
The White House's Vision for High Speed Rail - iamwil
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/04/16/A-Vision-for-High-Speed-Rail/
======
ujjwalg
Being from India (where the rail system is awesome, even though its not high
speed), having extensive traveling experience in Europe and an avid hater of
driving, I love the fact that something is happening in this area in US. When
I came to US, I was surprised to see the only modes of traveling being driving
or flying. My friends told me its because the auto lobbying in US is so
powerful that they don't let any public transportation system to develop. I
believed them. I am not saying it is true but I cannot figure out a reason why
public transportation system across US sucks and even though this venture is
highly cost intensive, IMO, it will be well worth it. Also, I dont understand
people who prefer driving 8 hours, rather than sitting in a train, stress free
and can actually use their time to work/read/socialize.

~~~
randallsquared
I far prefer driving to riding a train (or flying, except for the first and
last 20 minutes). Sitting in a train is not stress-free, for one thing. There
are all these people around you, who you can't just ignore completely, and yet
with whom you are not friends. It's like being at a party where you know no
one, and parties are hard enough to deal with even if you know everyone at
them.

Secondly, there's not really enough room to work unless you can do your work
on a phone; even if there were enough room for a decent-sized laptop between
you and the seat in front, you'd still have to put everything away and get up
whenever the people away from the aisle wanted out, which is every 15 minutes
or so, seemingly. This problem also exists for reading.

Also, when you're driving, there's always the possibility of stopping at
something that interests you, or taking a different route. You are in control
of your own movement, in a way that you aren't at all in a train, where you
can't realistically choose to do something differently. Even a comfortable
jail is still jail (though Amtrak, at least, is no more comfortable than
business-class flying), and while you might choose to put yourself in a
traveling jail for 12 hours, the lack of freedom to choose differently halfway
through will, of course, wear on you.

I took a train when I moved from Alabama to the DC metro area last year, and I
quickly realized I should have flown. There was absolutely nothing to
recommend the experience over flying, which is very similar, except much
shorter and somewhat cheaper (and Amtrak, the train I took, is _subsidized_ ,
so a train that actually reflected its true cost in the ticket price would be,
at current standards, an economy-class experience with a luxury-class price).

~~~
tptacek
This seems completely backwards to me --- I've gotten real work done every
time I've ridden the Acela, and I can't think of a single line of code I've
ever written on a plane.

~~~
randallsquared
Well, my own trip was stressful, cramped, and otherwise uncomfortable, and I
wouldn't bother to repeat it. If I really needed to spend that time coding and
had no option but to do it while en route, I'd much rather spend it mostly in
an airport. I've never actually done any coding while on a train or a plane,
though I have while riding shotgun in a car across the West, while my wife-at-
the-time drove. :)

~~~
tptacek
It sounds like you took a legacy Amtrak train (does Acela go south of DC?).
There is no comparison between Acela and standard Amtrak.

------
technomancy
Bah; everyone knows Rails can't scale.

------
tptacek
There was a segment on NPR about this last weekend, centering on a
husband/wife couple that lived in Belgium and commuted to Paris via high speed
rail; 1.5 hours each direction made it feasible for them to work in a major
metro without having to move there. So that's good.

On the other hand, the investment required to pull that off is staggering.
Europe taxes heavily to pay for the infrastructure. The people involved in
that infrastructure were interviewed saying to expect it to take 20-30 years
to build.

Then on the other hand, we got the to moon and built the interstate highway
system.

Then on the other hand, it's easier to link Brussels to Paris than it is to
link Chicago to Houston.

~~~
skolor
_the investment required to pull that off is staggering. Europe taxes heavily
to pay for the infrastructure._

The problem is, we (America) have been neglecting our infrastructure for far
too long. As a country, we've been doing little more than keeping our existing
infrastructure in working condition, and only upgrading where it was
absolutely necessary. We should have been incrementally upgrading our
infrastructure over the past 50 years, but we haven't been.

I always find it staggering how location locked much of the US population is.
Finding middle aged people who have never been more than 20 miles from where
they were born simply floors me. We are in desperate need of affordable mass
transportation, and high-speed rail seems to be the best way to achieve that.

If the current administration can at least start the upgrades to our
Transportation and Communication infrastructure that we need, at least enough
to catch up to the rest of the industrialized world, I will consider it a
massive success.

~~~
chasingsparks
Not to be a dick, but I am hoping you can save me time. I have heard the
assertion that Americans are more land locked than other (well, European)
countries, but I have never seen anything more than anecdotes. Does anyone
actually know of any serious comparisons?

It seems to me that a similar anecdote would be the "American's own more cars
than any other group and are ridiculously mobile."

I would side with the latter anecdote.

~~~
skolor
_"American's own more cars than any other group and are ridiculously mobile."_

I don't have any hard, general statistics, but back in high school we did a
rather informal survey, with a relatively small sample size (~50 students).
Out of them roughly 80% had never left the state (Florida), of those that had,
only 8% had left the country. There were also 20% of the students had never
been outside of the county we were in (the ~20 miles from home I mentioned).

It certainly seems to me an inverse relationship between car ownership and
mobility (on a large scale). While a car allows you massive mobility in a
relatively short range, you have to be actively driving and paying attention
the entire time, making it much harder to travel long distances. With mass
transportation (train, place, bus, etc) you can get on and fall asleep for all
that it matters to your mobility.

The lack of mass/public transportation seems to be the biggest hindrance to US
mobility. Your choices are largely: Fly or Drive. If you Fly, you have to put
up with the usual litany of plane complaints, and then you _have_ to rent a
vehicle when you arrive at your destination, due to the lack of reasonably
accessible public transportation in most areas. If you choose to drive,
getting anywhere will usually take several days, and puts a massive amount of
wear on your car and the driver. I'm not sure if you've ever gone on a sizable
road trip, but two years ago I did 5k miles of driving for a family vacation.
I have to tell you, it was rough. Long distance driving is vastly different
from driving around the city, and much more difficult on the driver.

~~~
chasingsparks
But isn't the issue regarding high speed rail service about commuting? That is
what I meant by mobility and where I believe the claimed benefits lie. People
can live in a comparatively remote area while still being employed in a
regional city -- the benefit being they might have a more suitable employer.

If that is the case, I would hope to see reasonable evidence showing that
high-speed commuter trains would increase the commuter mobility from the level
it is at now or possibly raise productivity (e.g. the not actively driving
issue).

~~~
skolor
I never thought of the High Speed Rail as a commuter exclusive option. While
that may be the intent, looking at the routes that have been brought up so far
I was under the impression that this was intended as a general attempt to make
the US more interconnected.

That said, most of the routes are _not_ places that are terribly feasible to
commute back and forth to by car. Just eyeballing the routes, most of them
look to be in the 3-4 hour highway driving time. Like its been mentioned
elsewhere, if they can do highway travel times, that becomes a feasible
replacement for the short commuter flights. If they can run at a reasonably
high speed, rather than having to slow down all the time (like the existing
high speed rail in the US, which rarely reaches highway speed) it may become
reasonable as a daily commute.

There are several people I work with (in Tampa, not a huge metro area at all,
but with no real public transportation) who have close to hour long driving
commutes. If you can do that and live ~100 miles away on the high speed rail,
that would greatly increase the reasonable mobility for commuting.

------
inaka
I would refer the high-speed-rail types to James Kunstler's brilliant post
'financial crisis called off' where he reminds us...

We blather about high speed rail, but you can't even get from Cleveland to
Cincinnati on a regular train - and what's more amazing, nobody is really
interested in making this happen. All we really care about is finding some
miracle method to keep all the cars running.

[http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/08/financial-crisis-called-
off...](http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/08/financial-crisis-called-off.html)

------
javery
The Route Map is very interesting:

<http://www.fra.dot.gov/Downloads/RRdev/hsrmap-lv.pdf>

It seems odd you would be able to go from Boston to Houston on all high-speed
but not New York to Chicago. I think they should add that Buffalo to Cleveland
rout to the high-speed list. Of course it probably has to do with the
condition of the existing rails and the terrain.

~~~
hristov
Southern senators need their pork. Logically the south is not the best place
to put rail because they do not have the large population centers, but
politically there has to be just as much rail in the south as in the northeast
or the southern congresspeople will destroy any legislation.

This is one of the reasons Amtrak has been losing money, btw.

~~~
hughprime
The South does have large population centers, it's just that they're rather
far apart. The northeast, maybe extending into Chicago, is the one and only
part of the US where a high-speed rail network would make sense, but it's
silly to expect a government to do things just because they make sense.

~~~
tptacek
SF-Sacramento-LA-SD

PHX-Tucson-ABQ-Vegas

DFW-Austin-Houston-San Antonio

Memphis-Little Rock-Jackson-Birmingham-Louisville-Atlanta

There's really only one place on the map that doesn't make sense for rail, and
that's the inner northwest (bounded by but not including Wichita, Sioux Falls,
Spokane, and SLC). Everywhere else on the map there are hugely valuable
cliques.

The fully connected graph is a red herring. Until we properly invest in
monorail technology (bona-fide electrified six-car monorail!), trains will
never be the right way to get from NYC to LA.

But there is a whole universe of people I could hire --- people I can name
right now --- if STL and MSP were wired to Chicago metro via high-speed rail.
There are also clients who I could do 2-3x more work at, because we could
staff on-site.

~~~
masklinn
> The fully connected graph is a red herring. Until we properly invest in
> monorail technology

Don't you mean maglev rather than monorail? Monorails aren't especially fast.

And even with expensive maglev techs, NYC to LA by train will still be long
and painful. I don't expect that kind of travels to be worth doing by train
(rather than plane) until we manage transcontinental vacuum-pressurized maglev
tunnels.

~~~
tptacek
No, I meant monorail.

Once again?

Monorail!

Was I sent here by the devil?

No, good sir. I'm on the level!

~~~
hughprime
The ring came off my pudding can.

~~~
tptacek
Take my penknife, my good man!

Ok. I'm done now.

------
johnohara
Paris to Brussels is 165 miles. 1.5 hours @ 110 mph Chicago to St. Louis is
298 miles. 1.5 hours @ 198 mph Chicago to Houston is 938 miles. 1.5 hours @
625 mph

The upper limit for maglev trains in 2009 is ~312 mph. The reason high-speed
is not in place in the USA has more to do with the problem we were trying to
solve using air travel than it had to do with whether high-speed rail would
work.

Here in Chicago, we have one of the nation's finest commuter rail systems
(METRA). It works great, runs on time, defeats bad weather, etc. -- for
distances <= 50 miles. Beyond that, the cost-benefit analysis get hazy.

------
benatkin
Why not try and get one high-speed rail link right before trying to build them
all over the country?

The Acela Express can go up to 150mph, but it is prohibited from going that
speed in a lot of areas, and from what I've read it isn't very reliable.

<http://is.gd/39PZO>

Of course, the Obama Administration will avoid any project where they can be
expected to have made measurable progress in six months. It's much easier for
them to just keep talking about what they're working on than it is to actually
fix anything.

~~~
warfangle
The Accela is an Amtrak train that sometimes goes highway speeds (as opposed
to, with Amtrak, almost never) and costs three times as much.

Blerg.

~~~
Kadin
Don't exaggerate; it's not "three times as much."

Amtrak NEC Service, New Haven (NHV) to Washington Union Station (WAS):

Train 175, Northeast Regional, 5'46", $139

Train 2173, Acela Express, 4'36", $213

So for $74 extra you get there roughly an hour and ten minutes faster,
provided they both run on-time. (In my experience the Acelas tend to run on-
time more often than the regionals, although they both run late more
frequently than they should.) The Acela is also a business-class seat while
the Regional is coach, and the Acela train is nicer overall.

Whether it's worth the extra money for the extra hour is a personal decision,
of course, but I don't think the pricing is wholly inappropriate. It would be
great if the Acela was faster because that would make the value equation that
much better, but it's not a terrible ripoff as-is.

EDIT: These are fares for _today_ , the equivalent of a "Yankee-class" ticket
on an airline. You could do better by buying with a 3-day advance, but I think
the Acela/Regional delta would be about the same, percent-wise.

~~~
hughprime
Wow, I had no idea the Acela was that expensive.

Alternatively, I just checked and you can fly from Boston to Baltimore (today,
with no advance purchase) for $96, and it takes 1'24". (I admit this isn't
quite your example, but it's a reasonable illustration of a similar route).

Or you could drive New Haven to DC, which is 306 miles, and google maps
suggests 5 hours 30 mins (admittedly optimistic in traffic). If you drive
alone in a gas-hogging 25 mpg car like mine that'll cost you about $40.

I'm starting to understand why nobody takes the Amtrak.

------
snewe
Biden dreams of a wonderful new way to travel:

"Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and
across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no
taking off your shoes."

Now imagine that people actually start taking trains. Wouldn't you expect the
TSA to start screening trains too?

~~~
javery
There is much less danger on a train vs. a plane. A bomb would only destroy a
section of a train and you can't really hi-jack a train and do much damage.

~~~
alain94040
_you can't really hi-jack a train_

So true. You can try, though. Let me know how it goes :-)

For sure in Europe, there is no security screening for high-speed trains like
there is for planes. You'd have to be paranoid to setup the same structure (or
a big hater of trains).

~~~
davidw
I did have to quickly go through a metal detector (IIRC) to get on a train in
Spain. But it was nothing like airport security.

This is a politics article though (hint: whitehouse). It should not be here.

~~~
tptacek
This is not a politics article, David. It's about high speed rail, not about
the politics of high speed rail.

------
iterationx
Won't this create more urban sprawl?

I'm also not convinced they won't have security screening for the high speed
rail. I wonder if they do in Spain because of 911 + 912.

~~~
m0th87
This is about linking major metropolitan areas together, not accommodating
those who wish to suburbs. One of the central tenants of this plan is that
these stations should be in the heart of the cities (as is done in Europe)
rather than a major commute away.

Also, I just returned from backpacking in Europe, where we used rail as our
primary mode of transport. Security is minimal; among my three trips on rail
in Spain, we never had our passports checked and our bags were only scanned
once in Barcelona.

~~~
profgubler
This is exactly why there is a lot of opposition to high speed rail in the US.
It primarily helps those who live inside major cities. When constituents feel
like they are paying for something that they are not benefiting from they will
oppose it.

------
chasingsparks
FYI: <http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=6470>

Webcast at 12:00 today.

------
symesc
The problem with many of the cities on this plan: no good public transit once
you get off the city-to-city train.

------
eru
I heard there will be almost as fast as regular European trains.

------
onreact-com
When you take a look at the map you only can think: This can't be all of it.
Some areas have no high speed rail at all and the areas that have are often
isolated from each other.

In Germany we have high speed rail all over the place, in France it's similar.
It has been there for years. Japan is best at building high speed railway
systems.

~~~
hughprime
Germany and Japan are tiny, though. Hell, Japan is virtually one-dimensional,
which makes it a great place for building rail lines.

