Being from India (where the rail system is awesome, even though its not high speed), having extensive traveling experience in Europe and an avid hater of driving, I love the fact that something is happening in this area in US. When I came to US, I was surprised to see the only modes of traveling being driving or flying. My friends told me its because the auto lobbying in US is so powerful that they don't let any public transportation system to develop. I believed them. I am not saying it is true but I cannot figure out a reason why public transportation system across US sucks and even though this venture is highly cost intensive, IMO, it will be well worth it. Also, I dont understand people who prefer driving 8 hours, rather than sitting in a train, stress free and can actually use their time to work/read/socialize.
I far prefer driving to riding a train (or flying, except for the first and last 20 minutes). Sitting in a train is not stress-free, for one thing. There are all these people around you, who you can't just ignore completely, and yet with whom you are not friends. It's like being at a party where you know no one, and parties are hard enough to deal with even if you know everyone at them.
Secondly, there's not really enough room to work unless you can do your work on a phone; even if there were enough room for a decent-sized laptop between you and the seat in front, you'd still have to put everything away and get up whenever the people away from the aisle wanted out, which is every 15 minutes or so, seemingly. This problem also exists for reading.
Also, when you're driving, there's always the possibility of stopping at something that interests you, or taking a different route. You are in control of your own movement, in a way that you aren't at all in a train, where you can't realistically choose to do something differently. Even a comfortable jail is still jail (though Amtrak, at least, is no more comfortable than business-class flying), and while you might choose to put yourself in a traveling jail for 12 hours, the lack of freedom to choose differently halfway through will, of course, wear on you.
I took a train when I moved from Alabama to the DC metro area last year, and I quickly realized I should have flown. There was absolutely nothing to recommend the experience over flying, which is very similar, except much shorter and somewhat cheaper (and Amtrak, the train I took, is subsidized, so a train that actually reflected its true cost in the ticket price would be, at current standards, an economy-class experience with a luxury-class price).
> Sitting in a train is not stress-free, for one thing.
It's the closest I've ever known to stress-free transportation unless you include limousines.
> here are all these people around you, who you can't just ignore completely
Why can't you? You can't fart in public cause that's bad education, but take a book or a laptop, a PMP and a pair of earbuds and you're off. You can also sleep, many do here in the early trains.
> It's like being at a party where you know no one, and parties are hard enough to deal with even if you know everyone at them.
Uh no it's not, at a party you're supposed to talk to people and socialize. In a train you're supposed to do your own stuff and not bother other travelers.
> if there were enough room for a decent-sized laptop between you and the seat in front
There is. In France there are even the center/4 places tables with even more room. And that's 2nd class.
> you'd still have to put everything away
Put what away? Lift your laptop using one hand and get out.
> whenever the people away from the aisle wanted out
In France's TGV, there's one window seat and one aisle seat. Period. And if you use reservations and are early enough you can pick your seat. I pretty much always get window seat on the upper deck.
> Also, when you're driving, there's always the possibility of stopping at something that interests you, or taking a different route.
You're in a train to go from point A to point B, not to visit Manitoulin Island. And the different route complaint is nonsensical.
> and while you might choose to put yourself in a traveling jail for 12 hours
There is no planned US route even remotely reaching 12h. In a current-generation HST, 12h would be more than 2000 miles in a single trip. That's simply not part of the operational range.
> I took a train when I moved from Alabama to the DC metro area last year
Care = none. We're talking high-speed rail here, not 60 years old trainsets on shit lines.
There is no planned US route even remotely reaching 12h.
Last year's current route from Atlanta, GA to Washington, DC was 13 hours.
> I took a train when I moved from Alabama to the DC metro area last year
Care = none. We're talking high-speed rail here, not 60 years old trainsets on shit lines.
The commenter I replied to had said: "Being from India (where the rail system is awesome, even though its not high speed [...]", so we were talking non-high-speed for the purposes of this comparison of how he prefers rail to driving, and I prefer driving to rail. However, you're certainly under no obligation to care. :)
Uh no it's not, at a party you're supposed to talk to people and socialize. In a train you're supposed to do your own stuff and not bother other travelers.
Again, "Also, I dont understand people who prefer driving 8 hours, rather than sitting in a train, stress free and can actually use their time to work/read/socialize", you can see I was responding to ujjwalg, who'd offered up his experience with India's non-high-speed, socializing-appropriate trains. :)
Anyway, it sounds like you're talking about commuting, which I do take a train for, and which I'd be happy to take high-speed rail for, if it was easy to do. I don't mind being on a train for 30 minutes when I have someplace to be. Actually taking hours-long trips by train, however, is not my thing, especially since anyplace a train serves is likely to be served by plane as well, more quickly.
The commenter I replied to had said: "Being from India (where the rail system is awesome, even though its not high speed [...]", so we were talking non-high-speed for the purposes of this comparison of how he prefers rail to driving, and I prefer driving to rail. However, you're certainly under no obligation to care. :)
The distances are much shorter in India. Moreover, most of the trains have bunks you can sleep on and are overnight trains. If you buy second class ticket between big metros, you are even served dinner and breakfast and all just for $30. Now you can chose between driving and riding a train.
It's a huge mistake to judge all trains by Amtrak's current condition. It's quite awful compared to modern trains in other parts of the world. You'd be surprised at how smooth and quiet modern trains can be, and that combined with wifi, nice seating and convenient stations makes it a very pleasant way to travel.
In my limited experience with Amtrak (admittedly limited to the Capitol Corridor line to Sacramento), there's no real problem with the comfort and quietness of the train -- the seats are comfortable, the trains aren't crowded, the staff are reasonably pleasant, and it's no slower than driving. I've never noticed the noise as a problem either. Combine all that with the pleasant view of the Bay on the Richmond-Martinez stretch and it's a really pleasant way to travel.
The only problems are (a) that they're often late, and (b) that even with the bridge toll and $4 gas it's cheaper to drive my own gas-hogging car to Sac than to catch the train.
I haven't been on the Capitol Corridor line and don't know if they use newer, nicer trains than most of Amtrak.
I've been on all of the cross country lines and a number of the stretches in the east, which almost exclusively use Superliner cars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliner_(railcar) and similar single-level coach cars. The difference between these and modern trains is like night and day. The Superliners are noisy and bumpy, with the classic "ka-clump, ka-clump" throughout the journey, and the interiors are cramped and, frequently, colored a drab, stained brown. In contrast, modern trains feel like they are gliding on the tracks with almost no sound (no "ka-clump") and tend to be roomy and comfortable.
Indeed, Amtrak's service is horrible, too. The worst case I experienced was paying for a sleeper car for an overnight trip, only to be told as we were being herded onto a single level coach that the sleeper car was broken and we were being downgraded.
This seems completely backwards to me --- I've gotten real work done every time I've ridden the Acela, and I can't think of a single line of code I've ever written on a plane.
I am with you; I ride the northeast corridor frequently (both on the Acela and the regular regionals) and I've gotten hundreds of hours of work done while clanking along at (average) 45MPH.
The key advantages Amtrak has over a plane, in terms of getting work done:
* Every seat has a 120VAC outlet
* There's no cellphone prohibition
Now the latter can be somewhat obnoxious if you end up in a car of people who spend the whole trip yelling into their phones, but I always sit in the "Quiet Car," if one exists, to prevent this. And then I tether my phone to my laptop to use its internet connection, and I can do all my work from the train. (The connection drops going through the Hudson River tunnels and in a few other places, but in general there's coverage all the way down.)
A 6-hour train trip is for me almost always more productive than a (theoretically) 1.5-hour plane flight, because I can spend virtually all of the train trip working, and not screwing around waiting in line, going through security, etc. The way I normally schedule it, flying requires me to give up a half-day of work, while I'll put in a regular day's work from the train.
The equipment is outdated (and has a certain "Amtrak aroma" to it that makes me want to shower immediately afterwards) and it would be great if that 6-hour train trip only took 3 or 4, but they've already got the airlines beat along the NEC, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, my own trip was stressful, cramped, and otherwise uncomfortable, and I wouldn't bother to repeat it. If I really needed to spend that time coding and had no option but to do it while en route, I'd much rather spend it mostly in an airport. I've never actually done any coding while on a train or a plane, though I have while riding shotgun in a car across the West, while my wife-at-the-time drove. :)
I wrote the initial version of Hecl on the train going back and forth between Rome and Padova. Trains are great for working, and are so much more relaxing than flying around.
Working conditions can be very different. Sometimes you can get some sort of business class, where pretty much everything is geared toward laptop use: power outlets, wireless, seating, tables and so on. But even without it, I prefer by far to read a book then to drive. The "awkwardness" factor is something you can get used to pretty fast.
There was a segment on NPR about this last weekend, centering on a husband/wife couple that lived in Belgium and commuted to Paris via high speed rail; 1.5 hours each direction made it feasible for them to work in a major metro without having to move there. So that's good.
On the other hand, the investment required to pull that off is staggering. Europe taxes heavily to pay for the infrastructure. The people involved in that infrastructure were interviewed saying to expect it to take 20-30 years to build.
Then on the other hand, we got the to moon and built the interstate highway system.
Then on the other hand, it's easier to link Brussels to Paris than it is to link Chicago to Houston.
the investment required to pull that off is staggering. Europe taxes heavily to pay for the infrastructure.
The problem is, we (America) have been neglecting our infrastructure for far too long. As a country, we've been doing little more than keeping our existing infrastructure in working condition, and only upgrading where it was absolutely necessary. We should have been incrementally upgrading our infrastructure over the past 50 years, but we haven't been.
I always find it staggering how location locked much of the US population is. Finding middle aged people who have never been more than 20 miles from where they were born simply floors me. We are in desperate need of affordable mass transportation, and high-speed rail seems to be the best way to achieve that.
If the current administration can at least start the upgrades to our Transportation and Communication infrastructure that we need, at least enough to catch up to the rest of the industrialized world, I will consider it a massive success.
Not to be a dick, but I am hoping you can save me time. I have heard the assertion that Americans are more land locked than other (well, European) countries, but I have never seen anything more than anecdotes. Does anyone actually know of any serious comparisons?
It seems to me that a similar anecdote would be the "American's own more cars than any other group and are ridiculously mobile."
"American's own more cars than any other group and are ridiculously mobile."
I don't have any hard, general statistics, but back in high school we did a rather informal survey, with a relatively small sample size (~50 students). Out of them roughly 80% had never left the state (Florida), of those that had, only 8% had left the country. There were also 20% of the students had never been outside of the county we were in (the ~20 miles from home I mentioned).
It certainly seems to me an inverse relationship between car ownership and mobility (on a large scale). While a car allows you massive mobility in a relatively short range, you have to be actively driving and paying attention the entire time, making it much harder to travel long distances. With mass transportation (train, place, bus, etc) you can get on and fall asleep for all that it matters to your mobility.
The lack of mass/public transportation seems to be the biggest hindrance to US mobility. Your choices are largely: Fly or Drive. If you Fly, you have to put up with the usual litany of plane complaints, and then you have to rent a vehicle when you arrive at your destination, due to the lack of reasonably accessible public transportation in most areas. If you choose to drive, getting anywhere will usually take several days, and puts a massive amount of wear on your car and the driver. I'm not sure if you've ever gone on a sizable road trip, but two years ago I did 5k miles of driving for a family vacation. I have to tell you, it was rough. Long distance driving is vastly different from driving around the city, and much more difficult on the driver.
But isn't the issue regarding high speed rail service about commuting? That is what I meant by mobility and where I believe the claimed benefits lie. People can live in a comparatively remote area while still being employed in a regional city -- the benefit being they might have a more suitable employer.
If that is the case, I would hope to see reasonable evidence showing that high-speed commuter trains would increase the commuter mobility from the level it is at now or possibly raise productivity (e.g. the not actively driving issue).
I never thought of the High Speed Rail as a commuter exclusive option. While that may be the intent, looking at the routes that have been brought up so far I was under the impression that this was intended as a general attempt to make the US more interconnected.
That said, most of the routes are not places that are terribly feasible to commute back and forth to by car. Just eyeballing the routes, most of them look to be in the 3-4 hour highway driving time. Like its been mentioned elsewhere, if they can do highway travel times, that becomes a feasible replacement for the short commuter flights. If they can run at a reasonably high speed, rather than having to slow down all the time (like the existing high speed rail in the US, which rarely reaches highway speed) it may become reasonable as a daily commute.
There are several people I work with (in Tampa, not a huge metro area at all, but with no real public transportation) who have close to hour long driving commutes. If you can do that and live ~100 miles away on the high speed rail, that would greatly increase the reasonable mobility for commuting.
The main problem with high speed rail in California is that LA isn't really a city, it's just a vast populated basin. You might get dropped at a station called "Los Angeles", but you're probably still an hour's drive from whatever part of Los Angeles you want to be in. Once you've gone through the hassle of renting a car at the station and driving to where you want to be, you might as well have driven all the way from San Francisco.
I vaguely recall that LA was served by train when it was first built -- I mean, internally for local commuting purposes. My understanding is that LA was built so spread out because it is in the desert and it wasn't economically feasible to develop it without doing huge swaths at a time because of the cost of infrastructure required to pipe in water from elsewhere.
I went to UC-Riverside in the LA basin for 8 weeks. I took the bus down from the SF Bay area and lived without a car the first four weeks. I brought my car the second four weeks. Local bus service was surprisingly good. The area I lived for 8 weeks was surprisingly pedestrian-friendly (except for the small detail that I was threatening to go into anaphylactic shock every time I left the building thanks to the smog). The city in the SF Bay area where I lived for five years or so also had better local bus service and was more pedestrian friendly than many places I have lived. My recollection is that SF Bay is one of the few places in the US where population densities are similar to parts of Europe. If I recall correctly, it also has one of the more heavily used Amtrak lines.
I think a lot of folks who are used to driving simply lack the skills and mindset to cope effectively without a car. So they routinely go back to their default and think the solution is either bring your own car or rent one. That isn't necessarily the case.
I would refer the high-speed-rail types to James Kunstler's brilliant post 'financial crisis called off' where he reminds us...
We blather about high speed rail, but you can't even get from Cleveland to Cincinnati on a regular train - and what's more amazing, nobody is really interested in making this happen. All we really care about is finding some miracle method to keep all the cars running.
It seems odd you would be able to go from Boston to Houston on all high-speed but not New York to Chicago. I think they should add that Buffalo to Cleveland rout to the high-speed list. Of course it probably has to do with the condition of the existing rails and the terrain.
Southern senators need their pork. Logically the south is not the best place to put rail because they do not have the large population centers, but politically there has to be just as much rail in the south as in the northeast or the southern congresspeople will destroy any legislation.
This is one of the reasons Amtrak has been losing money, btw.
The other reasons being that they provide a mostly terrible service that is impractical for routine use to an uninteresting market with an ineffective pricing scheme. But yeah, pork is bad too.
This statement confuses me. Looking at that map, it looks like most of the rail is being put in places that could most use it. There are a few confusing places (like the Buffalo-Cleveland being left out), but for the most part it seems to be linking the major city centers for those areas together. I do wonder about that little Florida circuit, especially why it isn't being connected to the rest of the huge Houston->All of the East coast circuit. I also wonder why Kentucky/Tennessee are left out.
"Amtrak operates corridor routes (covering distances under 400 miles) and long-distance routes (over 400 miles in length)...Virtually all of Amtrak's 44 or so routes lose money but the long-distance routes lose the most...
In congressional testimony the DOT IG stated that long-distance trains accounted for only 15% of total inter-city ridership.."
The South does have large population centers, it's just that they're rather far apart. The northeast, maybe extending into Chicago, is the one and only part of the US where a high-speed rail network would make sense, but it's silly to expect a government to do things just because they make sense.
There's really only one place on the map that doesn't make sense for rail, and that's the inner northwest (bounded by but not including Wichita, Sioux Falls, Spokane, and SLC). Everywhere else on the map there are hugely valuable cliques.
The fully connected graph is a red herring. Until we properly invest in monorail technology (bona-fide electrified six-car monorail!), trains will never be the right way to get from NYC to LA.
But there is a whole universe of people I could hire --- people I can name right now --- if STL and MSP were wired to Chicago metro via high-speed rail. There are also clients who I could do 2-3x more work at, because we could staff on-site.
> The fully connected graph is a red herring. Until we properly invest in monorail technology
Don't you mean maglev rather than monorail? Monorails aren't especially fast.
And even with expensive maglev techs, NYC to LA by train will still be long and painful. I don't expect that kind of travels to be worth doing by train (rather than plane) until we manage transcontinental vacuum-pressurized maglev tunnels.
More likely, lots of people stuck in dead-end manufacturing jobs will have access to better careers in major/minor S/E metro areas, and a lot more locations in the S/E will become viable locations for business expansion, like new call centers, data centers, modern industrial, etc.
The North-East Corridor (NEC) is basically our already-existing high speed train system: Amtrak's Acela. The problem is that it was a regular speed train system before that (and still is) and although some upgrades were made to the existing railbeds, their locations, slopes, and curves can't be changed much because of the population density throughout the region. That slows the trains down, and prevents real high speed trains in one of the US regions where it makes the most economic sense to have them. Business and government travel between Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington is HUGE, and the little jumper flights between these cities are lousy.
Repeated from downthread, but I think this is a red herring. NYC->BOS Acela doesn't need to be faster than a car to be tied with JetBlue for most effective way to get between those two cities. Cars are, in fact, a very effective way to get between point A and B when A->B < 4 hours. They're just a pain in the ass, and environmentally unsound.
That, and with the goals of the system: it could be more beneficial to get people from Detroit, Toledo, and St. Louis to Chicago, to create a vibrant midwest business "zone" across much of the rust belt by linking it to a prosperous metro, than to link Chicago to NYC --- which would mostly benefit people like me, who don't need the help.
Sure is interesting. If tickets on the NC->NY circuit are less than airline tickets, it might be worthwhile (currently, airline tickets are only about fifty dollars more than amtrak tickets; and amtrak takes ~9 hours). Also interesting is the route between Raleigh and Charlotte - right now there are only two trains that do that, late morning and early afternoon trains that aren't even useful for business travelers.
Paris to Brussels is 165 miles. 1.5 hours @ 110 mph
Chicago to St. Louis is 298 miles. 1.5 hours @ 198 mph
Chicago to Houston is 938 miles. 1.5 hours @ 625 mph
The upper limit for maglev trains in 2009 is ~312 mph. The reason high-speed is not in place in the USA has more to do with the problem we were trying to solve using air travel than it had to do with whether high-speed rail would work.
Here in Chicago, we have one of the nation's finest commuter rail systems (METRA). It works great, runs on time, defeats bad weather, etc. -- for distances <= 50 miles. Beyond that, the cost-benefit analysis get hazy.
Of course, the Obama Administration will avoid any project where they can be expected to have made measurable progress in six months. It's much easier for them to just keep talking about what they're working on than it is to actually fix anything.
So, I don't know that much about what train service between NYC, Philly, Boston, and DC was like before the Acela, but I do know that everyone in my company that travels between those locations uses Acela almost exclusively. I know it can't do max speed all the way between NYC and Boston, but it's still the best way to get from NYC to Boston.
++. When I got my NY->MD travel paid for, I always went with Acela. About two hours from Penn Station, and you're in BWI. No airport or driving hassle.
Amtrak NEC Service, New Haven (NHV) to Washington Union Station (WAS):
Train 175, Northeast Regional, 5'46", $139
Train 2173, Acela Express, 4'36", $213
So for $74 extra you get there roughly an hour and ten minutes faster, provided they both run on-time. (In my experience the Acelas tend to run on-time more often than the regionals, although they both run late more frequently than they should.) The Acela is also a business-class seat while the Regional is coach, and the Acela train is nicer overall.
Whether it's worth the extra money for the extra hour is a personal decision, of course, but I don't think the pricing is wholly inappropriate. It would be great if the Acela was faster because that would make the value equation that much better, but it's not a terrible ripoff as-is.
EDIT: These are fares for today, the equivalent of a "Yankee-class" ticket on an airline. You could do better by buying with a 3-day advance, but I think the Acela/Regional delta would be about the same, percent-wise.
Alternatively, I just checked and you can fly from Boston to Baltimore (today, with no advance purchase) for $96, and it takes 1'24". (I admit this isn't quite your example, but it's a reasonable illustration of a similar route).
Or you could drive New Haven to DC, which is 306 miles, and google maps suggests 5 hours 30 mins (admittedly optimistic in traffic). If you drive alone in a gas-hogging 25 mpg car like mine that'll cost you about $40.
I'm starting to understand why nobody takes the Amtrak.
The thing you're not acknowledging is that for trips under 3-4 hours, highway speeds + highway overhead beats jet speeds + jet overhead. It's a coin flip whether driving Chicago -> Detroit is better than flying it.
You don't need to be better than highway speed to be extremely valuable. The Acela is a much easier way to get from NYC to Boston than driving (done both), and it's more reliable and sometimes faster than flying.
"Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes."
Now imagine that people actually start taking trains. Wouldn't you expect the TSA to start screening trains too?
Before answering that question it's important to recognize that the future he's describing is the present in Europe, where there have been terrorist attacks for decades. Therefore, if security fears result in a system worse off than what he describes, then it's simply a US cultural artifact.
There is much less danger on a train vs. a plane. A bomb would only destroy a section of a train and you can't really hi-jack a train and do much damage.
Besides the difficulty involved in driving a train into a building, I'm guessing it's a lot easier to destroy a train from the outside. There's no point screening passengers when anybody who wants to can throw rocks at trains, put logs across the tracks, whatever.
So true. You can try, though. Let me know how it goes :-)
For sure in Europe, there is no security screening for high-speed trains like there is for planes. You'd have to be paranoid to setup the same structure (or a big hater of trains).
This is about linking major metropolitan areas together, not accommodating those who wish to suburbs. One of the central tenants of this plan is that these stations should be in the heart of the cities (as is done in Europe) rather than a major commute away.
Also, I just returned from backpacking in Europe, where we used rail as our primary mode of transport. Security is minimal; among my three trips on rail in Spain, we never had our passports checked and our bags were only scanned once in Barcelona.
This is exactly why there is a lot of opposition to high speed rail in the US. It primarily helps those who live inside major cities. When constituents feel like they are paying for something that they are not benefiting from they will oppose it.
No, because train stations are usually in or very close to inner city centers (airports are noisy, generate loads of waste and need enormous amounts of space so you have to get them out and far). In fact if done correctly it would probably bring americans back to city centers, closer to the stations and better able to hop onto a train and ride to the next town, 200 miles and an hour away.
> I'm also not convinced they won't have security screening for the high speed rail.
I don't know of any european nation with anything even remotely close to airport security in train stations. In France, you can literally arrive a minute before departure and hop on your high-speed train (it's not recommended because the risk of missing your train is high, but it's possible).
> In France, you can literally arrive a minute before departure and hop on your high-speed train (it's not recommended because the risk of missing your train is high, but it's possible).
Same in Germany. And in Switzerland the risk of lateness is even lower.
No, it will reduce urban sprawl. A quality rail network will bring the population in to the city center where it is easier to get to the train station and airport.
Trains contribute to sprawl, but differently than cars. American-style sprawl is the result of individuals using cars for all transportation. Communities that don't rely on cars and use trains for distance travel/commuting clump around stations as more people walk and bike when going short distances. Less wasted space.
When you take a look at the map you only can think: This can't be all of it. Some areas have no high speed rail at all and the areas that have are often isolated from each other.
In Germany we have high speed rail all over the place, in France it's similar. It has been there for years. Japan is best at building high speed railway systems.
