Railroad Forums 

  • General US High Speed Rail Discussion

  • General discussion of passenger rail systems not otherwise covered in the specific forums in this category, including high speed rail.
General discussion of passenger rail systems not otherwise covered in the specific forums in this category, including high speed rail.

Moderators: mtuandrew, gprimr1

 #1144554  by electricron
 
Most "Dream" HSR maps in the USA make the same mistakes you did, starting with a macro view instead of a micro view. I suggest HSR should follow historic patterns from the first half of the 19th century. The giant New York Central railroad was formed by mergining many smaller lines, lines connecting cities to the very next cities where there was sufficient trade. For example, a railroad connecting Albany to Syracuse merged with a railroad connecting Rochester to Syracuse, etc. until Buffalo was connected to New York City. All the railroads in the USA were formed similarly.
I strongly believe HSR implementation will follow the same pattern. Presently, one could state Boston to D.C. HSR exists. That L.A. to S.F. will exist soon. How they will ever be connected together will be determined where future HSR is built, and that will be determined by future demand. I believe it is safe to believe Chicago will be included, but that isn't set in stone. Neither is an extension down the East Coast to Florida. It's possible, although unlikely today, that a state with little passenger rail might decide to jump in a BIG way, let's say Tennessee, which decided to connect Bristol with Memphis with 200 mph HSR from scratch following I-40. If that we're to happen, extending the NEC to Bristol chances would increase significantly. I'm not suggesting that will happen, just that it could. And that would change all these "Dream" maps for a coast to coast HSR line following I-40 all the way west to L.A.
 #1144990  by The EGE
 
Seems to have been thrown together by blindly following some maps without much regards to reality. There's no reason the HSR to Maine would follow the Eastern Route when the Haverhill route is just as fast and already established.

Also, at what point did New Haven get renamed Harrisburg?
 #1145068  by mtuandrew
 
The EGE wrote:Seems to have been thrown together by blindly following some maps without much regards to reality. There's no reason the HSR to Maine would follow the Eastern Route when the Haverhill route is just as fast and already established.

Also, at what point did New Haven get renamed Harrisburg?
I agree, the HSR maps really do seem thrown together based on blindly following the Interstate system, without as much regard for where people WANT to travel. Also, "Harrisburg" is actually Hartford if you look more closely, which has come up on a few HSR proposals to use the Harlem line north from New York. Still not sure it makes sense to me, but I'm not a resident of the East Coast so maybe it does.
 #1145155  by electricron
 
The EGE wrote:Seems to have been thrown together by blindly following some maps without much regards to reality.
I think many "Dream" maps follow Interstate Highways because that's where potential right-of-way exists already in public ownership. Even FEC wants to follow a turnpike between Cocoa and Orlando, although I'll admit it doesn't have an Interstate designation assigned to it.
Buying land for a brand new corridor from scratch can be very expensive. Following other highways you run across homes, farms, businesses immediately adjacent to the highway, in a highway having a narrower corridor with less room for tracks.
Last edited by electricron on Sat Feb 09, 2013 11:00 am, edited 2 times in total.
 #1145342  by SouthernRailway
 
That map is nutty nonsense. It gives anti-HSR ammunition to the Wendel Coxes of the world.

We need HSR, but a good "dream" map would include HSR where corridors with frequent service already exist.

Building HSR from Chicago to LA is crazy; the route is mostly served just by one conventional long-distance train, and there isn't enough ridership to support it.

Crazy.
 #1145379  by trainmaster611
 
SouthernRailway wrote:That map is nutty nonsense. It gives anti-HSR ammunition to the Wendel Coxes of the world.

We need HSR, but a good "dream" map would include HSR where corridors with frequent service already exist.

Building HSR from Chicago to LA is crazy; the route is mostly served just by one conventional long-distance train, and there isn't enough ridership to support it.

Crazy.
Absolutely, I wish this map would just die. There's so many logistical problems involved with operating a long route and there's little cost/benefit to be made from building HSR outside corridors.
 #1145668  by lpetrich
 
HSR is most practical between big cities a few hundred mi/km apart. That is why the longer HSR lines connect several such cities. You can find that in China, Japan, Italy, and the emerging Western European network.
Beijing - Shanghai
Beijing - Hong Kong
Aomori - Sendai - Tokyo - Nagoya - Osaka - Hiroshima - Fukuoka - Hakodate
Turin - Milan - Bologna - Florence - Rome - Naples - Bari
Amsterdam - Brussels - Lille - Paris - Lyon - Valence - Nimes - Montpellier - Perpignan - Figueres - Barcelona - Zaragoza - Madrid - Cordoba - Sevilla / Malaga

With that in mind, we can look for plausible long US HSR lines.

The most plausible one is an Atlantic-coast line:
Portland ME - Boston MA - Providence RI - New Haven CT - NY NY - Trenton NJ - Philadelphia PA - Wilmington DE - Baltimore MD - Washington DC - Richmond VA - Raleigh NC - Greensboro NC - Charlotte NC - Greenville SC - Atlanta GA - Savannah GA - Jacksonville FL - Orlando FL - Miami FL

There are some other possible ones east of the Minnesota-Texas line, where even the rural areas are fairly populous. West of that line is much less populous, with big cities much more scattered. The most sensible HSR corridors there are in California-Nevada and the Pacific Northwest; the southern-Oregon mountains divide them.
 #1149109  by Froggie
 
This isn't necessarily counter to your point, but the HSR lines in Japan at least do have stations at much smaller cities [ever hear of Ninohe? ;)], and then run regular vs. express (and super-express) versions of the bullet train. I'm not sure if making stops at smaller stations in the West would actually be feasible, but I wanted to make sure we weren't overstating the size of cities served elsewhere. :)
 #1149148  by djlong
 
It seems to me that the way you do this is to start in populted cities and make tem 'hubs' for a HS network centered around it.

Chicago and New York are perfect starters.

Chicago would have lines branching out to Milwaukee/Madison/Minneapolis, Springfield/St. Louis (sort of in progress already), Indianapolis and Toledo/Cleveland with a spur to Detroit. You build out form there. Like when Indianapolis service grows, it might become a "mini-hub" with lines out to Terre Haute, Louisville and Columbus.

New York already has some of this since you can go to Boston, Philly, Baltimore and D.C. on the same line. Albany would be a good candidate to add and you could treat Harriburg as a 'spur' off of Philly. DC would build out to Richmond. As you build out towards the south, then Atlanta becomes a candidate for a hub with lines to Chattanooga/Nashville, Greenville/Charlotte, Macon-Savannah/Jacksonville, Mobile/New Orleans and finally Birmingham.

Out west you should have started with LA and built spokes to SF, Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego. I know the "nowhere to nowhere" segment of the CA HSR system was the cheapest segment to start with, but that only gave opponents more fuel.

Yes, this looks like paralleling the interstates but the interstates are there because the traffic is there. Because this country no longer "thinks big", we have to think smaller. We can't go in with a grand and glorious plan to have 80% of the population covered by HSR in some absurdly small (for "American't") number of years. What we CAN do is take the most populated places on the map, draw some shorter lines and sell this (among other ways) as reducing air travel congestion. Look what Amtrak did with NY/BOS, NY/DC travel.
 #1149262  by Adirondacker
 
djlong wrote: ... then Atlanta becomes a candidate for a hub with lines to Chattanooga/Nashville, Greenville/Charlotte, Macon-Savannah/Jacksonville, Mobile/New Orleans and finally Birmingham.....

Makes much more sense then Chicago to Denver. Jacksonville is as far from Chicago as Denver is, in nice round numbers, both a bit over 1,000 miles apart. Dallas is closer. So is Boston, just under 1,000 miles.
 #1172541  by joshg1
 
Newspaper columnists once prefaced idle thoughts with, I was just thinking…

About 15 years ago I was listening to someone gripe about getting from Boston to Orlando with the kids, and I got to thinking "How long of a train journey would the kids stand?" I figured 10 hours- a day out for a 10yo. Then I thought about a route, with TGV, Thalys, etc in mind, particularly at CDG and Lyon airports. Imagine a hub and spoke network- go veryfast between few stations, then transfer. Air travel is more of an influence than Amtrak. So my unencumbered by reality HSR network would look like this:

Suburban Boston (495), Hartford area, junction w/ the Hudson line, go around NYC to Newark Airport (so getting into Manhattan would require a transfer- like going to the airport now, and save $$ and/or time), Phila airport, BWI, a junction south of DC, Richmond, Raleigh/Durham, Charlotte, NE of Atlanta, Hartsfield, Jacksonville, Orlando, and on to Miami.

Then BWI to Chicago via Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toledo, maybe South Bend (Hammond?), preferably right into O'Hare. Why Toledo? Because that's where the branch to Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal starts.

And Chicago to DFW and Houston via St Louis and I can't decide- through Baton Rouge for a quick trip to New Orleans?

West coast- Vancouver to San Diego, but I haven't given it much thought. It's so far away.
I don't see any point in spanning the flyover country- why not fly since it's so far between cities? I don't have any air traffic figures but I was thinking about business travel and visiting relatives, not vacation outside of Florida. As far as the gaps in the east go, Toronto- New York is the only one that I think needs plugging. Not that Utica is so hot, but they are both world financial centers. Also thought about sleepers...
 #1172553  by electricron
 
I think 10 hours aboard a true HSR train is much too long to be competitive with the airlines. 5 hours is probably too long to be competitive as well, but it's the number I'll use for my example.

Assuming a realistic operating max speed of 186 mph for economic reasons, what would you consider a valid average speed? Keeping it simple, let's assume the HSR train stops three times every hour for 5 minutes, meaning it loses 15 minutes of traveling every hour, decreasing the time moving by 25%, so the max the average speed could be is 140 mph. With a maximum competitive 5 hour run, that HSR train could travel 700 miles.

Using Boston as the north and east terminal of the NEC:
Boston to Raleigh is 702 miles. You can't get to Florida, Charlotte, Charleston, or Atlanta.
Boston to Cleveland is 639 miles. Boston to Toledo is 752 miles. You can't get to Detroit or Chicago.

Using Chicago as the central hub in the Midwest:
Chicago to Fargo is 640 miles.
Chicago to Topeka is 570 miles. Chicago to Wichita is 735 miles. You can't get to Denver or Albuquerque.
Chicago to Little Rock is 651 miles. Chicago to Texarkana is 792 miles. You can't get to Texas.
Chicago to Memphis is 533 miles. Chicago to Jackson is 740 miles. You can't get to the Gulf coast.
Chicago to Chattanooga is 601 miles. Chicago to Atlanta is 716 miles. You can't get to Atlanta, but it's close.
Chicago to Philadelphia is 760 miles. You can't get to Philadelphia or New York City.
Chicago to D.C. is 710 miles. Very, very close, I'll let this one pass the example because it's the only terminus NEC city that can be reached from Chicago in this example.

Some California city-pairs:
San Diego to Sacramento is 503 miles. San Diego to San Francisco is 501 miles. California is okay.
Los Angeles to Salt Lake City is 688 miles. San Francisco to Salt Lake City is 735 miles. Salt Lake City is about as far inland as you can go.
Los Angeles to Las Cruces is 759 miles. Los Angeles to Albuquerque is 788 miles. You can get to Arizona, but not to a major city in New Mexico or Texas.

The 500 miles distances in California with 4 hours travel time is probably the data point we should be discussing for a valid HSR line, not the 5 hours and 700 miles I have been discussing - which by the way was half what you proposed. Even so, California still hasn't even half financed its HSR plan yet.
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