Front Range / High Speed Rail (Denver, Fort Collins: bus, garden, train)

[DarkWolf]

Originally Posted by bostontopueblo

The Acela train in the northeast is quite outdated and very slow compared to modern trains in Europe. I hope they can upgrade it as some point.

As we speak they are studying to upgrade it to 180-220mph. The Nimby's in Colorado will probably be less if this were an Electric Train.

[Josseppie]

Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey

As we speak they are studying to upgrade it to 180-220mph. The Nimby's in Colorado will probably be less if this were an Electric Train.

My understanding is it will be a electric train from Pueblo to Fort Collins. The New Mexico line, that will run Pueblo south to Albuquerque, will be diesel as the distance is longer and it would not be practical to build a electric train.

So it looks like we are doing the same thing you are, conducting a study to see the feasibility of a HSR. Ours just came out and said it was feasible!

[wanneroo]

Seeing how these rocket trains are electric where's all that electric power gunna come from? That must take a hell of a lot juice to zap that sucker up to 220mph.

[Josseppie]

Originally Posted by wanneroo

Seeing how these rocket trains are electric where's all that electric power gunna come from? That must take a hell of a lot juice to zap that sucker up to 220mph.

That is the easy part. Pueblo has a big coal fired power plant, going to get 2 natural gas power plants and could get the largest solar field in the country. Then on top of that they are proposing to build a 21,000 acer Colorado Energy Park. This was one of the first press releases but there have been more as the project keeps moving forward.

"AEHI Agrees to Negotiate Contract for Colorado Energy Park to Build Multiple Large Advanced Nuclear Plants and Joint Venture Other Renewable Energy Sources."

The link: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/AEHI-Agrees-Negotiate-Contract-Colorado-Energy-Park-Build-Multiple-Large-Advanced-Nuclear-899864.htm

That is another reason I am so optimistic about Pueblo's future.

[jazzlover]

This month's column by Don Phillips in "Trains" magazine should be required reading for the apparently very misinformed people opining on high-speed rail in this forum. Phillips is a longtime reporter on transportation issues for such newspapers as the Washington Post. He lived for several years in Europe and is well-versed on high-speed rail there, as well as having intimate familiarity with US rail transportation for over 40 years.

The first two paragraphs of his article set the tone:

I've learned a few things about the new "high speed rail" movement. We should never assume that even the most enthusiastic new supporter of high speed knows much about railroads or railroad history. It would be to their advantage to learn a few things.

Even some of the most responsible and enthusiastic high speed advocates don't seem to understand that the first steps toward faster trains will involve merely bringing us back to what railroading was doing in the 1930's. They talk as if 90 or 110 mph will be a great leap forward, but in reality, steam locomotives running on jointed rail did the same thing every day back then.

In other words, what I've been saying on this forum for a long time: Bring back an extensive system of conventional passenger trains running at speeds of 70-100 mph--just like they did 75 years ago. Easy concept, and one hell of a lot cheaper than building a few high-speed corridors that serve only a small fraction of either the population or the geography of the country. We simply do not have the money to build any kind of meaningful 200 mph high speed rail network in this country. What we CAN do is start to rebuild the conventional passenger rail network that can successfully compete with highway travel speeds.

The automobile analogy to the high speed rail pipedreamers is this: We'll build a 200 mph-capable automobile that will be the hot ticket in automobile technology. Only problem is that we can only afford to build one 200 mile-long road in Colorado for it to run on (actually, we can't even really afford that). Now, if that 200 miles is the only place you ever go, then that's great. But, if you need to go anywhere else, well, you're just s***-out-of-luck. Oh, and the 200 mph car and its 200 mile road will cost as much to build as probably 2,000 miles of conventional road.

[Josseppie]

^
We can't go back in the past. The rail system worked back then because at the time it was the best available technology, that is no longer the case. Trains take too long to go long distances, between Denver and NYC for example, and the business world moves to fast to wait and that is why planes have taken over. Even for vacations people don't want to spend their vacation getting to where they want to go, they want to get there fast and spend their time at Disney World, or wherever they decide to go.

That is why HSR networks work. They can connect the large urban areas, like the Front Range and even Albuquerque, where it won't take long to travel between cities on a train making it advantageous to use a train over a plane or a car. That has the benefit of helping the economy of the cities it runs through. Once that has proven to be successful we can use the slower train to connect to the HSR from places like Monarch and even the smaller cities in the lower Arkansas river valley to Pueblo's hub so that would help reduce traffic and in the long run help the economy of those comminutes as well. This will, also, connect the large airports to more of the population making them accessible for more people, again helping the economy of the state it is located in.

We can't keep looking in the past and say it worked then it will work now as that is not true, but we can take some of their models and build on them to have a better transportation system in the future.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by Josseppie

^
We can't go back in the past.

Yes we can. All we need is 88 mph and 1.21 gigawatts.

[treedonkey]

Here is a new article about how individual towns, in this case, Monument, CO are being asked to join in on the high speed commuter rail efforts:
http://coloradocommunitynewspapers.c..._monu_rail.txt

My favorite quote from that article:
"The authority is planning on trying to work with the railroads to move them out of the more heavily populated area of the state."

That sort of sounds like an excuse I came with in grade school to explain why I didn't get my homework done. Doesn't sound too promising, unfortunately.

[jazzlover]

Here's why it will probably never happen. First, the "Joint Line" from Denver south through Pueblo is currently the major corridor for coal trains moving from Wyoming to Texas. They are heavy and slow, and the Joint Line is at near capacity with them and the other freight traffic moving on the line. To "move that traffic off" the line would mean constructing a couple of hundred miles of brand new railroad on the Colorado's Eastern Plains. Who pays for that? Then, the Joint Line would have to be upgraded to high speed rail standards. That would literally mean rebuilding it from the ground up--at a cost in probably seven figures per mile. Along with that, EVERY SINGLE ROAD CROSSING FOR ITS ENTIRE LENGTH WOULD EITHER REQUIRE AND UNDERPASS OR OVERPASS TO CROSS THE HIGH-SPEED RAIL RIGHT-OF-WAY. Who will pay for that?

What could be done? Add a second and third conventional track all the way from Denver to Pueblo along the existing right-of-way. That would allow a minimum of one track to be dedicated to passenger trains at all times. Speeds of 55-90 mph would probably be possible for most of the distance. It would cost about 10% what a high-speed rail corridor would cost, and would still sustain average speeds faster than what is possible most days on the Interstate. And, construction of that could start almost immediately. Of course, that's not fun and flashy for the pork barrel politicians and clueless public like dreaming about some high-speed corridor that will never be practical and couldn't be built for at least a decade under the best of circumstances.

[Josseppie]

^
Never is a long time.

Here is why it will happen. The Front Range Urban Corridor is in the top 5 fastest growing corridors in the country so as it grows I-25 will be more and more congested. That will create a demand for some kind of passenger rail service between Fort Collins and Pueblo and if we are going to do it we might as well do it right and build a HSR, even if the initial cost is more. Then as the area south of Pueblo grows, mainly the Albuquerque/ Santa Fe metro areas, it will be to our advantage to have both areas connected by passenger rail service in Pueblo and again a HSR makes the most sense.

Here is what they should do:

Add a second and third track using HSR standards all the way from Fort Collins to Pueblo along the existing right-of-way. Then they could add another line using HSR standards south of Pueblo to Albuquerque and have the hub between the two lines at the historic train station in downtown Pueblo. This plan is not cheap but will more then pay for itself as the economies of Colorado and New Mexico benefit from the better transportation network.