Missing HSR Corridor Designations

Happened to be playing with Maps today when I came across this crazy curve on the way to Albany.

This corridor is going to need lots of work ;)
 
Yes, but, what is the plan then? Tunneling? Or just accepting slow sections?
 
Nexis4jersey said:
Tunnel through it...its not that hard these days...only take 2 years to build.
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And how often are you going to tunnel through the Berkshires to get a straight ROW? Once every 5 miles? That's not the only time the B&A has to maneuver around the Berkshires.

You're not getting 150 MPH between Springfield and Albany. Ever. And nobody's busting out the tunnel boring machine for the sake of Boston-Albany. Ever. This isn't Switzerland. Our HSR corridors save for the Cascades hew to flat land. And this is a tertiary corridor. We are not entering some new golden age of tunnel-building. Let's dispense with that fantasy right now.


The B&A's got decent superelevation on its curves because it was built for high steam speeds. There's not a lot of outright speed restrictions like the much sharper Patriot Corridor to the north. So get some tilting trainsets, finesse the superelevation around the curves a little bit more, and you can average 90-110 with the very slowest spots I doubt falling below 75 or 80. Electrify, and it gets a lot better still because of the superior acceleration on hills. It's not going to be "true" HSR speed. But it's better than the Pike...get caught behind a tractor-trailer out in Blandford and you ain't doing the speed limit there either. Especially when they refuse to stay out of the @#$% left lane.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
And how often are you going to tunnel through the Berkshires to get a straight ROW? Once every 5 miles? That's not the only time the B&A has to maneuver around the Berkshires.

You're not getting 150 MPH between Springfield and Albany. Ever. And nobody's busting out the tunnel boring machine for the sake of Boston-Albany. Ever. This isn't Switzerland. Our HSR corridors save for the Cascades hew to flat land. And this is a tertiary corridor. We are not entering some new golden age of tunnel-building. Let's dispense with that fantasy right now.


The B&A's got decent superelevation on its curves because it was built for high steam speeds. There's not a lot of outright speed restrictions like the much sharper Patriot Corridor to the north. So get some tilting trainsets, finesse the superelevation around the curves a little bit more, and you can average 90-110 with the very slowest spots I doubt falling below 75 or 80. Electrify, and it gets a lot better still because of the superior acceleration on hills. It's better than the Pike...get caught behind a tractor-trailer out in Blandford and you ain't doing the speed limit there either. Especially when they refuse to stay out of the @#$% left lane.
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125mph is all I would shoot for with Electric trains....you could probably take those curves at 80mph with upgrades...
 
And I'm guessing that 1960s-style demolition/cutting of any inconvenient mountains that happen to be in the way of that straight shot isn't an option anymore?

"It's in the way, get rid of it" is probably a hell of a lot cheaper than breaking out the old TBMs.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
You're not getting 150 MPH between Springfield and Albany. Ever. And nobody's busting out the tunnel boring machine for the sake of Boston-Albany. Ever. This isn't Switzerland. Our HSR corridors save for the Cascades hew to flat land. And this is a tertiary corridor. We are not entering some new golden age of tunnel-building. Let's dispense with that fantasy right now.
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Agreed, and "tertiary corridor" are the operative words.

The lesson from France is all HSR routes must branch out from the mega-city hub. NYC, CHI and LAX are the only true megas in the US. If France can't find it in its heart to build Lyon-Toulouse, ain't no way there's going to be a BOS-ALB.

ATL, DFW, MIA, and the PacNW slip in only in as political sops, and places capable of tunnel-free connection.

Whatever you spent on a BOS-ALB would be better spent extending the network one more stop from the mega-city in 5 or 6 other places.
 
Well when you talk about Mega Cities you go by regions , and in the Northeast its Boston , New York , Philly , Baltimore and DC ....branch out from those cities which is done by Regional Rail....states seem to want to create an Intercity line branching out from New York or Boston to popular areas like Cape May or Cape Cod via other cities.... With the Midwest if you saw the last page they have it all done and ready to go...
 
Nexis4jersey said:
Well when you talk about Mega Cities you go by regions , and in the Northeast its Boston , New York , Philly , Baltimore and DC ....branch out from those cities which is done by Regional Rail....states seem to want to create an Intercity line branching out from New York or Boston to popular areas like Cape May or Cape Cod via other cities.... With the Midwest if you saw the last page they have it all done and ready to go...
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Missing intercity branches are not missing HSR Corridors, and cool-looking Midwest maps aren't a real corridor plan if nobody is doing EISs on them.
 
Arlington said:
Missing intercity branches are not missing HSR Corridors, and cool-looking Midwest maps aren't a real corridor plan if nobody is doing EISs on them.
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map_improvements_underway.gif
 
Arlington said:
Agreed, and "tertiary corridor" are the operative words.

The lesson from France is all HSR routes must branch out from the mega-city hub. NYC, CHI and LAX are the only true megas in the US. If France can't find it in its heart to build Lyon-Toulouse, ain't no way there's going to be a BOS-ALB.
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First of all, we aren't France. What works for them doesn't necessarily work for us, and what they "must" do is different from what we must or even should do.

And I agree with you in that our megacity options are pretty damn scarce, and that's why the hub-and-spoke model isn't going to fly. We've got too many spokes, and not enough hubs.

We should be building HSR between city pairs, where there's high levels of traffic already moving between those city pairs, in corridors that hit the maximum possible number of city pairs.

You keep extending branches farther and farther out of, say, NYC? You WILL hit the limit of HSR feasibility eventually. You'll probably hit it around... I'll be generous and say Raleigh, but probably closer to Richmond.

What then? "Well, we're at the end of the line and it would just be SUCH A WASTE to go to Charlotte, to Columbia, Savannah, Atlanta? None of these places really benefit from HSR up to NYC, but I bet you they all want HSR to DC. Should we screw all of them because DC is not big enough?

So, no, I don't think BOS-ALB is of "tertiary importance," and I can sure as hell find plenty of LESS important places we could string out a 1000-mile HSR corridor to from any of our three megacities.
 
You can get from Boston to Albany in 1 hour by plane and 3 hours by car. Do you really think it would be possible to get a high-speed train remotely close to competitive with a plane or a car for a non-outrageous sum of money? And even if you did, how much traffic do you really think it would serve?

We have limited public dollars. If we were determined to improve that corridor we'd get much more bang for the buck expanding the Pike. But we'd be even better off leaving it be and focusing our limited resources on projects that serve actual significant demand.

Intercity train travel is less viable in America compared to Europe due to lower density. We should focus investment on the corridors that actually have a purpose and can improve upon existing travel options.
 
massmotorist said:
You can get from Boston to Albany in 1 hour by plane and 3 hours by car. Do you really think it would be possible to get a high-speed train remotely close to competitive with a plane or a car for a non-outrageous sum of money? And even if you did, how much traffic do you really think it would serve?

We have limited public dollars. If we were determined to improve that corridor we'd get much more bang for the buck expanding the Pike. But we'd be even better off leaving it be and focusing our limited resources on projects that serve actual significant demand.

Intercity train travel is less viable in America compared to Europe due to lower density. We should focus investment on the corridors that actually have a purpose and can improve upon existing travel options.
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BOS-SPG trains could absolutely be competitive with driving. HSR could compete with flying Boston-Buffalo, Boston-Cleveland, Boston-Detroit. Is Albany a big draw on its own? No, not really, but SPG-ALB happens to be the way Boston - anywhere significantly west. There are no other options, barring something totally zany like, say, BOS-CLE by going down the NEC and over the Keystone Corridor, then up a jog between PIT and CLE.

And, again, separate from the Inland NEC that's still up in the air, Amtrak wants to divert some Regionals and probably some HSR service up the New Haven-Springfield Corridor, and then into Boston. That takes care of BOS-SPG. The Empire Corridor is NYC-ALB-BUF. That's Albany westward.

SPG-ALB is right in the middle of these two high value corridors and it's "tertiary importance?"

That's sort of like building the entirety of the MassPike EXCEPT for the stretch of it in... let's say Brimfield. Yeah, you've got your interstate that can get you across MOST of the state but oops, there's a chunk missing, so you get to drive on rural roads for about 5 miles or so. Hey, no biggie, right?

And yeah, we don't have European densities, which is why I don't think going full "Eurostyle or bust" is going to get us far. I don't think we need to be or should be looking at what our most dense cities are, we ought to be looking at what pairs of cities are most frequently traveled between.
 
Nexis4jersey said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4gpZiUyy-U
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They actually pushed the trainset to 170 MPH in New Jersey during last night's test run. It was primarily an equipment test, not a track test. Track can already handle it on the long straightaways that've been upgraded to constant-tension catenary.

As for the east-of-New Haven testing, don't know if that happened yet or is scheduled to soon. East Junction, Attleboro to the curve outside Sharon station is the targeted 165 MPH territory in Massachusetts. And I think the test was going to push the limits Canton-Readville as well, although that is not going to be anywhere close to 165 during revenue service because of MBCR schedule intermingling and platform safety during MBCR service hours. Most likely you'll see a little >150 open up soon between East Junction and Mansfield, and then when the Mansfield and Sharon raised platforms and passing tracks get installed 165 territory will extend all the way to Sharon.

Cranston-Richmond is the RI area targeted for test. Covers the track just south of T.F. Green to a point about a third of the way between Kingston and Westerly.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
BOS-SPG trains could absolutely be competitive with driving. HSR could compete with flying Boston-Buffalo, Boston-Cleveland, Boston-Detroit. Is Albany a big draw on its own? No, not really, but SPG-ALB happens to be the way Boston - anywhere significantly west. There are no other options, barring something totally zany like, say, BOS-CLE by going down the NEC and over the Keystone Corridor, then up a jog between PIT and CLE.

And, again, separate from the Inland NEC that's still up in the air, Amtrak wants to divert some Regionals and probably some HSR service up the New Haven-Springfield Corridor, and then into Boston. That takes care of BOS-SPG. The Empire Corridor is NYC-ALB-BUF. That's Albany westward.

SPG-ALB is right in the middle of these two high value corridors and it's "tertiary importance?"

That's sort of like building the entirety of the MassPike EXCEPT for the stretch of it in... let's say Brimfield. Yeah, you've got your interstate that can get you across MOST of the state but oops, there's a chunk missing, so you get to drive on rural roads for about 5 miles or so. Hey, no biggie, right?

And yeah, we don't have European densities, which is why I don't think going full "Eurostyle or bust" is going to get us far. I don't think we need to be or should be looking at what our most dense cities are, we ought to be looking at what pairs of cities are most frequently traveled between.
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Yes, it is tertiary importance. You have to flush the system full of a source of passengers first before B&A HSR is supportable. That is not happening until:

-- The NEC gets its whole laundry list of capital improvements to the existing infrastructure fulfilled. Including the Gateway Tunnel. Significantly greater thru service from the NEC to the Empire Corridor is an absolute requirement for Albany to act as any sort of significant linchpin. If the ridership source doesn't first start flowing N-S, it's not going to have forward momentum E-W out of Boston. The only way you're doing that is by upping the thru capacity to NYC significantly.

-- Empire Corridor full-blown HSR. Goes without saying. We're still in the first stages of stepping up diesel service to 110 MPH. Then somebody's got to plant the electrification flag from the south or there's frigging nothing to connect the Albany hub to or plow west with higher speeds. Then you've got to get the secondary route to Montreal on the Adirondack appreciably fast (110 MPH diesel at minimum, one step below 125 MPH electric).

-- You have to get the Inland route chugging along at its full diesel schedule to generate some robust Boston-Springfield-Hartford traffic. You have to get the Springfield Line going 110 diesel. You have to get the Springfield Line electrified to 125 to plant that second electrification node touching the B&A...you are not bridging Albany-Springfield-Worcester-Boston without it. And you have to step up the Knowledge Corridor to faster 90 MPH diesel, and the B&A east of Springfield to at least 90 MPH to bolster the N-S and E-W pipeline through Springfield. You have to plant the third electrification node on the T to Worcester.


Yes...whatever order you want to tackle that laundry list, a direct high-speed connection between Springfield and Albany comes after ALL that work. The passengers to support a BOS-ALB service at triple-digit speed don't exist today. They have to come from somewhere. There has to be cresting momentum at the major terminal stops flushing all these branch corridors full.

Impatient? Start flogging somebody to get to work on the whole-enchilada Empire Corridor HSR and pumping $B's into Gateway and everything south. It ain't happening without a bare minimum of those. And it probably ain't happening without minimum of triple-digit fast diesel on every off-NEC/off-Empire corridor north of NYC.
 
This is all predicated on getting modern lightweight diesel rolling stock approved for use. So, the first thing is FRA reform. Then track upgrades.
 
Matthew said:
This is all predicated on getting modern lightweight diesel rolling stock approved for use. So, the first thing is FRA reform. Then track upgrades.
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The 110 MPH intermediate step ain't bad either. Every piece of Amtrak equipment assigned to the Eastern U.S. can do that. No need to make a new rolling stock purchase at all to get halfway to true HSR. Commuter rail and electrics have more bang-for-buck getting un-asphyxiated by the FRA than long-distance diesels do.

But the pace of even making those investments on the Empire Corridor has been dissapointing to-date. Everybody thought when Cuomo was elected governor that he'd be good on pushing this along, but he's been disengaged at best. It's not a unified enough political front at the moment.
 
Matthew said:
This is all predicated on getting modern lightweight diesel rolling stock approved for use. So, the first thing is FRA reform. Then track upgrades.
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I would love to see these trains operate on the current and future corridors....
-The Horn rule needs to go , most engineers and rail employees in general hate it and so no need for when theres a gated crossing...
-The Weight rule needs to go....stupid and outdated
-Track Design and signal...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IriQynewslY
 
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