Is Passenger Rail Doomed?

David Benton wrote:I'm not sure what liberal has to do with hsr . In Britain , i think the only difference between tory and the labour party when it comes to hsr would be the structure , not the amount spent . tory wanting private company ownership , competivie bidding etc , labour probably moving towards govt ownership/ control . But the difference is very slight .

The main reason for building HS2 is that the West Coast Mainline (from London to Birmingham and Manchester) is full. It is not possible to get more trains on to it, even with the most sophisticated signalling systems. Demand for travel continues to rise, even as fares rise. The people protesting live in the low density area of the Chilterns, roughly the equivalent of Westchester county in NY.
Their fears are mostly imaginary. All the main parties are in favour of building it. The MPs for the Chiltern area are of course worried they may lose support if they vote for it, but their votes are not essential.

Whatever goes on in the US the demand to travel by train continues to rise and over-crowding is common on many parts of the system. More carriages are on order for some of the busiest lines, such as the Great Western. In my experience the same is true in all the countries of western Europe. Netherlands, Belgium and France are all busy.

I strongly suspect that there is unsatisfied demand to travel by train in the US butthe politicians are still unaware of it.

(About four years ago I wished to make a day trip to Fort Lauderdale from Winterhaven. That would have been possible when there were three trains a day on that line, but after the withdrawal of one of them the journey was no longer possible. So, things are going backwards in the US. I suspect the underlying reason is daft economic theory, perhaps derived from Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman.)

george matthews wrote:I strongly suspect that there is unsatisfied demand to travel by train in the US but the politicians are still unaware of it.

Comparisons between the USA and the UK and/or Europe have the problem that population densities are a lot higher in both the UK and Europe than in the USA. Trains are mainly practical when you have enough people wanting to go from point A to point B (or along the line between them) and willing to spend the time it takes to go by ground transportation to make running a rail line between them worth it. Those conditions are met for enough of Europe and the southern part of Britain to make it worth having a rail network with frequent service everywhere, simply because there are so many people everywhere that it doesn't matter which points A and B you choose, there are going to be a lot of people wanting to go from one to the other. Those conditions aren't met in the USA except for the NEC and the area around certain cities.

I don't think passenger rail in the USA is doomed. But I don't believe it will ever play the same role in the USA that it does in Europe or Japan.

amm in ny wrote:I don't think passenger rail in the USA is doomed. But I don't believe it will ever play the same role in the USA that it does in Europe or Japan.

I will agree with you on that. Let's put some realistic prospective on areas and populations....
Japan population =128 Million ; Area = 145,925 sq mi; Density = 877/sq mi
Europe (Western Europe political*) population = 412 Million; Area = 1,506,536 sq mi; Density = 279/sq mi
USA (Lower 48 states**) population = 279 Million; Area = 3,119,884 sq mi; Density = 89/sq mi
*Note: Includes Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy , Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom
**Note: That doesn't include Hawaii and Alaska population and acreage.

Take some time to visit this web page with a map showing the differences in sizes between Europe and the USA.
http://goeurope.about.com/od/europeanma ... on-map.htm
It's unrealistic to believe in a functioning HSR lines stretching from the USA West Coast to the East Coast. The lower 48 USA population density is a third of Western Europe, and a tenth of Japan. Imagine how much worse these numbers would get if I included Alaska into the mix?
Additionally, how far apart are the distances between the various nations largest cities?
London to Birmingham = 101 miles
Berlin to Hamburg = 181 miles
Paris to Lyon= 299 miles
Madrid to Barcelona = 390 miles
Rome to Milan = 423 miles
New York to Los Angeles = 2790 miles
Yes, the two largest American cities are multiple times further apart than between European national cities. Golly, London to Athens is just 1926 miles. Where American cities are packed much closer together, our high speed Acela trains already run. Could they be faster, yes. Could they be much faster, no. Is the NEC overcrowded, no.
I don't think it's realistic to expect passenger trains to compete with airlines at these far longer travel distances seen in America. Therefore, a greater interest and patronage for domestic air travel in America should be expected.

It would be rather more useful to compare the areas actually pegged for high speed rail in the states rather than including empty areas like Montana. California, for instance, is about the size and density of Spain. It's also worth noting that European Russia has a rather robust passenger rail network, yet has about one-tenth the US' population density.

For comparison's sake, the NEC states, commonwealths and districts (I'm including Virginia) have a total area of 184,390 square miles, a population of 67,698,809 (US Census Bureau 2011 est.), and a density of 367 people/sq mi. Keep in mind that this figure also includes the outstate sections of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia which are still fairly poorly served by rail.

An argument could also be made for California (163,696 sq mi, 37,691,912 inhabitants, density of 230 people/sq mi), along with the Texas triangle and parts of the midwest, the south, and the Pacific Northwest (for which it would be best to compare county-by-county figures) - hence why supplemental service exists in most of those places. That certainly doesn't sound like passenger rail has no future in this country, though I admit that the long-distance trains are as much for political expediency as for connectivity and value of service.

Paulus Magnus wrote:It would be rather more useful to compare the areas actually pegged for high speed rail in the states rather than including empty areas like Montana. California, for instance, is about the size and density of Spain. It's also worth noting that European Russia has a rather robust passenger rail network, yet has about one-tenth the US' population density.

True. But once you start limiting HSR trains to between cities within the same states, it's really not a national HSR anymore. Sure, California has higher densities that could support HSR. But, what percentage of businessmen based in Los Angeles need to visit San Francisco, vs needing to visit Chicago, New York, Atlanta, or Washington D.C.? How many vacationers from Los Angeles want to visit San Francisco, vs all the other cities in all the other states?
What I'm suggesting is that flying will always have far greater patronage than riding on trains for most Californians traveling intercity within the USA. Trains will always be limited as the preferred mode for travel at shorter distances. How many Englishmen take the train from London to Athens vs flying, or to any other city at these far longer distances?

amm in ny wrote:

george matthews wrote:I strongly suspect that there is unsatisfied demand to travel by train in the US but the politicians are still unaware of it.

Comparisons between the USA and the UK and/or Europe have the problem that population densities are a lot higher in both the UK and Europe than in the USA. Trains are mainly practical when you have enough people wanting to go from point A to point B (or along the line between them) and willing to spend the time it takes to go by ground transportation to make running a rail line between them worth it. Those conditions are met for enough of Europe and the southern part of Britain to make it worth having a rail network with frequent service everywhere, simply because there are so many people everywhere that it doesn't matter which points A and B you choose, there are going to be a lot of people wanting to go from one to the other. Those conditions aren't met in the USA except for the NEC and the area around certain cities.

I don't think passenger rail in the USA is doomed. But I don't believe it will ever play the same role in the USA that it does in Europe or Japan

By that logic, SJ's X2000 (Sweden) should not be running at all, since the average population density of that country is 54 people per square mile and the X2000 has towns of between 14,000 and 50,000 inhabitants as some of its endpoint destinations.

Also, that logic dictates that interstate highways should be restricted to the eastern and western seaboard and ought not crisscross the entire contiguous USA—cities ought to be connected with the lowest-possible-density roads between cities (preferably two-lane highways, with minimal grade and curvature easement) when these roads traverse low-density areas.

electricron wrote:

Paulus Magnus wrote:It would be rather more useful to compare the areas actually pegged for high speed rail in the states rather than including empty areas like Montana. California, for instance, is about the size and density of Spain. It's also worth noting that European Russia has a rather robust passenger rail network, yet has about one-tenth the US' population density.

True. But once you start limiting HSR trains to between cities within the same states, it's really not a national HSR anymore.

I wasn't referring to just the same states, see Midwest HSR or the NEC for instance. But a transcontinental HSR system is just plain silly and nobody of any import whatsoever is proposing such

Sure, California has higher densities that could support HSR. But, what percentage of businessmen based in Los Angeles need to visit San Francisco, vs needing to visit Chicago, New York, Atlanta, or Washington D.C.? How many vacationers from Los Angeles want to visit San Francisco, vs all the other cities in all the other states?

Actually it's a fairly high percentage. Per capita California intrastate air travel is about three times that of travel in the BOS-WAS region and San Francisco Bay Area to LA Basin is the single largest air travel market in the country.

What I'm suggesting is that flying will always have far greater patronage than riding on trains for most Californians traveling intercity within the USA. Trains will always be limited as the preferred mode for travel at shorter distances. How many Englishmen take the train from London to Athens vs flying, or to any other city at these far longer distances?

Ok? And what in the world does that actually have to do with HSR or American passenger rail in general?

The key thing to remember about High Speed rail is not that you're connecting A to G, you're connecting A to B to C to D to E to F to G. For instance, a 220mph High Speed train would take about 9 hours to go Chicago to Miami. But when you look at the segments, you see that it's only about 1:40 from Chicago to St. Louis downtown to downtown, or about 3:20 from St. Louis to Atlanta, and about 1:40 from Nashville to Atlanta. Nonstop flight times along those city pairs are 1:05, 1:40, and 1:05, but that doesn't include getting from the airport to the destination which for business travelers at least, is likely to be downtown, or may require transiting downtown from the airport to reach an outlying destination on the other side of the metro area. It also doesn't factor in productivity time. On a 1:05 flight, there may only be 20-30 minutes of ability to use electronics (but still no cellphones!) or open tray tables to do paperwork, the rest is lost to departure and takeoff and moving about the terminal. For a comparable trip via HSR on say STL-CHI, most of that 1:40 can be used to be productive, with only a very small percentage lost to actually getting to the destination (I'm not including getting to the airport/train station since given our suburban-oriented community, actually reaching the station or airport may be equivalent).

Paulus Magnus wrote:Per capita California intrastate air travel is about three times that of travel in the BOS-WAS region and San Francisco Bay Area to LA Basin is the single largest air travel market in the country.

You still didn't answer my question, what's the percentage of all flights from LA that go to San Francisco?
LAX
Busiest International Routes from Los Angeles LAX(2009–2010)
Rank Airport Passengers
1 Tokyo (Narita), Japan 1,227,464
2 London (Heathrow), United Kingdom 1,189,309
3 Sydney, Australia 998,678
4 Taipei (Taoyuan), Taiwan 947,535
5 Seoul (Incheon), South Korea 896,389
6 Guadalajara, Mexico 769,254
7 Vancouver, Canada 686,731
8 Mexico City, Mexico 647,745
9 Paris (Charles de Gaulle), France 552,709
10 Auckland, New Zealand 528,625
11 Hong Kong 457,190
12 San José del Cabo, Mexico 417,497
13 Toronto (Pearson), Canada 337,692
14 San Salvador, El Salvador 325,186
15 Papeete, French Polynesia 307,267
16 Frankfurt, Germany 303,752
17 Brisbane, Australia 275,651
18 Melbourne, Australia 240,225
19 Amsterdam, the Netherlands 205,874
20 Puerto Vallarta, Mexico 205,648
Busiest Domestic Routes from Los Angeles (January 2011 – December 2011)
Rank Airport Passengers
1 San Francisco, California 1,587,000
2 New York (JFK), New York 1,525,000
3 Chicago (O'Hare), Illinois 1,154,000
4 Las Vegas, Nevada 1,125,000
5 Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas 1,055,000
6 Honolulu, Hawaii 973,000
7 Denver, Colorado 938,000
8 Atlanta, Georgia 904,000
9 Seattle, Washington 763,000
10 Phoenix, Arizona 726,000
Note: Only one of these top 30 destinations from LAX would actually compete with CHSR?
That's right, 1,587,000 passengers out of a total of 61,862,052 passengers, around 2.5%
Data source = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angele ... al_Airport

But LAX isn't the only airport serving LA metro area. Fine, here's the others.....
Bob Hope Airport
Top ten busiest domestic routes out of BUR
(June 2010 - May 2011)
Rank City Passengers
*1 Oakland, CA 395,000
2 Las Vegas, NV 355,000 JetBlue, Southwest
3 Phoenix, AZ 316,000 Southwest, US
*4 Sacramento, CA 221,000 Southwest
*5 San Jose, CA 213,000 Southwest
6 Dallas-Fort Worth, TX 151,000 American
7 Seattle, WA 136,000 Alaska
8 New York, NY (JFK) 108,000 JetBlue
*9 San Francisco, CA 67,000 United
10 Portland, OR 65,000
CHSR collects 896,000 more passengers, out of a total of 5,689,291 passengers. That's 15.7% for BUR.

John Wayne Airport
Busiest Domestic Routes from SNA (November 2010 - October 2011)
Rank City Passengers Carriers
1 Phoenix, Arizona 497,000
2 Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas 429,000
3 Denver, Colorado 424,000
*4 San Francisco, California 334,000
5 Seattle, Washington 304,000
6 Chicago, Illinois (ORD) 267,000
*7 San Jose, California 244,000
*8 Oakland, California 238,000
9 Las Vegas, NV 229,000
*10 Sacramento, CA 204,000
CHSR collects 1,020,000 more passengers, out of a total of almost 9 Million passengers. That's 11.3% for SNA.

Long Beach Airport
Top 10 domestic destinations for LGB (December 2010 - November 2011)
Rank City Passengers
1 Las Vegas, Nevada 215,000
2 Salt Lake City, Utah 204,000
3 Seattle, Washington 172,000
*4 Oakland, California 138,000
*5 San Francisco, California 137,000
6 Portland, Oregon 97,000
7 Phoenix, Arizona 96,000
8 New York, New York 88,000
*9 Sacramento, California 85,000
10 Washington, D.C. 67,000
CHSR collects 360,000 more passengers, out of a total of 3,006,630 passengers. That's 12% for LGB.

Ontario International Airport
Busiest domestic routes from Ontario ONT(November 2010-October 2011)
Rank Airport Passengers
1. Phoenix, Arizona 400,000
*2. Oakland, California 240,000
*3. Sacramento, California 220,000
4. Las Vegas, Nevada 210,000
5. Denver, Colorado 197,000
6. Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas 183,000
7 Seattle, Washington 137,000
*8 San Jose, California 136,000
9 Houston, Texas (IAH) 135,000
10 Salt Lake City, Utah 90,000
CHSR collects 596,000 more passengers, out of a total of 4,812,006 passengers. That's 12.3% for ONT.

Remember, I'm including all the CHSR destinations listed in the top 10 destinations from the LA airports, not just those heading for San Francisco. The grand total for CHSR destinations from LA is 4,459,000. The grand total of all Los Angeles airports is 84,369,979. That's just 5.2%........

Almost 95% of Los Angeles passengers are flying to destinations outside the State of California.

What in the world is the relevancy of other destination travel by air, seriously?

At least its probably the only time new zealand wil be mentioned in a hsr forum ,lol .

Paulus Magnus wrote:What in the world is the relevancy of other destination travel by air, seriously?

It's my response to the suggestion that the LA to SF air route has the highest demand of all air routes in America. While it is the highest patronage air route in America, it's not by much, and it's also just 5% or so of all air routes from LA. You can now assess this truth relative to all other air routes because you have some data for comparison and not just a single statement.
LA to NY is a very close second. LA to Chicago isn't shabby either. Do their numbers support building a HSR line between LA and them too? Or does the reality of the distances involve come into play with them?
This thread isn't about CHSR specifically. The point I'm trying to make is that the two and three largest metros in America, gathering significant shares of the domestic intercity travel market in America, are really too far apart to be bridged by HSR. A far greater share of intercity trips within America are significantly longer than what you'll find in Japan or Europe. Therefore; my main argument remains as I mentioned earlier; airplanes will always be the preferred means of intercity travel in America.
I'm in no way suggesting the trains can't their part with shorter trips, but I am suggesting that planes will always be preferred for the medium and longer hops.

I decided to look for some numbers.

Checking on this Amtrak report (PDF), I find that Amtrak has had an impressive increase in ridership over the last decade (FY00 - FY11):

Total: 20.9m - 30.2m - 44%
Northeast Corridor: 8.4m - 10.9m - 30%
Other Regional Corridors: 8.6m - 14.8m - 72%
Long-Distance: 4.0m - 4.5m - 12%

This suggests that Amtrak would do well by developing regional corridors, especially state-supported ones.

Amtrak isn't exactly collapsing, but its political support isn't that good. There are many people who feel that passenger rail is like the male teat, neither very useful nor very ornamental, to use what's supposedly 19th cy. rail baron James J. Hill's words.

One can see that in which states have developed regional corridors and which ones have not. Illinois and Michigan have, but nearby Indiana and Ohio have not, despite similar distances and city populations. Vermont and Maine have, but New Hampshire has not, despite being sandwiched in between. Etc. Like urban-rail development, this seems almost like political whim.

amtrakowitz wrote: [long quote of amm's post removed]

By that logic, SJ's X2000 (Sweden) should not be running at all, since the average population density of that country is 54 people per square mile and the X2000 has towns of between 14,000 and 50,000 inhabitants as some of its endpoint destinations.

Average population density would only be meaningfull if Sweden's population -- and its rail network -- were uniformly distributed over its entire area.

A look at Wikipedia shows that most of Sweden's population is in the southern 1/3 or 1/4, and most of it is on an axis running from Stockholm to Go"teborg and on down to the southern tip. As is most of the rail network. In this area, the density is over 200 people per square km (500 / mi^2).
The article didn't specifically mention X2000, but the 200 km/hr. segments are (not surprisingly) only in this area.

Similar considerations apply to the NEC -- the relevant density is the area within, say, 50 -75 miles of the line, which leaves out most of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and much of Massachussetts and Maryland. And this area includes the most densly populated parts of those states.

BTW, my comment wasn't intended to prove anything. It was intended to rebut the "Europe can do it, why can't the USA?" argument. Maybe the USA can make rail passenger service play a larger role than it does not, but comparisons with Europe don't prove it.

amtrakowitz wrote:Also, that logic dictates that interstate highways should be restricted to the eastern and western seaboard and ought not crisscross the entire contiguous USA—cities ought to be connected with the lowest-possible-density roads between cities (preferably two-lane highways, with minimal grade and curvature easement) when these roads traverse low-density areas.

Hardly.

The ways roads are operated and used are so different from passenger railways that you really need to do the analysis from scratch.

That said, roads in truly remote areas (e.g., Northern Alaska) do tend to be two-lane highways with simple intersections, and speed limited mostly by the drivers' sense of what is safe.