rail system, SNCF, gets 70% of its financing from private capital, with govt. guarantees. This could be done here as well.

In 1992 we (our group) incorporated the APHSR, the Atlantic and Pacific High-Speed Rail Corp., with the goal of building and operating the coast-to-coast mid-USA line from DC/Baltimore to San Francisco. We get polite letters from the politicians, but little else.

If you believe this should be done, stop "bemoaning" and start contacting all the political representatives you can get hold of, locally, regionally, and nationally. The political machinery does not respond to leadership, only to a groundswell of public support and interest. Let your voice be heard.

J. Snyder
Chairman, APHSR
106 Ashley Drive
Shepherdstown, WV 25443 USA
[phone]

[Anonymous]

We all bemoan the fact that this country is not building a HSR serving the whole country. The facts are simple. The studies have shown what it would costs would be to build it and it is true it is high, so where would the money come from. For starters, we could take the 5 billion a year that goes to Israel, add the 4 billion to Egypt and have a nice little fund to start building, after all, what have these countries ever done for us. Congress are now debating the President's request for 87 billion for Iraq with more to come. If the government can find the money to fight uncalled for wars[except Bush] and to maintain the life styles of other countries, if they wanted, they could find it to build our HSR.

[Anonymous]

Mr. ICETRAIN is being snide in his reply, but I can be Snyder....In any case, preliminary estimates indicate the cost to build a coast-to-coast HSR line DC/Baltimore through to San Francisco, connecting all major cities enroute (i.e. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake, Reno, Sacramento) would be in excess of $100 billion. The trainsets (10-car, off the shelf Alsthom/bombardier HSR units) would run about $30 million each.

This is a lot of money. But it is doable with a combination of long-term public and private financing. That is how the existing rail lines were built (and those lines will still be needed for freight and commuter lines).

Consider that we are at a crossroads in the USA. We must EITHER build massive new airports even further from the cities they serve (and only two new ones have opened in the last 30 years, Dallas/Ft. Worth and Denver), OR build HSR lines to serve the burgeoning urban areas of the US in the long-term future. Given that oil is a rapidly diminishing and finite-supply commodity (world peak production passed in the year 2000, according to the ASSN FOR THE STUDY OF PEAK OIL, see website), is it not prudent to begin a system that can use a variety of sources of electrical energy supply for power (i.e. nuclear, conventional, wind, geothermal, etc. etc.)?

Transportation is 20 % of the economy, and is the key to it. Unless we prepare for the future (as Japan and Europe have done), we will be behind the curve, permanently, with all the consequences that entails.

J. Snyder

[Anonymous]

FANTASITIC!

Anyone got $9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999.99 ?

[Anonymous]

I BELIEVE THE UNITED STATES SHOULD BUILD A NATIONAL NETWORK OF NEW, DEDICATED, HSR LINES COAST-TO-COAST AND NORTH TO SOUTH. I WOULD RECOMMEND THREE E/W LINES (I.E., NORTHERN TIER OF CITIES, CENTRAL US DC/BALT. TO SAN FRANCISCO, SOUTHERN TIER OF CITIES, AND THREE NORTH-SOUTH LINES--WEST COAST, MISSISSIPPI VALLEY CHICAGO-NEW ORLEANS, EAST COAST.

CONNECTIONS WOULD BE ESTABLISHED AT KEY NODAL POINTS FOR INTEROPERABILITY. LINES WOULD BE PRIVATELY OPERATED, OVER PUBLICLY-OWNED RIGHTS-OF-WAY CREATED BY GOVERNMENT LAND CONDEMNATION AND RE-USE OF EXISTING ROW IN URBAN AREAS (LIKE FRANCE, FOR EXAMPLE).

TECHNOLOGY WOULD BE STEEL-WHEEL-ON-STEEL-RAIL, WITH THREE TIERS OF SERVICE: NONSTOP COAST-TO-COAST, EXPRESS BETWEEN KEY CITIES, AND EVERY-CITY SERVICE. LINES WOULD BE DOUBLE-TRACKED WITH HIGH-SPEED CROSSOVERS.

FINANCING WOULD BE PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP (LIKE ORIGINAL RRS IN 19TH CENT).

YOUR THOUGHTS?

JOSEPH J. SNYDER
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV
E-MAIL: [e-mail]