What's so great about high speed rail?

[Bread and Circus]

This is an open honest question. Frankly, I'm afraid to fly. I love the idea of earthbound high speed transport. However, what's the math on high speed rail when it comes to fundamentally improving the economy and the environment?

If anyone is well-read on this and wants to share, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

[babylonsister]

1. I'm not well read on it, but our country needs an alternative to

moving around only by plane, or bus. I live in Houston; I'd love a subway.

[jtrockville]

2. I'm not well-read on economic benefits

But I'd love to be able to take a day trip from DC to Boston.

[rcrush]

3. I'm not an expert

Or even smart. But I have seen a few documentaries and videos that say highspeed ground systems are the only way to go in the future and air travel cant last much longer. It would be a hel of a lot more fuel efficient than air travel. And these future trains are supposed to go like 400 to 500 mph or something like that. Eventually would even be linked across the ocean and would go at super speeds. Making air travel obsolete.

[Johonny]

10. how would they link across the ocean?

[Condem]

12. By tunnel, Johonny.

Easy.

[originalpckelly]

17. Not through ground, necessarily, but through an underwater bridge like thing.

It's the same kind of technology that's proposed underground on land to get people from point a to b faster.

[happyslug]

21. Ships are even more efficient then trains.

And that is if the ship uses conventional engines and NOT sails to compliment the engines. Thus ships can and will provide some transport, but for the foreseeable future the push is to get people to stop flying or driving if the flight is less then 1000 miles. 1000 or more the Planes, unless oil prices goes through the roof, is the more economical way to go on LONG TRIPS, but under 1000 miles trains are not only competitive but do to their lower use of energy more efficient (The increase labor cost of operating a train is its chief deterrent, but those costs are minor if the trip is under 1000 miles).

[Lost in CT]

28. Donald Fagan had a plan... (Damn youtube no longer has the video)

[marmar]

4. If you get a chance to visit Europe and take one ride on the Eurostar, TGV, Thalys, ICE, AVE....

.... etc etc, you'll understand immediately.

[truebrit71]

13. Absolutely! It is also very, VERY cool...much more comfortable and less stressful than air travel...

...cheaper, more efficient and you get to your destination in a better frame of mind...

[WolverineDG]

31. and you don't have to arrive 5 hours ahead of time

to go through security or make sure you don't have any exploding toothpaste in your carryon bags.

dg

[originalpckelly]

16. Even just to the Northeast to take Acela.

It's not perfect, or high speed everywhere along its route, but it's the best North America has.

[donco6]

20. It's a fantastic way to travel.

I fly a lot, but I'd use an ICE if it were available.

[Rabrrrrrr]

5. It's a much more efficient use of energy

And - it's totally freaking cool!

I love riding the bullet train in Japan. ZOOOOOM!

And nice and smooth.

One of my great hopes for this country is that we'll put in high speed rail and become more of a train kind of society. We can't be fully in the way Japan or Europe are because we have that huge open area that is everything between the rockies and the Appalachians, but it would be great to get it as much as we can.

I, too, hate flying. I also hate driving.

But I *love* taking the train. There's leg room, you can get up and down, no turbulence, you can sleep or read or eat or just watch out the window.

[backscatter712]

6. It guzzles far less gas than airliners,

They're cheaper and more efficient than cars too, per passenger. Good trains are pretty comfortable as well. Get a sleeper compartment, or hit the bar, get something to eat, that sort of thing.

[gratuitous]

7. Eschaton blog has been touting the SUPERTRAIN

You can check some or all of his posts on it.

While high speed rail probably won't replace cross-country flights, for trips under 600 miles, it can be quite a time-saver when you consider how early you have to get to the airport so they can check out your shoes and shampoo. Also, since a lot of middle and large cities were built around their early railroad depots, the train will take you right into town instead of a $30 cab ride from town center at the airport.

Those are just a couple of points. I'm sure other folks will have more.

[originalpckelly]

15. There are some really wild proposal to use maglevs in vacuum tunnels...

to send people across the country at what's equivalent to supersonic speeds in normal atmosphere at 40,000 odd feet.

None of it's really against the laws of physics, it's just a matter of actually building it. It is however, science fiction, mainly because it would cost so much to do.

[gratuitous]

23. That would be highly expensive

I also wonder how long it would take to gain public acceptance of being shot through a tunnel at supersonic speeds. Safety and security concerns, chiefly. On the other hand, if we're really facing the decline of affordable petroleum fuel, the public might be interested in it.

Just occurs to me reliability would be a big factor, too. If a train is disabled or de-"railed" in a tube, how long does it take to extract the train (and passengers), repair the tube, and get things moving again? Would there be back-up tubes? How much room would the tunnels require?

Interesting concepts.

[originalpckelly]

27. You can't derail a maglev.

The structure of the train fully wraps around the "rail" above which it levitates.

[tularetom]

8. They take you to the central business district of any destination city

instead of leaving you at an airport 20 miles out of town. Plus they are economical in comparison to air travel (from the provider's standpoint - don't know how the ticket pricing would shake out).

[Condem]

9. How would we know?

France has it. Paris to London in, what, 90 minutes. Seems like a pretty good idea to me.

[Terran]

From what I understand, jet aircraft are big polluters

http://www.usatoday.com/money/biztravel/2006-12-18-jet-pollution-usat_x.htm

...for instance.

If we could largely replace passenger air travel with train travel, it would probably have a lot of positive effects, not just reducing green house gases.

[frogcycle]

11. two things

it is high speed
it is rail

[originalpckelly]

14. You cannot, at this time, power a jet with electricity.

Even bio-fuels put out gases that contribute to global warming.

In Japan, their trains are far safer than air travel anywhere. They've had no accident related deaths in 40 years of operation while actually at speed. The only deaths have been in stations while boarding, and that's still less than even the last commuter plane crash in Buffalo, NY.

In foreign countries, where there are really good rail systems, there is little regional airline business, as high speed trains are faster than than commuter planes, since you don't have to travel to an airport, then leave, then travel from an airport to town. There can be multiple stations that a single train can serve, so you don't need as many trips either. (In other words, flights either use the hub and spoke model or the point to point model, it's unusual for a plane to make several stops in the same city to pick up more people.)

Now, because the atmosphere is denser at ground level than at 40,000 ft, it means there is more drag. There are also losses of energy associated with transporting electricity over long distances to trains, but the fact that you can't currently power a plane with a wind mill or a solar farm, it's the only way to get fast transit over long distances that is environmentally friendly.

[Still Sensible]

18. When my wife went to China last year she came back

raving about the high speed rail between Shanghai and their international airport.

[originalpckelly]

22. That's a maglev they have there.

It's the fastest train that runs on a regular basis. Maglevs have the inherent design flaw that they require precious metals to make the linear motors embedded in the tracks. It's like a normal electric motor with the outside copper windings stretched out in a line down the track, instead of in a big circle around the stator, which is sort of like the axle of the motor.

It is actually possible to have conventional trains go as fast as the fastest maglevs, but none in daily revenue service have been able to beat the Shanghai system.

I think we need to have a hybrid system, where a train is accelerated/stopped by a linear motor, but kept at speed with a sustaining engine to save costs.

I think we should also consider building rolling highways, which are train systems that carry vehicles. They're already being implemented in Europe, but usually carry semis. I think we should consider carrying normal cars in a system that would work like an ultra-fast lane. Because people wouldn't be driving their own cars, the risk of accidents and traffic back ups should dramatically decrease, allowing even trains traveling the same speed as a car to get somewhere faster. We could build trains on either ultra-wide tracks or two standard width (gauge) tracks side by side, then have trains that ride on the two sets of rails to allow wider trains. That way people could just drive on and off across the tracks, rather than down the length of the train, which has in practice shown itself as a significant delay.

[happyslug]

19. The biggest thrust is from the larger cities.

First the airports around most major cities are maxed out. They can handle more passengers but not more planes. A real problem has developed over the last decade or so in that the number of small planes landing and taking off have increased while the number of super size planes landing and taking off has either leveled off or taken a slight decrease. These small planes take up as much time in an airport, at it most critical time, rush hour, as a larger plane and everyone wants to land around the same time. This is so bad even air line executives have come out to advocate increase in rail, just to get those smaller planes out of the way so they can land their larger planes.

Second, Most interstates in urban areas are maxed, they is no way they can put more cars on those interstates. This leads to two pushes for rail, first to get buses off the road, this makes more room for cars (Complaints about buses tyeing up traffic is now getting to the same level people were complaining about Streetcars right after WWII i.e. that Streetcars were tyeing up traffic, but unlike streetcars you can not just remove the streetcars and replace them with buses and see a decline in complaints do to the removal of the Streetcar poles and tracks). Second to get people transported to their jobs at a faster speed then if tied up in traffic.

Third, Modern Signaling system permit very close running of trains, much closer together then cars when car travel at the same speed (Europe does this all the time). Furthermore since the train is hauling 50 to several hundred Passengers, this takes up a faction of the space people in cars do. Furthermore most railroads view their lines as underused, and look to passenger trains to operate on those same tracks as the most profitable way to increase usage (Fright is still way more profitable then passenger service so the Fight lines do NOT want to operate the passenger cars but look at passenger service as the best way to increase revenue, provided it does NOT interfere with Fright).

AS you can see it is more then one reason (The narrow seats on coach class plane seat when passenger trains give you full size seats is also NOT hurting a push for trains).

Other reason can be cited, but these are the main reasons. The last big push for Passenger Rail service was in the 1970s, and failed miserably, mostly because of excess costs (Which was tied in with the number of conductors per passenger seats, this is less of a problem today do to the the fact most conductors now handle more passengers then they did in the 1970s AND people have maxed out available train, so we no longer have conductors assigned to empty seats). This is furthered by the fact Amtrak pioneered modern tickets (Quickly adopted by Airlines in the 1970s) to reduce the cost of handling people when they pay for their tickets.

Furthermore I do not see what Europeans call high speed trains hitting the US under this plan, given the time constricts of the Stimulus package I foresee Amtrak and other railways adopting methods to reduce time of existing trains AND increase the frequency of trains (One of the problems with most trains NOT in the North East is that the train tend to come once a day or less. This makes connections difficult, more frequent service will do more to speed up service by cutting back the waiting period between connecting trains. I suspect this is where most of the money for High Speed rail is going to go, additional trains for additional service on existing routes. Cut down the waiting period between trains from up to a day (Given the trains, outside the northeast, tend only to come once a day) can cut the time it takes people to travel by train in half (and sometime more, depending on how often the train operates now).

[originalpckelly]

24. All good, great points. Trains are inherently capable of supporting higher density per area.

Yeah, the stimulus isn't enough. We need to commit about a trillion over a few years to really build something worthwhile that will fundamentally change American life.

The stimulus is enough to built about one system in a single state. It's pathetic. This is enough to keep the planning going, but it will take more do something.

[GoneOffShore]

25. I've ridden high speed rail from CDG to Marseille

Far more relaxing than flying.

There are NO disadvantages to high speed rail.

[catnhatnh]

26. It doesn't even HAVE to be "high speed"-but it does have to WORK.

Case in point, several years ago I was traveling from Rochester NH to Auburndale Fl. I am retired so time was no factor and neither was cost up to a point. After shaking out my actual trip was a $40 round trip bus ticket from the next town over to Boston and a $112 round trip JetBlue fare from Boston to Orlando where my brother picked me up.
I WANTED to travel at least one way by train but here is what was involved keeping in mind that I am handicapped and that baggage handling was my largest problem....Train from Dover NH to Boston...Taxi ride to the other Boston train station. Train to NYC, change trains at station. Train to DC, change trains to Florida. Detrain and Greyhound bus for the last 40 miles...Now from DC to Florida I spec'd a single sleeper compartment...about 5x6 1/2 feet-price for train tickets $513!!! Until the train prices approach sane I see little hope.

[marions ghost]

29. K & R

n/t

[serrano2008]

30. Would it still work with our cities being so spread out?

Honest question here. Over in Europe the cites seem more dense and here in America, I live in the Kansas City area which seems extremely wide and spread out. Therefore, my initial impression is that with the exception of a couple of MAJOR lines from Boston-NYC and LA-SanFran and maybe a few others, people would probably rather fly (to save time) or on short trips would rather drive to have their car.

Being in Kansas City I probably am not the best judge of this so that's why I'm wondering. I would enjoy taking a fast train somewhere but if I'm driving to St. Louis, Minneapolis, Dallas, Chicago, Omaha...I'll just drive so I've got my car. It might take a couple hours longer but would probably be less expensive and stuff.