Midwestern High Speed Rail Network - Chicago thoughts? (Champaign, Madison: theatre, living)

[DarkWolf]

Originally Posted by williepotatoes

Thank you, but I will take one maglev please, because the chance of derailment is pretty remote. Since these rail systems will live or die on public funding, they will also (and already do) have powerful legislative enemies. The first time one of them tanks and produces a couple hundred bodybags will be the end of them.

Americans are not ready to become train people again. At least not as long as they have cars to drive. Making these systems financially sustainable is a long way off. If your going to make a move, then make a bold one and safe one. A futuristic high speed adventure just might click with the younger generation and build a market for their services.

Make no small plans.

Maglevs have derailed and its been pretty bad , they also have caught fire and had violent brake failures... HSR operates at profit in the Northeast and most of the world , so once its up and running it wouldn't need funding for Congress to keep going. Americans seem to be going back to Train travel and Transit , Ridership is up across the Nation for the 6th year in a row.

[williepotatoes]

Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey

Huh..... HSR is grade separated....and protected with a High Fench and concrete barriers in Suburban / Urban areas....so its unlikely that a car would get onto the tracks. There are also sensors and cameras every mile monitoring the tracks for debris or animals. Europe has more drunks then we do....and Japan has the world's highest suicide rate...so I don't see why we can't build HSR. We have a decent amount HSR experience , The Midwest used to have a semi HSR network with trains running out of Chicago at 125mph. Here in the Northeast Trains run between 100-160mph carrying over 3 Million daily without incident. Derailments are very rare and occur at low speeds usually in the Yard.... They drug test overseas and have stress tests along with that....we do less then they do in Europe or Japan. JB is Canadain..

Good, I guess failure is impossible then.

[DarkWolf]

Originally Posted by williepotatoes

Good, I guess failure is impossible then.

After a few incidents in Germany , they have made HSR nearly impossible to derail....or crash....

[css9450]

Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey

Huh..... HSR is grade separated....and protected with a High Fench and concrete barriers in Suburban / Urban areas....so its unlikely that a car would get onto the tracks. There are also sensors and cameras every mile monitoring the tracks for debris or animals.

And that's one of the reasons why when (if) it ever gets built, it'll be extraordinarily expensive. Could Chicago-Detroit or Chicago-St. Louis operate at 200+ MPH? Sure - but only if an all-new right-of-way is built over much of the route which features the grade separation and banked curves mentioned earlier. No grade crossings and no chances for pedestrians to get whacked. All crossings at grade with other railroads would have to be eliminated too, and any freight traffic traffic in the corridor would have to be kept on its own line. Yes it would probably have to be electrified.

Instead, we keep going about it half-heartedly by upgrading existing lines to 110 MPH or so, such as the aforementioned line in Michigan. They've been working toward that goal for about the last 30 years! Yet its no better than what some railroads could do back in the 1940s. Same with Chicago-St. Louis. This was supposed to be Amtrak's showpiece back in the early 70s, so much so that when they got the new French-built Turbo trains in 1973 they staged a race between a train, a car and an airplane. Since then, service along the line has had its ups and downs and even today, passenger trains are often run at the whims of about four different dispatchers, opportunities to pass other trains are scarce and interference with freight trains is common.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by williepotatoes

Thank you, but I will take one maglev please, because the chance of derailment is pretty remote. Since these rail systems will live or die on public funding, they will also (and already do) have powerful legislative enemies. The first time one of them tanks and produces a couple hundred bodybags will be the end of them.

Yep, that's certainly killed the airline industry and the theatre industry and the "living near the sea" industry and, come to think of it, the automobile industry (40,000 deaths a year ...) ... Oh, wait ...

Originally Posted by williepotatoes

Americans are not ready to become train people again. At least not as long as they have cars to drive. Making these systems financially sustainable is a long way off. If your going to make a move, then make a bold one and safe one. A futuristic high speed adventure just might click with the younger generation and build a market for their services.

Yes, because a car that drives at most 65 mph in most states is exactly like trains that operate at three times that speed in numerous countries ...

Originally Posted by williepotatoes

Make no small plans.

That is a perversion of Burnham.

[sunnyandcloudydays]

Seems it has been a while since this subject has been touched.

I am now on the fence with high speed rail.

For starters the NorthEast Cooridor is not the Midwest or the South or the Pacific.

Seems to me you have a lot more people traveling among the NorthEast cooridor than you would from
Detroit to Chicago to St. Louis.

The other problem I see now that I did not see before are states that are not willing to cooperate.
Example Wisconsin.

What good is a HSR if your in between state doesnt want the line?
Defeats the purpose

The other wild card is ridership.
How many people realistically will utilize the high speed rails?

I used to be so much in favor but lately the unanswered questions bring concern.

From a logical point the more we are less dependant on automobiles the better.
reduce congestion
reduce pollution
reduce fatalities due to drivers being tired and inclimate weather conds.

From what I know Illinois is on board for the HSR but surrounding states are not
mainly Wisconsin and Indiana.
I know Michigan is in favor and Minnesota.

[linicx]

I suppose states scan be forced into participating, but at what cost? If the average Chicagoan does not hop on the Amtrak today to go to Minneapolis or St. Louis, what makes anyone think they will do it in eight years? It might make more sense to add a short spur to serve a new ridership of nearly a million feet on the ground.

[oddstray]

It makes a helluva' lot more sense to do that in the flat midwest than on the shaky, not-so-flat west coast. Oh, nevermind. They're putting it through the central valley. Where No.One.Lives!

[cubssoxfan]

How much is funded by the state? We are what, 11BILLION in debt with ever increasing pension obligations. Same with the Federal funding, we have so many traditional transportation needs for highways, transit, rail, waterways/harbors with a lot of currently needed infrastructure needing repair, replacement or expansion.

I love the idea of high speed rail, but the reality of current costs and current budget realities do not match to do a true "European" high speed rail.

[sunnyandcloudydays]

Right on - I can count on one finger the times I have traveled to Minnesota.

I can count on one finger the times traveled to Wisconsin in the last year.

Seems to me the old proposed STAR line would be beneficial.

Ridership would be a primary concern along with priorities

Great great idea but what is the practical side ...

Heck I would love to see the cost of METRA go down.. there is a priority

Then I think of Mega bus and it seems like everytime its empty..

Would people even change.. ????

Short Spur route is a good idea test it out and see how it works , before investing money that is simply not there.