High speed rail may be the answer to our economic problems...

[kentuck]

It would bring back the steel industry. But it would create railroads that were "green" and would help to solve the oil problem at the same time. It would be good for our country. We could convert our entire country to high-speed rail. It would cost a lot of money but we would get more bang for the buck and more benefit for our country than just about anything else we could invest in. Is it time to put high-speed rail construction on the table?

[TahitiNut]

1. I'd like to see regional mass transit coupled with regional rail.

We need alternatives to longer drives and shorter flights ... as well as commutes.

[MADem]

2. Now that's something the gubmint oughta subsidize.

I really do think they ought to work at making train travel more efficient, more common AND more affordable.

[SteelPenguin]

20. Exactly what I was going to say

...but said better than I would have. ;)

I live in Pittsburgh, my in-laws live in Harrisburg. It's a 3 hour drive. I can pack my family of 4 in a car and it'll cost us about a 15 gallons of gas there and back, so even if gas were 5 bucks a gallon it would cost us only about 75 bucks, call it 100 with tolls, to get there and back.

Even with a less fuel efficient car most could do it in under 150 bucks.

Meanwhile to take the train it would be 6+ hours, 5 and a half for the train ride itself if nothing goes wrong...the train shares the freight tracks and you can sit there on the tracks standing still for a long time waiting for other trains to clear the tracks. Best case scenario it's going to be over 6 hours door to door. Probably closer to 7.

Plus it doesn't run every day, and only once a day, so not much choice of when to travel.

Even the bus is cheaper and faster. Why anyone would take Amtrak from here to anywhere is beyond me....

Now if it could do it in closer to similar time to the car, AND be about the same cost...heck i could put up with only one travel time a day. We'd take it. I'd rather spend 3 hours on a train with the kids having fun than driving. Plus if it were a high speed rail with it's own line it'd be more like half that time. Heck i'd pay a little more to do it in half the time...

*sigh*

I just doubt it'll ever happen. Too many naysayers.

[TommyO]

32. Something like this would be perfect

http://www.maglevpa.com/project.html

It is envisioned that this will be the first segment of a high-speed maglev system that will cross Pennsylvania from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia with stops in Johnstown, Altoona, State College, Lewistown, Harrisburg, Lancaster and Paoli and eventually extend farther East to connect to the populous Northeast Corridor.

[MsTryska]

3. Are you one of those Urban Planner types?

Commies.

*lol*

I used to work with a mess of transportation planners - they've been gungho about High-Speed rail since the 70s. Can't say I don't agree with them either.

I love the idea of high speed rail. And then we wouldn't have to bail out the Airlines anymore.

But there is a lot of NIMBY, and no one ever wants to pay for it out of their funds either. If the Feds paid for it, we might have something.

[originalpckelly]

10. Put it alongside the highway system...

people are already used to highways being noisy and have already sound proofed their houses or made the decision that it's OK to hear the noise.

[MsTryska]

31. exactly. or elevate it

right along the median, although bridges and overpases would be an obstacle. That would be great tho. At least that way, you save the interstate for logisitcs and tractor trailers, and the light rail can be people-movers.

[kentuck]

4. A link to support post.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=611d21dd-edb6-45f8-802c-568e35493234&k=55817

<snip>
One area that is ripe for such investment--and that is not, from what I have seen, a declared priority of the Obama administration--is high-speed rail. Amtrak's Acela trains--the closest thing we have to one--average less than 100 mph between Washington D.C. and Boston, whereas trains in Western Europe and Japan go more than twice as fast. Many of them also run on electricity. They would be the most energy-efficient and quickest means of getting between places like Boston and New York, or Los Angeles and San Francisco. But they would require a massive investment. For instance, installing high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor could cost about $32 billion, while California's high-speed rail system would require up to $40 billion. A system that would address the other areas of the country could easily raise the cost to the hundreds of billions. The House transportation and infrastructure committee has currently proposed $5 billion in stimulus funds for intercity rail--not even a down payment on what it would cost to convert the U.S. to high-speed rail.

Investing in high-speed rails would be very expensive, but unlike tax cuts--the benefits of which can be siphoned off in the purchase of imported goods--the money spent would go directly to reviving American industry and improving the country's trade balance. That doesn't just mean jobs creating dedicated tracks or new rail stations: Though the U.S. abandoned train manufacturing decades ago to the French, Germans, Canadians, and Japanese, this kind of production could be undertaken by our ailing auto companies or aircraft companies--if the federal and state governments were to place orders. And building trains that would run on electricity would be a paradigmatic example of the "green jobs" that Obama often touts.

Though a massive investment in high-speed rail brings its own set of complications, it's worth keeping these kind of examples in mind when one hears from the Obama people that they can't find sufficient infrastructure projects to fund. The question I would pose is this: Are we not at some point going to have to go beyond repairing roads and bridges in our conception of public spending and public works, and contemplate the kind of ambitious industrial expenditures that the country made on war production in 1941?

...more

[WyLoochka]

5. Agree - spend the bucks on rail

Won't fly anymore for too many reasons to list here.

I need to travel at least quarterly between NW Wyoming and central Arizona. I would take a train, rather than drive, if only there were a train to take.

It's probably not going to happen though - if we spend on transportation it will most likely be on roads.

What was that about "change"? It was a very seductive mantra - but it's beginning to look like it was just bullshit.

[xchrom]

6. i want to see a bunch of money spent on rail -- high speed and everything else.

this is an intelligent way to spend both tax dollars and deliver tax breaks.

[GoesTo11]

7. Does High Speed = Green?

Is there something about magnetic train technology that makes it lower in energy use or do you mean it would just be green if more people used high speed rail to go from city to city instead of flying?

[kentuck]

8. Yes.

It would be very "green".

[originalpckelly]

9. There's so much I could say about trains, but they're safer...

so long as there are no level crossings, it's possible to have a train system without many or any accidents causing fatalities. Japan's Shinkansen is the safest form of transportation on the planet, as it has caused no human deaths at speed. Plus high speed trains are almost universally powered by electricity, which means that there is not a volatile chemical propellant on board than can catch fire in a crash.

[Raskolnik]

11. No, we couldn't "convert our entire country to high-speed rail."

We should invest heavily in mass transit infrastructure, but there is simply no way, in the foreseeable future, a nation with the size and population distribution of the U.S. can be "entirely converted" to rail, high-speed or otherwise.

[kentuck]

12. "Can't" never could do anything.

I could foresee high-speed rail from Denver to Kansas City. And from Cincinnati to Atlanta. From San Francisco to Los Angeles. From Dallas to Houston. And all along the East Coast. It depends on how much we would want to invest.

[Raskolnik]

14. You stated: "We could convert our entire country to high-speed rail."

Regional rail service is viable, even perhaps some coast-to-coast lines may eventually work.

But the entire country? Nope.

[kentuck]

16. Literally, you are correct...

We are not going to put high speed rail from Hazard to Lexington or the small towns in America. But we can have high speed rail across the nation if we want to spend the money.

[originalpckelly]

17. Never say never, I've got an idea for a system to carry cars on trains.

Instant reduction in CO2 emissions, reduced fuel prices, and increased safety. We could then use the same tracks to run high speed passenger rail service.

Railways would dip underground when the curves in turns on the actual highway became to sharp for a HST to travel over.

[Raskolnik]

22. So you're going to have a train carrying half a dozen cars to places in the great plains

and mountain states?

[originalpckelly]

24. Think automated people mover meets car carrier.

Yes, but I suspect the amount of traffic will be higher because through trips. You can't get from New York to LA without going through the mountain states. I think we can probably build a rail system that will get people there in a day or so at high speed, if not faster. With time segregation, we can use the left over capacity for local transit. Although, it must be stated that mixed speed traffic reduces the throughput of the system.

[ejbrush]

36. What? It's been done once already!

Pull open your google and look at a map of the US railroad system from 1880 on. Nearly every jerkwater town from Maine to Oregon had tracks through or to it. Hundreds of thousands of miles of track, thousands of good paying jobs, schedules kept and maintained by telegraph and mechanical clocks and coal and steam. No computers, no Blackberrys, just imagine what they could have done with technology?
They could do it then, we can't do it now?
Bull.

[Touchdown]

47. Agree with all except the "thousands of good paying jobs" part.

The building of this nation's railroads is a sordid tale of near slave labor, actual slave labor, hundreds of work related deaths, immigrant exploitation as well as deportation after the job was done. Working on the railroad was a dangerous and thankless job. But! Cecil Rhodes got rich!

[Greyhound]

51. Let's not forget the massive land theft and rampant corruption.

Just one of the sources of the American parasite class.
:kick:

[ejbrush]

56. *Building* the railroads was hellish. No arguement.

Gave rise to obscenely rich oligarchs. No arguement.
But the thing is, once they were done, people had to run the things. Thousands of people. Union workers (my grandfather lives today on his BLET-Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen - pension). Keeping the stock running, track maintenance, working the stations and depots, it was a huge part of the economy.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. I'm all for it.

[ogneopasno]

15. And invest more in freight rail, too.

[originalpckelly]

18. There's really no reason to have truckers moving stuff across the country...

trains should be doing that, and it would make our roads safer because we wouldn't have to worry about as many big rigs traveling them.

[Raskolnik]

23. Well, yes, there is a reason.

On-time shipping reduces costs to businesses considerably. I agree that we are going to have to radically overhaul our transportation infrastructure in the near future, but to pretend that there is no benefit to the current shipping methods is kind of silly.

[originalpckelly]

25. Please do explain to me why a train traveling at 100 mph is slower than a truck?

I understand what you're saying, just in time delivery, yada yada. I agree, but you can slap together JIT shipments for multiple customers in a single train, then run that train at high speed, and beat the truck drivers. All while having lower and more predictable fuel costs.

The only part of the route that has to be driven by truckers, is the part from the freight terminal to the customers place of business. We can use an inter-modal containerized system to just take the loads off a train and put them on trucks, without have to unpack a train and reload the stuff on a big rig's trailer.

Freight in France travels at higher speeds than it does in the US, and the french mail service uses old TGVs to ship mail, we might be able to get away with putting freight on something like a TGV for cargo that has an outer streamlined shell to reduce drag. Time segregate the shit so that there is less danger to passenger rail.

[Raskolnik]

28. France is not the U.S.

There are problems of geography that I do not think advocates of "total" rail conversion are or can address.

Again, I am all in favor of vastly improving regional and hub-to-hub rail service, but I think a lot of people forget that U.S. is a big damn place with many large open spaces between population centers, unlike Japan or Europe.

[hack89]

40. How many rail hubs do you envision?

you would still have to transfer the freight to a truck to be delivered - depending on the number of rail hubs, that might still mean trucks moving goods for hundreds of miles. It may not be that big an improvement to justify the cost.

[globalvillage]

19. The High-Speed Rail for America Act of 2008

The High-Speed Rail for America Act of 2008 builds upon the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 which reauthorizes Amtrak and authorizes $1.5 billion over a five-year period to finance the construction and equipment for eleven high-speed rail corridors. It provides billions of dollars in both tax-exempt and tax credit bond and provides assistance for rail projects of various speeds. The bill creates the Office of High-Speed passenger rail to oversee the development of high-speed rail and provides a consistent source of funding.

Specifically, the High-Speed Rail for America Act of 2008 provides $8 billion over a six-year period for tax-exempt bonds which finance high-speed rail projects which reach a speed of at least 110 miles per hour It creates a new category of tax-credit bonds – qualified rail bonds. There are two types of qualified rail bonds: super high-speed intercity rail facility bond and rail infrastructure bond. Super high-speed rail intercity facility bonds will encourage the development of true high-speed rail. The legislation provides $10 billion for these bonds over a ten-year period. This would help finance the California proposed corridor and make needed improvements to the Northeast corridor. The legislation provides $5.4 billion over a six-year period for rail infrastructure bonds. The Federal Rail Administration has already designated ten rail corridors that these bonds could help fund, including connecting the cities of the Midwest through Chicago, connecting the cities of the Northwest, connecting the major cities within Texas and Florida, and connecting all the cities up and down the East Coast.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/25/95822/061

[originalpckelly]

21. $1.5 billion over five years? Are they fucking joking?

It's going to cost way more than that to build a real high speed rail system.

[lib2DaBone]

33. The estimated cost is $700 Billion. We could already have paid for it.

[blue_onyx]

26. I hope Obama puts something like this at the top of his agenda

These types of projects are what the stimulus package should be geared toward (not so much toward tax cuts). It would help deal with transportation and energy issues, as well as put people to work. I know there's probably a lot of out of work auto workers that would love to have a job building trains.

[kentuck]

27. Absolutely!

A great way to rebuild our manufacturing base and go green at the same time. And put the autoworkers back to work. And wean ourselves off foreign oil. And cut back on the pollution from cars and trucks and airplanes. And it would be good for our people and our economy.

[dysfunctional press]

29. it might be a part of the overall solution, but it's not "the answer to our economic problems"

i'd rather see it developed as a series of regional systems, similar to the hub & spoke design the airlines use, with the various 'wheels' inter-connecting to form a coast-to-coast network.

[ThomWV]

30. Hang them right over the existing rights of way for the Interstates

[lib2DaBone]

34. Most people are completely missing the point. We are not talking AMTRAK here..

This will be a COMPLETELY new system. New tracks, new trains and all computer controlled.

The only existing thing that will be used will be the right of way.(the most expensive part BTW, and we already have that in place) There will be NO crossings. Trains will travel on dedicated tracks from start to finish..at speeds up to 300 MPH, with NO interplay from auto traffic.

Think of an over-nite rail package delivery system to rival Fed-Ex or UPS. How many jobs would this provide? It is possible. Studies have shown that pound-for-pound, dollar-for-dollar, nothing beats high speed rail for delivering bulk goods.

Think of crowded airline commuters who fly 600-1000 miles. Would you take a clean quiet bullet train instead of an airline if you were going from say, New York to Baltimore? Or Chicago to St. Louis? Of course you would. 300 mile per hour rivals many commuter airlines.

Build this rail system NOW. But it must be done with American steel, American computers and American Labor! That is, if you think America is smart enough to compete with the French and the Japanese.



BEZANNES, France, April 3 — A French high-speed train broke the world speed record on rail on Tuesday, reaching 357 miles an hour (574.8 kilometers) in a much publicized test in eastern France, exceeding expectations that it would hit 150 meters a second, or 540 kilometers an hour.

The train, code-named V150, is a research prototype meant to demonstrate the superiority both of the TGV high-speed train and of its probable successor, the AGV, which is also manufactured by the French engineering group Alstom. The performance on Tuesday came close to but did not break the world speed record for any train, set by an electromagnetic train in 2003.

[Nederland]

35. One big problem

Right of Way.

Do you ralize how long it would take to establish right of way in all the necessary locations and fight off all the court challenges? Decades. Hell, the railways can't even get Congress to approve building railways in the median space that already exists on Interstate highways, and that land is already Federally controlled. That's another big difference between the US and Europe...

[kentuck]

39. What about "eminent domain"?

They can put roads and railroads thru your property anytime they wish.

[lib2DaBone]

42. I do believe many of the right of ways are still in place?

.. and the roadbeds are still owned by the rail systems. Although, many of them have been years ago forgotten and left to rot into the landscape.

[Fading Captain]

37. Too many people have jobs, with different hours, in different places

For high speed rail to make sense.

[Deja Q]

43. Wouldn't that change too?

[lunatica]

38. The cottage industry springing up at train depot locations would skyrocket

And would further benefit the climate change problem.

Green car outlets that people could rent to go to their business meetings and bring them back to the train depot when they're done.

Restaurants, hotels, tourist centers, amusement parks, retail stores, grocery stores all close to the train depots would be great.

This would create thriving commercial centers around the depots.

The use of private cars to get around town would diminish drastically if you can just rent one at the train depot for the occasion. Fuel wouldn't be an expense if the cars were solar powered.

Traffic would diminish and therefore pollution would diminish.

With rapid bullet trains people could live in one city and commute to work to another city and drive or ride bikes rented at the train stations.

[earth mom]

41. Of course it would be a great answer...but the powers that be won't do it.

It would make too much sense and help too many of the peons Congress & the government hates so much.


I wanna know how long it will take before everyone here on DU gets it that HOPE IS GONE?


Hope went out the window when Gore didn't run this year and Edwards was kicked to the curb.

Everything else they are dishing up is bullshit and lies. :argh:

[Fearless]

44. That won't work without a fundemental ideological shift in this nation.

I don't think that will happen without force (economic or otherwise).

[lib2DaBone]

45. Stay Tuned..... USA lost a half million Jobs in December......

Soon to be a million jobs a month.. lost in America. We are going to see change no one whould have believed even 2 years ago.

[Fearless]

48. Maybe, but if they keep the cost of gas comparable, then no dice.

[Touchdown]

46. It'd bring back the magnet and concrete industries, but rebar aside...

Contact rail isn't the way to go when you have to build from scratch.

We should invest in Magnetic Levitation (MAGLEV) transit systems. Why go with rail (which by US law is capped at 150mph) when MAGLEV has been around for 15 years, can go as fast as 350 mph safely, and is less expensive to operate and maintain in the long run? The up front costs are more than traditional rail, but the savings in running the system more than pays for itself.

No physical contact means, no friction wear on the track (guideway), less moving parts on the vehicles, no engine overhauling (the propulsion is entirely in the guideway or track), and no crashes with auto traffic, since it's all elevated.

[paulk]

49. it's not feasible economically

local high speed in metropolitan areas, yes - northeast corridor, perhaps LA to SF, Texas triangle, etc.

But the only way you could do a transcontinental system would be government subsidies at a huge loss. The price you would have to charge per ticket to break even would be astronomical. You couldn't run enough trains to pay for it - not to mention the maintenance of both the trains and the track over the life of the system. The "bang for the buck" would actually be quite low...

We'd be much better off investing in green energy, IMO.

[kentuck]

50. I disagree.

Each dollar spent in building the system would put back seven dollars into our economy. It would be a boom. I think it fits right in with the green energy proposals.

[paulk]

53. where do you get your numbers from?

I'd be interested in a cost analysis of a maglev line between, say, Denver and KC. It's 600 plus miles, with - what? Topeka? Lawrence? on the way. You'd pick up a few passengers there.

Today there are 16 flights going from DIA to KC, and 12 going the other way. How many passengers is that? I don't know, last flight I took to KC had about 50 people on it...

What are you going to charge for tickets to pay for the cost of the new line over the life of that line? What is the life of the line, before a major new investment is needed? Twenty years? Thirty? Are there going to be enough people wanting to make that trip to make it a worthwhile investment, especially when you compare it to what else we could be investing our money in? Like healthcare, alternative energy? And remember that you'd still be competing with airlines for that business.

Hey - I'm all for hi-speed. I love trains. I worked for the railroad for twenty years. But too many of these scenarios seem pie in the sky to me - they don't take into account real world factors. "If you build it they will come" is not a working philosophy when it comes to spending finite resources, afaic.

[Greyhound]

52. Not the answer, but one that would certainly help.

I'd also suggest that instead of traditional rail, mag-lev would be a better long-term choice.

[datasuspect]

54. "MONORAIL!"

monorail?

YES, MONORAIL!

[Lorien]

61. Maglev monorail to be more precise

it's not your uncle Walt's monorail:

[suffragette]

55. Looks like Obama and Biden are on board on this

I posted this back in November:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4423121

Here's another indicator:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/4/30/17129/8159
Obama on rail transit
A candidate finally discusses public transit ... at a random lunch

Says Obama:

The irony is with the gas prices what they are, we should be expanding rail service. One of the things I have been talking bout for awhile is high speed rail connecting all of these Midwest cities -- Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis. They are not that far away from each other. Because of how big of a hassle airlines are now. There are a lot of people if they had the choice, it takes you just about as much time if you had high speed rail to go the airport, park, take your shoes off.

This is something that we should be talking about a lot more. We are going to be having a lot of conversations this summer about gas prices. And it is a perfect time to start talk about why we don't have better rail service. We are the only advanced country in the world that doesn't have high speed rail. We just don't have it. And it works on the Northeast corridor. They would rather go from New York to Washington by train than they would by plane. It is a lot more reliable and it is a good way for us to start reducing how much gas we are using. It is a good story to tell.

And agree with you that this would be a good method to provide real economic stimulus ass well.

[BlooInBloo]

57. People looking for "the answer" invariably fail.

[kentuck]

58. Well, thank you for those encouraging words...

It's good to know that we are all in this boat together.

[Still Sensible]

59. While I would like to see some targeted

high speed rail to give the concept a try where it might make sense, I expect it would require a seismic cultural shift to succeed in many parts of the country.

[Lorien]

60. I've been saying this for years, only I'd prefer a maglev system with

light rail connectors. The high speed maglev monorail is virtually silent, and the monorails could be placed in existing highway median strips so there would be little destruction to existing property.

[1]

62. i would think the economic answer would involve more than getting you from here to there...

how about an energy initiative that gets us more green?

employs at least as much as your suggestion.

how about a health care initiative that takes care of us?

employs at least as much as your suggestion.

how about servicing the poor and homeless in this country?

employs at least as much as your suggestion.




i get that you want to get from here to there pretty damn quick. how about another plan that might just serve a few more of us not particularly concerned about how fast we get from here to there?

what do you think about that?