
Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor - koops
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-amtrak-sea-level/
======
jonas21
> _The report’s authors estimated the initial cost of protecting the study
> area to be $78 million, based on the premise that water levels around
> Wilmington would rise 2 feet by 2050._

That's a drop in the bucket compared to Amtrak's $38 billion maintenance
backlog or the $13 billion Hudson tunnel project.

Out of all the potential effects of climate change, this seems like one of the
least worrisome -- we even know how to fix it already!

~~~
freehunter
>this seems like one of the least worrisome -- we even know how to fix it
already!

The biggest struggle with climate change (in the US at least) is trying to
convince businesses that they're going to be impacted financially. If anything
we need more industry-specific reporting to try to show companies how ignoring
climate change will impact their bottom line.

~~~
chiefalchemist
> "convince businesses that they're going to be impacted financially"

Yes and no. My take is this: there's too much time and energy being put into
why and who does or doesn't believe (it's human-made), and not enough focus is
on "solutions" (to the higher waters). Often this distraction seems to be
generated by politicians.

I wish I had $10 for every time I've seen an article misuse the phrase
"climate-change deniers" My sense those people are very few. That is, flat out
deniers are few. Most everyone else sees it coming. The debate is why it's
happening (human vs natural).

Even if we settle on why (which we won't), it seems to me Amtrak, etc. are
still going to be impacted. At some point we need to focus on the ends, and
let the means go.

Note: I realize that __if__ we settle on human-made there is, at least in
theory, opportunity to slow the change. I understand that. My faith breaks
down on ever being able to agree on why. It's as if the building is on fire
and we're so busy debating why the fire started that we've forgotten we still
need to do something about the fire.

~~~
jacobolus
There’s a team of guys with flamethrowers running around the house lighting
everything on fire, and some of the inhabitants are saying “well you can’t
discount the possibility that the fires started themselves, and having a house
on fire isn’t really so bad, and we probably can’t do anything to fix it
anyway.”

And now you are standing up for them.

Our problems cannot be summarized as “higher waters”. We are talking about not
just sea-level rise displacing hundreds of millions (if not billions) of
people, but also lethal heat waves every summer in many parts of the world,
permanent severe drought in some places, raging wildfires, severe storms,
collapse of many ecosystems, collapse of agriculture in many places, etc.

~~~
mirimir
Funny :)

But we're _all_ running around with flamethrowers. And we can't imagine life
without them. That's the hard part.

~~~
ahje
Not just that: The rest of the world are running around with matches and
lighters, are watching us, thinking "Damn, I want one of those" and have
started building their own flamethrowers.

Now we're telling them to stop building flamethrowers while we keep insisting
that we keep our own.

~~~
mirimir
Just so.

------
sailfast
> Water levels around Wilmington would rise 2 feet by 2050. That reflects the
> median of possible warming scenarios

2 feet is the median!? And things continue to accelerate?

I thought I followed climate change issues but somehow did not know that in
most people's lifetimes sea levels will rise multiple feet. I would've thought
folks would be more... concerned? The maps of New Jersey, New York, and
Connecticut look like they are going to cost us billions to trillions to
mitigate between now and 2100.

~~~
graeme
I have no idea why people aren't more concerned. I think the desire to avoid
sounding "apocalyptic" has led to people not emphasizing the expected damage
if we keep using CO2.

Anyone with a child born this year can expect that child to live past 2100. A
future grandchild will live well past 2100. Even most people reading this can
probably expect to live past 2050.

It's not an abstract issue that will affect future generations. It will affect
us and our direct descendants.

~~~
stale2002
Well, that is because things _aren 't_ literally apocalyptic.

The science says that sea levels will rise by a meter or so over the next
hundred years. That won't end the world.

The science says that climate change will cause trillions of dollars of
damages, over the next hundred years.

Trillions of dollars in damages is bad. But it is on the same scale of
"badness" as another iraq war.

I'd want to prevent a third Iraq war, but I am not going to pretend that it
would put billions of lives in danger.

~~~
graeme
Science can't predict the economic effects of such a change over a 100 year
period. Economic forecasting just isn't that good.

That's also not the right way to look at Iraq war costs. A lot of the war cost
is just "shuffling".

Eg pay $1,000,000 in soldier salaries, the money is moved from taxpayers to
soldiers. Then the soldiers spend the money. What was lost?

The real cost is the alternative work the soldiers could have done. The
private sector could presumably have put them to better use. This would be
more acute if the economy had full employment.

Bombs and munitions are worse, as there is real destruction of material. But
much of the money is still recycled back into the domestic economy.

By contrast, a trillion simply _lost_ from a catastrophe is just lost. It's a
loss of real infrastructure. It's a loss of whole cities such as Miami, etc

To speak of "science" in this context is to misuse the term.

~~~
diggernet
But a lot of the catastrophe cost is just "shuffling".

Eg pay $1,000,000 in construction worker salaries, the money is moved from
taxpayers to workers. Then the workers spend the money. What was lost?

The comment about alternative work still applies, but much of the money is
still recycled back into the domestic economy.

So it's not a trillion simply _lost_.

All in all, I think the comparison to war is very apt.

~~~
graeme
Real resources go into the building of those buildings though. You could have
built other things, but instead you must rebuild new york.

Whereas, soldiers probably weren't doing much economically productive in the
first place. And as long as there is spare capacity in the labour force,
moving people from "unemployed" to "soldier" isn't a massive misallocation of
resources.

It's not nothing - taxpayers could habe spent the money better had they kept
it. But it's not the same as if you levelled a city.

Further, the vast bulk of costs associated with the iraq war are interest on
debt. That is really just shuffling money around. Especially if the debt is
held by americans.

Money is just a unit of exchange. It isn't synonymous with wealth itself.
Climate change will actually directly destroy wealth: it will level capital
stock, it will lower crop yields, etc.

This is very different from movements of money back and forth that leave the
physical economy untouched.

Iraq suffered destruction of capital during the Iraq war. Not sure if a dollar
figure was attached to it, but that would be a more comparable situation.

Iraq's economy is $200 billion per year. I'm guessing the dollar loss to them
was much less than 2.4 trillion. And yet I'm sure the real hardship caused by
capital loss is greater than americans feel from their financial loss - even
if you account for population size differences.

------
calebsurfs
This is nothing compared to the estimated $3.5 billion to redirect the tracks
underground in San Diego. Coastal bluff failures are occurring within several
feet of the tracks on a regular basis. I spend time at this beach and I don't
know how this track will be viable in a couple years, with or without rising
sea levels. Once it is deemed unsafe, San Diego will be completely cut off by
rail.

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sd-del-mar-
bluf...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sd-del-mar-
bluffs-20181216-story.html)

~~~
CalRobert
Given HN's general policy of disallowing paywalled links maybe we should also
consider disalling GDPR-walled links. Sure, proxies and VPN's exist but it's a
PITA just to read an LATimes article.

And SD will still have the trolley from TJ at least.

------
hprotagonist
Even a decade ago, some long stretches through connecticut reminded me a lot
of the tramway sequence in _Spirited Away_ :
[https://vimeo.com/91985775](https://vimeo.com/91985775)

~~~
arethuza
The train I get along the Fife coast on the way into Edinburgh is so close to
the sea I often find myself wondering if you could jump from the train into
the sea...

~~~
abstractbeliefs
Probably could between Aberdour and Burntisland, as you pass silver sands

------
koops
The US east coast has post-glacial rebound and Atlantic meridional overturning
circulation slowdown to compound their sea-level problems. But most the rise
is nothing special compared the rest of the world, which is the worst part of
this.

~~~
jackcarter
Won't post-glacial rebound _counteract_ rising sea levels?

~~~
koops
Unfortunately no, not here. The metaphor I've heard is continent as couch
cushion: the glacier was "sitting" on the upper part of North America, pushing
up the edges. Now that weight is gone, the coasts are dropping slightly.

~~~
jackcarter
Ah, that’s interesting and believable. Do you know where you heard that?

I found this article, which talks about a slightly different effect: If
Antarctic ice melts more quickly than arctic ice, then the Antarctic land
rebound will shove southern-hemisphere water north, raising sea levels in the
northern hemisphere. The opposite effect happens if arctic ice melts before
Antarctic ice.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/cities...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/cities-
sink-sea-first-earth-submerge-coastline)

~~~
wcoenen
The article doesn't even mention the effect of gravity, which is also
significant. Ocean water is currently gravitationally attracted to the ice
caps, and when an ice cap disappears, all that "bunched up" water will spread
around the globe. This effect reduces sea level rise in a large area around
the ice cap, and increases it everywhere else.

This other article in The Guardian does mention it:
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-
interactive/2018/...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-
interactive/2018/sep/12/greenland-antarctic-ice-sheet-sea-level-rise-science-
climate)

------
tbihl
Misleading title: should be 'will drown.' Not once in the article was any
current drowning of the infrastructure mentioned.

------
igravious
“More than a year and a half later, Amtrak, a private company _whose stock is
primarily owned by the federal government and which depends on congressional
funding to operate_ , has yet to repeat its analysis for the network as a
whole.”

So, _not_ a private company.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/2015/03/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/2015/03/09/dd125130-c691-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_story.html)

(From 2015 – Supreme Court says Amtrak is more like a public entity than a
private firm)

"" All the justices agreed to overturn the lower-court ruling in which the
Association of American Railroads had prevailed at the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the D.C. Circuit: that Amtrak was a strictly private entity and as such
Congress was wrong in 2008 to set up a system that allowed it to issue
regulations.

The lower court had based the decision on Congress’s command that Amtrak “is
not a department, agency or instrumentality of the United States Government.”

But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said saying so does not necessarily make it so.

The government puts all sorts of demands on Amtrak — maintaining service
between Louisiana and Florida, for instance, or offering reduced fares for
elderly or disabled passengers — not to mention giving it subsidies of about
$1 billion a year, Kennedy said.

“Amtrak was created by the Government, is controlled by the Government, and
operates for the Government’s benefit,” Kennedy wrote. Thus, in working with
the Federal Railroad Administration to issue the “metrics and standards” for
performance, “Amtrak acted as a governmental entity for purposes of the
Constitution’s separation of powers provisions.” ""

In Ireland we call entities like this _semi-state_ companies:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-
sponsored_bodies_of_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-
sponsored_bodies_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland)

------
zachrose
I was on a road trip throughout a lot of different parts of America last
month. A park ranger in Big Bend told me that a tributary creek of the Rio
Grande was a hundred feet wide, when normally you can just jump over it. A
lakeside highway rest area in North Carolina was flooded up to a permanently
mounted bench and trash can.

~~~
amvalo
Huh? Big bend is nowhere near sea level..

~~~
moate
Rising temperatures melting glacial/mountain ice more dramatically
contributing to river water carry? I'm not saying that's specifically the
case, just throwing out a possible hypothesis. Plenty of others exist (bad
rainy season, tributary re-routing due to industry, removal of forested areas
that would have previously soaked up water, etc).

Could be a global warming thing, could be a seasonal thing, could be anything
really.

~~~
tbihl
As a general rule, higher temperatures lead to atrophied snowmelt rivers
because there's not as much accumulation. That's one of the contributing
factors for water problems in a lot of Western (U.S.) areas.

~~~
moate
Good point, but OP didn't mention if this was an isolated incident (the hot
summer that burns off more cap snow which will never get replenished) or a
sustained thing (this used to be a 4 foot stream, but for the last 5 years
it's been 100 feet wide instead). Who knows what's actually going on in this
story.

I'm not saying it's anything one way or the other since this is a hyper-
empirical piece of data to be working off of. Based on context I'm assuming OP
meant to imply that this is a sign of rising water levels, but I was just
posting some alternate theories.

~~~
zachrose
Yes, hyper-empirical is exactly right. I totally don't know what caused the
bigger creek in Big Bend or how that relates to the larger climate. I was
hoping Hacker News would chime in with exactly this kind of analysis.

------
CodeSheikh
Blessing in disguise here for Amtrack and a great opportunity to do an
overhaul of a subset of the one of the oldest railroad infrastructure in the
USA. Many lessons we can learn from European counterparts.

~~~
caymanjim
It's not easy to move a rail line. It's politically and economically
infeasible. Amtrak hugs the coast in the northeast in part because that land
is useless for anything else. Much like the subways, bridges, tunnels, roads,
and every other piece of transit infrastructure in the northeast, the rail
problems are systemic and it's a huge effort just to keep things moving at
all. This isn't a blessing; it's a snapshot of one of dozens of problems that
are just as urgently in need of investment.

~~~
CodeSheikh
"politically and economically" this is the problem right there. When people
graciously justify (and subconsciously) roadblock to any advancement and
progress economical and political issues.

If Amtrack pauses its service segment-by-segment so they get to focus on re-
building infrastructure then I believe It will not have that much of a
negative impact on travelers, at least. People can always resort to other
traveling alternatives(buses, cars, planes). Heck, it is economical to travel
from NYC to DC by bus vs train. Train gets you in 3 hours for $200 and bus
gets you in 4 hours for $19. For me, $200 is worth paying if I get to DC in an
hour!

Yes there will be job displacements while the overhaul is underway. But for
numbers sake, more job will be created as part of the overhaul.

By politics I assume you meant unions. It is a rabbit-hole debate but I will
say this that unions have done more damage to the infrastructure progress than
any other political entity in northeast USA.

~~~
bobthepanda
Northeast airspace is overcrowded, as is I-95. Not to mention that Amtrak
mostly gets money for NEC from the fares, so pausing it is a non-starter
without serious government cash infusions.

------
LiamMcCalloway
Should we talk about JFK being under water as well? see NY map.

------
a3n
Rather than thinking like a train company, wondering how to protect or move
the tracks, what if they thought like a transportation company, and figured
out how to move the same and projected number of people?

Although if climate inaction generally prevails, eventually the area won't be
viable for that many people to live, work and commute. Problem solved.

------
joering2
Speaking of Amtrack with such fast news cycle, did they find out the cause of
two recent crashes (I believe New Jersey /Connecticuit) ? Ine over some
oassage-bridge. I cant find anything on it anymore.

------
m0llusk
This might be a good opportunity to rebuild the whole thing. It has always
been slow because of basic problems anyway.

------
sillypuddy
It will be interesting to see how fast Boring company progresses and if that
will be a scalable solution. If there is going to be a large capital
investment, it would be great if it also sped up travel times.

------
mikejulietbravo
As a very frequent Amtrak rider, I’m pretty conflicted here. On one hand,
climate change is bad. On the other hand, giving the Amtrak fleet a bath, or
altogether destroying it sounds pretty good to me.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _On the other hand, giving the Amtrak fleet a bath, or altogether destroying
> it sounds pretty good to me._

Why?

~~~
ams6110
Amtrak is hands-down the worst passenger rail service I've ever used, out of
services in four different countries. I will say I've never used Amtrak in the
Northeast which I understand is somewhat better than the rest of the country,
but that's not saying much.

~~~
13of40
I've only used it on the west coast, but it seems like the service,
cleanliness, etc. are comparable to European and Asian trains, but because the
Amtrak trains are super slow and the distances here are so much greater,
riding anywhere on it is a terrible experience. Not to mention the fact that
it's almost as expensive as flying. (Just checked and it would cost me $79 to
fly to Portland from Seattle and $53 to take the train. Kind of a no-brainer.)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Why is that a no-brainer? In Seattle, first you have to get to the airport.
Sea-Tac isn't exactly _in_ Seattle. Depending on where you're coming from,
King Street may be easier to reach.

Then there's the bit about arriving at the airport 2 hours before, in order to
pass through security. Yeah, you can probably cheat on the two hours,
depending on how long security lines tend to be at Sea-Tac. Still, it's a
chunk of time you don't have to spend when you take the train.

Roll all that together, and I'm not sure that the train is much slower. And it
costs less, and the scenery is better. So from where I sit, it doesn't look
like a no-brainer at all.

Have I missed something?

~~~
mikey_p
One major downside is that the schedule is very unpredictable between Portland
and Seattle, due to right of way being preempted by freight traffic. It's not
uncommon to have to pull into a siding and sit for 10-20 minutes several
times.

That said the comfort between train and air travel is night and day, you get
much more space, plenty of outlets, room to get up and move around, purchase
food and drinks, even if the food is worse than airline food.

~~~
lostapathy
How can the food be worse than airline food? I haven’t been on a flight in
years that had anything other than prepackaged snacks available at any price.

~~~
Symbiote
I have eaten one Amtrak meal.

It was a burger in a plastic wrap, which was microwaved to heat it.

I've had bad airline food, like British Airways ten years back, and food from
British trains, but Amtrak's offering was easily the worst. Hopefully they've
improved by now.

The best meal was on a Swiss train (in Germany). That was also the cheapest
Swiss food I've ever had.

