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Gotcha, my mistake. I thought you were talking about slower service.
I still think the cultural factor is prohibitive for attracting a lot of riders on a high speed Miami-Chicago route. I agree that in order for it to work, you'd need to have a lot of embarking/disembarking passengers at the stops in between because 10 hours on a train (vs. 3ish flying) from end to end still isn't ideal. But the problem is that car dependency is real in the United States. Of course nobody has their own car when they're flying, but outside of a few major metro areas (Chicago is one of the few), most passengers are either picked up in cars (family/friends/rideshare/taxi) or head right for the rental car center.
Chicago is a great city to get around without a car. Miami isn't bad either (but not on the same level as Chicago). However, Indianapolis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Orlando are not particularly well known for having great public transit. Atlanta is the best of the bunch, and it's not great. And while Atlanta and Nashville have OK urban cores by American standards, they pale in comparison to their comparably sized European and Asian counterparts in terms of density, walkability, transit connections, and concentration of activity and attractions (Bikeshares are great, but they're supplemental transit for most, and nobody with luggage is going to hop on a bike to get where they need to go). Those are all of the factors that make downtown to downtown rail service so appealing. Unlike flying, rail transit in Europe or Asia puts passengers right in the center of the activity and they don't need to rely on cars to get around (vs. making airport transfers from well outside of the city many times). American cities are largely much more decentralized. What does a rail passenger do when they arrive in downtown Orlando? Not much. Downtown is fine (underrated even), but small and the vast majority of destinations people travel to Orlando for are well outside of downtown and not transit connected. Most of the cities on that line will have similar issues (Nashville and Atlanta would be the best, but still are fairly decentralized).
And that's just passengers disembarking. Who is boarding these trains, and how are they getting to the station? In Europe and Asia, there's much higher residential density in/around the urban core (which means more people walking and taking transit to the station) than any of the cities on this route. And much lower percentage of the population owns cars and/or commutes regularly in a car in Europe/Asia. This isn't the case in most American cities. Apart from Chicago, every city on CHI-MIA route is fairly suburban immediately adjacent to the center of the city. Apart from Chicago, 80-90% of households have at least one car in all of the cities on that route. It's going to take a lot to entice them out of their cars, and I'm not sure that incentive exists. The car provides flexibility that rail just doesn't (come and go when you please). Between parking at the station, fares, and renting a car at the other end, it's almost certainly going to be cheaper to drive. And because most of these cities are so decentralized, the car makes it more convenient to get around when you're there. I don't think even the most efficient high speed rail will fix that. Most people will opt to drive between Chattanooga and Atlanta or Jacksonville to Orlando even if they have the option to take a high speed train because the benefit of arriving in the downtown of any of those places isn't the same as arriving in central Amsterdam, Antwerp, Dusseldorf, or Zurich. I'd like to see it work here, but I don't think we're even close to the point where that will happen in the U.S. outside of maybe the Northeast Corridor.
Your points are good in their comparison to Europe especially when comparing metropolitan areas of the same size, but there has been a notable densifying of urban cores since the 2000s especially as populations have increased in many of these cities. With it has come somewhat more walkable areas and oftentimes a large part of the visitor attractions as well as the major corporate offices are near the city centers, where you'd ostensibly try running these trains, rather than the airports which are for various reasons usually further out from the core and certainly never right in the core within walking distance of corporate high-rises.
Flying has similar issues with usually needing a car, but that's exacerbated by the airport's location most of the time. Meanwhile, a train station in the urban core can mean a short and relatively inexpensive rideshare trip for your final leg. I've traveled quite a lot for work over the last decade which usually takes me into cities rather than further flung industrial areas or suburbs and rideshare has vastly changed the experience for me even when flying to the destination. I don't bother to rent a car for the majority of these trips including to some of the cities on this potential route because a combination of walking, rideshare, and mass transit when available has made that unnecessary. It's often more frustrating for me to go through the car rental process in renting and returning and to have to drive and navigate and find parking, and unless I'm hitting up a ton of places far flung from each other, it's also about as expensive or cheaper than renting a car.
HSR is good in that it can be much faster than driving, and it's also a more relaxing way to travel a lot of times as it can be quite spacious and smooth. If your destinations are ultimately in the urban core instead of in multiple places far away from each other and you're moving about them often, then it may be preferable for many.
Again though, I don't see this as low hanging fruit. Maybe some of the HSR corridors between some city pairs that would be along this route, but I don't really know. The whole hog though is definitely not.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 07-16-2020 at 04:15 PM..
In general, since we now hear that USPS will be using less air transport, why can't they partner with Amtrak to have passenger trains carry mail and invest in building out and improving the passenger rail network? I can see many potential routes where transporting the mail via adequate rail service would eat airmail's lunch, as it were. And it would have to cost much less than transporting mail by air.
Electrification is not low hanging fruit. It requires expensive "catenary," substations and locomotives. I suggest making the Cardinal daily and, after the South Shore finishes the West Lake Corridor, run it along said line between Mccormick Place and Dyer IN, where a joint South Shore/Amtrak station would be built.
A no-brainer new front range line from El Paso north along the Rio Grande to Albuquerque and then tie into a revamped SW Chief route north of ABQ, past Santa Fe and thence to Trinidad Colorado, and then straight up to Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver and Boulder and then probably to Cheyenne. That would connect three major east-west routes and provide a major north-south route. Passengers from El Paso or Albuquerque or Denver would not have to go to Chicago or LA to get to the other cities on the N/S route.
In general, since we now hear that USPS will be using less air transport, why can't they partner with Amtrak to have passenger trains carry mail and invest in building out and improving the passenger rail network? I can see many potential routes where transporting the mail via adequate rail service would eat airmail's lunch, as it were. And it would have to cost much less than transporting mail by air.
Yea, LA to Vegas makes a lot of sense to me though one question I have is if there are existing rail tracks and/or ROW right now. I do know that the CA HSR under construction has a funny jog out to Palmdale which I think is kind of silly, but it'd make more sense if that were where trains coming from both Central Valley/Norcal and from Southern California also ran through to get to Vegas. I'm less sure about the SLC stretch though since that's a significantly further distance out from Las Vegas to SLC and with no major population centers in-between. Then again, both Las Vegas and SLC are growing at pretty substantial rates, so it may make sense to start planning early. This would seemingly have to be rather high speed though, so it's tough to say if this is actually low hanging.
I do think mail/freight delivery makes sense. I also think some kind of Auto Train like service would be good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pvande55
Electrification is not low hanging fruit. It requires expensive "catenary," substations and locomotives. I suggest making the Cardinal daily and, after the South Shore finishes the West Lake Corridor, run it along said line between Mccormick Place and Dyer IN, where a joint South Shore/Amtrak station would be built.
Right, full electrification can be a pretty substantial investment and generally isn't worth it until there is substantial ridership to amortize that cost. I think there are some routes that exist now where it makes sense, but not the bulk of it.
One thing that's piqued my interest in recent years are the advancements in batteries, inverters and motors which gets more attention for electric rubber-on-asphalt vehicles, but has also seen some development in terms of rail transport. One of the major advantages of steel-on-steel rail transport versus rubber-on-asphalt transport is the much, much lower rolling resistance of the former. One of the disadvantages of battery electric vehicles is the possibly much higher weight for the equivalent "range". However, that weight disadvantage nearly disappears with steel-on-steel because the rolling resistance is so low for steel-on-steel. I think with that, what seemingly could make sense are battery electric trains and with catenary only set up in a few key areas especially at and near stops. I think the logic behind that is that a lot of the initial power consumption comes from getting trains to cruising speed in the first place. Now if you had electrification at and near the stations, then any electrification put in those areas would get more "minutes" of electrical contact per mile and thus more charging for every mile of electrification near those stops because those are the areas where the trains will have supposedly slowed down, come to a complete stop and then build speed back up from 0 mph (the stop), plus those stations would likely be near where there is a grid connection (since stations aren't generally in the middle of nowhere) and near people where employees can live to service such. So with that, you can have a battery that gets charged at and near those stations from catenary to charge the batteries and additionally the motors can also draw power from catenary so that they're drawing power from the grid while building up speed and you minimize the amount of battery capacity you need to cruise the more distant parts of the route off of battery power. This partial electrification with battery also has the advantages of being able to run on tracks where you can't put in catenary like places with low clearance or shared track that double-decker/oversized freight runs as well as having some backup power in case there are any issues with the grid.
I like the idea of a daily Cardinal and with a direct transfer to a regional commuter line--I'm trying to see where the routing goes right now as I'm not super familiar with the South Shore Line besides knowing it exists and is electrified. I see that the West Lake Corridor is supposedly underway. From what I've read, it looks like it'll terminate a half mile north of the Amtrak Dyer station which is unfortunate as that half mile is a pretty significant hurdle for transferring, so what you're saying about extending it to Dyer makes a lot of sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SunGrins
A no-brainer new front range line from El Paso north along the Rio Grande to Albuquerque and then tie into a revamped SW Chief route north of ABQ, past Santa Fe and thence to Trinidad Colorado, and then straight up to Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver and Boulder and then probably to Cheyenne. That would connect three major east-west routes and provide a major north-south route. Passengers from El Paso or Albuquerque or Denver would not have to go to Chicago or LA to get to the other cities on the N/S route.
This sounds pretty good. Is there existing tracks or ROW for this proposed route or is this completely new? I know that the Albuquerque to Trinidad route currently exists via the current Southwest Chief and this would be good in essentially doubling the amount of service for the stops between Albuquerque and Trinidad and there's commuter rail in the Denver area, but it'd be nice to know what else currently exists. I know there's the Front Range Passenger Rail proposal which would cover the Albuquerque to Cheyenne stretch, but is there something similar for existing freight rail for the El Paso to Albuquerque stretch? I see that BNSF does have rail that would go from El Paso to Albuquerque via Las Cruces, but don't know if there's been any proposal to put passenger transport on it:
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-09-2021 at 10:02 AM..
Yea, LA to Vegas makes a lot of sense to me though one question I have is if there are existing rail tracks and/or ROW right now.
Yes, there are already tracks between LA, Vegas, and SLC. In fact, Amtrak used to run a train
along those tracks (it was called the Desert Wind). I wish I'd ridden it back in the day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
I do know that the CA HSR under construction has a funny jog out to Palmdale which I think is kind of silly, but it'd make more sense if that were where trains coming from both Central Valley/Norcal and from Southern California also ran through to get to Vegas. I'm less sure about the SLC stretch though since that's a significantly further distance out from Las Vegas to SLC and with no major population centers in-between. Then again, both Las Vegas and SLC are growing at pretty substantial rates, so it may make sense to start planning early. This would seemingly have to be rather high speed though, so it's tough to say if this is actually low hanging.
The CA HSR project was a great idea, but ruined by idiotic route planning.
Indeed, the detour to Palmdale certainly is silly (as was having the line follow Highway 99 through the Central Valley cities, rather than taking a direct route along I-5).
But a future LA-to-Vegas train probably wouldn't go through Palmdale... more likely it would go east
through San Bernardino, then over the Cajon Pass and enter the desert at Victorville, about 45 miles
east of Palmdale (that was the route the Desert Wind took).
Electrification is not low hanging fruit. It requires expensive "catenary," substations and locomotives. I suggest making the Cardinal daily and, after the South Shore finishes the West Lake Corridor, run it along said line between Mccormick Place and Dyer IN, where a joint South Shore/Amtrak station would be built.
The northern transcontinental line was fully electrified at one point but went back to fuel power for the reasons you state. I think it was the Milwaukee Road, running from Chicago and Milwaukee through the northern tier of states to Seattle.
I understand that passenger trains heading into large underground stations in eastern cities, like Chicago and New York, switch to electric while they are in the tunnels.
The northern transcontinental line was fully electrified at one point but went back to fuel power for the reasons you state. I think it was the Milwaukee Road, running from Chicago and Milwaukee through the northern tier of states to Seattle.
I understand that passenger trains heading into large underground stations in eastern cities, like Chicago and New York, switch to electric while they are in the tunnels.
The electrified lines into New York Penn Station and Philadelphia 30th Street Station are electrified for many miles before they enter the tunnels or stations. Both cities' regional rail networks are fully (or largely, in NYC's case) electrified, as is the entire Amtrak Northeast Corridor line from Boston to Washington. (The electrification east of New Haven was part of the Acela HSR project — as of now, you can't run true HSR using onboard fuel sources. The New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad electrified its line from New Haven into Grand Central Terminal in the 1910s, and the Pennsylvania Railroad began electrifying its lines on Long Island around the same time, shortly after Penn Station opened. The PRR electrified its entire system from New York to Washington and Philadelphia to Harrisburg in the 1930s.
The only on-the-fly electrification change I'm aware of in NEC territory is where Metro-North New Haven Line trains switch from overhead catenary to third rail power somewhere around Bronxville in order to reach Grand Central Terminal. Some New Jersey Transit lines that operate over the electrified Morris & Essex (Lackawanna) lines into Hoboken use dual-mode locomotives that switch power when they enter electrified territory.
Chicago has only one electrified regional rail network — the ex-Illinois Central Metra Electric lines that operate out of Dearborn Street Station. Those too are electrified for their entire length.
I know Amtrak would never be interested in it, but here in Coos Bay Oregon we have a stupid airport, that they spend millions of dollars to subsidize, so we can have one flight a day fly out of it. With no competition the airfare is way out of the price range of most people. So people here have to take the local transit buses, and transfer several times to get to the airport in Eugene for a flight they can actually afford.
At the same time the Port of Coos Bay has spent $50 million for the rehabilitation of the 134 mile freight line between Coos Bay and Eugene. I believe they currently run about three freight trains a week on it.
The way I see it, they have already spent all that money on rehabilitation of the rail line. Now if they would just pull the plug on the worthless airport, they could use that money to buy probably a heritage train that they could run back and forth between Coos Bay and Eugene. Not only would it be a tourist attraction, but it could provide good affordable transportation for Oregon Coast residents to get to the Eugene airport where they could catch affordable flights to more then one place.
But that is just my idea. There is no talk of it here, and probably no interest as well.
The CA HSR project was a great idea, but ruined by idiotic route planning.
Moreover, I'm pretty sure California would benefit much more from simply improving the conventional rail system. Amtrak still puts you on a bus between L.A. and Bakersfield, if you want to ride the San Joaquin route north; they should fix that. The Surf Line route, between SD and Solana Beach goes miles out of the way inland, presumably because that was the easiest and cheapest way to route the tracks when they were first laid down in the 19th century. So, instead of HSR, they could just build a few more tunnels and bridges to provide more direct routes from place to place.
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