History repeats itself, and the result may be the same, I'm afraid...

[bikkuri bahn]

from 1965- you can change the dateline to 2011 (and the president and omit railroad officials) and otherwise leave the text unaltered:

 

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=VeMjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=uicEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5962,28938&dq=high+speed+rail&hl=en

[cteno4]

really quite sad...

 

recently with all the HSR sort of going up in flames around here i have thought that even just better rail service on the right hauls at not even high speed would sell well here now days with air travel being as onerous as it is! even with the old metro liner it was pretty much dead even most of the time getting to nyc from dc, even with the hourly shuttle planes (if everything went perfect and you shaved the buffers to the minimum you could do the shuttle in a bit over 3 hrs door to door). train is certainly more comfortable and much more of a relaxed journey and less chance of getting stuck in traffic as you can alway switch to metro on both ends if the roads were jammed.

 

now with all the security, seats that even someone like 5'4" is cramped in (let alone 6'4"), and planes with people stuffed in the overhead bins (look for this at some point!), weather delays, etc. its even more attractive if it can meet the travel time window.

 

seems there is a window for more simpler, not totally hsr routes these days, but track is the issue and thats a huge portion of the cost i guess. sign...

 

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

Hey, that article says they'll be testing between NY-Washington and NY-Boston "At speeds of up to 125 miles an hour."

 

Last I checked, 125 is the current speed on the NY-Wash Regionals and the Acela hits 150 on New Haven-Boston, so I'd say this one worked out. The trains in question were, of course, the Metroliners, which became the basis for Amfleet (and which have now been cascaded into Keystone service, where I see 'em almost every day).

 

The thing is, the goalposts move, you have to keep innovating. The 0 series Shinkansen debuted at 210km/h, scarcely faster than the Metroliner. But the Japanese did that whole continuous improvement thing and now they're running at 270-300km/h, whereas we just put rail in the back burner for the duration of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations.

[cteno4]

moving the goal posts has always been the great goal, but im now wondering if just doing things that work, save energy/co2 and are more relaxing and comfortable is a good goal as well in these tight times. sometimes we get stuck on faster faster faster...

 

the few commuter rail lines that have slipped in in the last decade have been smashing successes, but those usually focus on car travel. they have been pretty opportunistic, finding little used freight rail lines to use, but still i like the rambo approach as well like this to be cleaver instead of hoping for the hail mary of full HSR all the time.

 

like i said even the old metro liners would equal the shuttle in time and beat it in ease and comfort on the nyc to dc run. nyc to boston it starts to not work and boston to dc its a full day trip, not a half day, but still a much more enjoyable ride!!!

 

jeff

[keitaro]

enjoyable for a railfan but how about others?

 

 

anyway I find australia to be as bad or worse in the rail development area of coulda, shoulda, didn't.

 

one example of stupid is ropes crossing in new south wales.

 

There was a line going from st marys to ropes crossing that used to supply the old ammunitions factory. but they pulled that up to build houses over it.

 

mean while the plan is to build another 7000 houses/units over next 15 years there? spreading down towards the richmond windsor area. which has a train line.

 

so would it not be feasable to leave the track there and reserve some land as building houses for in the future when there is a sustainable population to warrant the line to be upgraded and run a train service down to the richmond line???

 

i'm talking 10 - 15 years from now but now it's impossible to do.

 

on top of that there loops of feasability studies for the sydney to melbourne HSR.

 

I mean serious second highest flight route in the world in number of seats. what study is required they already know what the track plan is and how much it will cost just build the damn thing!!

 

I really do hope the U.S gets some form of hsr though there are some really good benefits of this to the U.S. due to large populations now and long distances between states and cities.

 

Also really needs to be done before there is no land to build it on. same goes fro sydney the longer we leave it the harder it is to get the land for the track. especially at the rate at which houses are being dumped just about anywhere.

[Mudkip Orange]

boston to dc its a full day trip

Tokyo-Osaka is the oldest route, (and thus most geometrically constrained); it's 551km via expressway, and your average afternoon rush Shinkansen leaving Tokyo takes 2:36. That's an average speed of 212 km/h.

 

Washington Union to Boston South is 724km by expressway. At 212 km/h that distance could be covered in 3:25. Allowing an additional 20 minutes to negotiate Penn Station and the Hell Gate Line brings that to 3:45, which is still faster than air travel when you factor in city-airport travel times. Security makes it even longer still.

 

The truth is that we're conditioned to accept longer travel times then other countries, and as a result we think things are further away then they really are. For instance using the same methology as before, New York Penn is only 2:45 away from Montreal Central. Montreal! Another country... another language... think about it.

[cteno4]

i was just relating the current fastest time of acela of about 6.5hr min not being time competitive from boston to dc...

 

to get 3.25hr coverage would require a rethink to that corridor that's probably not going to happen anytime soon. we hobbled ourselves from the get go.

 

i totally agree we could do better, but with so much attention to speed on longer runs i think we do forget the shorter runs where current train speeds can make nicer alternatives than cars and planes.

 

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

Well geometrically there's no way around the fact that you'll eventually need a new Connecticut Air Line to get around the curves on the shore route. But NYC-Wash can get there with incremental improvements.

 

700-series on the Tokaido top out at 270km/h, which is 168 mph.

 

The track and catenary improvements between Edison and Morrisville will bring that portion of the NEC to 160 mph. We're into the same ballpark.

 

Similar improvements could achieve the same speeds between Morrisville and Bridesburg SEPTA, between Arsenal and Wilmington, between Wilmington and the Baltimore Beltway. You get into some expensive bits - you need entirely new bridges at the Susquehanna and on either side of Aberdeen. But it's all very, very doable. Baltimore is a tougher nut to crack - you probably need about five miles of new deep bore - but it's nothing that hasn't been accomplished by the Swiss, or the Germans, or the Japanese.

 

It's really just a question of whether we have the national will to move great quantities of earth. We did, once... that's why you've got all those red-and-blue shields in every city.

[lordwinslow2]

That is fine, but the biggest problem right now on the NorthEast Corridor is the north of New York City section between Southern CT and Penn Station.  That part of the line is some of the oldest track in the Amtrak System.  Most of it is old cargo lines and I know they have been working on upgrading it for ages so they can go faster than 50mph.  Considering parts of Northern CT and Rhode Island have been upgraded and can handle speeds of 150mph, once that section is fixed and they get the speeds updated the Train is a viable option over the daily shuttles from Logan (Boston) to the New York area airports.  Heck right now there are times when driving I-95 From Boston to NYC is sometimes faster than the train.

 

I can't wait for the upgrades to be complete, I like taking the train to NYC from Boston, but right now the price/time is not worth it over a plane or gas/parking for the car.

 

Winslow

[Mudkip Orange]

Well that's where you need the air line. The shore line geometry is crap, and there's only so much you can do with catenary and track before you run into the limits of superelevation and cant deficiency. Plus Connecticut is totally NIMBY about the shore line, the state limits Amtrak to 39 total trains per day over the low-level bridges.

 

If you Google "Penn Station, NY to South Station, Boston", the three fastest routes all run via Hartford. Ultimately any significant upgrade to NY-Boston service will have to do the same.