THE FUTURE OF U.S. RAIL SERVICE

High-speed rail on the D&RGW main climbing up to Moffat Tunnel and then through the Rockies inspires me to amend a famous slogan - "Zip through the Rockies - not around them."

I have seen several versions of that map. The first one I saw was 10 years ago.

A foamer map.  HSR from Montreal to Windsor wouldn't be US. The 220 mph is unrealistic.  Japanese Shinkansens have a top speed of 240–320 km/h (149–199 mph) on expensive, exclusive rights of way. JR Central Shinkansen pages.

Not going to happen, passenger train service is toast in the USA. 

Interesting. All I can say is that passenger rail is back in my neck of the woods in New Hampshire. The Downeaster: its fun and relatively fast way for me to get to Boston in 1 hour. I would eventually like to see high speed rail investments with Private monies..

It might happen in the NORTHEAST CORRIDOR because that is the only route than makes money.  Amtrak loses everyplace else.

Calif was just given a major blow to the financing of the states high speed rail project.

high speed rail

Cool map, maybe when they run out of jet fuel.

High speed rail?  They ought to try for 1950- speed rail when it comes to passenger hauling.  Took the Coast Starlight in October - scheduled average is 39 mph.  We made that going north.  We rode for fun, so slower was better, but for transportation they need to figure out how to get rolling.  True high speed rail scares me - if you want more than 125 mph, fly.  Opinion.

Not sure about the Salt Lake to Green river route. It looks like that is the old Denver Rio Grande route, but its not real suitable for high speed.

Freight service is still doing good. As for passenger service that is another ball game. Parts of the US still have high ridership but others don't.

I would love to see mainline passenger service return to the US.

In Florida there is going to be a high speed rail service between Orlando FL and Miami FL over Florida East Coast(FEC) tracks. Should start in 2016.

The hope is to take traffic off of I-95 and the FL turnpike. I think it will work if done correctly. Also a plane flight from Orlando to Miami will cost twice the price of high speed rail, so that may lure some people off the airplanes.

Lee Fritz

High speed rail would work if and when all the airport and freeway rights of way are privatized, and proper taxes paid paid from them.  When people have to pay out of pocket what it costs to omove themselves, then things will change.

nice to dream but I don't see it happening.

In this area, I woudn't believe FREIGHT trains are running, but know they are because when I turn on the news, somebody got splatted at a rural crossing, usually at night.

As much as I would like to have seen high speed rail in California, their initial ballot measure was wrong from square one. High speed rail was needed between suburban residential areas and urban centers, not Los Angeles and San Francisco. The airlines have that pretty well sewn up. What made it worse was they substantially deviated from the specifications laid out in the ballot proposition that approved the project. The court was right to stop them.

The system shown on the map isn't going to happen anytime soon given that some politicians will want stops in some obscure areas will mess up the system. Politicians should never be allowed to play with trains. If you picked six random members from the forum they'd come up with something 10 times better than any recent rail proposals I've seen out here in California.

Politicians should never be allowed to play with trains

That's a good one Matt   but we shouldn't limit it to just trains.

My prediction:  rail will be completely replaced in the next 50-100 years by robotic, electrically powered trucks and automobiles based upon cheap solar power.  No one really wants to get on a crowded train or subway with some idiot playing music on his phone so loud you can hear it, or shouting into her cellphone.  Let's face it, being around strangers involuntarily is not always fun, and most people have chosen the automobile for that reason.  You leave when you want and go where you want. 

Robotics will solve the major problem of the idiots, drunks and careless wetware behind the wheel (35,000 deaths a year) and traffic jams.  You'll also be able to read, nap, do your afternoon delight, or  work while you're in transit in a robotic automobile, thus increasing productivity and/or happiness.  Solar power derived electricity will solve the major problem of air pollution. People will be able to live where they want and central cities will shrink.  Sorry I won't be around to see it .

Robotic cars make me think of "too big to fail" in the sense that when it works, it's great if something should go amiss ( as they all eventually do) it would be catastrophic. Rail travel is growing, as well as light rail so..rather than based on theory, I think it's a safe bet the future looks good. Unless someone finds "affordibilium"or makes electric cars and their infrastructure affordable, things will remain on the current curve. We cannot afford to replace the bridges that are falling down let alone installing a new transport "experiment" from the West Coast to the East.  

Now, suppose HAL 9000 is the controlling computer?  Dave,.......!

Boy I'll agree with that...

"Robotic cars make me think of "too big to fail" in the sense that when it works, it's great if something should go amiss ( as they all eventually do) it would be catastrophic"

I think the 35,000 deaths each and every year in the USA due to the incompetence, negligence and fallibility of the human beings behind the steering wheel are already catastrophic. Robotic cars potentially could reduce this carnage by 90-99% in the long run.  Not to mention the tens of billions of dollars in health care expenses for vehicular injuries, and perhaps hundreds of billions per year in lost time from work. Robotic cars are going to be a reality within the decade.  They will stop faster (so they will be less likely to hit careless or stupid pedestrians, or careless or stupid other drivers' cars) and won't tailgate, won't turn without using turn signals, won't speed beyond the safety of current road and traffic conditions, etc.  There is basically little or no infrastructure that is needed for robotic cars.  Like the computers that control our power systems, air traffic controls, etc. they are simply more reliable and capable than human beings doing the same functions.

As for electric cars, the infrastructure will be a lot cheaper than a national high speed rail network.  And I think it's inevitable that cheap solar power will eventually make us an all electric society some day.  Coal is already close to dead in the first world, petroleum is on it's last few decades, nuclear power represents a lot more risk than robotic cars , and natural gas will probably be the only major fossil fuel in use 50-100 years from now. I'd rather see federal development dollars go into solar power than a national rail network that will, like the Erie Canal, be outmoded within a few decades of its being built.  A side benefit is that much of our lung and heart disease is due to use of fossil fuels and the emissions involved.  Solar electric power will probably eventually reduce mortality due to lung and heart disease by some very large percentage once fossil fuels are ancient history.  That's my story and I'm sticking with it for now.

Cool: robot cars look fun!

Rusty

At this point its simply unaffordable and a fantasy of the future. Some of us are old enough to us remember being promised "flying cars." Its a laudable exercise in futurism and not much else. There will always be fatalities..once it was horse and buggy fatalities..there is no such thing as an omniscient designed system. Where is the huge increase in power generating coming from and who is going to pay for it if they could? You are simply trading one issue for another.Technocratic optimism is a fun subject but unfortunately nothing is ever as easy as it seems when making predictions. As far as driving on this system, I suspect tolls would be required or what, more taxation?

Look at the high speed rail proposal in CA..recently shot down because they did not have the financing in place. 

In this case a little pragmatic skepticism belongs in the mix. As far as reducing fatalities by 99% or whatever, thats a number pulled out of a hat as there are no comparative systems in place. Remember Mag Lev..the next big thing? No one can afford it.

Misconception here?  I always thought that rail building was cheaper than highway construction, and that rail was the most efficient way to move other than a barge going down river.

I am with Matt - anybsix of us could come up with a better plan.  Mine is 120 mph track right next to e freight tracks, withpriority for passenger trains.  And Pullmans with decent bathrooms.

I would like to use Amtrak's route between St. Louis and Chicago to suggest an answer. 

Ridership between St. Louis and Chicago has been increasing as Amtrak's reliability increases.  By car they are 6 hours apart.  Airplane is uniquely disadvantaged in that an under 2 hour flight is a four hour trip due to airport security.  Amtrak is 5 and a half hours and will drop with increased speeds on parts of the route.  Trains compete in this particular market using standard equipment, no fancy expensive dedicated "high speed" trains. 

Rail is able to compete with airplanes since the extra hour and a half is perceived to be a lower mental cost than the pain in the butt TSA causes.  For each additional hour of rail travel over flight time the value of avoiding TSA diminishes. Long distance trains would need to be "high speed" or very cheap to compete while distances under 5 hours can compete with standard equipment.

This rosy picture is incomplete.  The train will not grow enough to break even without a system of transportation at each end of the line.  The options in St. Louis are Metrolink (which should make you laugh in dismay), a bus system, taxi, walk, or a friend.  Most business and residences are far from the downtown station making walking and taxi poor options.  This necessary piece of the transportation system is sorely lacking on St. Louis' end.  Why take the train if one leg of your journey is lacking a good way to get there?

Lastly, take a look at the rail network on Amtrak.com.  Going west from St. Louis to Denver requires going east to Chicago first.  Same with a trip to Memphis.  New Orleans to Florida requires a detour to North Carolina.  The St. Louis to Chicago example remains only a niche market because it is not part of a coherent transportation network. 

My answer is that while rail travel can compete in short and medium distance markets if all the transportation pieces fit together, it will not compete over long distances.  I fear we will not see a change from the present laughable Amtrak network because Congress refuses to spend the money needed to improve the network and focus on routes that can be viable. 

Nathan

"At this point its simply unaffordable and a fantasy of the future."

Another Luddite . Certainly not a fantasy, when mainstream manufacturers are promising fully autonomous vehicles, requiring no driver input,  before 2020. Even Google is working on it, and they've got more research money than the federal government at the moment . 2020 is the relatively near future that most of us will live to see, even at our "advanced" ages.  It will take some time before all cars on the road are required to be robotic or you have to drive them somewhere other than public roads, perhaps another decade, so say 2030 or 2035.  Life expectancy at 65 is now about 19-20 years, so half of us will see that change.

Fully automated traffic control will take longer no doubt, so that there will almost never be any traffic jams.  People in their 40s and 50s will likely live to see that.

As for my estimate of a 90-99% reduction in fatalities being near crazy (my choice of words ), I'd say you may not be fully aware of the issues.  Over 50% of traffic fatalities are due to drunk driving.  Robotic vehicles don't get drunk.  The vast majority of the rest are due to human error,  although nobody really knows how many, but speeding, stupidity, texting, drinking coffee, combing hair, etc. are major factors and those won't happen either.   We won't be able to prevent suicides by pedestrians, but no robotic automobile will let itself be driven into a highway abutment at 70 mph.  So maybe I'm wrong about 90-99%, but I'd say you're dead wrong (pun intended) that tens of  thousands of people who are dying each year won't ratchet down to hundreds or the low thousands through the advent of non-human "drivers." 

In any case, the public has voted with its dollars and the automobile is the choice of the present, not the train or bus.  Building high speed rail will not materially change that, in my opinion.  High speed rail might have made sense in the 1980s, but 30+ years later it's about to be made redundant, at least in North America, where there is no infrastructure, no stomach for the expense, and central government planning is viewed with suspicion at best these days.

As for solar powered electricity for vehicles, it's something that has to happen, for all sorts of reasons.  It's a question of when, not whether.  And it's nothing like Maglev trains (see above; not really necessary) or flying cars (also not really necessary).  Solar power is necessary and it's pretty close to cost effective in many areas of the country now.