High Speed Rail (Boston to... Texas?)

Sure, Acela is not ideal but it is much better than most of the country has. There is only one slow train a day between densely populated SF and LA, for instance. The only parts of the US with reasonably frequent train service now are the LA-San Diego corridor and some regional routes radiating out from Chicago.

(And by the way, LA-SD is a huge success and proves that rail can be made to work well in what many people would consider to be 'sprawl'. it has much more service now than before Amtrak took over in 1971.)
 
A couple nights ago Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was on the Daily Show and specifically promised Jon Stewart that the NEC would be "fixed up" along with the new HSR routes. So much for that.

If they can't use the stimulus money to upgrade the tracks, how about expanding the number of trains? Why is the last Amtrak train (never mind the Acela) from New York to Boston on a Friday night at 7:30!? All these trains are packed, too. And...

the shuttle flights are still full
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Which puzzles me. The last decade has seen the expansion of NEC transportation options go from the air shuttles to Acela to literally a dozen or more private bus lines between Boston and NY alone. Has there just been a phenomenal increase in passenger load in the Northeast? How are all these things so busy?
 
Ron Newman said:
The only parts of the US with reasonably frequent train service now are the LA-San Diego corridor and some regional routes radiating out from Chicago.
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Not to mention the Bay Area-Sacramento-Bakersfield corridor services (trains to and from Bakersfield are connected by Amtrak California buses to LA's Union Station -not 100% ideal, but it worked pretty well when I took it) and the Vancouver, BC to Eugene OR corridor which sees frequent service between Seattle and Portland...
 
Wait, LA isn't even connected to SF by rail? WTF!?
 
LA is connected to Oakland, and you can transfer at San Jose to a local Caltrain that runs to San Francisco. However, LA-San Jose-Oakland is just one train daily (which continues north to Oregon and Washington).
 
czsz said:
Which puzzles me. The last decade has seen the expansion of NEC transportation options go from the air shuttles to Acela to literally a dozen or more private bus lines between Boston and NY alone. Has there just been a phenomenal increase in passenger load in the Northeast? How are all these things so busy?
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A lot of people taking the shuttles are on connecting flights. If youre going Boston-Dallas, and HAVE to connect in NYC because theres no direct flight...youll take the shuttle. No way youre driving or training to NYC to get to their airport.
 
Okay, but that doesn't explain how, with a huge variety of new transportation options, everything is still full.
 
czsz said:
Okay, but that doesn't explain how, with a huge variety of new transportation options, everything is still full.
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Well, the bus lines might have generated a lot of demand. Suddenly, people can take a day trip to NYC for $2-30 round trip, when in the past doing so would never be an option.
 
17% of the US population lives on just 2% of the country's land along a 400 mile long reasonably straight line from Washington to Boston. To not use a fair portion of this investment on the NE corridor is foolish.
 
czsz said:
Wait, LA isn't even connected to SF by rail? WTF!?
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Yes, the San Joaquin route starts at Jack London Square, Oakland (bout a mile walk from BART), then goes north hugging the Bay to avoid the foothills, east to Stockton, and then south through the valley until Bakersfield, where as Roxxma mentioned, you've got to switch to a bus (LA traffic woohoo!!) All told, it's a pretty ridiculous journey (probably 9 or 10 hours on a good day), and that's just counting the ride from Oakland. Factor in the additional Amtrak bus/BART from elsewhere in the Bay and it gets more inconvenient. I've only gone as far as Fresno, which is minimum 5 hours by train, but once again, getting to Jack London Square is a hassle. It's ridiculous that neither SF nor SF has a major regional train station.

I haven't really kept up with this HSR talk, but looking cursorily at these plans I just can't fathom having high speed rail run through the backyards of Atherton and Menlo Park, to say nothing of a stop at Palo Alto!!! The NIMBYs must be fighting this tooth and nail. No doubt they want to push this whole thing over to the East Bay. *noses up*

Also, Ron, what is this once-a-day service from LA-SJ-Oakland you speak of? I've never heard of San Jose being directly connected by rail to Southern California.
 
Justin7 said:
17% of the US population lives on just 2% of the country's land along a 400 mile long reasonably straight line from Washington to Boston. To not use a fair portion of this investment on the NE corridor is foolish.
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12% of the population lives in California (SF to LA=348 miles).
 
I knew about the lack of connection between SF and Oakland due to the Bay...the ridiculous thing to me is the 100 mile bus ride from Bakersfield to LA!
 
If Amtrak already runs trains from San Jose to Oakland..why don't they start the San Joaquin service from Diridon?!?1

Did they just assume BART was always "just around the corner"?
 
I can always count on good ol' Danny Grabauskas to back me up

Danny G said:
The news today that the Northeast Corridor (think your Amtrak trip from Boston to New York to Washington DC) would be shut out of the first round of high-speed rail funding is very bad news and a missed opportunity. And not just bad news for the Northeast Corridor, though certainly that, but for the future of high-speed rail itself...

... Nothing breeds success like success. Nothing. And while we can recognize the fact that as a region we?ve benefited more than other areas of the country in terms of dollars spent is fine. But let?s be clear, spending the money the way proposed makes this is a national jobs bill -- not a national transportation bill. Sound national transportation planning would have dictated some additional investment now in the only example we have of effective high-ish speed rail in the US.
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http://www.cwunbound.org/2009/12/northeast-corridor-shut-out-of-highspeed-rail-funds.html

If only I were as eloquent as Dan, I would've summarized my argument on the previous page as "nothing breeds success like success." Quod erat demonstratum...
 
Oddly, he was referring to the Mattapan High Speed Line
 
Justin7 said:
17% of the US population lives on just 2% of the country's land along a 400 mile long reasonably straight line from Washington to Boston. To not use a fair portion of this investment on the NE corridor is foolish.
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bdurden said:
12% of the population lives in California (SF to LA=348 miles).
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Does 12% of the population live in the combined LA and SF areas? Otherwise the comparison doesn't really make sense.

Not to say LA and SF shouldn't be connected by high speed rail.
 
The route is not simply SF to LA, as if there's nothing in between (or to the side). The Central Valley alone is already the size of Massachusetts (and rapidly growing). The HSR route hits all the major population centers:

LA
Inland Empire (stop at Riverside)
San Diego
Central Valley
Sacramento
Bay Area

Outside of that, you don't have much in the way of people. The hypothetical state of Jefferson only has a population of 400k! "Upstate" California as a whole has a population of 1.6 million (out of 37), and a large chunk of that falls under the Sacramento metro anyway. I suppose Santa Barbara County would be outside the scope of HSR as well, but again, that's only 400k people.
 
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