The silver lining to the cloud the airline industry in flying through right now.

[Stinky The Clown]

The more costly an airline ticket, the better the chance for AMTRAK to fill the void.

I've long thought that we ought to be considering the elimination of short flights. Say, anything that can be done by four or five hours on a train.

The trip from DC to NYC is a 25 minute flight or a 2 hour and 25 minute train ride.

BUT

Let's look at portal to portal time. This is based on my own personal experience. Anyone who has used the Shuttle from DC to NYC and also used the Metroliner (and now the Acela) likely can report the same thing.

Plane:

Leave home and drive one hour south to DCA. Arrive at DCA one hour ahead so I can be properly patted down and bent over. That's two hours. There are days when the trip to the airport can grow by 30 minutes or more, but let's say an hour. Then we taxi and wait for takeoff. While the air time is 25 minutes, the flight is scheduled for an hour to allow for fuck around time. Then we arrive at Laguardia. We wait, on average, 15 to 30 minutes for a cab. Then we ride into Manhattan. Over the Triboro, that's an hour. If we take the Midtown Tunnel, it might be 30 minutes; it might be two hours. So let's say an hour from the airport to anyplace in midtown. That's a total of about 4 hours, give or take a few.

Train:

I drive to the nearest AMTRAK stop, which, for me, is BWI Rail Station. Driving and parking is no more than 20 minutes. I can arrive as late as one minute before departure and still get on the train. I usually allow 30 minutes so I don't have to run. The train from there is only two hours and fifteen minutes, but I'll say two and a half hours. You arrive at Penn Station, right in midtown. Wait for a taxi, maybe five minutes, maybe a half hour. Then a ten minute cab ride to anyplace.

Totals, portal to portal:

Plane: 4 hours

Train: 3 and half hours

I think a five hour total train trip is a reasonable cutoff before the need to fly.

I hope we take this opportunity to grow AMTRAK to the behemoth of US mass transport.

[Mme. Defarge]

1. I just made a similar comment to my husband last night!

This is the perfect opportunity to invest in high speed rail travel.

Great minds, eh?

[Stinky The Clown]

5. Rail makes so much sense.

I love to ride the train. It is civilized and comfortable.

Flying SUCKS.

[roguevalley]

17. the trouble with that for me is, there is no amtrak here. I have to

fly thousands of miles to reach a place to go from there. that means two HUGE fares no matter what I do.

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. Outside the obvious corridors...

...you'd need massive investment in right-of-way improvements, rolling stock....

All of which would require billions....

Of course, we're heading into a major recession, and spending on public works projects is the traditional counter-cyclical weapon against them....

Hmn...

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Bingo!

It makes perfect sense and now is the time.

[FarCenter]

4. Plus, you have 2 useful hours on the train, travel with dignity, and arrive less frazzled

[Stinky The Clown]

6. Oh absolutely

Flying is the height of indignity. Train travel allows for lots of thngs ..... a nap ..... work ...... computer use with actual space to use it ..... cell phone use (so long as it is respectful to fellow travelers) ...... ability choose a meal or a snack ..... able to get up and walk around ....... Yup ..... civilized.

[Yael]

10. No question. The corridor thrain has WiFi

Wide seats, cell access and electrical outlets to recharge.

You can't beat it.

[kestrel91316]

7. I would love to hop on Amtrak to go up to San Francisco some time.

Unfortunately, no trains GO to San Francisco. They go to the bay area, but not to the city, so you still have to deal with all sort of other transit hassles to actually get into the city. May as well fly......it's cheaper and easier and takes less time by far. This is a tragedy for this nation.

[NuttyFluffers]

38. several stations are next to or near BART

it's very doable. i just don't recommend arriving here around 3AM is all. BART usually stops around 1-6AM or 1-4AM, depending on day and time.

edit: the easiest for LA to here would be Emeryville or Oakland Coliseum, FYI.

[shanti]

45. how long is that trip

oakland to LA?

[kestrel91316]

64. Oh, thanks! I don't know how I forgot about BART, lol.

[shanti]

44. amtrak to sf

is OK here in sac, but you have to switch to bus in oakland. i love the freedom of the train. what i REALLY want tho is a nonstop to LA from sac!

[kestrel91316]

65. Yeah......WTF is with those gaps in the train that need a frickin' BUS, anyway??

This is the 21st century. Give me a break. No wonder people don't USE the trains much for long distance....

[Yael]

8. It is fantastic living/working in the corrodor.

Philly to NYC midtown is 1.5 hours from arrival to 30th street station to cab on 34th.

[Beregond2]

9. The very first thing that should have happened

in response to 9/11 was the building of a modern, effective national ground transportation system. Imagine the one we could have had with the money we have thrown away in Iraq. sigh.

[RC]

11. Let me know when they have the spur built to Oahu.

I won't live long enough for AMTRAK to go from Minneapolis to Kansas City, let alone from where I live. This may sound good, but the day of the stage coach to the rail center is over.
Right now I can go from Kansas City to home in 2 1/2 to 3 hours by plane. I need to make my time off from work count as it is.

[Leopolds Ghost]

43. The day of cheap air travel is coming to an end however.

Unless you come up with hydrogen-powered jet planes.

I'd love to see the high-energy-density fuel cell engineering specs on a flying vehicle. Can anyone say Hindenburg?

Portable magnets for plasma or dark matter or what have you are too heavy. The energy density of uncompressed hydrogen and solar panels are too low. Compressed hydrogen and nuclear power are unstable and require too much shielding.

[Dr.Phool]

12. I enjoyed a trip on Amtrak, but they have to improve their service.

A couple of months ago I wanted to go from Tampa to Myrtle Beach, SC.

Here's how it worked.

They bussed me to Orlando to catch the train. We arrived in Florence SC, at 10:30 or 11:30 pm. Too late to rent a car and complete the trip. I checked all the car rental agencies beforehand, and none were open that late, so my 79 year old father had to drive 60 miles, at night to pick me up.

The return trip, the train departs at 3:30 am. Again, no place to drop off a rental car if I had one. Took the train back to Orlando, where I took their bus back to Clearwater.

Over all, I enjoyed the train ride. Nice wide comfortable seats, that recline just like a recliner in your living room. An electrical outlet next to the seat for laptops, dvd players, or whatever, and your cellphone works almost everywhere. I'd take Amtrak again, if they had better service hours.

Part of the problem is, that they share the rails with freight trains (in this case, CSX. Years ago the feds allowed the rail companies to tear up the parallel tracks to cut down on maintenance costs.

But, I agree. The airlines service is so shitty anymore, I dread flying.

[Leopolds Ghost]

46. Ask yourself why no rail line exists to Myrtle Beach

You will get the same answer, the feds allowed state, local developers and Norfolk Southern to tear up the tracks that do not make money hauling slow-moving freight. Freight gets right of way by law except on a few government-owned rail lines scattered here and there, which not coincidentally carry the bulk of the nation's rail ridership.

Rail transit has fallen off and "become impractical" where freight companies got rid of passenger service and tore up the tracks and gave Amtrak a concession on a few limited routes (usually one two-track line per state, the equivalent of early thinkers complaining that car travel will never be practical because there is only one two-lane paved road in the entire state, thereby rendering the cars themselves impractical.)

[dysfunctional press]

13. the vast majority of the country is not the eastern coast corridor.

when you start looking at things like chicago to st.louis, minneapolis, kansas city or beyond- rail starts making less and less sense. that's why it isn't there. amtrak is fairly successful on the routes you mention for the reasons you mention. but those reasons won't work in the vast majority of the u.s.

[Davis_X_Machina]

14. You do it where you can..

...and don't do it where you can't do it.

The problem with Amtrak is that powerful barons in Congress keep making it do the latter, and it winds up making it difficult to do more of the former.

Chicago-St. Louis, at 300 miles, is a perfect candidate.

[dysfunctional press]

18. amtrak already does that route...i've ridden it.

but there's not enough traffic on the line to warrant the cost of upgrading to high-speed rail. we'd be better off investing in the development of other ways to power personal vehicles than internal combustion engines, rather than trying to put in uneeded and unwanted high-speed rail lines around the country.

[Leopolds Ghost]

49. That's like saying there's not enough traffic on a 2-lane road to warrant upgrading it to a freeway

Yet the state and local government irrationally pilfer money from citizens to do that all the time.

[FarCenter]

19. The US should invest in making the doable routes really work

Portland, ME to Richmond, VA is the best route.

But I would think that San Diego to San Francisco is the next best route.

Raleigh NC, Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Greenville, Spartenburg, and Atlanta down the Piedmont should also be good.

East-west routes between the Mississippi and the West Coast should probably be abandoned, e.g. the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle via Minneapolis-Saint Paul and not much else.

[Stinky The Clown]

24. The Chicago area would also work

Down into Iowa, over to the the Twin Cities, down to Missouri, even Kansas City, back to Cleveland, Detroit, etc.

How about a Texas system? San Antonio, Houston, Austin, up to Dallas.

[FarCenter]

25. Chicago works well as a hub

The problem in the midwest is that the cities are in a grid -- Pittsburg, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, Milwaukee in the north -- Charleston, Cincinnati, Louiville, St Louis in the south -- Columbus and Indianapolis in the middle -- Detroit to the north, Memphis to the south.

So a good route structure isn't obvious. Also, without improved roadbeds to allow 100+ mph travel, the distances are a little too great.

San Antonio, Austin, Dallas would probably work, but Houston is by itself on the coast.

[Leopolds Ghost]

51. We need a trunk HSR (150-200 mph High Speed Rail) system. Some needed routes are:

Trunk HSR should be long distance high speed with express track and direct connection to the existing network
to effectively increase the "short haul" 4-6 hour radius from 300 miles (currently) to 800 miles (for trains
equipped to utilize trunk HSR for the mid part of their journey.)

* Chicago - South Bend - Toledo - Lorain - Cleveland - Akron - Youngstown - Pittsburgh - Jonestown - Altoona - Harrisburg - Lancaster - Philadelphia - NY (in 8 hours or less) using mostly new, 200 mph express-local track

* DC - Frederick - Gettysburg - Hanover - York - Lancaster - Reading - Allentown - Bethlehem - Westfield - Newark - NY all stops local

* Wilkes-Barre - Scranton - Pocono - Stroudsburg (express to NY via Hopatcong and Passaic) - Bethlehem - New Hope - North Philadelphia - 30th St

* KC - St. Louis - Springfield IL - Champaign-Urbana - Indianapolis - Dayton - Springfield OH - Columbus - Akron - Cleveland - Buffalo - Toronto (Midwest cities, 120 mph conventional HSR) with offshoot to Pennsylvania HSR corridor to Philly/NYC via Youngstown route. Conventional rail offshoot to Minneapolis via Rochester MN and the Mississippi valley

* St. Petersburg - Tampa - Orlando - Cape Canaveral - West Palm Beach - Fort Lauderdale - Miami

* Charlotte - Salisbury - Lexington - High Point - Winston-Salem - Greensboro - Durham - Cary - Raleigh - Rocky Mount - Suffolk - Portsmouth - Norfolk - Virginia Beach

* Birmingham - Knoxville - Bristol - Blacksburg - Roanoke - Lynchburg - Richmond - Williamsburg - Newport News - Norfolk - Virginia Beach

* Atlanta Hub HSR to Birmingham, Charlotte, Augusta/Columbus, Macon, Chatanooga, and Montgomery AL

* Chicago Hub HSR to Minneapolis, Louisville/Indianapolis, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Detroit, Cairo/Memphis, KC via St. Louis, Omaha via Des Moines, and the Fox Valley cities

* SF - Palo Alto - Mountain View - Fremont - Stockton - Fresno - Bakersfield - San Fernando - Burbank - Los Angeles - Anaheim - Oceanside - San Diego (SF to LA in 6 hours) on mostly new, 200 mph express-local track

* Fort Worth - Dallas - Tyler - Longview - Shreveport - Monroe - Vicksburg - Jacksonville - Montgomery - Atlanta - Albany - Columbus - Charleston - Myrtle Beach - Wilmington

* Fort Worth - Dallas - Texarkana - Little Rock - Memphis - Nashville - (Chatanooga - Marietta - Atlanta - Macon - Jacksonville - all Florida points) on 200 mph, ALL EXPRESS track with a 3-way interleaf in Nashville

* Fort Worth - Dallas - Texarkana - Little Rock - Memphis - Nashville - (Bowling Green - Louisville - Indianapolis - Chicago - Milwaukee - Madison - Minneapolis) on 200 mph, ALL EXPRESS track with a 3-way interleaf in Nashville

* Florida points - Jacksonville - Macon - Atlanta - Marietta - Chatanooga - Nashville - (see above) on 200 mph, ALL EXPRESS track with a 3-way interleaf in Nashville

* El Paso - Albuquerque - Santa Fe - Pueblo - Colorado Springs - Denver - Boulder - Loveland - Fort Collins - Cheyenne

* Add long-distance route: Chicago - Davenport - Des Moines - Omaha - Denver - Vail - Grand Junction - Moab - Grand Canyon - Las Vegas - Riverside - Los Angeles
(High speed between Los Angeles and Las Vegas and grade-separated from the surrounding terrain between Denver and Vail; low speed long distance rail the rest of the way)

* Reinstate the Low-Line between Seattle and Chicago via Portland, Snake River, Yellowstone, Billings, Black Hills, Sioux Falls, Cedar Rapids, Quad Cities. Retain existing High-line thru northern Montana.

* Convert successful Heartland flyer to HSR: Tulsa - Oklahoma City - (Dallas) - Fort Worth - Waco - Austin - San Marcos - San Antonio - (Houston - Galveston) with a 3-way interleaf going due east to Houston. If that is successful, build a secondary HSR along the Eastex between Dallas, Houston, and Corpus Christi.

Note that the idea is not that 80% of the riders will take the train all the way from Minneapolis to Miami or San Diego to SF, the optimal usage is for 10% thru travelers, and 90% of the riders to get off at stops in between. When train lines are built as a single, isolated route, designed to get people from one end all the way to the other, there is no room left on the train for people to get on in between, no pressure to develop accessible stops in between, and ridership suffers.

3-way route interleaving creates a star-shaped system where each leg carries two or more routes so that any point
on the system connects directly to any other point with no more than a single transfer (ideally on the same track,
same direction). the best example of this concept is the DC and SF subway systems.

150 mph minimum -- 110 mph is SO 1906!

200 mph for the more significant trunk routes that connect the
largest cities such as Atlanta, NY, Florida, Texas and Chicago.

Ideally we should be using passive, at-grade maglev on conventional rail
(4th-rail passive maglev using overhead catenary and on-board permanent magnets)
to float trains at upwards of 300 mph while allowing them to coast to a comfy
40 miles per hour on conventional track to reach their destination. Of course,
"liberals" defunded that project because they felt it competed with their
preferred solution of light rail in wealthy areas.

[Leopolds Ghost]

50. Long-distance routes are over-subscribed -- they are consistently sold out.

Just because long distance routes lose more money per passenger-MILE (nota bene!) is not a reason to shut them down without causing knock-on effects rendering the close-in routes equally unprofitable.

As Amtrak's former director (and former director of Union Pacific) David Gunn astutely pointed out, it's a matter of diminishing returns.

It's like tearing down buildings in your city to make the city more appealing to business by providing free-flow traffic and guaranteed parking. Doesn't work until you tear down 80% of the structures whereupon you are left with a donut hole.

Same analogy applies to removing Amtrak routes. Amtrak needs to double its routes to become profitable, just as Main Street needs to double the number of stores on it to become walkable and thereby appealing to visit (and you may notice all of these subjects are related.)

Most people, used to the zero-sum logic of free parking, free-flow intersections and free-flow highways mandated by the federal Subdivision Ordinance of 1926, assume the opposite.

[Leopolds Ghost]

48. As usual I find myself disagreeing with you on something.

Chicago to St. Louis? Are you kidding me? That is a priority corridor for Amtrak expansion. Is it Amtrak's fault that St. Louis and many of these other non-transit-oriented cities are no-growth cities while transit growth has at least kept pace with sprawl in the high-growth cities despite the lack of new routes even while folks take your advice and build more and more gasoline canals (freeways?) The gasoline canals will eventually go the way of the water canals of the early 1800s. At least the Roman Aqueducts were beautiful to look at.

[Joanie Baloney]

15. youcantgettherefromhere.com

should be Amtrak's website. For train travel to work the trains actually have to GO someplace. I can't get from San Diego to Denver, Chicago, Las Vegas, or even San Francisco without a bus ride or a night in a hotel in there somewhere.

[uncle ray]

27. funny

i've researched in the past taking amtrak from denver to minnesota, because of this thread i checked again, their route takes me through california, to washington state then to minnesota. over 80 hours on the train, not to mention layover times.

i guess i'm stuck driving, cause i'm DONE flying.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. A common theme to some of the responses to my OP is that it won't work in some areas

And right now, that's true.

But there's no reason it can't change and change rather quickly. We have the track. Some of it in need of some repair, but its there. It goes to every grain elevator in the midwest and every industrial area in the rust belt. What need is not so much more rail as more passengers! That will get the rails fixed.

And we need a Congress that won't appoint a former CSX executive to a seat of power and then proceed to disinvest in rail.

Rail travel can work in more than the Northeast Corridor.

Even if we never get truly long distance rail, mid level distances can be turned over to rail rather quickly if only there's a national will.

[NuttyFluffers]

39. there's complaints about currently implementation

but i hope people understand it is the best solution to our current crisis. rail, especially electric rail, is by far the most efficient method of mid-short land transport. we shall see what people derive from your comments...

[Leopolds Ghost]

60. Los Angeles and Seattle vetoed moving ahead with rapid transit

They passed laws permanently preventing rapid transit from being built in their cities.
the laws specify light rail (2-car trains that run at bus speed) must be built instead
because it is cheaper and less "experimental" than electrified rapid transit. They also
didn't want "unsafe" subways or "unsightly" elevated structures...but they don't seem to
mind building 10-lane freeways in these "environmentally friendly" blue areas... because
"everyone uses freeways, so it's worth the cost." I bet they would have a cat if someone
actually offered to condemn houses for a rail line!

Not to mention that mass transit is considered to be for "minorities and poor folk"
who everyone knows are not hard-working Americans (whose spouse would look at them funny
for taking mass transit... like taking a scooter to work (remember when that briefly
caught on in the 90s?)

[Leopolds Ghost]

59. I agree, it's just that we're missing key pieces of track.

I mean, all the major segments are in place but they are in bad shape and too crowded with freights to get the trains to outpace the cars on the adjacent freeway. So rather than buy up the freight railroads, why not simply build a few connecting high speed lines to connect the pieces of railroad track where all the people are.

We could use some of that money we are spending on Iraq.

[klyon]

20. less raw pollution in upper atmosphere

we never talk about what is going on up there

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

21. given their funding situation

why should one assume that Amtrak won't be forced to cut service also?

[Thothmes]

22. Try taking a trip from NYC to LA

and let us know about the time vs cost ratios then .

[Stinky The Clown]

23. From the OP .......

"I think a five hour total train trip is a reasonable cutoff before the need to fly."

What was the point you were making?

[Leopolds Ghost]

40. You guys are both wrong about this, IMO

There is no reason long distance rail transit can't work in the US. None at all.

Long distance trains are actually over-subscribed, but people don't know that because Amtrak uses long-distance routes (which are owned by CSX and BNSF) to hide its capital shortfalls on the shorter routes. Using the 4 hours-a-limit logic you can reduce train travel to the Northeast Corridor alone whereupon you'd discover that whoops, all those 8-hour and overnight travelers changing trains in DC and NYC are the extra customers who make the Northeast Corridor "profitable".

This is network reduction, it is a terrible management practice promulgated by the same people who came up with "total quality management" or whatever it's called -- business unit theory -- the notion that a business should concentrate on its sole profitable endeavor and eliminate all loss leaders, even if they are its original raison d'etre. Eliminate all but the most profitable business units and you get what is known as knock-on effects, making the remaining routes isolated and unprofitable. This has already happened to Amtrak and rail in general, you just don't notice it because both Amtrak and freight rail rely on enormous hidden subsidies in the form of the US Interstate and local freeway system, often running on condemned rail right of ways.

The solution, ironically, is the same as Dean's 50 state strategy. Hillary's 50+1 strategy was a variant of business unit theory or total quality management -- only spend money in the one state most likely to put you over the top. As you have seen, this results in fewer and fewer blue states each year, each one of which gets discarded as a "red state" wherein only conservative turncoat Dems are allowed to compete because the left populist wing has been defunded and the whole state conceded to the GOP.

In the case of Amtrak, this is what happens when a train route is discarded as "uncompetitive with air travel." Besides which, the air travel brand, like the GOP brand, is in the crapper due to the same reason in both cases -- peak oil. The solution is to expand the playing field -- build trunk line HSR across the Eastern US and West Coast so that it is possible to take an 8-hour train from New York to Chicago.

You should also be able to transfer from an express HSR train to a local branch line going directly to grandma's home town without changing platforms.

The cost of gas does not need to go above $6 in today's dollars to make commercial air travel every bit as bankrupt as Amtrak. If both air and rail are running at a loss, why isn't the government funding 200 mph HSR?

[Carnea]

26. Don't get me wrong flying has become a horrible experience.

From Boston to Washington DC Amtrak makes perfect sense....

Outside those cities it is a disaster. Yes I have taken the train. (Florida to New York City) and it was fun but honestly unless you are a student, retired or unemployed it simply takes to long. And if their is more than one person in you party it is quicker and cheaper to rent a car and drive it.

(I've also take the bus....I still wake up sweating from flashbacks ...... the horror the horror)

[Stinky The Clown]

29. Just because it doesn't work now, doesn't mean it can never work

Yes, the NE corridor works well for train travel. What needs to happen is a commitment to simply provide it elsewhere. As the cost to drive goes up, it becomes quite reasonable to expect that ridership will grow.

[Carnea]

30. Yes but almost nobody takes the train from London to Moscow

Yet We expect train travel between Los Angeles and Chicago which is 200 miles longer not including that mountain range in the way.

There are some significant problems to train travel outside the northeast corridor. Short American vacations and a lack of infrastructure are just two of them but nothing will avoid the fact the United States is a very big somewhat empty piece of land.

[Stinky The Clown]

31. Did you read the OP?

I suggested that we use rail when the travel distance is reasonable. LA to Chicago is not reasonable.

[Carnea]

32. Yes but there really is good train service in the NE corridor.

So I am wondering what you are exactly proposing.

It reminds me of the conversations that my local area has to improve its anemic and expensive mass transit system. Nobody uses it because it doesn't go where we need it to go in a timely manner. (Also it goes to bed early. Whatever person decided to stop running buses at 7:30 pm was a class A moron. but I digress.) They can't afford to expand routes and schedules to attract riders because they subsidize the service so much they manage to lose money the more people use it. According to studies new riders last about a week then go back to gas guzzling cars or taxi cabs.(Obviously they need to charge close to actual costs then give discounts to the poor rather than the paltry $3 fare they charge now. And use that money to expand routes and times.)

[Stinky The Clown]

33. Was it not clear in the OP?

Let me try again.

If the train can get you from A to B in less that four or five hours total time, then do not allow an airline to offer the same itinerary.

This will force ridership on trains, helping to make them a) viable and b) acceptable to riders as they use them more.

[Leopolds Ghost]

54. It'd be easier to simply wait for the energy (jet fuel) to become unaffordable vs. passenger load

Just as with happened with the electric trains after the gov't insisted they be divested from the electric cos.

Not sure where airlines will end up but they may end up having to be partially nationalized to keep them in business, like Conrail. Which will further raise questions why we aren't building high speed intercity rail lines.

[Leopolds Ghost]

42. All mass transit loses money the more people use it. Even NYC. Even in the old days.

The Railroad Electric Power companies were required to run trolleys at a loss in return for the vast sums of money they
made on long-distance transport and electrification. The car lobby convinced us to apply anti-trust laws to break up
the Electric systems, just as we later broke up Ma Bell and other regulated monopolies in favor of unregulated
oligopolies that compete to maximize profit and disinvest in anything that does not turn a profit.

Meanwhile, air travel loses money the more people use it, thanks to peak oil which means we may be seeing what
happened to the railroad companies happen to air travel. This will cause a flood of long distance drivers on
the roads, offsetting declines due to high gas prices, because there is no decent rail because none has been
built since the early 1900s when we were building 110 mph express-local electric trains that no longer are
permitted to run anywhere outside the northeast corridor (only because it was built by a single company and
directly bought up by Amtrack before it could be de-electrified and sold to freight).

[Leopolds Ghost]

41. Hmm, no... I just got finished mapping a bunch of rail lines to determine where Amtrak could be run

You need to seriously consider that not everyone lives in NY or LA and most people have no desire to go from NY to LA. 75% of Americans live in or on the outskirts of major mid-size cities that are less than 100 miles apart. The fact that they have no choice but to drive 200 miles to the nearest major airport (on taxpayer-subsidized 10-lane freeways through said enormous patches of empty land) is usually ignored by folks like the posters on this board.

Oh yeah, and the distance between Paris and Berlin = New York to Chicago, yet you can take 150 mph high speed rail from Paris to Berlin.

150 mph means 300 miles in 2 hours. 2 hours is a daily commute for many Americans.

Why is there no god damn rail line (NO TRACKS EXIST AND HAVE NOT BEEN BUILT, YET PARALLEL HIGH-SPEED FREEWAYS HAVE BEEN BUILT THRU ONCE-PRISTINE EMPTY LAND) between Scranton and New York, or between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, or between Richmond and Virginia Beach, or between Orlando and Miami?

What about the Midwest? Old rail lines actually do connect all the major cities in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois which are all less than 100 miles apart, yet the only active rail lines go to Chicago only. Lots of open, flat land for high speed rail, yet none exists. Too valuable as Monsanto-owned farmland for growing ethanol crops to fuel cars. OK, what about the Great Valley in PA? There is next to no decent mass transit or rail service in the "rain shadow" of the New York metropolitan area, outside of which millions of people live in satellite cities of 100,000 or more where the rail lines have been ripped up and replaced by parking lots which -- by law -- must be provided as an unfunded subsidy by the developer as a covenant upon the land and cannot be removed or built upon. You can't unpave a lot in America without removing the adjacent apartment building's legal status as a multi-unit domicile and reducing the number of allowable units according to how much asphalt must be provided each occupant, by law. Parking is a requirement in America, not a right. Yet rail transit is considered a vanity project. People forget that the only reason the Northeast Corridor exists between NY and DC is because a single company built it in 1900. The only decent high-speed local rail is in New York and Philly, also built before 1900. No new rail has been built since the Depression, only roads.

[Carnea]

47. I agree we need more localised rail.

The devil is in the details.

For example the distance between New York and Chicago is 711 miles a couple of hundred more miles than Berlin and Paris. And Berlin to Paris train takes 10 hours even with the super trains.

http://downloads.raileurope.com/brochure/2007_us/eot9.pdf

Whats really strange is that while researching this most travel and government websites recommended flying between Berlin and Paris as faster (and cheaper) way to go.


Which would put our New York to Chicago route at 14 hours plus even with high speed trains. Zippy mind you but not completely competitive.


As for the idea (often floated) of a Orlando to Miami train there are other problems. First there already is an effective light rail on the Ft Lauderdale Miami corridor that seems to work (Though like many rail programs it has serious parking issues) But that is commuter rail. Nobody actually goes to downtown Miami. (And virtually nobody goes to downtown Orlando. So your first challenge is to actually fill more than one train car a day between the two cities.) Sure you could provide bus service from the train station to poplar destinations. That would work in Orlando where the popular destinations are pretty obvious. But people going to "Miami" are in reality going anywhere within a couple of hundred miles of downtown.

The reality is the build it and they will come approach does sometimes work but more often then not it is a white elephant. Most American cities simply are not designed for rail commuting. Over time we can change that but we need demand and $4 gas isn't going to create that. Perhaps a $1.50 $2 a gallon tax on gasoline towards mass transit would be a step in the right direction.

http://www.mapcrow.info/Distance_between_New_York_US_and_Chicago_US.html

http://www.mapcrow.info/Distance_between_Berlin_GM_and_Paris_FR.html

[Leopolds Ghost]

53. Florida HSR is not supposed to work that way. and Paris-Berlin is incomplete.

711 miles at 120 mph average (175 mph on straightaways, express track, stopping at major stops only, just as the Penn line has been doing since 1910, only faster) = 5.9 hours.

Figure in your average gov't underperformance (because God knows we shouldn't test the recommended performance speed of the track, nor maintain the track in top-speed condition) and you get 8 hours.

Of course, if we used passive 4th-rail maglev with conventional rails we wouldn't need to worry about deteriorating track performance at 200 mph speeds. The only reason 300 mph is difficult is because of right of way considerations -- 300 mph requires too huge a turn radius.

All-stops-local time is irrelevant because local trains are designed to get people on average half the distance along the course of the line. And locals still end up carrying more people because the number of people going from, say, Akron to Philadelphia in 4 hours outweighs the number of people going from end to end in 6 hours on the express train because there are more origin-destination pairs.

As for Florida HSR, I guess even liberals voted against it when Gov. Jeb Bush asked them to take it off the ballot after Florida agreed to do the right thing and build real rail in one of the nation's largest and wealthiest states where right of way is cheap. The purpose of HSR is for conventional travel, as would be done in a car with luggage or an expensive short-hop airplane, not commuter travel. However (and this is crucial) the local tracks can be used for greatly improved commuter service with numerous local stops paralleling the express track, as on the Northeast Corridor.

Contrary to popular assumptions, the Northeast Corridor is no more densely developed than Florida, nor are most of the intervening areas pedestrian friendly. Only the cities are. As for even the cities in Florida being pedestrian-unfriendly non-destinations, if that is the case then these I would suggest skipping them and putting the stops where people actually want to go, such as the malls and Edge Cities and direct climate controlled connections with seamless baggage handling to the airports and theme park destinations. The number one mass transit system in Florida is in Orlando, not Miami. It is the monorail line at Walt Disney World Resort and its affiliated hotels. Of course, Disney World killed the Florida HSR bill because they wanted to prevent it from serving anything but Disney World -- no other Orlando destinations except downtown and Disney world.

In any case, pedestrian unfriendly cities are dying cities by definition and will be completely dead after a few years of $4 a gallon gasoline. So don't blame rail for inability to serve no-growth cities, which is what blown-out sunbelt cities will become when their blow-off escapes the gravitational pull of the old downtown. Many of the old rail-oriented cities already experienced this, there is almost no point for rail or cars to drive into them which is the only reason connecting them by rail is difficult.

[Leopolds Ghost]

56. OK, it's about 850 miles

(On Edit... OK, I did the math for a likely rail alignment and it's about 850 miles
which works out to about 6-9 hours if you account for conventional turn radii in areas
where existing right-of-way must be used.)

Chicago to NYC 9 AM arrive 3-6 PM sounds pretty good to me.

Keep in mind Chicago's a lot further off than Boston, I think people are more willing
to make a real trip of it. People are perfectly happy to drive 8 hours to get from
DC to Charlotte.

[Leopolds Ghost]

58. Another edit: The current NY-Chicago is 18.5 hours (down from 16 hours in 1941)

So all you have to do is (a) get back to the 1941 performance figure and (b) cut it in half
by doubling average track speed from 70 mph to 140 mph and using TGV type trains on the high-speed routes.

This requires rebuilding all the tracks on the trunk lines and building short cuts thru areas where no straight track
exists. Even the conventional routes need to be rebuilt to allow speeds attained in the early 20th century when they
were built.

From an article predicting the death of train travel in 1998:

Even lovers of train travel are frustrated by another trend: Although Amtrak has made progress modernizing and grabbing market share between Washington and Boston, in most other areas trains run substantially more slowly than they did 50 years ago.

For example, in a recent filing with the Surface Transportation Board, which regulates railroads, one expert pointed out that the run from New York to Chicago is now scheduled for 18 hours and 26 minutes, up from 16 hours in 1941; from Chicago to New Orleans, the scheduled time is now 19 hours and 25 minutes, up from 15 hours and 30 minutes in 1953.

The actual decline is worse, though, because unscheduled delays are more frequent. Most inter-city trains travel at less than 70 miles an hour; many travel at less than 50 m.p.h.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E3DC1438F934A25752C0A96E958260

[NeedleCast]

28. Frequent Business Traveler - I take the Train Whenever I can

It's easy for me, since I live in DC, to get just about anywhere on the east coast by train and it's become more and more cost effective and - more important for me - more comfortable. I'm a very broad shouldered person and tiny plane seats kill me. I love the fact that I get to travel for business, but getting there and back has become a real chore at the airport and on a plane. The airlines offer nearly no level of service now anyway, even to premier customers like me.

The train offers nearly double the seat size, a bar-car so I can decide when to get up and get a drink and no annoying sky-servers whining at me about buckling my seatbelt at 36,000 feet. If we hit turbulence bad enough to bounce my 260 pound ass out of the seat, we've got way, WAY bigger worries than seat belts.

Plus, with DC mass transit I just have a roommate drop me off at the metro station (2 miles away) and take the subway to Union Station where I can jump the AMTRAK. Unlike planes, the AMTRAK is rarely late (in fact, in a dozen or so train trips over the last three years it's never been late for me).

I'm with ya H2S. The more AMTRAK stops the better.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

34. I love trains

I haven't been on a real train since I was a teen many years ago (I'm not talking about metrorails which I have ridden since) but it was always a pleasant experience. You can get up out of your seat and move around. I don't know if they have dining cars anymore but in the past, it was great fun to eat on the train. I love old-style European trains with their separate compartments and hallways where you can walk around and meet people. And I've never had such a good night's sleep as I've had on trains. There's something about the rocking motions and the sound of the rails that makes me fall into a deep and wonderful sleep when riding a train at night. If I had the time, I wouldn't mind 10 hour trips on a train. It's less hectic an experience than flying to me and it's more comfortable than a bus.

[Leopolds Ghost]

35. The nation's rail infrastructure is privately owned and in TERRIBLE shape.

The nation's mass transit infrastructure has been torn down and been replaced by slow-moving buses and trolleys that stop in the middle of parking lots which are labled "rapid transit". These slow-moving trolleys are a mere parking-displacement scheme.

Not coincidentally, the only successful short-distance railroads in America run on tracks which are PUBLICALLY OWNED and BUILT SPECIFICALLY FOR HIGH-SPEED, PASSENGER TRAINS: the Penn Central (Northeast Corridor) built in 1900 and its neighbors, also built in the early 20th century, are the fastest rail lines in America: NJT, LIRR, Metro North, Caltrain, Keystone Corridor and SEPTA, the remnants of the Los Angeles Southern Pacific, NY, Chicago and DC subways (the three of which carry something like 75% of all non-conventional rail mass transit riders in America daily -- all the other rail lines are mere ineffective demonstration projects designed to make you think politicians care about transit.) All the NEW rail lines built in America (especially in Sunbelt cities) are built for small trains at excruciatingly slow speeds, (think 18-25 mph average speed, versus 80-100 on the Penn Central built in 1903) sometimes these light rails share single track with freight and switchbacks thru parking lot infested areas while cars speed by at 80 mph.

Aside from DC, the only serious attempt at rapid transit in the US were cut short. Philly, Atlanta, Miami, and Baltimore have subway or elevated systems that were strangled in their infancy -- and San Francisco's BART is a problematic version of DC's Metro that is really more of a high-tech commuter railroad due to the enormous distance between stops.

Boston Philly and San Francisco systems only work because they have extensive trolley lines feeding into high-speed tunnels. Unfortunately there is pretty much only one or two such tunnels going through each of these cities.

BLUE BASTIONS SEATTLE and LA RECENTLY VOTED TO KILL THEIR RAPID TRANSIT SYSTEMS and convert to surface transit,
like Cincinnatti did in the early 20th century. Is this what Barack Obama and the Democratic Party stand for?
Building 8-lane freeways thru Blue counties and killing rapid transit and Intercity High Speed Rail (HSR)?

I just got done mapping possible AMTRAK alignments on the East coast. Did you know there are more miles of freeway in the US then there are mainline railroads between even small US cities? Scranton/Wilkes-Barre PA for instance has no active rail corridor connecting it to NY or Philly -- none exist.

There are unused rights of way being paved over for shopping malls. Except for the busiest mainline rail corridors (which are not built for high speed trains to bypass freight) the rail lines that still exist between even the largest US cities are the ones that are SO TWISTY AND POKEY that they were unable to be ploughed under and turned into state and federal highway decades ago.

If you can't take a train from NY to Scranton, if you can't even hire a train and route it from NY to Scranton, don't talk to me about reviving American rail transit and ending American dependence on auto traffic. Most Americans foolishly believe that they can power 200 million cars driving 10 miles daily with electricity instead of gasoline.

[Leopolds Ghost]

36. Oh yeah -- drive from Maryland to DCA?

That is indeed a less preferable option to taking the train -- to DCA. ;-)

[Leopolds Ghost]

37. On the other hand,

you live out near BWI so driving there would make more sense. if only the BWI rail lines actually connected to the airport. They are talking about extending the Green Line to BWI, but the Inter-County Connector (destructive highway through ultra-liberal Montgomery County) is sucking up all the funding, so no more transit will be built in Maryland in the near future (the disastrous Purple Line project is an example of dumbing down mass transportation in an effort to "use what funds are left over" for slow-moving secondary transit geared to the elderly and service employees.) which tells you America will never build decent car-optional transit development because if ultra-liberal Montgomery County won't stop building 20-lane express-local interchanges thru its designated "transit serviceability areas" no one will stop doing so. Hell, Lancaster County PA is condemning land in the middle of Amish country to build bypasses. That's right, the folks who don't even drive.

[Runcible Spoon]

52. Reconstructing mass transit needs to be a top priority in the next administration.

it's a huge step in staving off the twin threats of peak oil and global warming/atmospheric pollution. This also needs to include industrial truck routes as well.

[flashl]

55. There should be no doubts about where rail is going ...

Foreign investors' rail bid examined

Senators: Group may seek control of CSX

Senators from both parties are calling for an investigation into a move by unknown foreign investors to gain more control of one of the nation's largest railroads, which serves military bases and transports nuclear materials across the country.

The six members of the Senate Banking Committee expressed concern that The Children's Investment Fund (TCI), a London-based group, could be setting the stage for the foreign investors to take control of the CSX rail line. The fund is trying to win five seats on CSX's 12-member board.

USA Today

Note: Both Warren Buffett and George Soros are buying rail companies

[Leopolds Ghost]

57. The Children's Investment Fund?! Those Evil Bastards!

We must not allow the next generation to take control of our precious natural resources. Especially foreign children.
Especially children from London! Why, just look at what happened in just about any fantasy movie you can name. :smoke:

[flashl]

62. Last time, we had Sir Charles to rescue us from an evil Children Enterprise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkix60xjUC8

[Leopolds Ghost]

63. Aren't the Children's Investment Fund mining Dust in the Arctic?

And in Harry Potter we leard that a secret cabal of hereditary
child magicians controls the British economy and rail network.

[KharmaTrain]

61. Amtrack...A Hidden Pleasure

In the 70's I had to ride Amtrack to school...right after the organization got rolling. The trains were old and many times we had breakdowns or other problems that made taking the rails a joke. They never were on time and then once aboard, going to the bathrooms were an adventure on odotory tolerance (that is if the bathroom hadn't turned into an opium den).

Last summer we took the Acela from New York to Philly. We got to Penn Station about an hour before the train...almost no security (and no facist TSA morons taking bottles of water away and having you take off your shoes)...we got on the train right on time and were in the 30th Street station in Philly an hour later. Had I flown, I'd probably still be waiting in the concourse or on the tarmac.

From one whose done a lot of traveling in the past couple years, flying has become a bigger and bigger pain. If its not the mismanagement of the airlines, it's their poor customer service and now the excess charges. American Airlines is at the top of my shitlist...I've rarely had one of their flights that wasn't delayed or had some other problem. The experience has been so bad that we've decided to take the train or drive if possible in the future.

The rising prices are creating havoc in the airline industry that wasn't very solvent in the best of times. Consolidation and "deregulation" has created large airlines that can't adjust to the marketplace nor have any incentive to. The lack of competition is now coming home to roost...and I expect soon we'll see the big airlines coming to Congress hat in hand crying for a bail-out. Maybe it'd be good to see the whole system collapse...get the bad blood out.

[lib2DaBone]

66. Good Posts

Well thought out.. good information. I agree with what everyone is saying, but it seems that Amtrak and current rail administration is the problem. The system is antiquated. As long as we are starting over, why not sit down with the best engineering talent we have in this country, and re-design the system? It would seem that the largest expense of rail would be the right-of-way and the initial purchase of roadbeds. We already have that in place from coast to coast. The heavy lifting is done. We need to re-think the routes and make the trains go where people need to go, where the commerce is going to be in 2008-2020. Additionally, what do we spend in Iraq each month, somewhere around $15-20 Billion? If we took , say, 6 months of the Iraq money, ($90 Billion) and put it to work rebuilding the rail system, we could generate thousands of jobs and provide unlimited economic stimulus. Of course, this all takes political vision and leadership. I love the Mag lev train idea. I wonder why they never perfected the "Piggyback" Auto train concept? You know,that's where you drive your car on to the train in New York and Drive it off in San Francisco. At $5 a gallon it would seem to make sense, plus, I hate driving 8 hours a day on the interstate.

The Eurostar uses its 12,200 kW power to move 766 passengers along at 300 km/h (188 mph).

[Stinky The Clown]

67. There is an auto train from Lorton, VA, to Sanford, FL.

I have heard of a few people who took it. The reports I hear (unsubstantiated/opinion only/not first hand experience) is that it is expensive and not very comfortable.

I think rail is very viable. As you say, in large measure the roadbed is there. Most of it is private, but its there.

[Leopolds Ghost]

68. I have a friend who swears by it

But she likes to take Amtrak in general.

Interesting that they don't run one from further north (auto train terminal at Newark Airport, maybe?)