New York-Chicago

What about using the Route 80 ROW? How are the curves and grades there? You mentioned southern PA being inhospitable, is northern PA better?

Yes, 2nd trick op, that brings back the memories of how mountainous central Pennsylvania is.

As to getting data on the route of I-80, that might be buried in some highway-department database somewhere. Alternatively, one could extract that info from street-location database at http://www.openstreetmap.org/ If you are interested and you have some appropriate programming and mathematical ability, you may want to talk to the site's owners about taking a whack at that problem.

I-80 is what Google Maps finds as the shortest road distance. Mapquest also finds it. Different road-map sites sometimes give different travel routes, but they usually agree on the less ambiguous cases.

In central Pennsylvania, it's very twisty. Near State College and Lock Haven, and likely elsewhere, there are some curves with a radius as low as 2000 ft. This is likely close to whatever minimum is mandated for the Interstates. It's been hard for me to find a figure for that, but I've seen figures for similar systems of about 1000 ft. That's 0.2 miles with a possible limit of 0.1 miles.

Why is that bad? Because of centrifugal acceleration -- the train will try to go straight (Newton's First Law of Motion), and its effort to do so will create a centrifugal acceleration of v^/r (speed = v, radius of curvature = r). Note the square -- going from 60mph to 180mph will increase the centrifugal acceleration by a factor of 3^2 = 9.

For this reason, high-speed routes are usually designed with very low curvature -- the LGV Sud-Est has 4 km / 2.5 mi as its lower radius-of-curvature limit for most of it.

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Turning from horizontal to vertical travel difficulty, mountains have the problem of high grades on their slopes. The usual maximum grades for railroad lines are around 1 - 2%, and mountain trackage sometimes approaches such grades by being very twisty. For high-speed trains, however, one can get to 3.5 - 4% without much loss of speed. Flat roads can get more; the Interstates get up to 6%, and some roads in mountainous areas even more. Much of San Francisco has grades at least 10%.

The Google Maps Terrain feature shows height contours at high enough resolution, and with the help of the Distance Measurement Tool, I found that the mountain Blue Knob, near Altoona and Johnstown, has ruling grades of 40%. I checked on some other mountainous parts, and their grades sometimes approach that value. Much of the twistiness of roads and rail lines there is due to traveling between the mountain ranges and cutting across them at passes. When doing so, it is hard to keep the path's radius of curvature much more than half a mile or so.

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That Distance Measurement Tool I put to work on the routes, finding their great-circle distances

Absolute minimum NYC - Chicago distance: 711 mi - 4h 33m
Highway distance: 806 mi

Avoiding Lakes Michigan and Erie, but otherwise the shortest distance:
NYC - Cleveland - Norwalk OH - Toledo OH - South Bend IN - Gary IN - Hammond IL - Chicago: 735 mi - 4h 43m

The route goes through central PA and roughly parallels I-80. The biggest city on the route is Hazleton, with about 23,000 people.

Will use the same cities west of Cleveland in the other routes.

Southern Pennsylvania:
NYC - Newark NJ - Philadelphia - Lancaster - Harrisburg - Pittsburgh - Youngstown OH - Cleveland: 792 mi - 5h 5m
Highway distance: 883 mi
Amtrak (Pennsylvanian + Capitol Limited): 925 mi

New York Southern Tier:
NYC - Newark NJ - Scranton PA - Binghamton NY - Erie PA - Cleveland: 788 mi - 5h 3m
Highway distance: 890 mi

New York Water Level Route:
NYC - Albany - Schenectady - Utica - Syracuse - Rochester - Buffalo - Hamburg NY - Erie - Cleveland: 915 mi - 5h 52m
Highway distance: 972 mi
Amtrak (Lake Shore Limited): 959 mi

So even in great-circle distances, the Pennsylvania routes are shorter.

I guess the main question is which route offers the greatest average speed over the shortest distance. It would be great for the NE Corridor btw NYC and PHL to support TGV level speeds, but that seems not possible.

Then the question is can the line between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh be re-engineered to support 220MPH speeds? Are there any routes that could support those speeds? Would the old Erie-Lackwanna route be faster because of avoiding the mountains? How much faster? While AGV is the fastest technology available today, perhaps it could be increased to 250MPH in future. If the line is straight for long, long distances then this will be possible (if it is possible), and the average speed could climb.

Looks like I was mistaken about the Southern Tier route once belonging to Nickel Plate. I found this page on that railroad and this one, which indicate that most of its trackage was in Ohio and Indiana, with some of its tracks extending into Illinois and Buffalo, NY.

Instead, the Southern Tier route is mostly on former Erie Lackawanna trackage; I found this page of Erie Lackawanna maps. However, the EL's trackage is almost impossibly twisty for high-speed-rail duty, so the most that one can reasonably expect is to parallel it.

And if one has to parallel it, then why be stuck with some approximation of it?

Returning to the central-Pennsylvania route, State College has a population of 38 thousand people and Bellefonte 6 thousand. Wikipedia lists "Happy Valley" as a nickname for State College.

As to the Philly-Pittsburgh line, the difficult part is between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh; between Philadelphia and Harrisburg should be relatively easy.

what about a couple of tunnels to ease the grades ??

Yes, that's why I mentioned the Lötschberg and Gotthard Base Tunnels earlier in this thread, to compare with some existing and under-construction tunnels.

And in several places, it may be most convenient to construct long viaducts, like what some European and Asian HSR lines have.

I checked on the existing PRR/Amtrak Philadelphia-Harrisburg line, and while the terrain is not especially rugged, the line is nevertheless somewhat twisty. But its trackage near Philly is 4 tracks, and high-speed trains could be run in the center tracks.

Personal political leanings aside, the success of the recent HSR initiative in California, coupled with the prospect of a limited capability for funding of new, and not fully proven, capital-intensive projects within the public sector likely mean that any development of a major, long-distance HSR sytem will take place on the West Coast. I doubt that the nation is ready for a simultaneous test of HSR technology vs. major physical barriers in two locations at once, and no one knows how the issue of of accomodating HSR technology to mountainous routes already occupied by successful, and 100%-privately owned and financed rail systems will be worked out.

But having made that point, It's also worth noting that the East Coast's prime candidate, the former NYC route, lends itself much more readily to a strategy of gradual uprdade toward a "working and limited" rather than a "true" HSR system.

During the 1920's, the Golden Age of rail-dominated long distance travel, the Century often ran in as many as six sections during the summer peak season; the Broadway seldom mustered more than one. The easy grades and lack of a need for helpers more than made up for the extra distance via Albany.

And while attempts to segregate freight traffic would draw the opposition previously cited, the presence of a greater number of intermediate citites offers the prospect of much more short- and medium-distance patronage, also allowing the line to be developed in segments, until it's determined whether a true longer distance service is marketable.

So my advice to advocates of a true East Coast-Midwest service would be to encourage developemnt of a series of corridors and feeders along the route with the strongest prospects of customer support, while the Golden State carries the ball.

I think that 2nd trick op is essentially right - it would be better to develop high-speed corridors radiating out from very big cities, even if they are not initially long enough to meet each other. The proposed lines from Chicago fit the radiating metaphor very well; the proposed NYC lines not as well.

So there's likely to be a Buffalo-Cleveland gap in the initial stages of eastern HSR development.

I've also thought about how to do high-speed service through Philadelphia from NYC to western Pennsylvania. The existing track geometry causes serious problems. In western Philadelphia, there is a rather complicated junction called the Zoo Interlocking, after the nearby Philly Zoo. It is a wye; trains can go from any direction in it to any other direction in it.

To the northeast goes the line to northern Philly, New Jersey, and NYC

To the southeast goes the line to 30th St. Station, south Philly, and Delaware, Maryland, and DC

to the west goes the line to west Philly, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh (western PA)

The problem for trains from NYC to western PA is that they must reverse direction when they stop at 30th St. station. A train going there has to go norhteast-southeast, then southeast-west, or west-southeast, then southeast-northeast at the Zoo Interlocking. I don't know what the Pennsylvania Railroad used to do or what Amtrak now does. Did/do they wye the trains at the Zoo Interlocking? Or did/do they change ends at 30th St. Station? Perhaps by uncoupling a locomotive at one end and coupling one at the other end.

Most high-speed trainsets are double-ended, meaning that they can easily change ends.

But there is a faster alternative. That is to skip 30th St. Station and go directly northeast-west or west-northeast at Zoo. There's a Philadelphia station it could stop at: North Philadelphia. It is a through station, thus requiring no reversal of direction. One can then catch either a SEPTA Regional Rail train or else a Broad Street Subway train to downtown Philly.

For some reason, hardly any Amtrak trains now stop there.

I also checked on Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and both cities' Amtrak stations are through ones.

lpetrich wrote:But there is a faster alternative. That is to skip 30th St. Station and go directly northeast-west or west-northeast at Zoo. There's a Philadelphia station it could stop at: North Philadelphia. It is a through station, thus requiring no reversal of direction. One can then catch either a SEPTA Regional Rail train or else a Broad Street Subway train to downtown Philly.

For some reason, hardly any Amtrak trains now stop there.

Ah, so you wish to use the Pennsylvania Railroad's approach. The Broadway Limited and other east-west trains generally did skip 30th St. Station on their ways to Pittsburgh or New York, or had connecting service (possibly a through coach?) to 30th St. No reason that Amtrak couldn't do the same, except that from what I understand, North Philly is a scary place to a lot of people crime-wise (the town, not the station necessarily), and people seem to prefer direct service through downtown.

There's yet another higher-speed option that people haven't discussed much... the NYC to Niagara Falls, sealed trains through Canada, and the Amtrak-controlled Michigan Central to Chicago. Essentially, a Niagara Rainbow, extended to Chicago. Eventually, NYC - Buffalo will be upgraded to 110 mph running, and the plan is for Amtrak to upgrade the entire Michigan Central to the same standard. Coupled with the current Transport Canada-allowed 100 mph running through Ontario, we've changed the schedule from nearly 19 hours (Lake Shore Limited) to no more than 12 hours. If nothing else, it's an option until Ohio gets off its duff and starts leading the way in HSR.

I hate to be dismissive, but I think there's no point to HSR if taking an airplane is better in terms of time for the overall experience.

I am not sure if I fully agree with the proposition that true HSR can only happen in California and that all other sections of the country have to wait for California.

If NJ, PA, OH, IN and IL would put up some of the cash (in the form of a bond issue), the way CA did, then I think there would be federal help for this effort.

Given that TGV train technology has been pushed to 357MPH, there is a strong possibility that 225MPH will be exceeded, but there is little/no possibility that this will happen on tracks that don't meet the 225MPH standards.

Maybe it has to start in pieces, like NYC to Philadelphia, Philly to Pittsburgh and Chicago to Cleveland. But it should be with this overall intent (LGV standards) in mind. Otherwise we are spending billions to continue service that can not compete with air travel.

Hours could be cut from travel times by having one high speed passenger main accross northern Indiana west of South Bend. Never on time 49 can run all the way from NY on time then get caught up in this downgraded part of our rail system.Then be delayed for hours. I also rode the Pennsylvanian which was used to pick up dead under the hours freight crews here! Also there is alot of slow running around Buffalo. If you got the 20's up to 50's. Hours would be saved. It's also important to remember most people do not ride end point to end point. Most get on and off between. Tilt trains should be used on mountain lines, with curves. They can take curves at double the speed. Without major track improvements.

With regard to Mr. passrail's idea, here's a link to just one more example of the occasional tragic consequences of the general public's woeful ignorance of the operating conditions the rail industry faces every day. I'm sure that more than a few oversheltered suburbanites are saying "Why didn't the train stop?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090709/ap_ ... n_hits_car

When NS and CP heavily upgraded and reopened the former PRR Wilkes-Barre Branch in my old hometown a few years ago, fatalities were predicted, and notices of the revised, higher speeds posted in post offices, community centers, etc. But sadly, the predictions proved correct. When any major increase in speeds is undertaken, too often the locals simply fail to make the connection, not to mention that there are always a few fools who assume that everything is a 15 MPH drag.

Ignorance, simplistic excuses, and the "blame game" are a daily fact of life in our superficial, un-thinking society. And any large, capital-intensive enterprise makes a convenient target; Amtrak and the transit operators, with their unique satus and no private-sector accountabilities, make a near-perfect target.

My point here is simply that the dream of a fast restoration of rail passenger service, HSR or conventional, to a role as a major player in the market isn't that simple, though the simultaneous revival in California of passenger service at medium distance intercity, commuter, and transit levels proves that it can be done. As noted before, the time horizons will be very long, and there will be many bumps in the road(bed).

[quote="NJTRailfan"]You guys are nuts if you think that a NYP-Chicago run will be HSR. First the flight from EWR,JFK and LGA to ORD is only about 2-3 hrs. Most of everyone I know want to fly. They will not waste valauble time on a slow Amtrak Train HSR or not because most Americans don't get enough vacation time to waste on a train otherwise they'd take the train everywhere. Most will fly. The only ones you'll win over are those driving in their cars and SUVs. You will see more regular trains before you see and HSR Trains. Plus the money used can be better spent upgrading tracks, signals, equipment and facilities. Even the Europeans don't have HSR Trains go that far as one poster mentioned. I don't think there are even sleeping car or shower facilities on board.
Let's say this HSR does take off you will not get it to go anywhere near as quick as the plane.
A better idea would be to put HSR on coridoor routes like Detriot-Chicago-St Louis, Intra California runs, Las Vegas-LA and SF and intra Texas along with Atlanta to Miami and Orlando. Anything beyond the HSR Coridoor is wasting money.[/quote]
First of all, most people don't ride end point to end point. They get off at stations in between. Second, Amtrak is carrying record numbers of riders, even with poor service, late trains, middle-of-the-night departures, etc. Third, most people don't fly, they drive. The market to go for is the driving public, not air travelers...and that's a big market. Fourth, sleeping cars are very popular, with some trains having waiting lists during popular times. They are also very, very high revenue for Amtrak. Airplanes can not serve intermediate points along the corridor, never will, can't! The reservations are to keep the long distance trains from overbooking. During the first surge of ridership on Amtrak, people were standing in the aisles. They don't add cars or extra trains. This way they just turn you away once the train has filled. As fuel starts to climb again in price, more of the air service will disappear.

PRSF, that's the concatenated-corridor argument, and I think that it's a legitimate one. But it rules out the central-Pennsylvania and Southern-Tier possibilities, leaving the southern-Pennsylvania and Water-Level ones.

I've worked out what may be the nicest HSR route between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh.

From Harrisburg, cross the Susquehanna River and follow I-76 until one reaches the mountains, a 40-mile trip. This is largely flatland and easy railroading territory.

Then head straight for Pittsburgh on a great-circle route, passing Saxton, Johnstown, and Derry, for a total trip length of 167 mi. The route cuts through the mountains nearly perpendicularly, reducing the amount of tunneling necessary. The worst of the mountains will be about 55 mi, to near Johnstown, though there are still some mountains west of Johnstown.

PassRailSavesFuel wrote:

NJTRailfan wrote:You guys are nuts if you think that a NYP-Chicago run will be HSR. First the flight from EWR,JFK and LGA to ORD is only about 2-3 hrs. Most of everyone I know want to fly. They will not waste valauble time on a slow Amtrak Train HSR or not because most Americans don't get enough vacation time to waste on a train otherwise they'd take the train everywhere. Most will fly. The only ones you'll win over are those driving in their cars and SUVs. You will see more regular trains before you see and HSR Trains. Plus the money used can be better spent upgrading tracks, signals, equipment and facilities. Even the Europeans don't have HSR Trains go that far as one poster mentioned. I don't think there are even sleeping car or shower facilities on board.
Let's say this HSR does take off you will not get it to go anywhere near as quick as the plane.
A better idea would be to put HSR on coridoor routes like Detriot-Chicago-St Louis, Intra California runs, Las Vegas-LA and SF and intra Texas along with Atlanta to Miami and Orlando. Anything beyond the HSR Coridoor is wasting money.

First of all, most people don't ride end point to end point. They get off at stations in between. Second, Amtrak is carrying record numbers of riders, even with poor service, late trains, middle-of-the-night departures, etc. Third, most people don't fly, they drive. The market to go for is the driving public, not air travelers...and that's a big market. Fourth, sleeping cars are very popular, with some trains having waiting lists during popular times. They are also very, very high revenue for Amtrak. Airplanes can not serve intermediate points along the corridor, never will, can't! The reservations are to keep the long distance trains from overbooking. During the first surge of ridership on Amtrak, people were standing in the aisles. They don't add cars or extra trains. This way they just turn you away once the train has filled. As fuel starts to climb again in price, more of the air service will disappear.

I guess my point is that the Chinese are planning HSR from Beijing to Shanghai, which is about 800 miles. They are estimating five hours. Given the new AGV technology carriers passengers at 225MPH, the question becomes how quickly could you run train service from NYC to Chicago? The flight is 2 hours, plus time to get to the airport (1 hour) and getting there early for security (at least one hour). So that's four hours before even arriving and getting bag (another half hour at least) and travel to destination. Now given that it has been possible to to reach 356MPH on an AGV in 2007 (downhill granted), it seems probably that top speed will increase from 225MPH in future, which will mean that under LGV conditions, it would be possible to achieve NYC to Chicago in 4 hours, which would be less than the airport time and would redefine travel east of the Mississippi the way the TGV has redefined travel in France (see NYT article).

This may sound unrealistic in terms of funding, etc., but if the US commits to reducing greenhouse gases, then reducing air travel is a very efficient way to start. Besides this, it gets to the heart of our global competitiveness. If we could get a man to the moon, we can pay the French to get trains from NYC to Chicago in four hours.