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

Boston Globe - August 4, 2009
Bid for US aid envisions wide N.E. rail system

By Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Correspondent | August 4, 2009

WASHINGTON - Transportation officials from six states sketched their vision for an advanced New England rail network yesterday, seeking federal help for projects that range from repairing a rusted bridge in Haverhill to building a bullet train that would whisk travelers from Boston to Montreal. (oh, please, oh please, oh please!)

Described as the first regionwide passenger rail agenda, the New England system would speed up trains, increase service, and open new commuter lines throughout the region - as well as provide high-speed routes linking New England to Quebec with 110 mile-per-hour trains.

The officials acknowledged they face long odds, with stiff competition from projects proposed by states in the West and Midwest. But they said New England needs an economic boost and a better transportation system, and the best way to jump-start the effort is by using some of the $8 billion set aside for rail projects in the economic stimulus package approved by Congress in February.

?This plan will not only improve mobility and the environment, but also economic growth and development in New England,?? said James A. Aloisi Jr., Massachusetts transportation secretary, who attended a meeting of the six states in Burlington, Vt., where the plan was unveiled.

Officials said just getting the plan down on paper has significant political value and will lay the foundation for future rail construction.

The projected price tag of the Northeast projects totals $35 billion - far more than is available nationwide. Other states also are aiming high. Overall, the government has been deluged with $102 billion in applications, according to the US Department of Transportation.

?It promises to be a very difficult fight, because this is a discretionary program, and there are a lot of regions that are vying for this money,?? said Joseph F. Marie, commissioner of Connecticut?s Department of Transportation. ?While $8 billion sounds like a lot of money, the need exceeds it tenfold. It?s really important to manage expectations.??

Forty states and the District of Columbia have filed 278 applications for the money, which are due later this month and will be awarded in the fall. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and other Obama administration officials have hinted that California, Florida, and the Midwest, whose high-speed rail plans are closer to being ?shovel ready,?? are front-runners to receive much of the funding - Washington?s largest-ever commitment to high-speed rail.

LaHood told the Wall Street Journal in May that California, which has been developing plans for a $40 billion bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles for more than a decade, was ?way, way, way, ahead?? of other applicants. California requested $22.3 billion in high-speed rail projects under the stimulus program.

Still, New England officials said they were optimistic that the federal government was keeping an open mind and that at least some of the projects in the regional rail blueprint will make the cut.

?I think at the end of the day New England will get its fair share,?? said Aloisi, who said he had a cordial meeting with LaHood last month to push for the region?s rail plans.

David Cole, commissioner of the Maine Department of Transportation, said that the state had shovel-ready projects that fit the federal guidelines, including a proposal to extend the Downeaster, which runs from Boston to Portland, north to Brunswick.

?The Brunswick project is ready to go. We?re not complacent. It?s not a slam dunk, but we should have a decent shot at funding,?? he said.

The New England plan identifies dozens of other projects, but singles out six as top priorities: raising speeds and running more trains between Springfield and New Haven, where the state of Connecticut hopes to introduce commuter rail; raising speeds and expanding the number of trains on the Downeaster; inaugurating passenger rail between Boston and Concord, N.H.; increasing capacity on the Northeast Corridor in Rhode Island; and improving service to the east and west sides of Vermont. The Vermont plan would return passenger trains to Northampton, Mass., after an absence of several decades.

Several of the proposals are intended to establish connections between train lines and airports in Providence, Hartford, and Manchester, which the federal guidelines say is a plus in deciding grant awards.

New England officials said that even if they don?t win funding this time, the legwork they are doing now could pay dividends later.

The Obama administration has promised that the $8 billion in the stimulus is just a ?down payment?? on a national high-speed rail network.

Congress is considering $4 billion more for high-speed rail in next year?s budget - four times as much as the administration requested - and a draft of long-term federal transportation legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill includes $50 billion more for high-speed rail.

Michael Lewis, the director of the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, said he was confident that more high-speed rail money would be provided.

?I don?t think this is the end,?? he said. ?Our investment in intercity rail is going to be a long-term commitment. The intercity highway system was built over 40 years.??

?It?s going to be heavy competition,?? Cole said. ?But what we don?t get this round, we?ll continue to pursue.??
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You want Monreale strip places for the lapp dances which I cannot see because I am not old enough to be a Gentleman!!! But I would be against this if it means more deisle smoke in the BIG TRENCH by Mr Ned F and others of the SEnd.. Spend your stimulation by electrifying a rail. so that the silver bullets are modern, not like old style stinky trains.
 
^ LMFAO.

Surely, you're a professional author. How else could you come up with this stuff?

Archy and Mehitabel:

"expression is the need of my soul," declares Archy, who labored as a free-verse poet in an earlier incarnation. At night, alone, he dives furiously on the keys of Don Marquis' typewriter to describe a cockroach's view of the world, rich with cynicism and humor. It's difficult enough to operate the typewriter's return bar to get a fresh line of paper; all of Archy's dispatches are written lowercase, and without punctuation, because he is unable to hit both shift and letter keys to produce a capital letter.

"boss i am disappointed in some of your readers," he writes, weary of having to explain the mechanics of his literary output. " ... they are always interested in technical details when the main question is whether the stuff is literature or not."

I'm glad you've discovered capital letters.
 
I wish the new england states would work together more on projects like this. When you think about it, thats 12 senators working to cover an area similar in size of NY state.
 
The fact that they don't plan on building a new ROW through the mountains in western Mass means we will never have a great system like they do in Europe. We are trying to do this on the cheap and we are just going to end up paying more in the future for it.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
The fact that they don't plan on building a new ROW through the mountains in western Mass means we will never have a great system like they do in Europe. We are trying to do this on the cheap and we are just going to end up paying more in the future for it.
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Totally.... Check out that "High Speed" stretch of switchbacks through Vermont. It will be going like a bullet [train] through granite [mountains]

As for western Mass, I'm not an engineer but it seems to me they would not even necessarily have to blast a new ROW or tunnels, but rather after springfield run it along (or within) the Pike.... its definitely straight enough, I'm guessing the catch is the slope for the road is too much for the train?
 
That's a tough climb through the western parts of Westfield, Woronoco, Russell, and Blandford. (Course I was doing 85 on it on Sunday).
 
The map of High Speed rail routes is too political in my opinion (and by political, I refer to accepting political boundaries, not politics in the sense of Republican vs Democrat).

Case in point: It makes far more sense to connect Pittsburgh to Cleveland via Youngstown and Akron than it does to build a route across the mountains to Philadelphia.
 
Like I said, they are trying to do this on the cheap by using existing ROWs that were laid down back in the 19th century. I'm all for investing in our rail network but this seems like a political stunt rather than something up there with the Interstate System.

The worst part about it is the government just redefines HSR as faster than 90mph rather than above 150mph like EVERYONE ELSE.
 
Documents that should interest this forum. Apologies if they've already been posted, but I didn't see a reference to them in this thread.

http://www.dot.state.wi.us/projects/state/rail-vision-2050.htm

Vision for the future: U.S. intercity passenger rail network through 2050

Report prepared by the Passenger Rail Working Group for the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission in December 2007
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http://transportationfortomorrow.org/final_report/

Transportation for Tomorrow: Report of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission Transportation for Tomorrow December 2007
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from the first link above:

The 2050 map below is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute the exact routes that would be included in the passenger rail network by 2050.

29mn1ig.jpg
 
To take the 'glass half full' POV (as opposed to the popular 'Oh my God we're all going to die of dehydration' POV):

At least we are having this discussion. It wasn't too long ago (say, about a year or so) that the idea of expanding our rail network and adding more high speed lines, would have been laughed out of the Oval Office.
 
Wow, it will only take 40 years to turn a shitty rail system into a slightly less shitty rail system?

In 2050 the NE Corridor should be 300+ MPH maglev.
 
Am I reading these maps wrong or do they act as if the NE Corridor is already perfect and requires zero improvements?
 
European HSR wasn't nearly as good as I thought it would have been when I rode it, it only went at an average speed of 60 mph (100 kph), not much faster than Amtrak (my ride was Vienna-Dusseldorf). Asian HSR is the way to go, it's a minimum of 150 mph (250 kph) everywhere, with top speeds of 220 mph (350 kph), and 310 mph (500 kph) conventional tracks and maglev in development. At those speeds, air travel between Europe and Asia can even be replaced, though creating a HSR track between the two continents will be quite expensive.
 
BarbaricManchurian said:
European HSR wasn't nearly as good as I thought it would have been when I rode it, it only went at an average speed of 60 mph (100 kph), not much faster than Amtrak (my ride was Vienna-Dusseldorf). Asian HSR is the way to go, it's a minimum of 150 mph (250 kph) everywhere, with top speeds of 220 mph (350 kph), and 310 mph (500 kph) conventional tracks and maglev in development. At those speeds, air travel between Europe and Asia can even be replaced, though creating a HSR track between the two continents will be quite expensive.
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The other thing Europe has is different levels of rail for different budgets and different speeds. That's what America really needs.
 
BarbaricManchurian said:
European HSR wasn't nearly as good as I thought it would have been when I rode it, it only went at an average speed of 60 mph (100 kph), not much faster than Amtrak (my ride was Vienna-Dusseldorf). Asian HSR is the way to go, it's a minimum of 150 mph (250 kph) everywhere, with top speeds of 220 mph (350 kph), and 310 mph (500 kph) conventional tracks and maglev in development. At those speeds, air travel between Europe and Asia can even be replaced, though creating a HSR track between the two continents will be quite expensive.
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Yeah, but it depends where you go. Not every point in Europe is connected by the most rapid HSR (Vienna-Dusseldorf isn't exactly the most high-profile, high priority connection). The Asian HSR networks aren't a continent-wide system, either.

When you can pick any two cities in China and take a 200kph train between them, then tell me Asia's HSR is superior to Europe's on the basis of a Vienna-Dusseldorf run.
 
czsz said:
Yeah, but it depends where you go. Not every point in Europe is connected by the most rapid HSR (Vienna-Dusseldorf isn't exactly the most high-profile, high priority connection). The Asian HSR networks aren't a continent-wide system, either.

When you can pick any two cities in China and take a 200kph train between them, then tell me Asia's HSR is superior to Europe's on the basis of a Vienna-Dusseldorf run.
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That was just one example of the heavily lacking HSR that I found when traveling Europe, in most places not better than Amtrak. In Dusseldorf, I wanted to take a day trip to Paris, but imagine my disappointment when I found the fastest train took 6 hours to reach there, when the distance was only 256 miles (412 km). From Prague to Vienna, the train was not high-speed but was about the same speed as Germany’s “high speed” system in most places, and consequently took forever (6 hours). In almost all cases rail connections between cities in Europe are far below 200kph.

Contrast this with the Asian HSR systems. In Japan, you can reach almost any city in the country from Tokyo in less than 6 hours at an average speed of far greater than 200 kph, so it’s no wonder why it has the world’s most popular HSR, 6x more popular than the 2nd most popular, France (6 billion vs 1 billion rides). In South Korea you can reach from Seoul to Busan in less than 3 hours. In Taiwan you can reach from Taipei to Kaohsiung in 90 minutes. Even all this pales in comparison to China’s new HSR plan. Already there is the world’s fastest HSR from Beijing to Tianjin reducing the travel time for the 75 mile (120 km) trip from 90 minutes to 30 minutes, traveling at a top speed of 220mph (350kph). Many new 150mph (250kph) lines have already opened, such as Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan, Hefei-Wuhan, Wenzhou-Fuzhou, and Wenzhou-Ningbo. This is just a prelude to the thousands of miles of 220mph (350kph) HSR to be opened in the next few years. There is the 665 mile (1070 km) distance between Beijing and Shanghai to be covered with a high-speed line, reducing travel time from 12 hours to 5 hours (actual line distance is longer, I just measured the straight line distance between the two cities). There is the 1222 mile (1967 km) distance to be covered between Beijing and Hong Kong with a high-speed line, reducing travel time from 20 hours to 8 hours. All these awesome developments will make Asian HSR networks a continent-wide system, especially if North Korea decides to go capitalist and if the planned tunnels from China to Taiwan and Korea to Japan will be completed. This is in comparison to European HSR systems, which you all idolize but are just a collection of disjointed, breaking across country lines, occasionally high-speed but usually low-speed “systems” slightly better than Amtrak, not in speed but in frequency and reliability.
 
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