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[quote user="Overmod"]But the argument he's making is that it isn't the minutes separating you from air that matter here; it's the minutes separating the high-speed timing from the practical and less expensive rail competition. (There are also a number of buses that run from a street location near Penn Station to a variety of Washington final locations in about three hours for $30; when you factor in Metro time and delay these can actually be competitive with the train for that destination pair.)[/quote] Joe wrote: To attain a true high-speed system on the Northeast Corridor, there must be a dedicated and exclusive infrastructure built as straight as the geography will allow. The cost and environmental impact of such an undertaking would be astronomical given the real estate values in that portion of the country. I said at the end of my post that high-speed rail yes or no is a political decision. When you go high-speed you compete with other modes of transportation. With airlines it is time, price, comfort; with bus it is price. Times on a bus are unpredictable with traffic jams. For that you don't need a true high-speed system. The German high-speed routes are 2,900 miles long. 1770 miles are rebuilt old existing lines upgraded to a max. speed of 125 mph or 143 mph. Newly built were 1130 mile, 350 miles of them to 155 mph standard, the balance to standards of 186 mph. [quote user="Overmod"]And very, very few people are going to pay a major difference for six minutes or so unless they have expense accounts supervised by people who don't care. Or haven't looked carefully enough at time management or money management.[/quote] On Acela Express (AE) business travel and commuting account for 61% of the travellers, on Northeast Reginals (NR) this are 32%. So you are partly right. I have looked in the schedules and the AE is about 25 minutes faster than the NR on the relation New York to Washington DC, and about 30 minutes on the relation Boston to New York. [quote user="Overmod"]The only thing that 'wins' for Amtrak between Boston or NYC and Washington is the congestion and security issues regarding practical destination-to-destination time net of security and road access; the airplane has always been dramatically faster in time. [/quote] You can mourn this as long as you want, that are the facts. And with the USA's paranoia about terrorism it won't change. Sure it needed these delays to make trains competetive on longer routes. If you would put the Acela passengers back on flight the airports and people would complain about the congestion. [quote user="Overmod"]With the permissible speeds for more conventional equipment rising too, and in the absence of functional tilt ... you do know the Acela tilt is disabled for most of the run, right? ... keeping the time disparity limited until significant portions of the track are good for 150+mph undisturbed running. And that sure isn't true of a great deal of the corridor.[/quote] The AE's tilt system comes from the lightweight LCR and was designed in the 1970s. The Avila Liberty's should be state-of-the-art and I see no need to disable it. If the Avila is needed and worth the money only time can tell. Perhaps it is a way to pressure Congress to provide money for upgrading the NEC. The trains are already here. [quote user="Overmod"]Quite frankly, what happened back in February in this respect, at 124mph, was quite bad enough for me. Not much of an advertisement for Bombardier permanent coupling, was it?[/quote] If a pin breaks after 17+ years I would put it Amtrak's maintenance. Regards, Volker
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