Why Plans for High Speed Rail Services Fail

[MineralMan]

There has long been a plan for a so-called "high-speed train" line running between Minneapolis, MN and Chicago. It has been talked about for years. The 410-mile journey by car takes about 7 hours or maybe a little less if you push speed limits and leave at the right time. The current single train that makes that route takes about 8 hours, but is often delayed, since it shares the same rails as freight transportation, which typically has priority.

There are numerous flights each day between the two cities, which take roughly 1.5 hours. Add another 1.5 hours for airport time, plus transportation to the airport and from the airport to your actual destination in either city. Fares start at a little more than $100, depending on the day and time.

Anyhow, the "high-speed train" that had been planned would have run at only 110 MPH, compared with the average speed currently of about 70 MPH. It would save a little time, assuming that the speed could be maintained, which is in no way certain. The estimated transit time for that train would be about 4.5 hours, according to the story at the link below.

That plan is dead, though, blocked by a couple of MN Republicans in the legislature. It's not happening. Even if it did, the first train would not have run until 2028, at the earliest. Wisconsin, the state where most of the track would be, was not interested in the first place, really, since it saw no real benefit from such a train.

Besides, 110 MPH is not really what most people are thinking about when they talk about HSR. People envision speeds over 200 MPH. That, however, would require a completely new rail system between the cities, designed for bullet trains and not shared by freight rail service. No estimate of how long it would take to create a bullet train line has been suggested, and there is no actual proposal for such a thing. Nobody knows what the costs would be, nor when such a train might take its first run, but if the 110 mph train couldn't have been ready before 2028, it's an obvious guess that a brand-new bullet-train system would take far longer.

That is just one route envisioned by advocates of true high-speed bullet trains between major cities. There are many others that some have in mind, of course.

There are good results to imagine for such fast train service. But, implementing those dreams will require vastly expensive, time-consuming projects that would not begin running for a decade or more, at best. Finding the will and the money needed to invest in such projects is not going to be easy. In fact, it may be impossible, given the current state of politics and the economy.

Anyhow, here's an article on the death of the so-called high speed train between Minneapolis and Chicago. It's worth reading:

https://www.twincities.com/2018/01/11/how-2-gop-lawmakers-derailed-high-speed-train-plans-to-chicago-for-now-at-least/

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Starting in the late 1930s, the Milwaukee Road was running passenger trains at speeds up to

100 mph.

First with 4-6-4s and 4-4-2s; then with diesels.

Not to be outdone, the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad was known as the "Route of the 400s."

The Burlington was no slouch either.

[MineralMan]

2. OK. I'm not sure what that has to do with this, though.

True HSR will require speeds at least double that. That's a big deal. We know how to do it, but not using existing rail infrastructure. HSR will require complete replacement or a second, new rail line.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. Sorry. Wasn't trying to hijack the thread. Just noting that

100 mph was a day-in and day-out event prior to the wreck of the Exposition Flyer in 1946.

[MineralMan]

5. Yes, but doubling that speed is an enormous challenge.

I can drive my little KIA Soul at 100 MPH on the freeway, too. I wouldn't, of course. Cars that can do 200 MPH are way out of my budget range, though. It's like that, really.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. Agreed.

I have the FRA Track Inspector's Compliance Manual on my hard drive. The standards for track alignment get increasingly exacting as the speed limits go up.

[MineralMan]

8. Yes. Bullet-train infrastructure is far more difficult to create

and maintain than standard rail infrastructure. It's an entirely different system. The current railbeds wouldn't support it. It will require a completely new system, new grade crossings, new controls, new everything.

There are examples of it in many countries now. It's not like it would have to be engineered from scratch, but it's also not compatible with current rights-of-way as a parallel route. For one thing, there's no room in much of those rights-of-way, and the freight still has to move.

Here's a very good white paper on the subject, which compares bullet train lines in several countries:

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-high-speed-rail-development-worldwide


Here's a study for a bullet train concept for the Seattle area. It's important to note that infrastructure costs for that one are estimated at "about $80-140 million per mile." There is some argument that that cost estimate is too high. I do not know:

https://seattletransitblog.com/2018/01/17/much-high-speed-rail-actually-cost/

When one actually looks closely at what is being discussed, it's very sobering, really.

[flotsam]

9. Yes-so difficult

only 20 other developed nations can do it...

[MineralMan]

10. Yes. Everyone knows that some countries have

bullet trains. We don't, though. Why that is has a lot to do with cost, rights-of-way and other issues. That's what I'm discussing.

[flotsam]

11. So nowhere else

had to deal with cost, rights-of-way and other issues? Isn't this your second bite at the apple?

[MineralMan]

12. Yes, of course they did.

Last edited Fri Feb 15, 2019, 01:48 PM - Edit history (1)

In China, for example, funding for projects is by fiat. We don't do that here. As for your second question, I post as I choose to post.

[BeyondGeography]

3. I can see us in 2050, when India's economy is bigger than ours

and we're number three with Indonesia right behind us, still talking about how high-speed rail isn't right for us.

[MineralMan]

6. Well, then, I suppose you could support HSR projects.

I don't think that not having them will be what holds us back, though.

[DanTex]

13. This is why one specific high-speed rail line failed.

The reason is politics. Specifically, Republicans (although Democrats get some blame too). Same answer to why a lot of things don't work in this country, even though they work in most other countries. Universal healthcare, for example. It's why New York's subway seems third-world compared to places like Hong Kong and Tokyo.

High-speed rail needs to be a major federally funded initiative, and Republicans and even some conservative Democrats won't go for it. So we don't get it.

But does it make sense in the US? Yes! Tons of sense. The argument that the US is too sparsely populated is really only true in the area between the Mississippi and the West Coast. We probably don't need a high-speed line across Montana (at least not for now). But there are many parts of the country that are screaming for it. The Northeast. California. Texas. Florida. The Great Lakes region. It makes perfect sense for all of them.

It's better for the environment, it's the most convenient way to travel distances of up to 500 miles or so, and it brings economic benefits all around.

And even for some longer trips. New York and Chicago are about the same distance as Beijing and Shanghai, where there is a train service that takes 4 and a half hours (and was built ten years ago). How great would that be? And how much benefit would it be economically for a smaller city like, say, Cleveland, to be able to bullet to either New York or Chicago conveniently, from city center to city center, in a few hours.

[MineralMan]

14. Are there any projects that are actually underway?

Beyond the speculative phase?

[DanTex]

15. I don't know the status.

Something is going on in California, I think Amtrak is the process of upgrading Acela in the Northeast.
But nothing on the scale that is needed is underway.

[MineralMan]

16. The Governor of CA just nixed that, except for a stretch

in the Central Valley, between Merced and Bakersfield. That's because some of that has already been begun in the construction phase. However, passenger use between those two cities will probably not be heavy. There's just not much reason for people in either city to need to go to the other one.

Newsom's reasoning for the cancellation was financial.

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2019/02/12/newsom-scales-back-high-speed-rail-plans

Since Acela shares the rails with freight, it is unable to maintain its top speed of 150 mph, except in some stretches of its route. I don't know of any plan to make it a separate system with its own infrastructure. That's the rub in many of these situations.

[DanTex]

17. Yeah, I read about that.

And I'm aware that Acela is hardly "high-speed", I've ridden it. Amtrak says that the new Avelia trains will run faster, though I don't know how much faster. You are right, what they actually need to do is build new rails that can handle actual high-speed trains.

And that probably won't happen, unless there's a huge progressive shift sometime in the next decade.

[MineralMan]

18. I just looked up ticket prices on the Acela line

from NYC to DC - Over $250. That seems high to me. I can't see that being attractive for anyone but business people who are being reimbursed. Not for a trip to the Smithsonian for a family, I think.

[DanTex]

19. Yup, it's expensive, and not that much faster than regular Amtrak.

Mostly for business travel. The price depends on the time, but basically you can pay $200+ for Acela, which is slightly nicer, and saves you a half hour, or you can pay $100 for regular Amtrak. Which means that Acela is the way to go if someone else is paying for it.

But, yeah, basically, as far as high-speed trains go, compared to the rest of the world, Acela totally sucks.

The thing is, the crappiness of US rail is just one part of the general crappiness of US infrastructure, and the inability of our political system to get any of it built.

For example, New York City finished the first part of the second avenue subway a few years ago. It was three stations, and two miles of subway. It took 10 years to build (actually 50 years if you count all the on-and-off attempts since the 1970s). For some reason, it cost NYC six times more per mile than a similar project in Paris. WTF? Then there's Penn Station, which used to be a beautiful, ornate gateway to NYC with vaulted ceilings, like Grand Central still is, until they decided to tear it down and replace it with the network of rat-maze-experiment tunnels that is Penn Station today.

And that's just me complaining about New York. But it's the same story across the country. California failing to connect LA and SF with high-speed rail is similar. Because that's obviously a perfect place for a high-speed rail line, but we just can't get it done.

You can google "why is infrastructure so expensive in the US" and you'll get all kinds of articles of people blaming this and that, but for whatever reason, the US sucks at building transportation infrastructure. We didn't used to -- when they built the NYC subway a century ago, it was amazing. But we do now.