Vision Challenge accepted. Trains tracks are 2 demensional and can easily be regulated as to vehicle height standards and compatability. What if a qualified vehicle could enter the rail system and "hook up" with an existing vehicle traveling at a constant velocity?
I studied this issue of getting better use out of the 199,000 miles of track in our country that can compete with the conveince of the interstate system and the speed of air. There is a middle ground in rails, but the system needs to fully embrace 21st century tech and incorporate the land use pattern which is the US and not attempt to mimic old world countries.
I am thinking big and out of the box, a frontier worthy of the effort in WWII.
Gary
The article, apart from the intro talking about "Shaq-worthy" legroom and then segueing into a critique of SUV's and "bad drivers" is behind a subscription wall.
OK, there are a variety of reasons for supporting trains, but if the issue of Global Warming comes up, then it becomes squarely a matter of relative fuel efficiency and fuel mix of the different modes of transportation.
I present the Vision Challenge. How much would you spend on trains, how many passenger miles would this accomodate, and how much would this effort go towards alleviating the Global Warming problem?
For example, Amtrak involves spending somewhere more than 1 billion accomodating about 5 billion passenger miles/year or about 1/10 of one percent of automobile passenger miles. Amtrak represents on average a 500 BTU/passenger mile saving over cars.
Total US energy consumption is about 100 quads (a quad is 10E15 BTU's). At 3000 BTU/passenger miles and about 5 trillion annual passenger miles (mostly auto), the personal transportation sector accounts for 15 quads or about 15 percent of total energy consumption. The savings attributable to Amtrak is .0025 quads (or 2.5 percent of a single quad or roughly 3 hundreths of a percent of total US energy consumption).
The Vision Report proposed ramping up annual spending to 10 billion/year to accomodate a ten-fold increase in passenger train traffic to a full one percent of automobile passenger miles. The propose doing this by adding to mainly "corridor" trains without dining, lounge and sleeping cars and somewhat less "Shaq-like" proportions of legroom. These trains are proposed to save something like 1500 BTU/passenger mile over autos, for a total savings of .075 quads or less than one part in a thousand on the 100 quads of national energy expenditure.
Do we increase expenditures on trains 100-fold over the Vision Report, essentially replacing all auto travel with trains, by spending one trillion dollars per year on trains, for a net energy savings of 7.5 quads or 7.5 percent of total US energy use?
Again, the concern is Global Warming -- what do people want to spend on trains, to what effect?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
A story in Time magazine dated, July 19, 2010, page 18, "All Aboard?" by Michael Grunwald, discusses the issue of spending billions of federal money for high speed rail service and other related projects on Amtrak.
The link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2002523,00.html
Any thoughts on this subject as related to the Grunwald article.
Grunwald explores the various issues and favors the increase in high speed rail service but at what costs and the complicated issues of establishing high speed rail service.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.