And one of the notable things about the study is that *most* of the identified upgrade costs were in the gorge region. UP wasn’t asking for that much in Idaho or in Utah.

Annual operating expenses would be orders of magnitude lower.

In addition, doubling the frequency on an appropriate routes tends to more than double the number of passengers, increasing the revenue per train. Particularly if it’s at a different time of day!

The really interesting number is usually the ratio of new revenue to new expenses — or if you’re planning to cut a train, the ratio of lost revenue to avoidable expenses.

Economies of scale and network effects such as these are why competent analyses often show that running one train a day will be a poor deal, but running five a day will be a great deal, even though it “costs more” upfront.

The fatal flaw in the North Coast Hiawatha study was failure to consider appropriate scheduling; if there are two Seattle-Chicago trains, they really, really need to be about 12 hours off from each other, to maximize ridership.

Failure to electrify is a typical penny-wise, pound-foolish choice — looking at capital costs without thinking about operating costs. Electrification costs quite a bit up front, but saves a lot on operations. Assuming you’re running a lot of trains, it pays for itself in a few years. (If you’re not running enough trains, then it takes many years, so it’s not a good idea for thinly used lines.)

BNSF Chairman Matt Rose said that he was seriously looking into electrifying the system, and that it would save them money in the long run, but that right now they were very concerned about the cost of capital. (A private company doesn’t want to go bankrupt developing a system which will be highly profitable later, because it will be highly profitable for *someone else*.) I actually wonder if the backing of Berkshire Hathaway will make them reconsider — Buffett, sitting on oodles of capital, knows that railroads need vast amounts of capital and if the business case is made to him we may see freight mainline electrification.

At pre-70s-oil-shock prices. The 70s oil shock promptly hit after the grossly incompetent Milwaukee management removed the wires.

With PTC installed — which is mandatory — the 79mph rule is *irrelevant* — PTC satisfies the requirements for going over 79 mph, and the PTC needs to be installed on all trains, freight and passenger.

At that point, the *track class rules* are the relevant speed limits. I take this to mean the
shared track will remain class 4, passenger speed limit *80 mph*. Not 79mph. Or perhaps it
will become class 5, freight speed limit 80 mph, and the passenger trains will retain 80 mph
speed limits instead of the possible 90 mph speed limits. Either of those claims would actually *make sense*. Retaining 79mph speed limits after PTC installation is ridiculous, unless WSDOT is actually indicating that they’re planning to violate the federal PTC mandate.

Does WSDOT actually mean what you indicated them saying?

I personally would have ridden many times from the Boise area to Pocatello in my college years and would now welcome an alternative to flying home every year at the holidays – I’d gladly take a train!!! I just took the Cascades this weekend up to Vancouver, and I really hope that line can survive. It was great.

http://www.unitedrail.org/2009/08/28/this-week-at-amtrak-2009-08-28/

It’ll be like those Japanese manga with trains traveling through space. Taking sprawl to the next level!

1 h = 3600 s

light is 3.6 *million* x faster than an HSR train.

Now if we ever get a train that goes 300 *thousand* km/h… oops, that’s over escape velocity and the train is now taking off into outer space….

:-)

For example, the City of Kent and Auburn doesn’t want a train running 90 or 110mph in their backyard. The city can impose a speed limit for “safety reason” until the particulars are figured out. It could be grade separating all crossings to fencing or it could be something silly like adding street lights.

We could upgrade everything to Class 6 and have 110mph track along the entire corridor now but we can’t use the infrastructure if the cities aren’t in cooperation with each other. There are a lot of hurdles to increasing speed limits on the railroads.

Currently with Class 4, the maximum speed is 79mph for passenger, 60mph for freight. The cities has imposed a 50mph restriction on freight trains however. The only 60mph segment is between Longview Jct and Vancouver, WA.

To increase to 90mph, track would need to be upgraded to Class 5. This is part of the “corridor hardening” that you may have seen in the ARRA project list. This will reduce a lot of the slow orders on the line. Once the track upgrades are completed, installation of Positive Train Control within the track infrastructure, locomotives (on all passenger and freight locomotives)and cab control cars must be completed.

BNSF will allow 90mph with mixed traffic but has requested a separated corridor for anything above 90mph.

While I am no expert in the field of transportation, most locations that are currently 79mph would be good for 90mph. Tukwila to Steward for example would be a good 15-25 miles distance. The Bypass after Lakewood Station would be another 10 miles of 90-110mph. Nisqually Jct to Napavine would be another 30-60 miles of 90mph (and could do 110mph if some line relocations were done) and etc…

There are a lot of possibilities to go beyond the 2 hour and 30 minute marker but it depends if the state is willing to pay the extra money for the needed extra maintenance for track.

This is again where if we had a public vote to get these funds then it would be much more feasible to look at the higher cost to get more trains faster instead of gambling on the stimulus funding.

WSDOT nor our Governor isn’t that proactive when it comes to rail transportation since it is seen a “secondary” mode of transportation here. Its been shown that the Cascades can indeed make money but until some one comes out forthright and press the issue, it will be business as usual.

The train is not THAT heavy and do remember, it does go up the Cascades mountains, which varies in grade between 1.8 to 2.6 percent

So again, let me say that there will be no operational difference with the Coast Starlight using the Bypass, at all.

In the EU, where most of their rail network is electrified, transport accounts for less than 4% of total electricity consumption. The growth in electricity consumption by transport is small in absolute terms compared to other sectors (Source: European Environment Agency). We should not be pitting rail against each other when inefficiencies and growth in population and jobs increase energy consumption much more than trains.

I never said that electrification was needed to quadruple Amtrak Cascades ridership. The Long Term Plan assumes locomotives powered by diesel.

Art, I wouldn’t jump to electrification on a new route but it is something we should look at long term as we build ridership. And before we try to create high speed routes that are over 600 miles long through mostly rural areas, lets spend our money on improving shorter, more densely traveled corridors like Amtrak Cascades and California High Speed Rail. That’s where the travel demand and congestion is.