by MIKE SKEHAN
Congress, in a bold stroke of progressive thinking, has quadrupled the investment in High Speed Rail (HSR) to 8 Billion. The funds will be doled out by the FTA on a competitive basis, and with just 12 HSR corridors in the nation to date, our own Cascade Rail Corridor, using existing Talgo tilt trains is in line for a huge chunk – Maybe?
1/12th of 8 Bil. Is 666 Mil. – but I’m not naive enough to think we’ll out compete California and other large states for a full share. As I have advocated here before our state is in a very competitive position to capture the needed funding to accelerate progress towards making the dream a reality.
We have many of the pieces in place. You can learn more about the latest plan from the WSDOT here.
Many of these projects, such as the Ft Deviance Bypass and Vancouver, WA rail yard bypass are or will be shovel ready. This makes sense on so many levels: Consider a trip from Seattle to Portland via car, plane or HSR.
• Car Travel: 144 miles @ 60 mph takes 2.4 hours, costing $70 (IRS 50.5 cents/mi)
• Plane Travel: About 3.3 hours, costing $70. (LRT to/from airports, 1 hour security and boarding, and a 50 minute flight)
• HSR Travel will take under 3 hours, and cost about $30. For the business traveler who can use the time on the train as billable hours, it’s a no brainer.
Greenhouse emissions are much lower for trains than planes and all but a few cars. Fuel efficiency is a hands down winner for rail!
Using and “Incremental Approach” to funding our HSR line adds train sets, more frequent trips, and increases train speeds to 110 mph along sections of the line. On-time performance is increased from 60% to 97% Ridership will nearly double over 10 years, and the entire corridor, when fully built, could be operated at a profit.
I’m referring to our adopted state plan for Option 3, costing $537 Mil. The report concludes that thousands of jobs will be created, and benefit cities all along I-5 in the billions.
With the Feds now aiming to pressure freight railroads to reduce or eliminate slow orders and improve on-time performance to 80% or greater, now is the time to look towards the future.
Again, the support STB has given to rail transport is appreciated. I hope you can find the time to encourage our elected leaders to grab this low lying fruit. Thanks.
Here are the links:
WSDOT MidRange Plan Dec 2008
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/83B17378-CDC8-4D57-AA60-4CD64BAF6D94/0/AmtrakCascadesMidRangePlan.pdf
WSDOT HSR and Airport Capacity
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/D27DD829-9CCF-483F-8A95-0CCA95C34365/0/LATS_PhaseII_Ch15.pdf
Energy & CO2 for various modes of travel May 2007
http://www.buses.org/files/ComparativeEnergy.pdf
Enjoy your reading and morning coffee!
I’d have to also add that it would really benefit business travelers if they were allowed a “special” car or section where they can continue to conduct their business. This has been a major selling point on the TGV, ICE, and AVE lines since those trains have reservation only conference rooms.
With more to come
“Obama plots huge railroad expansion”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18924.html
Nice read. I still have the question, “What defines high-speed?” I guess in this country the NE corridor is high-speed rail. The Amtrak Cascades with the tilting Talgo cars would be similar to the NE corridor. To me both of those are medium-speed rail. High-speed rail as it’s thought of in Europe and Japan are dedicated track that supports +200mph trains. California seems to be the only game in town at this point for true high-speed rail.
Reading some of the comments like “Sin City to Tomorrow Land” make me wonder if members of Congress know less about plans for rail than I do or if they’re just willing to ignore reality for the sake of a simple sound bite.
I’ve got no problem with a large portion of the federal dollars going to California but I’d like to see some of it in the form of loans. Since this system is supposed to operate at a profit California should be willing to repay seed money to help other projects get rolling.
Some Long Distance Trains can be considered High Speed, under the theory that anything above 79-90MPH. THe Superliners are geared for 90-110MPH running, and on the Southwest Chief, they do get that speed. Track and Signal conditions are a limiter, especially if Automatic Train Stop is not there. It is mandatory above 79MPH. I saw an interesting photo in a book on the Milwaukee Road Hiawathas, and they showed it hitting an unprotected crossing at high speed in rural Wisconsin. The sign said to be careful, trains are running at 100MPH! That was not just in the Diesel Era, the Milwaukee had some interesting high-speed Steam Engines.
There are commuter operations in the Northeast that get over 100MPH. This is using a conventional coach train pulled by an Electric Locomotive. That is why some High Speed Rail advocates pitch the big stuff like the TGV, ICE, Shinkansen. Those hit nearly or over 200MPH.
Not all the ICE trains run on dedicated track in Germany, and they share some corridoras with the slower Intercity Trains. In some areas, they share track with Light Rail Trains(speed restrictions in place, though).
The TGV trains don’t run entirely on dedicated tracks either. Most large city terminal access is over track shared with other services and the service end points are often well past the end of the high speed line. IIRC most of these shared lines outside cities allow 90-120 MPH running.
Bernie, while CA HSR may be able to operate at a profit the capital investment is still too large for the state to bear alone. The Feds should grant the money since it’ll come back in the form of jobs and economic prosperity leading to increased tax revenues.
Good point about HSR. I think we need to aim for 180+ mph.
Like others have said, it’s a relative thing. For example, the NE Corridor “Acela” tilt trains are limited to 150 mph (the maximum speed for shared freight, Amtrak, and HSR lines) The Acela’s average about 65 mph between Boston and Washington DC, a trip of 456 miles in 7 hours, with 15 stops.
The Talgo tilt trains here, could max out at 110 mph, with an average speed of 48 mph midterm, and 58 mph with full build out. The Cascades Corridor has 12 stations from Bellingham to Portland.
The 13th station should be open in November 2009 if all goes well… (Stanwood)
Do those averages go up any if you only look at the SEA-PDX segment, both for mid and long-term?
Track from Tukwilla to Sumner and from South Tacoma (once Pt. Defiance bypass is complete) to South Lewis County is straight enough to allow for fairly high speeds and has enough space to allow tracks to be added and the few curves to be re-aligned for higher speed operation.
UK, Japan, etc. – 150+ is considered High Speed Rail. Most trains run at 90mph for normal passenger trains. Some freight trains, though they are much shorter than American freight trains, also run around 80-90mph.
US standards is spot on from EGR. ATS, PTS, or ATCS are what is required to run above 79mph. “Dark Territory” (Stampede Pass) is restricted to 49mph for freight and 59mph for passenger trains. While Stampede has “CTC Islands” the FRA and BNSF still consider it dark.
While I’d love to see HSR come to the area, I think we also need to be realistic in both presenting numbers and in terminology.
For example, let’s take the airplane numbers from SEA to PDX:
“Plane Travel: About 3.3 hours, costing $70. (LRT to/from airports, 1 hour security and boarding, and a 50 minute flight)”
The times aren’t realistic. No regular business traveler (which is the profile used) would be getting to SEA an hour early. For that flight I routinely get there about 30 mins early. Further, it only takes 16 minutes from downtown to SEA via car. While using LRT is admirable, it skews the picture from the reality of travel today (and even realistically what a frequend business traveller would do in the future). So really, we’re talking closer to 2.75 hours.
As for the HSR portion – I think from a public standpoint we’d get laughed at if our HSR is slower than the lowest highway speeds out there – with or without consideration of stops.
If SEA-PDX is looked at as a HSR corridor instead of just a regional rail route, then money and improvements need to be made to make it on par with those expectations. Until then, I think other regions should get the money that truly deliver HSR (mind you, since I’m from Seattle I’d love to see them get the money, but logically it doesn’t make sense compared to other regions).
Just my two cents.
Ray,
Of the 12 designated HSR corridors only a few will have any projects ready to go in the next 24 months much less the next 3 or 6.
Of those except for the NE Corridor most have issues similar to what we see on the EUG-PDX-SEA-YVR corridor.
I’d hate to see a majority of the 8 Billion go to the NEC. The infrastructure on that route is a money pit. In addition to upgrades allowing faster speeds for Acela there is a huge backlog of various worn out bits dating back to the Penn Central days and earlier.