Missing HSR Corridor Designations

C

Commuting Boston Student

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I'm sure everyone has seen this by now - or, almost everyone.



This is the map of every officially designated (by the FRA) high-speed rail development corridor. It's a great start, but there's a lot of absences that strike me as pretty glaring, like...
  • Someone over at the FRA must really hate the State of Tennessee...Louisville-Nashville and Memphis-Nashville are both reasonably important connections that are absent.
  • South Central, Southeast/Gulf Coast and Florida are all completely isolated from each other, which makes no sense when you consider that Houston-San Antonio and Jacksonville-Orlando both had to be deliberately excluded to create this artificial separation. Why?
  • Going back to the gaping hole in Tennessee, Louisville-Nashville-Birmingham could have connected the Chicago Hub Network to the Southeast/Gulf Coast Network.
  • Montreal is designated for a connection, but Toronto isn't. Both cities should be connected, but TWO is a much higher priority than MTL is. Why one and not the other?
I'm sure there's other things I'm not seeing here, too, but...

Is this just supposed to be the Phase I map, with a Phase II coming in the future? Or, is there some sort of explanation for those missing links?

And if anyone else spots glaring absences, feel free to point them out.
 
Interesting that Montreal links to Boston- I had thought it was inextricably linked to New York for rail planning purposes. Interesting.
 
CBS, I get what you mean about some of the regional corridors not being interconnected. But isn't that because HSR is supposed to compete with relatively short (i.e., <700 mile) flights.
Can HSR really compete for travelers trying to get from Miami to San Antonio or New Orleans to Chicago? And do we want it to (from an efficient use of gov't money POV)?
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
CBS, I get what you mean about some of the regional corridors not being interconnected. But isn't that because HSR is supposed to compete with relatively short (i.e., <700 mile) flights.
Can HSR really compete for travelers trying to get from Miami to San Antonio or New Orleans to Chicago? And do we want it to (from an efficient use of gov't money POV)?
Click to expand...

Can HSR really NOT compete for travelers trying to go from Houston, TX to Austin, TX or from Jacksonville, FL to Orlando, FL?

I agree, trying to compete with long-distance flights by building some kind of trans-national express New York - Los Angeles would be the height of stupidity, which is why I'm not raising a fuss about California and the Cascades being isolated - there's a whole lot of nothing worth connecting to out there.

But the NEC is connected to the Empire and Keystone Corridors, and also to the Southeast Network. Obviously, nobody's going to through run a train all the way from Boston to Jacksonville, ever, even though there's a solid line of uninterrupted HSR corridor.

By the same metric, while I wouldn't expect HSR to ever depart Miami bound for Chicago, San Antonio or Montreal, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that two large cities in the same state roughly 150 miles from each other would be and should be connected.

Very few people would ride HSR all the way down the East Coast or all the way across the Gulf Coast, and those that would are probably not going to be dissuaded from doing so by having to transfer once, twice or even three times. So, creating this forced isolation from network to network that requires deliberately excluding what are likely high-volume, high-profit connections (especially Houston-San Antonio or Houston-Austin) seems actively harmful.
 
Gotcha. I was misinterpreting your point to be the goal should be connecting all corridors.
But I see what your saying about deliberately isolating the corridors at the expense of logical connections is the height of stupidity.
 
Do you really expect competence from the FRA when it comes to passenger rail?

We're talking about the agency which has basically killed efficient, effective passenger rail in the United States. Or perhaps it is better said that it is the cover on the coffin, nailed shut.
 
The fact that they omitted Houston-Austin/San Antonio and Houston-Dallas while putting in Dallas-Oklahoma City-Tulsa and Dallas-Texarkana-Little Rock shows how ridiculous that map is. Then there are routes like Raleigh-Columbia-Savannah-Jacksonville but no Chicago-Quad Cities-Iowa City/Cedar Rapids-Des Moines-Omaha? Boston-Montreal and Seattle-Vancouver but no Detroit-Toronto or Buffalo-Toronto? Come on!
 
I don't the HSR map is missing anything [EDIT Except HOU-DAL] As a practical matter, you need this combination of attributes to make HSR work:
1) A mega-metro at one end (like Paris, Chicago, Atlanta, DC, Dallas, NY, LA, SF), with a strong metro core. I've taken those over 5m + BOS, SEA, and SFO. (Paris has 11m, no other French metro cracks 2m so their system has virtually no spoke-to-spoke routes). DTW, at 4.3m does not have a strong core, so I've cut the list just above it.
2) A trip of about 100 to 300 miles works best (so I've drawn circles at 400 miles for NYC, CHI and LAX, and 300 miles for everyone else.

Under 100 miles (2 hours by car) cars dominate the trips, so CLE-PIT, at 106 statute miles (by air) is too close between cities that are too small. CLE-PIT is a natural driving market, especially when you consider that few trips go from downtown to downtown (too many start at homes in the 'burbs).

Meanwhile PIT-CHI is 400 mi and CLE-NYC is 400mi, meaning they are too far from the mega cities for a rail trip through "the other one" to compete with air.

Depending on rail's speed, somewhere between 300 or 400 miles (BOS-DCA is 399), Air (under current scenarios) gets dominant again.

If you look inside those 300 mi circles, you basically see the map as drawn
(click link in #2 from gcmap.com)

Really, the map needs to be trimmed. BOS at 4m and Montreal at 3.8m is silly when a routing like NYC-HVN-BDL-YUL or NYC-ALB-BTV-YUL would connect NYC metro (17m people) to Montreal (something the FRA map doesn't do).
 
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Where are you getting the 100-300 mile figure? In Europe trains tend to rule anything between less than 500 miles, with high speed trains being most efficient on trips of 250-500 miles or so.
 
Arlington said:
2) A trip of about 100 to 300 miles works best (so I've drawn circles at 400 miles for NYC, CHI and LAX, and 300 miles for everyone else.

Under 100 miles (2 hours by car) cars dominate the trips, so CLE-PIT, at 106 statute miles (by air) is too close between cities that are too small. CLE-PIT is a natural driving market, especially when you consider that few trips go from downtown to downtown (too many start at homes in the 'burbs).

Meanwhile PIT-CHI is 400 mi and CLE-NYC is 400mi, meaning they are too far from the mega cities for a rail trip through "the other one" to compete with air.

Depending on rail's speed, somewhere between 300 or 400 miles (BOS-DCA is 399), Air (under current scenarios) gets dominant again.

If you look inside those 300 mi circles, you basically see the map as drawn
(click link in #2 from gcmap.com)
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree with several of these numbers.

- Statute Miles != Miles Driven. Google maps driving directions suggest 132 miles for Cleveland to Pittsburgh, a nearly 25% jump over the straight line of air travel. Apply that back to the average driving speed of 50 mph, your two hour trip just became a 2.5 hour trip. And you'd better hope that there's no traffic, or that 2.5 hour trip is probably turning into a 3 hour trip and that's suddenly not looking so hot compared to driving 20 minutes and taking transit that gets you there in an hour (more on this coming right up.) Not to mention, I'm sure there's a significant minority or better of 'burbanites who would much rather live in the city but cannot because they've been priced out one way or another - for better or worse. If they were given an option to live in Cleveland and work in Pittsburgh... [sarcasm]well, okay, I can't see anyone choosing to live in Cleveland so maybe you have a point.[/sarcasm]

I'm sorry, Cleveland fans and/or residents! I'm sure it's a very nice city and I have no right to make fun of it, having never been there myself.

- Just assigning a flat mile radius and saying 'HSR only works in this operating range' is discounting several factors, chief among them - your speed. Average speed is always, always, always going to be much less than your top speed, and we're still nowhere close to a solid consensus on what the HSR speed du jour is going to be - 200 mph? 225 mph? Maybe even 250 mph? This is important, because you're going to want to take 50~60 mph off the top to get to your average. Now, it's the generally accepted consensus that HSR is fully competitive for travel times in the vicinity of 3.5 hours or less. Even at an average speed of 140 mph, that gets us competitive rail out to ranges of 490 miles. Conversely, to get to 300 miles max effectiveness, you have to assume a much lower pain/travel time tolerance for HSR riders before they switch to air - 2 hours and change, not 3.5 - or you have to assume that the 3.5 hour figure is correct BUT the HSR network is going to average speeds on the order of 85 mph.

Now, maybe I'm just being too idealistic, but 85 mph doesn't really grab me for 'HSR,' and I'm reasonably confident that we can do better.

- Also worth considering is that the majority of people are not going to get on an HSR train at one terminus and ride all the way to the other end of the line. There are going to be a significant number of boardings and alightings at every single stop along the route. People are also generally not so rigidly inflexible that they'll be willing to endure a precise travel time to the minute and won't tolerate even 1 minute longer - so if the ideal HSR corridor is 490 miles, I don't think anyone is going to lose a significant amount of sleep over a rail line that ends up being between 500~525 instead of that magic 490. (Not to mention, I'm predicting an average speed of 160, not 140, and that gives us corridors that 'max out' at 570.) 400 miles out isn't even close to 'too far' unless you're planning on terminating a train there. (And, why would you?)

- Finally, 'cars rule' is a situation that describes most travel anywhere in the USA today, because - with very few exceptions - there are no other choices. If you're going to use 'do cars dominate this corridor of travel?' as the metric by which any rail line lives or dies, you might as well kiss passenger rail goodbye right now because you're going to find that it's awfully hard for services that don't exist yet to compete with the car, which does.
 
omaja said:
Where are you getting the 100-300 mile figure? In Europe trains tend to rule anything between less than 500 miles, with high speed trains being most efficient on trips of 250-500 miles or so.
Click to expand...
Efficient isn't "market dominant" and Europe isn't America.

FRA has dealt realistically with the fact that here in the USA, gas is cheaper, densities are lower, trains are slower ( often un-electric in the plan), the rails are attuned to freight, and air is more competitive.

All estimates are estimates, and I see no point in worrying over even a 30% error in PIT-CLE air/rail/car miles. Omissions from the map of Norfolk and Lychburg and PIT-CLE doesn't mean trains won't be improved or connected there, it just means a different (non-mapped) rationale is needed.

The FRA has also considered the physical and political topography and written the Pacific NW in and some other bits out. Over the years little bits have come and gone (like Montreal's routing).
 
trains are slower ( often un-electric in the plan), the rails are attuned to freight
Click to expand...

This is the "High Speed Rail" map so neither of these assumptions applies.
 
Matthew said:
This is the "High Speed Rail" map so neither of these assumptions applies.
Click to expand...
Actually, diesel and freight do apply, even if indirectly. To the extent that the corridors are supposed to be "places where HSR would work," on the surface they are neutral/silent on propulsion and right-of-way (they certainly do not assume electric and 100% passenger).

But immediately beneath the surface, the reality is that when the EIS studies are done, many of the rights-of-way shown are going to be improved versions of freight-owned railroads, and further that today's budgets pretty much mean that at launch they'll rely on 110mph diesels (same speed as today's Northeast Corridor Regional services).

Certainly Germany was happy to roll out its ICE as a progressively-faster, freight-mixed service.

All the stuff now being built/upgraded is that way. Here's a list:

- Wisconsin MKE-MSN (unbuilt, but they bought diesel Talgos)
- Michigan's east-west routes
- Chicago-StLouis, and
- SEHSR (from Washington to Charlotte, Petersburg-Raleigh will be 110mph, the rest will be upgraded freight)

Within their HSR corridors, incremental roll out means that all have anointed diesels that run at 110mph where on dedicated (state-owned) passenger rights of way, and at between 79mph and 110 when operating on freight rights of way.

The USA needn't have a rigid "it ain't HSR unless it is dedicated, electric and 125mph+", because the reality is that most of Europe has mixed their new lines in with their old lines. Certainly France, the UK and Germany all have had incremental mixed systems, where conventional lines fan out from the HSR endpoints.

Fanning out with conventional service from HSR endpoints works great. Again, it is very much how the TGV/LGV roll out in France worked and it has proven to be a great success (economically) for Amtrak Virginia which is showing an honest profit (above the rails) on its 79mph extensions (to Lynchburg, Richmond, Newport News and expected Norfolk service) of 110mph Northeast corridor trains.
 
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The other thing that has always bugged me about the HSR corridors is the way that Toledo OH gets its own CHI-TOL corridor, when what should happen is that the CHI-DET line gets extended down to TOL and on to CLE.

Duplicating CHI-DET and CHI-TOL is double the cost for *not* double the mobility.
 
Europe may have mixed lines but they are certainly not running around claiming that old chugging diesels are HSR.

I think it's fair to say at a minimum that HSR requires electrification and 125+ MPH speeds.
 
Arlington said:
Efficient isn't "market dominant" and Europe isn't America.
Click to expand...

...HSR is market dominant in those stage lengths precisely because it is more efficient. Europe v. America doesn't change the operating characteristics of the infrastructure itself.
 
Matthew said:
Europe may have mixed lines but they are certainly not running around claiming that old chugging diesels are HSR.

I think it's fair to say at a minimum that HSR requires electrification and 125+ MPH speeds.
Click to expand...
Okay, we'll put you down for "they're basically all missing" when discussing FRA HSR corridor designations.
 
omaja said:
...HSR is market dominant in those stage lengths precisely because it is more efficient. Europe v. America doesn't change the operating characteristics of the infrastructure itself.
Click to expand...
What kind of efficient are you talking? Energy efficient? Labor efficient? Capital cost efficient?

Let me know when you've gotten to "cost efficient" and "time efficient" because these *do* change Europe v. America--land use, fuel prices, freeway availablity, airport convenience, all effect cost-and-time tradeoffs between modes--and things as simple as the cost of motor fuels start the list of differences between Europe and America of all the kind of things that effect market dominance here vs there.
 
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