Map Of Potential High-Speed Rail Built By The Stimulus

[marmar]

via HuffPost:




High-Speed Rail Built By The Stimulus
Think Progress | February 18, 2009 07:51 AM


After much clamoring by energy hawks, who knows what it was that finally brought high-speed rail to the stimulus -- perhaps a little nudge from ol' Amtrak Joe? -- but it got in, to the tune of $8 billion.

And now the question is, where will the expansion be? Matthew Yglesias reports on possible new high speed rail expansion:

In a last-minute change, the total quantity of funds available was increased. But there's no special plan for Las Vegas. The money will be spread all across the country. As it happens, I think an LA-Vegas HSR line is a perfectly reasonable project. But in practice the areas that will get a leg up should be the Federal Railroad Administration's officially designated high-speed rail corridors. As it happens, LA-Vegas doesn't make the cut. But guess who does have such a corridor? Ohio!

LINK TO THE MAP: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/18/map-of-potential-high-spe_n_167804.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. An excellent start

And I can understand why Ohio is there--it connects the Midwest to the East Coast. I'm hoping that soon there will be a link between the southwest and the Midwest through Arkansas.

[donco]

2. St.Louis Chicago of course..

Maybe a loop to KC for BBQ.;)

[Moostache]

16. Gonna be big in the future (again)...

St. Louis and Chicago are going to make a huge comeback in the 21st century.

Transportation via rivers and waterways will again become more and more important to commerce in the post-F.I.RE, post-petroleum economy.

(Full disclosure - I was born outside of Chicago and live in St. Louis!!)

[donco]

20. Shhh…. don’t tell

everyone about St.Louis/Chicago, it will screw everything up.;)

[backscatter712]

3. Nothing for Colorado.

Guess we're just flyover country...

[marmar]

4. Denver is so isolated as far as big cities go.....

.... seems like it would be a tough place to connect via rail.

[KansDem]

6. Tell me about it!

I was hoping I could speed-rail on out to the west coast for a few days, then back to Kansas, but it looks like I'll have to continue flying...:(

[BarbaRosa]

10. Not knowing a whole lot about this,

I wonder if mountains pose a barrier to high speed? I've always though Denver to El Paso would be a good route. Then west to L.A.,or San Diego, via Phoenix?

[backscatter712]

13. Probably.

You have steep grades, sharp curves. You have to spend money building bridges and tunnels, and I imagine you'd have to build a lot of bridges and tunnels if you wanted to eliminate enough of the twists and grades to make the tracks suitable for high speeds. Given the .gov's track record of supporting passenger rail (especially when the Rethugs get their panties in a bunch), I don't see it being popular.

[BarbaRosa]

15. Yet, they propose the Eugene to Vancouver route

There are mountains there. No doubt population plays a significant factor.

[madrchsod]

5. it`s not going to be anything near the french or japanese rail system

it would cost at least a trillion over 20 years to build the french and japanese system that was on that map.

[marmar]

7. Of course not.....

All the big cities of Northern Europe are linked by highspeed rail. You could go London-Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam-Cologne-Berlin-Munich in a seamless transition from one high speed rail line to another. (Eurostar/Thalys/ICE).

[NuttyFluffers]

8. Houston doesn't connect to Dallas?

Chicago doesn't connect to NYC. Cleveland, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh don't connect. a lot of redundancy and disconnection from major metros.

seriously, how hard is this? get the top 20-30 most populated cities, look at a map, draw a straight line between as many as possible within a regional 300-600 miles, create loops wherever possible, use double tracks, own the lines outright, and maintain them off of other transport intersections. then draw up the train routes. those can be managed and re-managed time and again after the tracks are laid. think NYC to Chicago is too politically charged, not fast enough, whatever? fine, but at least you have the tracks connecting Cleveland, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh.

dunno, it's better than nothing, and california does get something. but i think this could be cleaner. the advantage of high speed rail is going between cities that are 300-600 miles apart very fast. from there taking more regional local transport makes sense.

like, SF to LA, logical, but then let slower trains take the people to either San Diego or Sac. granted, Amtrak is so crippled now you'd have to buy real dedicated passenger railroads versus leasing right-of-way. but a decent non-high speed rail should easily cover the distance from SF to Sac, LA to SD. get that to a 90 mph express commuter (ideally a Euro-standard of under 120 mph, but that's not USA rules), with no stops on the way, and that'll be easily as good. 90 mph between these end up as only an hour or so, and with no traffic or parking to worry about that's still a bargain. could save quite a bit of money to then connect more cities.

but that's just my assessment. at least it's spending money for jobs.

[moc]

9. I thought that was really weird too.

It makes more sense than DFW-SA in my opinion. I think the DFW-HOU commute is much more heavily traveled, just judging from the frequency of SWA flights between Love and Hobby. Dallas-SA? Not so much.

[Bucky]

18. A Houston-Dallas line would be an immanent domain nightmare. Plus we got high speed pick ups

Shit, if you can't maintain 90mph along the I-45 corridor, you ain't really in a hurry anyway. And eliminating the truck traffic from Houston to Dallas would lead to gross overcrowding among the armadillo population.

[Control-Z]

19. While having virtually nothing

other than my own natural instincts to base it on, you've spelled out what are basically my thoughts on California rail travel. I live in So Cal, and have tried to find alternate ways (other than air) in the past, to travel to Las Vegas and SF. It just makes sense to me for the amount of people who either fly or drive to these destinations annually.

(I would also love to be able to catch a train to Utah, via Las Vegas or SF, because that is where my daughter lives.)

[Coexist]

11. connecting orlando to jax would help with tourists not flying to Fl

am I crazy, or does that not make sense?

[Still Sensible]

12. The first one we heard talked about was between Los

Angeles and Las Vegas and I wonder why it is not on this map.

[Coexist]

14. that was Boehner crying about how Harry Reid only wanted to sneak

the rail into the stimulus to establish that route to bring 'pork' to his home state.

Compare Nevada to Ohio.

Yeah.

Boehner's still an ass.

[Dawgs]

17. What? On morning Joe today they did a hit piece on the stimulus because of the LA rail project.

Joe actually had the nerve to compare it to the AIG execs that took that trip to Vegas.

Of course, I was screaming at the television because there was no proof of this Reid project.

[devilgrrl]

21. But but but where's the link between Vegas and Disney World??????

:sarcasm:

[devilgrrl]

22. Check out the map.

[marmar]

23. thanks devilgrrrl.....How did you get the maplink to open up in your post?

I was doing something wrong.

[devilgrrl]

24. I just right clicked and chose "view image" and copied the URL

:-)