President Biden Announces Billions to Deliver World-Class High-Speed Rail
whitehouse.govIf California rail cost currently at $200 million per mile, is any indication, the $8.2 billion in new funding should be able to help build 42 miles of high speed rail. Something like NYC to Westchester Country New York
https://www.hoover.org/research/little-engine-couldnt-califo...
It increasingly seems like Brightline West is actually going to happen which is great
I wish the map were higher definition. I see a line from San Antonio (or Austin?) to El Paso, my most traveled route, but nothing in the text description about it. There are also some other lines linking the Texas Triangle which would be great!
Regardless, I hope this plan sees fruition in a reasonable timeframe. Further investments in transit within cities themselves would be welcome too, given a lot of folks may be renting a car at 1 end of a high speed rail trip, but this seems great.
There's a _slightly_ better one on the DOT site (https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/president-biden...), and that site links to a PDF with some more in depth info on the projects (https://railroads.dot.gov/elibrary/fy22-23-FSP-National-rail...).
The LA-Las Vegas route sounds interesting to me. That road tends to get really bad on the weekends, so I think it would serve a need for the bougie set that don't want to deal with traffic.
> bougie
An LA-Vegas train would also be a boon for senior citizens (which make up a large percentage of gamblers), who often take buses to gambling destinations today.
Last page here: https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/2023-12/FY...
Here's a decent res of that map
https://www.railwayage.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image_...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/invest/ has a larger, zoomable map.
It doesn’t show railways, though, but may show railway station investments (I didn’t look hard for them)
The US would really benefit from a high speed rail network even if it connects just a few hubs imo.
Just getting freight railroad operators to follow existing law that gives passenger trains priority would improve things significantly. We could also upgrade existing track and trains to get top speeds of 125 and we would see large benefits for many regions.
It just takes one cargo company to fuck it up for everyone else.
The cargo car that had a wheel break in the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland created damage so bad that it will be closed until September 2024. 7km need to be completely redone at a cost of over 100 million.
All of this because some low cost cargo company ran their wheels way past expiration.
The train was inspected twice by humans and once by an automated system before it entered the tunnel but such catastrophic wheel failures are almost impossible to check for. It is up to the owners of these cars to ensure the equipment doesn't have too many km on it.
Additionally cargo cars are dumb pieces of steel so the train operator does not notice right away if a wheel is gone unlike with a passenger train. The locomotives have so much power they will easily keep chugging along dragging the damaged cars behind them ripping out the track.
Money laundering/pork claims coming from the usual suspects not withstanding, I’m hopeful that the technology that gets developed under this helps boost California’s miserable failure in connecting Fresno to Visalia or wherever it’s located currently.
No amount of investment matters if trains can’t run on time. My experience with Amtrak has been that unless you are starting at a hub (e.g. Chicago/Seattle) there is almost a zero percent chance your train will be on time. Even worse, the discrepancy isn’t a matter of minutes but hours.
My latest - and last - attempt at taking the train from St. Paul to Columbus, WI (nearest stop to Madison) was scheduled to leave at 8 am. At 8:30, we were told by Amtrak staff they “expect the train within the half-hour”. They kept saying this until 1pm. I could have driven the route in less time than I spent waiting fruitlessly for the train to arrive.
Different lines have different issues. Where I live the Amtrak cascades line is pretty good and I rarely had issues with it not being on time when I was using it regularly for over a year. The Coast starlight on the other hand was always late and you just had to build that into your plans.
A lot of this issue comes from freight stealing priority from passenger trains. By law, passenger trains have priority but Amtrak has no way to enforce this which makes Amtrak trains less likely to run on schedule.
With the amount of semi-trucks I see on the highway crisscrossing this country constantly it seems it might be better to just focus on getting our existing freight traffic off the roads before we worry about passenger traffic.
*I'm not talking about last mile deliveries, or suggesting the entire trucking industry can be magically turned into railroad freight.
US Freight Rail is among the most utilized and most efficient in the world.
Freight Rail is actually the reason why our passenger rail sucks so much, because in USA, Freight has priority over passengers. So a lot of our passenger rails sit waiting for the freight-trains to pass.
It is the other way around. Passenger rail has priority but that law is ignored by freight operators.
“For over 50 years, freight railroads have been required by law to provide Amtrak with “preference” to run passenger trains ahead of freight trains. However, many freight railroads ignore the law because it is extremely difficult for Amtrak to enforce it, and as a result, people and the American economy suffer.” https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance#:~:text=For%20ove....
Oh wow. That's incredible. So legally Passenger Rail has priority, but in practice the freight-corporations bully the passenger lines.
Its a difficult situation, because nominally, the freight-rail operators also own those raillines. So a free-market solution is likely not possible. This is just something that needs to be enforced from the top-down.
A free market solution was never feasible as there are just too many parties and externalities involved. This was always going to be a situation where some type of monopoly would happen at various levels which would likely require some type of regulatory intervention to achieve a Pareto-optimal situation.
There are likely solution to the issue that are not top-down, but this isn’t a situation where free market forces will provide the socially optimal outcome.
> Freight Rail is actually the reason why our passenger rail sucks so much, because in USA, Freight has priority over passengers. So a lot of our passenger rails sit waiting for the freight-trains to pass.
Do you have any sources for this? This doesn't sound correct to me. A train is a queue, there is no priority in regards to crossings that I know of.
Edit: I stand corrected, Amtrak report does suggest that freight might have a priority. That report is honestly shocking.
Freight doesn’t have priority, passenger trains have priority according to the law but the law is functionally unenforceable so freight steals priority from passengers.
My suspicion is that we heavily subsidize road-freight traffic by not properly taxing very heavy vehicles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
Reasonably loaded freight trucks do about 10000x as much damage to roads, per mile. Freight trucks also run a lot further per day than regular vehicles. I know a lot of roads never see any freight haulage at all, but I suspect that major transits (interstate highways) are essentially a way to get the US public to pay for freight haulage jobs. I'd guess that last mile is far less damaging, as the box trucks weigh far less.
This is what Tesla Semi is focusing on. The demo from Elon many years ago showed the Tesla Semi trucks autonomously driving and following each other within a couple of feet so they could take advantage of lower drag. He specifically talked about how the Tesla Semi in trailer mode or whatever it is called will be able to be cheaper than rail.
> will be able to be cheaper than rail.
Elon has a history of making fake, bold claims just as the state tried to take on more responsibility.
Starlink instead of municipal Internet
Hyper loop instead of cal train
Now “train mode trucks” which is literally just insane if you’ve driven cross country.
I've tried to figure out the logisitics of having Caltrain and Cal HSR sharing two tracks in the SF Bay Peninsula corridor and I simply can't figure it out. There's no way you can get the Cal HSR at speed through the corridor with bidirectional Caltrain non-high-speed traffic, and there's no room to build more track. So the HSR would have to slow down to Caltrain speeds or they would have to modify the Caltrain schedule (this is all speculation; I haven't seen any plans to address this, other than the ongoing grade separation and electrification).
Combined with the route (which takes a big detour, increasing the ride between the termini), it seems like we're going to pay a lot of money to have something that can sort of get you between northern LA and southern San Jose in a not-very-short amount of time. Hard to see the attraction.
What's insane is the fact that the issues you bring up could have and should have been hashed out via a whiteboard months or years before the first shovel hit the dirt. Figuring out how to solve fundamental architectural issues shouldn't be postponed until development has started, unless of course the real priority was getting dollars to the beneficiaries of taxpayer largesse — and looking good for the next election cycle.
What I anticipate is that it will require a transfer in Diridon, which is suboptimal but it's also unrealistic to think of HSR going directly to SF (seriously, what route would be conceivable that could support actual high speed rail?). However, Caltrain just issued this press release today, which indicates that one of the results of electrification is going to be an ability to run more trains and increase the speed of SF<-->SJ bullets to accommodate 30min end-to-end travel time. If it's a 2hr30min HSR ride from LA to Diridon, then a transfer to 30min Caltrain to SF, that sounds more than acceptable, and still far faster and more convenient than flying LAX<->SFO.
https://www.caltrain.com/news/caltrain-announces-exciting-ne...
Pleasantly surprised by this. Finally some real investment in high speed rail. The LA to Las Vegas high speed line seems like an obvious mistake, though. Definitely excited about the northeast corridor improvements. They say the Downeaster line is going to be improved, but no details. I wish the Downeaster went further up the coast of Maine.
edit: Looks like the Downeaster could get extended to Rockland. Neat! https://www.wabi.tv/2023/12/08/downeaster-could-extend-furth...
> The LA to Las Vegas high speed line seems like an obvious mistake, though
I'm curious as to why you think this? LA<->Vegas on I15 gets supremely busy during the weekends. I dunno how much regular commuter traffic there would be during weekdays, but it seems like it would see high demand, especially if its a) faster than driving and b) you can drink on the train. My main issue with it is that it doesn't actually get very far into LA.
If they put slot machines in the cars, or dedicated casino car(s), they could pay for themselves!
Key point: on weekends. Northeast corridor is high demand all week long. And much more of the national economy flows through that region. LA <> Vegas is mostly leisure.
Covering leisure use cases helps reduce need for cars.
It’s very smart, and allows the west coast to grow its population.
If the Biden admin truly cared about the environment, they wouldn't be making it easier to get to Las Vegas.
I took an Amtrak from Portland to Seattle recently and was amazed at how slow it was, it had to slow down and speed up a lot. I think it had to do with turns too.
Sadly, a high speed rail between the two wouldn't make financial sense. We just don't have enough people making the journey regularly. Not to mention, you'd end up with stops in (at least) Vancouver, Centralia, Olympia, and Tacoma in between, which would negate the point of high speed rail.
I know it's hard to accept, but the US geography (and population density really) makes high speed rail pretty much a no-go here.
They are working to improve it and service quite a few station between pdx and Seattle. Still it is around a ~3.5 hour trip which is only slightly longer than the ~3 hours it takes to drive.
Ahh, yes, I remember thinking that it was roughly the same time. Still much better without the traffic, but significantly more expensive if one has access to a vehicle already. I found myself thinking I would like to take it more, but it wasn't that fast, plus with having to get to the train station ahead of time and then get transportation when I arrived, it was actually more time consuming.
It was very scenic though and I very much enjoyed being able to walk around and also walk to the food car to get a beverage and sit at one of the tables there.
You must also add on the time to get to the station from home and the time to get to where you're going in the destination area from the station there.
For instance, if I live in Bellevue or Redmond and want to go to Portland, I can drive in the same 3hrs as it would take someone who lives in Downtown Seattle to take the train. But if I were to take the train, I'm looking at a 20-30min taxi or uber ride first, plus the cost.
I've noticed that people often underestimate the actual expenses associated with driving.
For instance, the Amtrak Cascades ticket from pdx to Seattle is only $26. On the other hand, when you calculate the IRS mileage rate of 66 cents per mile for the 161-mile distance between Portland and Seattle, driving adds up to $106. This calculation doesn't consider the opportunity cost of driving, as it limits your ability to do other things while operating a car. Additionally, it doesn't factor in externalities like pollution. Considering the challenging driving conditions in Seattle, avoiding the hassle of driving and parking there is a definite positive in my opinion.
Ah yes, billions more in spending that we can't afford. Keep emitting debt, US government, and keep generating more inflation while you're at it. Insanity.
We are talking about 8.2 billion dollars from a 6.5 trillion dollar budget. The US brings in 5 trillion dollars in revenue yearly.
This is like someone making 100k a year complaining about spending 16 cents on something because they have a loan to pay off.
Mind the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves.
Stop wasting the money of other people. Rail sucks. Leave it for cargo.
But Rust and Ruby target completely different use cases.
Nah trains rule.
This is like someone making 100k a year but spending 115k a year saying "ehh, 16 more cents doesn't matter".
Can’t afford? The US is insanely wealthy, it can easily afford this if it wanted to. The issue is around the politics of taxing and spending, not about the affordability of it.
Forget about my support for Palestinian genocide! Look, trains!
Why build a monorail in a small town with a centralized population around a town center?
What about Chicago to Saint Louis?
What about it? That line started running at 110mph a few months ago.
The Chicago region only got about 15% of what it asked for, and notably they didn't include funding for a few smaller projects that would have combined to shave 20-30 minutes off of almost half of all long-distance Amtrak trains.
They literally refused to fund a project to double-track a 1-mile section of track on the south side of Chicago (on a 4-track wide right of way) that causes delays to every single Amtrak route between Chicago and the east coast.
There's a 13(?) mile long section of single track in Michigan (that Amtrak owns!), and is the largest source of delay for all Chicago-Detroit trains. And they refused add a second track, which the right of way already has room for.
220mph == high speed in this case
So, wouldn't dedicated high speed lanes by autonomous vehicles be more flexible?
They are talking 220mph here. I would think autonomous electric vehicles could do this too.
Although, possibly rail might be safer because you can build fences to keep animals out.
Maybe a mixture of both in the future?
also vehicles would be
- 10x costs to maintain the vehicles (tires brakes etc) - 10x less energy efficient - 10x less comfortable, cars are bumpy trains are smooth
That makes sense on those tradeoffs, I'm just wondering how many people would use high speed rail by going to a station and waiting for it. Maybe if they could make the departure and arrival seamless. And also have frequent departure times it could work. I used to take the train a lot from New Jersey to NYC and the 1 hour gap made it kind of a PITA, 15 minute increments makes it so one doesn't have to plan so much around it, and it is thus more likely one can rely on it.
"cars are bumpy trains are smooth "
Your delusions never cease to amaze.
What autonomous vehicles?
Waymo type vehicles.
I wouldn't get in one of those going 22 miles an hour let alone 220 mph.