243129I stand by my the points in the link in my second post and maintain that folks are not in that much of a hurry as indicated in my analogy regarding the cessation of Supersonic Travel (SST).
You can and should stand by the points you made in the previous article (for which you received so much flak) concerning Northeast Corridor improvement, as well.
I do think there were different reasons for abandoning the SST in the Seventies, perhaps first among them being that relatively few people would actually want to pay the required 'pro-rata development costs per trip' to get the nominal benefits for those destination pairs over land -- even had there been no convenient 'excuse' over sonic boom issues.
Interestingly, we are now seeing that the chosen alternative strategy, flying larger numbers of people per aircraft at relatively high subsonic speeds, also has limits; the Airbus A380 is apparently an accelerating commercial failure even though it promised to offer (and, in fact, could deliver) a good mix of Sybaritic luxury and lots of cheap seats in steerage on any given flight.
It remains to be seen whether passengers would pay for the necessary very, very fast accelerations and peak speeds needed to retain current stops and still gain significant-to-customers time reductions between New York and Washington. Or where the money could possibly come from to build a real 'second spine' with 220mph peak between Boston and New York, let alone how you could repay its cost out of increased revenues.
There are lots and lots of people who would benefit from, and would gleefully ride, true high-speed Corridor service. Problem is, all the ones traveling within a particular schedule slot outside of logical 'peak' times could probably be accommodated on a couple of railbuses' worth of seats ... think People Express rather than Midwest Express ... and that's not a good fit with anything Amtrak owns or is contemplating for super-high-speed service.
Your original point in the article -- that Amtrak should be optimizing Corridor trains for sustained 125mph service rather than investing in the capability to reach higher nominal speeds that very little of the track would support within the service life of the prospective equipment -- remains quite valid. It's practical time reduction using such equipment that I think the forces-that-be in the NECIP should be concentrating on now and over the next decade or so. It would certainly remain wholly relevant for regional well into the future.
OVERMOD: " A great deal of expense and sacrifice went into some somewhat unfortunate concrete-tie trackwork that Did Not Ride As Advertised (or have particularly long unmolested service life, either). "
Overmod I've been out of town and didn't see this thread until Sunday afternoon. The picture appears correctly (in Firefox 66.0.3 on Mac OS 10.11.6) as a rendered image. There's more involved, I think, than meets the eye regarding "why this never happened". A very pointed objective of Carter's original Northeast Corridor improvement plan was to implement track speed of nominal 150mph in a variety of places; it was very obviously not going to result in very much continuous 150mph running (the crossovers in the middle of Princeton Junction famously remaining 85mph as I recall) and it was probably doomed from the start with the preferred-subcontractor setasides, but the 2h45' timing could probably have been achieved with the same kind of train used for the "2 hours and 59 civilized minutes" in the 1970s ads. A great deal of expense and sacrifice went into some somewhat unfortunate concrete-tie trackwork that Did Not Ride As Advertised (or have particularly long unmolested service life, either). However, there was starting to be some fruit from these efforts by 1986, when I first noticed that train speeds were beginning to seem dramatically higher. How much of that was ended by Ricky Gates, I can't say. I suspect most of the reason Acela never reached its "speed potential" was circumstantial, and perhaps hushed-up if not actually hidden. I remember the early discussions for the Boston electrification and line modifications (remember the granite center-of-ROW markers that were such a disaster?) there was extensive discussion of sustained 140mph capability, and why that ultimately was limited to just a few almost meaningless miles is its own interesting topic. Things like spoke breakage and tilt issues surely indicate all was not well with ROW high-speed improvements as well as Bombardier's engineering of the Acela trains. I have yet to see the raw data from the vertical accelerometers in Amtrak's testing on the Metro-North portion of the Corridor that showed shocks in the 190g range, but transients or no, where that level can be recorded you should not expect 140mph within at least a few miles either way. I do not know if these anomalies are even wholly correctable, let alone whether MN's other "commitments" on that section would politically allow what would be needed for safe higher-speed operation through it. I don't need to mention bridges on the Shore Line as a sore point, and again I don't know if through speeds even on something like the revised Walk Bridge would allow full high speed. I don't see anything particularly 'difficult' about meeting the speed improvements called for in the brochure. As 'charlie hebdo' commented in connection with the German railroads, a program of consistent small lime improvements can produce enough incremental time savings to matter in trip time; conversely nominal improvements in permitted track speed may not amount to much in actual reduction. I remember discussions about implementing a TVM-like 'true train-control' system that would optimize and largely 'automate' best-speed transitions through the complicated mess of slow points and slow orders that the modern Northeast Corridor route imposed .. and largely still imposes. (And would have made the accident to Amtrak 188 impossible, but I digress...) I see little hype in a 2h45' timing between NYP and WAS, but you will notice the implication is that the time is for 'express' catering to people going end-to-end between the two points. Doing it while continuing to include the ex-VP's Wilmington between Philadelphia and Baltimore is a little more onerous.
I've been out of town and didn't see this thread until Sunday afternoon. The picture appears correctly (in Firefox 66.0.3 on Mac OS 10.11.6) as a rendered image.
There's more involved, I think, than meets the eye regarding "why this never happened". A very pointed objective of Carter's original Northeast Corridor improvement plan was to implement track speed of nominal 150mph in a variety of places; it was very obviously not going to result in very much continuous 150mph running (the crossovers in the middle of Princeton Junction famously remaining 85mph as I recall) and it was probably doomed from the start with the preferred-subcontractor setasides, but the 2h45' timing could probably have been achieved with the same kind of train used for the "2 hours and 59 civilized minutes" in the 1970s ads. A great deal of expense and sacrifice went into some somewhat unfortunate concrete-tie trackwork that Did Not Ride As Advertised (or have particularly long unmolested service life, either). However, there was starting to be some fruit from these efforts by 1986, when I first noticed that train speeds were beginning to seem dramatically higher. How much of that was ended by Ricky Gates, I can't say.
I suspect most of the reason Acela never reached its "speed potential" was circumstantial, and perhaps hushed-up if not actually hidden. I remember the early discussions for the Boston electrification and line modifications (remember the granite center-of-ROW markers that were such a disaster?) there was extensive discussion of sustained 140mph capability, and why that ultimately was limited to just a few almost meaningless miles is its own interesting topic.
Things like spoke breakage and tilt issues surely indicate all was not well with ROW high-speed improvements as well as Bombardier's engineering of the Acela trains. I have yet to see the raw data from the vertical accelerometers in Amtrak's testing on the Metro-North portion of the Corridor that showed shocks in the 190g range, but transients or no, where that level can be recorded you should not expect 140mph within at least a few miles either way. I do not know if these anomalies are even wholly correctable, let alone whether MN's other "commitments" on that section would politically allow what would be needed for safe higher-speed operation through it.
I don't need to mention bridges on the Shore Line as a sore point, and again I don't know if through speeds even on something like the revised Walk Bridge would allow full high speed.
I don't see anything particularly 'difficult' about meeting the speed improvements called for in the brochure. As 'charlie hebdo' commented in connection with the German railroads, a program of consistent small lime improvements can produce enough incremental time savings to matter in trip time; conversely nominal improvements in permitted track speed may not amount to much in actual reduction. I remember discussions about implementing a TVM-like 'true train-control' system that would optimize and largely 'automate' best-speed transitions through the complicated mess of slow points and slow orders that the modern Northeast Corridor route imposed .. and largely still imposes. (And would have made the accident to Amtrak 188 impossible, but I digress...)
I see little hype in a 2h45' timing between NYP and WAS, but you will notice the implication is that the time is for 'express' catering to people going end-to-end between the two points. Doing it while continuing to include the ex-VP's Wilmington between Philadelphia and Baltimore is a little more onerous.
Your observations are spot on. I stand by my the points in the link in my second post and maintain that folks are not in that much of a hurry as indicated in my analogy regarding the cessation of Supersonic Travel (SST).
Convicted One In answer to your core question, I would offer that "hype" is frequently never realized. I believe PT Barnum had a thing or two to say about the mechanism of hype. Frequently I see these "public-private partnerships" hyped with these really grand artist sketches of how great the finished product will be, only to find that after the taxpayers have been baited into some commitment, suddenly the "private" end of the partnership loses enthusiasm for the grander parts of the original hype. And the Taxpayers end up doing most of the heavy lifting that is gonna get done. Naive people enjoy being lied to....that is my conclusion
In answer to your core question, I would offer that "hype" is frequently never realized. I believe PT Barnum had a thing or two to say about the mechanism of hype.
Frequently I see these "public-private partnerships" hyped with these really grand artist sketches of how great the finished product will be, only to find that after the taxpayers have been baited into some commitment, suddenly the "private" end of the partnership loses enthusiasm for the grander parts of the original hype.
And the Taxpayers end up doing most of the heavy lifting that is gonna get done.
Naive people enjoy being lied to....that is my conclusion
I don't see anything particularly 'difficult' about meeting the speed improvements called for in the brochure. As 'charlie hebdo' commented in connection with the German railroads, a program of consistent small timing improvements can produce enough incremental time savings to matter in trip time; conversely nominal improvements in permitted track speed may not amount to much in actual reduction. I remember discussions about implementing a TVM-like 'true train-control' system that would optimize and largely 'automate' best-speed transitions through the complicated mess of slow points and slow orders that the modern Northeast Corridor route imposed .. and largely still imposes. (And would have made the accident to Amtrak 188 impossible, but I digress...)
Convicted One I'm seeing the top image now, with the Boston-NYC and NYC-Washignton blurbs on it. however everthing after that is still empty boxes.
I'm seeing the top image now, with the Boston-NYC and NYC-Washignton blurbs on it. however everthing after that is still empty boxes.
OK thanks. I only posted one image.
Convicted One 243129 How about now? The picture comes up on my screen. ???? Photobucket does not allow hot linking unless you are paying them like $349 to host your pictures for you. So your pictures do not show up as pictures we can view.....unless we open the link back to photobucket, for each individual picture...very time consuming. Just A SUGGESTION, but there are image hosting services that allow hot linking on free accounts. IMGUR is one such service...note I have no commercial interest in imgur.
243129 How about now? The picture comes up on my screen. ????
Photobucket does not allow hot linking unless you are paying them like $349 to host your pictures for you.
So your pictures do not show up as pictures we can view.....unless we open the link back to photobucket, for each individual picture...very time consuming.
Just A SUGGESTION, but there are image hosting services that allow hot linking on free accounts. IMGUR is one such service...note I have no commercial interest in imgur.
Thank you for the info, I shall try it. I did however C&P, does it display now?
243129How about now? The picture comes up on my screen. ????
Note: I'm getting "404 file not found" error messages on all the boxes under the top image
CMStPnP 243129 Never happened. Why? We kind of had this discussion several times over but in limited ways. Amtrak is not charging other carriers the true cost of using the Corridor or it's charges that it is charging are way below sustainability of the Corridor Infrastructure. Hence we get these press releases from Amtrak each year as to how many 100's of millions of dollars more Amtrak has fallen behind in maintence of the corridor due to lack of the Feds paying for it via grants. Well the bottom line is Amtrak has enough trains transiting the Corridor they do not need Federal Grants apart from major improvement projects. They should be able to keep the cooridor in a good state of repair year to year without outside funding just via user fees. How many privately run toll roads do you see falling apart in this country and issuing press releases each year that they could not fully afford the maintenence on the toll road that year and have fallen further behind on their multi-Billion dollar maintenece backlog? I can see the NEC asking for help on unpredicatable weather disasters, I can see them even asking for help on major speed improvements or line relocations. However, I do not understand why they need to do so with just basic maintenence which should be fully covered via transit fees. We should all see the NEC maintained in a good state of repair plus enough left over for incremental improvements in speed so that over time the overall NEC speed and maintence level increases. That has not happened since Amtraks inception. The only conclusion I can draw is mismanagement of the NEC and Amtrak either not collecting the bill for usage in full each year OR not charging what it costs to keep the NEC in good repair each year. Given that it cannot maintain the NEC in good repair it is sheer buffoonery to state the NEC makes a profit. We see in a recent news item that NJ Transit withheld payments for using the NEC but was allowed to continue to run trains on the NEC and continue to wear out infrastructure. At the point that NJ Transit refused to pay it's bill, Amtrak should have halted all NJ Transit trains transiting the NEC. It didn't though and I am willing to bet that the recent NJ Transit settlement with Amtrak shortchanges Amtrak on the time value of money due to the delayed payments and only reimburses Amtrak just for the missed payments and does not include any time value of money or interest calculations. If that is happening which I suspect it is abuse of Amtrak pure and simple and the rest of us in the country are paying the bill for that nonsense. So in my view the NEC Infrastructure should be a seperate and independently managed division of Amtrak not influenced by the Amtrak executives to curry local political favor. As for the Amtrak NYC-Albany trains, they should be under the same cost sharing formula as any other state sponsored Amtrak train and should not have any exemptions. I suspect they have exemptions still from Amtraks founding but never looked into the issue. When Amtrak was founded, NY said it would only support the formation of Amtrak if the NYC to Albany trains were preserved on Amtrak's dime alone or with Amtrak picking up most of the costs. If that agreement is still in place, it is really unfair to the rest of us paying into Amtrak.
243129 Never happened. Why?
We kind of had this discussion several times over but in limited ways. Amtrak is not charging other carriers the true cost of using the Corridor or it's charges that it is charging are way below sustainability of the Corridor Infrastructure. Hence we get these press releases from Amtrak each year as to how many 100's of millions of dollars more Amtrak has fallen behind in maintence of the corridor due to lack of the Feds paying for it via grants.
Well the bottom line is Amtrak has enough trains transiting the Corridor they do not need Federal Grants apart from major improvement projects. They should be able to keep the cooridor in a good state of repair year to year without outside funding just via user fees. How many privately run toll roads do you see falling apart in this country and issuing press releases each year that they could not fully afford the maintenence on the toll road that year and have fallen further behind on their multi-Billion dollar maintenece backlog?
I can see the NEC asking for help on unpredicatable weather disasters, I can see them even asking for help on major speed improvements or line relocations.
However, I do not understand why they need to do so with just basic maintenence which should be fully covered via transit fees. We should all see the NEC maintained in a good state of repair plus enough left over for incremental improvements in speed so that over time the overall NEC speed and maintence level increases. That has not happened since Amtraks inception.
The only conclusion I can draw is mismanagement of the NEC and Amtrak either not collecting the bill for usage in full each year OR not charging what it costs to keep the NEC in good repair each year. Given that it cannot maintain the NEC in good repair it is sheer buffoonery to state the NEC makes a profit.
We see in a recent news item that NJ Transit withheld payments for using the NEC but was allowed to continue to run trains on the NEC and continue to wear out infrastructure. At the point that NJ Transit refused to pay it's bill, Amtrak should have halted all NJ Transit trains transiting the NEC. It didn't though and I am willing to bet that the recent NJ Transit settlement with Amtrak shortchanges Amtrak on the time value of money due to the delayed payments and only reimburses Amtrak just for the missed payments and does not include any time value of money or interest calculations. If that is happening which I suspect it is abuse of Amtrak pure and simple and the rest of us in the country are paying the bill for that nonsense.
So in my view the NEC Infrastructure should be a seperate and independently managed division of Amtrak not influenced by the Amtrak executives to curry local political favor. As for the Amtrak NYC-Albany trains, they should be under the same cost sharing formula as any other state sponsored Amtrak train and should not have any exemptions. I suspect they have exemptions still from Amtraks founding but never looked into the issue. When Amtrak was founded, NY said it would only support the formation of Amtrak if the NYC to Albany trains were preserved on Amtrak's dime alone or with Amtrak picking up most of the costs. If that agreement is still in place, it is really unfair to the rest of us paying into Amtrak.
Well put, I totally agree with your observations. However high speed rail, as in sustained 150 mph speeds, is not feasible or practical on the existing ROW and should not be pursued. Amtrak management is inept and should be subjected to strict oversight.
Convicted One 243129 Nothing is displayed on the screen? Here is how your post appears to me:
243129 Nothing is displayed on the screen?
Here is how your post appears to me:
243129Never happened. Why?
243129Nothing is displayed on the screen?
Paul of Covington I can't see a thing.
I can't see a thing.
Nothing is displayed on the screen?
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
50 'peeks' and no opinions? Nobody wonders or cares why?
$2.45 billion Federal loan was appropriated in 2016.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s2sVnRw_KYqOe9st5g1-opQd_aYMXZreZTlng9arbLs/edit
Never happened. Why?
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