Interesting article with some decent renderings of the new Miami Station and associated Real Estate Development plans.
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/06/the-triumphant-return-of-private-us-passenger-rail/372808/
CMStPnP Interesting article with some decent renderings of the new Miami Station and associated Real Estate Development plans. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/06/the-triumphant-return-of-private-us-passenger-rail/372808/
Thanks. It was interesting and confirms what's been whispered - this is generally a real estate play. The numbers just fail if it's "just trains".
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
oltmannd Thanks. It was interesting and confirms what's been whispered - this is generally a real estate play. The numbers just fail if it's "just trains".
In my view both the Houston and Texas Central and the Milwaukee Road were intially largely real estate plays vs freight carriers. I would suspect most railroads got their start that way. Houston and Texas Central took the land grants given and at each water stop or near each water stop plotted out towns and mini subdivisions for settlers along it's route to create both Passenger traffic and Freight traffic. It intersected deliberate with a number of Stage station stops where small town development was already underway. The Milwaukee Road initially paralleled the route of the Watertown Plank road out of Milwaukee but at a distance in some cases in order to both pull in some of the traffic, dual use some of the hotels along the Plank road as well as sell some of the resorts along the Plank Road to traveling passengers. Milwaukee Road as well plotted a number of Milwaukee suburbs and distant towns West of Milwaukee and likewise sold the parcels to settlers in an effort to create passenger traffic and freight. Initially the Milwaukee gambled on a Milwaukee-Waukesha-Praire Du Chen mainline but then as it set it's sights on the Twin Cities shifted it's mainline to a more nothernly higher speed and more direct route. I believe they did this because initially Prarie Du Chen and towns along that mainline route were growing faster but then the growth of St. Paul / Minneapolis took off.....causing the railroad to shift it's route. At one point on the Milwaukee branches, Mineral Point, WI was bigger than Milwaukee in people and mining industry..........hence it got a branch but then Mineral Point faded away to nothing more than a po dunk town. Interesting history just on the Milwaukee Road and H&TC start ups.
I have a initial plot done by H&TC of a small town along it's ROW here in Texas as well as a very early Milwaukee Road poster (4-4-0 era) where the Milwaukee Road is selling the resorts and hotels along the Watertown Plank road just west of Milwaukee to traveling passengers. The H&TC plot I got from the railway museum in Cleburne....they made a copy of theirs (I think) and then I donated it to the City of Allen for their Historical Guild and they display it a lot on the local cable channel. The Milwaukee Road travel poster was for sale by one of the former Watertown Plank Road Resorts (Red Circle Inn in Nashotah, WI ==> where the 1930's Hiawatha was first penciled in on a napkin by Railroad Engineering Dept Officials..........I purchased it a few years ago).
RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.
Could be a play for the Florida port business
Ft Lauderdale design is out
https://us-mg205.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.partner=sbc&.rand=el6u3orhaljqr
What is so interesting about the AAF play is the bet being placed on the ultimate financial health of certain American cities and future increased land values. I do wonder a bit about whether such high assumed land values might be a bit too much to be financially efficient for the residents.
Of course this is in contrast to the extreme devaluation of land in American cities following the intentional dispersing effect of the subsidized interstate road program just as the article describes a waste land of parking lots. But where will everything end up? Right now we are searching for the balance point in land values as we cannot practically disperse anymore and are heading toward land bound highway corridors such as I-4 in Orlando.
I wrote about the history of the assumptions behind the 1930-1960's land planning and how everything might work out in the future based on the travel demand model used in the I-4 managed toll lanes project on the Strongtowns group. Some of you might find such interesting, along with their critques of modern road engineering, as the project planners are essentially projecting the "free" general purpose interstate lanes will essentially become gridlocked at all times of the day.
oltmannd CMStPnP Interesting article with some decent renderings of the new Miami Station and associated Real Estate Development plans. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/06/the-triumphant-return-of-private-us-passenger-rail/372808/ Thanks. It was interesting and confirms what's been whispered - this is generally a real estate play. The numbers just fail if it's "just trains".
V.Payne What is so interesting about the AAF play is the bet being placed on the ultimate financial health of certain American cities and future increased land values. I do wonder a bit about whether such high assumed land values might be a bit to much to be financially efficient for the residents. Of course this is in contrast to the extreme devaluation of land in American cities following the intentional dispersing effect of the subsidized interstate road program just as the article describes a waste land of parking lots. But where will everything end up? Right now we are searching for the balance point in land values as we cannot practically disperse anymore and are heading toward land bound highway corridors such as I-4 in Orlando. I wrote about the history of the assumptions behind the 1930-1960's land planning and how everything might work out in the future based on the travel demand model used in the I-4 managed toll lanes project on the Strongtowns group. Some of you might find such interesting, along with their critques of modern road engineering, as the project planners are essentially projecting the "free" general purpose interstate lanes will essentially become gridlocked at all times of the day.
What is so interesting about the AAF play is the bet being placed on the ultimate financial health of certain American cities and future increased land values. I do wonder a bit about whether such high assumed land values might be a bit to much to be financially efficient for the residents.
Your article contains some interesting thoughts and prognosis-es. Having read it twice, two or three thoughts come to mind.
As Peter Schwartz pointed out in The Art of the Long View, predicting the future is a dicey exercise. Instead of trying to predict a single outcome, Schwartz, who was a corporate planner for Shell Oil Company, used scenario planning to come up with three or four plausible future outcomes. His methodology, which was taken from military planners, has been adopted by many corporate planners.
Nuclear power was supposed to be the wave of the future for the electric power industry. My company had planned to build five nuclear power plants for north Texas. As it turned out, for a variety of reasons, only one of the plants was built. Conditions that had favored nuclear power turned sour, and one plant was enough for us. It is unlikely that we will see any more nuclear power plants in the U.S. in the near future.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) has sunk more than $6 billion into the longest light rail project in the southwest. The planners envisioned heaps of people using it to get to work, play, etc. People would leave their cars at home and pile onto the trains. They would even take the train to the symphony, opined one writer in the Dallas Morning News. It has not happened, as highlighted in a recent article in the Dallas Morning News. Only 1.8 per cent of the people in the Metroplex use the light rail trains. I had pegged it at approximately three percent, and I was astounded to learn that it is 1.8 per cent. In Dallas, at least, people are just not willing to get out of their cars; at least not in significant numbers.
You may be right about highway congestion and the willingness of people to pay tolls to avoid the mess caused by congestion. You may be right about people being more willing to ride a train. But what happens to congestion, for example, if self driving, automated personal vehicles are developed and deployed in massive numbers 25 or so years from now? Never happen?
I am reading a book on how Jimmy Doolittle solved the problem of how to fly a plane on instruments. He achieved the break through in 1929. Never happen said most of his contemporaries, Charles Lindbergh being an exception. It did.
The appropriate question for market share is the percent of travelers making trips along the corridors served. Still probably not above 10% but try adding that back to the road network now. I touched on this a bit but if you don't have a road network that is safe for pedestrians you are fighting a battle the wrong way.
Automated automobiles will be available to the general public in some form, but more than likely only in some type of cruise control function for a while. But, the court system is going to eat the inevitable accidents like a steak dinner and every manufacturer wants a government liability shield.
Consider the "un intended acceleration" cases from wire driven controls referencing to just a simple lookup table. They will be more expensive and when an attempt to use them on crowded urban networks is made they will actually cause congestion to go up, as they will be trying to keep safe following distances and not accepting merge options, causing traffic to flow in two different conflicting ways.
Even still the roads have to be provided, and getting back on topic, the projections from even the proponents of the I-4 rebuild in Orlando see tolls of $0.8/mile if you want to move. This might be the future AAF is looking toward.
V.Payne The appropriate question for market share is the percent of travelers making trips along the corridors served. Still probably not above 10% but try adding that back to the road network now. I touched on this a bit but if you don't have a road network that is safe for pedestrians you are fighting a battle the wrong way. Automated automobiles will be available to the general public in some form, but more than likely only in some type of cruise control function for a while. But, the court system is going to eat the inevitable accidents like a steak dinner and every manufacturer wants a government liability shield. Consider the "un intended acceleration" cases from wire driven controls referencing to just a simple lookup table. They will be more expensive and when an attempt to use them on crowded urban networks is made they will actually cause congestion to go up, as they will be trying to keep safe following distances and not accepting merge options, causing traffic to flow in two different conflicting ways. Even still the roads have to be provided, and getting back on topic, the projections from even the proponents of the I-4 rebuild in Orlando see tolls of $0.8/mile if you want to move. This might be the future AAF is looking toward.
I drive a Mercedes with many of the current automatic drive features incorporated. They work well for the most part but also have significant deficiencies in them. For example when I cross a solid white line on the pavement without using my turn signal the steering wheel fights with me for control to keep away from the solid white line (this requires a little more thought, IMO). When traffic is merging it does not recognize the merged traffic until it is halfway square on with the front......then and only then does the automatic braking kick in (they need to fix that more). When I cross a dashed line without using the signal it vibrates the steering wheel to alert me I might be falling asleep......thats OK, IMO. I have not tried the automatic parallel parking yet as I am afraid if it doesn't work quite right I will have a steep repair bill. I do like the blind spot feature though. BTW, I have wi-fi internet as well in my car but it is waaaayyy to slow to be taken seriously, so I am dropping that feature. Problem is the bandwidth to each car is not really enough to provide the high speed service most are used to. I don't know why this is because when I use the Internet Hot Spot on my cell phone.........speeds are just fine. So the built-in Mercedes wi-fi and Email options are a waste of money at their current speeds.
At any rate, even with automatic drive it is going to cost money and time to use the automobile and I am very much doubtful it will mean higher speeds on the freeway system. For one, much of our existing freeway is only engineered for a top speed of 70. They would have to fix radius curves, on ramps and off ramps before we get to speeds higher than that. Thats at least a century or more away with the cost.
So, Mercedes is not for people who don't feel the need to signal lane changes.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
My Dad was a proud owner of the old VW Beetle back in the day when accessories were being added on many other cars being sold. His famous remark about these was: "It's just one more thing to get fixed when it breaks". Seeing how expensive cars have gotten and are getting, I can see why more people, young and otherwise, are choosing to give up driving.
Not necessarily, I drive a Mercedes myself and it doesn't have any of that stuff mentioned. I don't have to fight the car and parking it is easy. Of course it is 23 years old. I've been in driverless cars. One was the Times Square shuttle from Grand Central, the other was the Docklands Light Railway in London. Both worked fine. Driverless cars on public roads? Sounds about as logical as using Hydrogen to provide lift to an aircraft.
When I began my business career with a Wall Street bank in 1964, we were three years away from getting our first IBM computer. NCR machines were the best that we had. Today's modern banking system would not be where it is if it were not for the sophisticated computer systems that were subsequently developed and deployed. Who in 1964 could have foreseen where banking systems would be today?
I hold a commercial pilot's license with multi-engine, instrument, flight instructor, instrument flight instructor and corresponding ground instructor ratings. I learned to fly in 1958. It was hands on stick and rudder flying. Today's commercial airliners pretty much fly themselves. Computers manage all of the systems, although the pilots can override them if necessary. They simply fly the airplane better than humans can fly them. Who would have guessed in 1958 that aviation would advance to the place it is today?
Fully automated personal vehicles would not necessarily mean higher speeds. Initially, they may mean somewhat lower speeds. And only be applicable, at least initially, in high density urban areas. They could, perhaps, be a mechanism for greatly increasing the capacity of the existing highway systems. Who knows?
No one knows what the future will bring. That is why planners use scenario analysis to come up with a reasonable number of plausible possibilities. If you believe we are at the end of the technology development curve, then the notion of automated personal vehicles may seem over the top. But if you think, as I do, that we are not even near the end of the beginning of the technology curve, lots of things that have not yet been imagined will pop up as practicable ideas.
jclassThought this exchange in the article's comments was interesting. ````````````` "This is mainly private money - so it doesn't really make any difference to me" what private money? 1) The State has already bought land so private AAF can build the new train from Cocoa to Orlando 2) The Airport (state) will build the Orlando Terminal. 3) The Feds will lend 1.6 billion to this. Will it be repaid? If AAF folds, private FECR will retain the tracks, improvement and freight business 4) The State will fund improvement to existing private tracks and freight trains so they can later add a low cost commuter service, parallel to tri-rail. 5) Besides the 3 stations that will be privately funded, Cities, Counties and State will build a dozen of commuter stations. 6) They will apply for TIGER grants to improve at grade crossing security. I really hope AAF to succeed otherwise this will be one of the biggest public money grab from a private equity fund. `````````````````` This is misleading. 1. The State had bought land which be part leased - at great cost - to AAF, and part used for their own infrastructure upgrades. (Also AAF, bizarrely enough, has had to pay the Turnpike a one-off $4M fee to cover "lost revenues" for the latter if it goes ahead. I'm not making that up.) 2. The Airport is building an intermodal terminal that it's had planned since the 1990s. It's not AAF specific, intended for SunRail, Amtrak, FLHSR if that ever appears, and even some other private ventures such as a weird Maglev link to Disney that I'll believe exists when I see. And yet again, AAF will be paying through the nose to use it - several dollars per alighting passenger on top of lease payments for space and facilities. 3. (a) It hasn't been decided whether the Feds will loan anything, or even if AAF will make an application. The $1.6B figure the media's been using appears to be a mixture of conjecture and confusion based upon an earlier, cancelled, application. (b) FECR will not "retain the tracks, improvement, and freight business". The Right of Way belongs to AAF. If AAF folds, and is unable to pay back the loan, the ROW will be sold to pay it back. The ROW is worth _billions_. And, FWIW, FECR would consider it a problem if they inherited the newly "upgraded" FEC mainline. They don't want the expense of maintaining a 110mph double tracked system. 4. The State wants an unrelated commuter service from Miami to Jupiter running along the FEC mainline. They will indeed pay for upgrades to the FEC mainline to get them. If AAF doesn't go ahead, those upgrades will cost more. You've got this backward: the State will save money if AAF goes ahead. 5. I gather Boston will be funding a museum too. What's your point? Those stations have zero to do with AAF, they're related to the commuter rail project. 6. AAF is covering the full costs of upgrading grade crossing safety. TIGER grants may be used by local governments to implement quiet zones, but that's an entirely different issue. And, FWIW, as someone who lives 1.3 miles from the FEC mainline, I can tell you the quiet zones are needed with or without AAF. They'll be cheaper if AAF goes ahead though, given AAF's grade crossing safety upgrades overlap considerably with what's needed to implement a quiet zone. Again: if AAF goes ahead, taxpayers will save money over what they would have had to pay if it didn't. I live on the Treasure Coast and finding it increasingly embarrassing to admit that, as the local media and a few extremist groups have basically been misleading and lying about the project, making us all look like NIMBYs. I'm sure you're just repeating what other people are telling you, but be careful with what you hear. These same people were claiming the trains will close crossings for five minutes a time until it became abundantly clear that was ridiculous. That's the level of discourse here. Don't believe the NIMBYs. They're lying about almost everything.
I am sure that there are some good thoughts here, but without topical sentences and paragraphs, reading it is a slog.
A suspicion: If the MIA - Jupiter has freight, AAF, & commuter rail there will be too much congestion on just 2 main tracks. FEC is going to want to continue their day time freights. A partial solution may be station tracks at each commuter station. That is most locations would have 4 tracks with platforms outside tracks 1 & 4. Then 2 MTs between stations ? For MIA, Ft. Lauderdale, West palm Beach center island platforms between track 1 & 2 + 3 & 4. Maybe some other stations ?
Presently only present known 4 track area is south of downtown FLL to abeam of FLL airport ? Part of intermodal terminal that may be going to be moved ?i
Phoebe Vet So, Mercedes is not for people who don't feel the need to signal lane changes.
They allow you to turn all the safety stuff off if you want. I kind of like it on though.
The new Mercedes Sunroofs are neat, no longer do they cover them on the inside of the higher models you just press a button and the glass turns opaque vs transparent.
I suppose this is germane since automated automobiles have long been proposed as the reason that the US should not invest in intercity rail for some time. I fully think the technology will get there in 5-8 years, but the legal and criminal environment on public roads will provide significant financial cost questions, namely who bears the costs of accidents.
For example auto insurance accident scam artist will surely figure out which models are so equipped and target them hoping to gain direct access to a manufacturer's purse in court. They could stage an accident at a merge point with two scam vehicles as they are currently doing, confusing the system into a lessor of two bad choices, which is still an accident. The Atlantic Cities had a recent article on the difficulty presented when the system might have to make a less safe choice to continue or risk getting stuck in traffic. Teenagers might play games with the robot cars like pulling in front of them, slowing down, and speeding up again while blocking lanes, till the driver takes it out of auto and retaliates, who bears the cost for the ensuing road rage accident?
This is a side question to the financial costs of keeping two cars getting to be a bit much for a family. I recently heard a friend of mine who is a lawyer and the wife a nurse comment on the high cost of a new car despite a income level well above average. In another approach some Florida communities allow for golf carts on local public roads to get around town, returning to the scale and complexity of the 1920's cars for cost reasons, though some households retain only a single full size car to go out of town.
What is really interesting to see is AAF investing in Cities, not just any suburban area, but a compact series of walkable streets downtown and the associated building frontage, just as before in the early 20th century grand terminal developments. To do this with their proposed Miami station and the associated real estate play around it they have to believe that this is where the future will lead.
But at the other end they are stuck with an airport station for now and no distribution network they control around the broader Orlando metro, which is puzzling. Maybe this is all that can be done for now or perhaps they think a commuter rail project will build it for them. They would be well served with even a slow loop around metro Orlando (and out to Disney's transportation hub) after the airport stop, spliced together from various ROWs, with multiple smaller stations to provide a in vehicle distribution, one seat ride (and more station real estate plays) and hence lower perceived and real cost of access.
I certainly do not think our future will be without automobiles, but we will be looking to return to a scale, usage, and financial cost that more closely suits us. This transition will more than likely be driven by the cost to operate a vehicle due to the purchase and maintenance costs, and the inability to construct new roadways to keep traffic flowing within financial reason, particulary in our vast suburban and now landlocked highway right of ways, such that we are left with an uncorrectable tradegy of the commons situation on the public "free" roads.
Sorry Sam1,
The site crunches all the sentences together. Paragraphs don't stay paragraphs.
I had the same problem, from time to time, when I was using my laptop while traveling. When I realized that the Enter was not making paragraphs, I would put xxxx in to indicate a new paragraph.
Johnny
Palm Beach station design is released. that makes 3 station designs fairly quick. Any guess how long it would have taken if government had gotten involved ? That is not to say there may be interference by other persons / entities that want to put in there two cents ?
http://www.aguyonclematis.com/2014/07/all-aboard-floridas-west-palm-beach-station-revealed/
Some info here.
It does seem like they are moving pretty fast. Only thing I can think of that moved almost this fast was the Amtrak extension to Norfolk.
I am really curious to see the equipment order, when it comes.
oltmannd http://www.aguyonclematis.com/2014/07/all-aboard-floridas-west-palm-beach-station-revealed/
1000 foot platform would equal ~~ 12 cars. That would depend on if the boarding doors are at car ends or if some kind of superliner type car with center of car boarding. Of course at very heavy loads possible when many persons going to a cruise ship then each end of a train could overlap ends of platform.
It might be more indicative if we know the length of the Orlando station platforms and Miami.
Another item that AAF may consider at some future time is to take passenger trains directly to the cruise ship port ?
Miami - Dade approves Miami station design
http://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/news/MiamiDade-officials-approve-All-Aboard-Floridas-Miami-station-plan--41166
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