High Speed Rail (Chicago, Latham: get credit, houses, buy)

[oakparkdude]

Its nice to see we have a bunch of knowledgeable rail advocates here!

[chet everett]

And I argue, that if passengers are treated as FREIGHT you will only get "Ponderosa" customers that will NOT make the project feasible. If you TRY to get the Gibson's clientele you will PUT AIRLINES OUT OF BUSINESS and belive me that is NOT something that will help Chciago!

Honest, the technology that Siemens is looking at is stuff that researchers at Argonne looked at DECADES ago and both DOE and DOT wisely decided that it was NOT in the strategic interests of the the US. I suppose some of these things might have made sense IF we really did have LOTS AND LOTS of reactors for CHEAP energy that would not impact the environment, but THAT did not happen...

http://books.google.com/books?id=IAD...esult&resnum=6

[oakparkdude]

Originally Posted by chet everett

And I argue, that if passengers are treated as FREIGHT you will only get "Ponderosa" customers that will NOT make the project feasible. If you TRY to get the Gibson's clientele you will PUT AIRLINES OUT OF BUSINESS and belive me that is NOT something that will help Chciago!

Chet, how many times do I have to repeat myself? ORD to LA, ORD to LGA, and ORD to IAD will not be replaced by trains. Trains (for the foreseable future) will only be competitive for the intermediate range trip (300-500 miles.) For long-haul trips, planes will remain superior. As far as I can tell, European airlines still are in business and are no more unprofitable than US airlines.

BTW, I'm not sure why making Chicago the passenger train hub of the Midwest would be bad for Chicago. Sure the airlines would lose the short-haul business, but their more lucrative long-haul would remain.

[RichMonk]

You make too many assumptions. Assumptions about who will be riding, assumptions about how that affects airlines, assumptions on why DOE and DOT made certain decisions and incorrect assumptions about what kind of trains will be used.

Cars will be too expensive to drive cross country in our future or in our children's future. Planes will also be too expensive to fly to regional destinations. So, to prepare for this inevitability we should expand our transportation options. Trains, while not as fast as planes, are economical (if your not using some ridiculous sci-fi floating fortress train) safe and more pleasant that driving down 55 staring at nothingness.

EDIT: I guess the main thing that one should glean from this is that the age of petroleum is ending. Cars will need to change and they WILL be more expensive as will planes. Oil is a cheap, cheap, cheap source of energy though it doesn't seem that way right now. Civilzations will have to adapt and if we don't do something, anything, like expanding our trains then we are in for some trouble.

[meatpuff]

Originally Posted by Avengerfire

Will I pay a significant amount of money more to shave a hour or two off of my train ride to Minn. or St. Louis? No way.

Well, right now the stimulus plan is pouring money into renovating the CTA Blue line to eliminate slow zones on a perfectly functional transit line. With a few assumptions, we can compare how many dollars each project spends to save one man-hour of travel time.

The Blue line had 36,417,000 riders last year. Let's say 50% of them are riding to or from the Loop. The renovation is from Division to Clinton. I would guess when it's done it might save 4 min on the journey from Division to Clinton, or 2 min per average rider (who boards or alights in the Loop). That saves 18.2 million riders two minutes each, or 36,400,000 man-minutes, or 607,000 man-hours saved. The cost of the project is $88 million.

From Dick Durbin's site Durbin Pushes Chicago-St. Louis High Speed Rail Line *(3-10-2009) (http://durbin.senate.gov/showRelease.cfm?releaseId=309356 - broken link), according to IDOT, the Chicago-St. Louis HSR (110 mph service) is predicted to cost as much as $700 million. It will shave at least 90 min from each trip (5.5 hrs -> 4 hrs or less), and there are currently 543,642 annual riders. That's 815,463 man-hours saved each year.

For the Blue line it's $145 per man-hour saved, and for the HSR it's $858 per man-hour saved.



The points here are just that travel time is valuable and worth spending money to reduce, whether it's intra-city or inter-city. And secondly, that both of these projects are in the same ballpark as far as dollar-efficiency. And finally, that of the two, the Blue line is definitely a slam-dunk and should be done first. And it is being done first.

The question is how much will ridership increase on Chicago-St. Louis Amtrak if the improvements are made? If ridership increases 5X, the cost per man-hour for HSR is divided by 5, and the HSR project looks like about as good an investment as CTA slow-zone elimination. And very few people are calling slow-zone elimination a waste of money. Shortening the train travel time from 5.5 hrs to 4 hrs means the train is currently slower than driving, but will be made faster than driving. A lot more people would ride and I don't think 5X the current ridership is unreasonable.

[chet everett]

No, petroleum is going to be around for A VERY LONG TIME -- honest.

And trains that are step BACKWARDS like Acela are NOT going to ever run on anything other than diesel, because NOTHING has its energy density.

People are NOT going to do the "hub and spoke" thing with trains or use HSR in combination with airtravel in the current configuration of Chicago's airline and rail terminals. Any shift that de-emphasizes Chicago as a hub HURTS Chicago BADLY.

Cars are currently the CHEAPEST total cost way to get people coast-to-coast, especially when one considers diesels and that is unlikely to change. If their is shift toward either CNG or hydrogen to reduce CO2 and other emmissions that will happen BECAUSE it is cheaper.

All the WORLD's oil companies know EXACTLY what they are doing and why. The future will not be all that much different than the past.


meatpuff:

5x? WHAT THE ???

[oakparkdude]

Originally Posted by chet everett

No, petroleum is going to be around for A VERY LONG TIME -- honest.

And trains that are step BACKWARDS like Acela are NOT going to ever run on anything other than diesel, because NOTHING has its energy density.

You do realize that the ACELA uses electricity not diesel, right?

[oakparkdude]

Incidentally, I'll throw another shout out to the urbanophile blog (http://theurbanophile.blogspot.com/2009/02/chicago-reconnecting-hinterland-part-1b.html - broken link) who has a very interesting (and lengthy) post on this subject.

Also this article http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea...1.longman.html which advocates for wide-spread electrification of rail lines.

And, if I've convinced you, go to http://www.midwesthsr.org/ and donate money.

[chet everett]

WHOA -- diesel electrics are what runs Metra too. In fact I have retired relatives that rebuilt those locomotives at Electromotive division. Far better use of energy than the pathetic hack of Acela.

Slower Than A Speeding Bullet - Acela, Amtrak's new train | Washington Monthly | Find Articles at BNET

Man that urbanophile writes longer stuff than even me! Hard to tell if he agrees with me or not, my guess is he does.

As I said, Amtrak is not the answer. We need a new federal authority to own the capital stock and oversee the operations of the system. The actual operations might be contracted out to private companies (or maybe not - we'd have to figure that out). But we should avoid structuring this with traditional railroad operating practices that date to the 19th century and equally avoid the civil service type structure of 30 years to retirement with a defined benefit system for life. Neither of these is conducive to running a rider oriented, financially sustainable system.

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by chet everett

Winter average lows in the 20's are not signficantly more comfortable than those in the teens...They do get less snow, but they also have higher relative humid for much of the year.

What about the wind chill though?