A Future Interstate Rail Network (proposal) PICS (No 56K)

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One of the biggest challenge of rail lines today is what the fuck do you do at the other end?

A comprehensive high speed rail system will be a pipe dream as long as we can't go 10 miles once we reach our destination. Which basically leaves, SF, LA, and the North eastern Corridor.
 
Nerevar said:
It's sad to read this and think about all the people saying it'll never happen, it's too expensive - just look at how much we spend on highways every year. I mean, if this were to cost $500 billion and take 20 years, that would still cost less than 15% of what we spend on highways on a yearly basis. It's nuts - you people have no idea where your money is going, do you?
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Bingo, our automobile craving is subsidized so heavily.

If we gave mass transit a small fraction, it would give far more bang for the buck. Especially in the West Coast and the East Coast.
 
I would love for this to happen, but it's basically a pipe dream at this point. Here's what Houston's interstate train station looks like:

hou15.jpg


Of course, Houston has more pressing issues like its lack of mass transit, light rail problems, and constantly trying to widen freeways. *sigh*
 
electricpirate said:
One of the biggest challenge of rail lines today is what the fuck do you do at the other end?

A comprehensive high speed rail system will be a pipe dream as long as we can't go 10 miles once we reach our destination. Which basically leaves, SF, LA, and the North eastern Corridor.
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We give more money to air travel then rail travel every year.

Train stations are downtown, airports are an hour out.

Final destination obviously isnt the problem.
 
Nerevar said:
It's sad to read this and think about all the people saying it'll never happen, it's too expensive - just look at how much we spend on highways every year. I mean, if this were to cost $500 billion and take 20 years, that would still cost less than 15% of what we spend on highways on a yearly basis. It's nuts - you people have no idea where your money is going, do you?
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Hmm, excellent points. (And no, I haven't studied the intricacies of highway budget distribution :-).
Certainly makes it seem more than possible. Hopefully it happens.

*
For fucks sakes! What hell is going on with the servers?
 
This would be fucking fantastic, it would create a ton of jobs and make life a whole hell of a lot easier for millions of commuters.
 
shintoki said:
And then when dumbass little Timmy gets hit by the train and his parents sue. It will all be for naught. I'm really hoping they put some limitations on lawsuits in before this or else it could be a wreck.
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Cars kill something like 40,000 people in the US every year. A train network like this would save lots and lots of lives.
 
chaostrophy said:
Cars kill something like 40,000 people in the US every year. A train network like this would save lots and lots of lives.
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Yes but let me tell you this little story about a recent accident. Amtrak owns the NEC, the NEC has electric overhead catenary. Recently a couple of teenagers decided to trespass onto Amtrak's property, its tracks, and decided to climb on a couple of freight cars on a siding. They get a little to close to the catenary and become conductive. The survive in a comma or something and Parents sue, and win, against Amtrak despite warning signs and a fence.
 
It'd be nice if they laid their own track this time. Amtrak still uses CSX tracks for half of their commutes on the East Coast. On the way to Chicago I got stuck sitting in the middle of nowhere for a freaking hour while some coal train passed, went in reverse, then passed again.
 
Not too bad but I think there should be an extension of the high-speed rail service from Sacramento to Portland. A high-speed direct route of the LIRR from Ronkonkoma to Penn would be the absolute best thing tho :D
 
br0ken_shad0w said:
I would love for this to happen, but it's basically a pipe dream at this point. Here's what Houston's interstate train station looks like:

hou15.jpg


Of course, Houston has more pressing issues like its lack of mass transit, light rail problems, and constantly trying to widen freeways. *sigh*
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Oh god, that's just depressing. :lol :lol
 
No high speed from Miami to Hotlanta = fail

Seriously, it seems like a cool idea, particularly with the poor state of air travel
 
Javaman said:
Oh god, that's just depressing. :lol :lol
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Google image search "Amshack." Most auto based cities use to have fantastic union stations, which they then demolished for a parking lot.
 
jjasper said:
Love the idea but the lay out for the standard city route in Tennessee is beyond retarded.
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* Various routings from Knoxville to Little Rock, via Nashville and Memphis, scored too low to be included
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From the Article.

Not too bad but I think there should be an extension of the high-speed rail service from Sacramento to Portland.
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Not enough people would use that route to be cost effective as the population along that route is very low.
 
draven said:
No high speed from Miami to Hotlanta = fail

Seriously, it seems like a cool idea, particularly with the poor state of air travel
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It's high speed to Savannah, then standard speed for one stop to Macon, then back on High Speed to hotlanta.
 
Actually I think something like this WILL happen, as it doesn't seem to be predicated on Bullet Trains and the like. There's a growing consensus at all levels of government that interstate passenger rail should see more investment.

Note that this is a separate but related topic to investment in local/commuter rail. Where interstate passenger rail introduces the most efficiency gains is in replacing short flights by air. Considering time through security, it's already faster to take Amtrak from Boston to DC than it is to fly.

Replacing short air routes with train routes dramatically improves the efficiency of both modes, as well as overall mobility for people.
 
gkrykewy said:
Actually I think something like this WILL happen, as it doesn't seem to be predicated on Bullet Trains and the like. There's a growing consensus at all levels of government that interstate passenger rail should see more investment.

Note that this is a separate but related topic to investment in local/commuter rail. Where interstate passenger rail introduces the most efficiency gains is in replacing short flights by air. Considering time through security, it's already faster to take Amtrak from Boston to DC than it is to fly.

Replacing short air routes with train routes dramatically improves the efficiency of both modes, as well as overall mobility for people.
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Really?

Because the current stimulus bill has 60 BILLION + for highways (majority new highways, not fixing) and less than 8 billion for public transit.

And some senators are trying to cut 5 billion from transit to give it to highways
 
sonarrat said:
It was somewhere on the second page. OP says 70-120 which you can easily manage on I-5.
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from where? Only Up the California coast is Standard rail to LA, everywhere else is high speed.

edit: the post you read is talking about what the FRA currently labels "high speed" which, in california, is not what is getting built. We are getting a high speed 220mph trains, which is what the rest of the world uses when it comes to high speed rail. The FRA will change what it terms as "high speed rail" eventually, but that just shows you how much our government at the moment is complete shite when it comes to interstate rail.
 
phfresno said:
from where? Only Up the California coast is Standard rail to LA, everywhere else is high speed.

edit: the post you read is talking about what the FRA currently labels "high speed" which, in california, is not what is getting built. We are getting a high speed 220mph trains, which is what the rest of the world uses when it comes to high speed rail. The FRA will change what it terms as "high speed rail" eventually, but that just shows you how much our government at the moment is complete shite when it comes to interstate rail.
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110mph is the FRA tier II regulation for passenger rail, basically it is as fast as a train in America on a track with any connection to any line that a freight car can get on can go. And that is if the track is fully signaled, fully welded rail. Tier 1, as in the north east corridor allows 150 but those trains are essentially robotic tanks with a engineer their to make sure a rat does not touch any buttons.

California High Speed rail is entirely new ROW with absolutely no connection to any line that has a connection to a line with freight, so they will not be regulated by the FRA.

Most rail in this country that Amtrak operates on is tier III which has a maximum speed of 79 mph.

The FRA really requires that our passenger trains which have the slightest possibility of ever having a freight car accidentally routed on to its line be the Russian war train from golden eye.
 
XMonkey said:
Ya, all that traffic is never an issue or anything.
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well, the I-5 runs down the central valley where the new high speed trains will be hitting 220 mph. So, you're gonna get to LA twice if not 3 times as fast on the high speed trains than driving in a car going through the Central Valley.
 
That's pretty cool, especially after having to go back and forth between New Jersey and Philadelphia by car quite a bit with family this past summer...
 
Skilotonn said:
That's pretty cool, especially after having to go back and forth between New Jersey and Philadelphia by car quite a bit with family this past summer...
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NJ to Philly is commuter rail, no relevance to this what so ever. Aside from the fact the NEC is the only place in America which is almost adequetly served by public transit.
 
Here's one of the key problems: Rail lines have to be put in, and they need land for that.

If you want to put in a a new high-speed rail line, since the current rail lines are unsuitable and prioritized for cargo, that's fine. Let's see you find a continuous strip of land going end-to-end through cities and such. They would have to expropriate countless properties, have to deal with 100s of different city planning departments, and all those similar nightmare scenarios.

Dedicated rail right of ways SHOULD HAVE been put in place when the interstate highway system was being built, but at that point in time the train was as good as dead in people's minds because Americans feverishly believed that the car was the one and only future. (Hell, they even built neighbourhoods without SIDEWALKS, because why wouldn't you just drive around the corner to the store?) Now all the urban and suburban areas are way too developed to make it happen, unless some dictatorial system does it by force.

I'd love to see it happen, but barring some miracle, it ain't gonna.
 
Obama's $8 billion investment in the recovery act, and additional $5 billion over the next 5 years for High Speed Rail looks like the beginnings of a real step in the right direction for this country's high speed rail service. Obama has said that High Speed Rail will be his #1 transportation priority. Hopefully his administration and this congress will begin to lay the ground work for a national interstate rail network.
 
Nerevar said:
It's sad to read this and think about all the people saying it'll never happen, it's too expensive - just look at how much we spend on highways every year. I mean, if this were to cost $500 billion and take 20 years, that would still cost less than 15% of what we spend on highways on a yearly basis. It's nuts - you people have no idea where your money is going, do you?
Click to expand...
Well the 800 billion stimulus money would have been an easier swallow if it was for something like this but on a smaller scale but considering it'll take us 20 years just to pay that off, yeah this will probably never happen unless we turn to slave labor or some shit.

8 Billion is nothing for this type of thing.
 
mAcOdIn said:
8 Billion is nothing for this type of thing.
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It's a start. No one should expect the government to drop half-a-trillion dollars on something that has never truly existed on American soil, but this investment of $8 billion is a step in the right direction. By the time Obama is out of office (presuming that will be in 8 years) we will see one true high speed train being TESTED in California, which won't be operational to the public until 2018. Obama needs to be the president that got the ball rolling on high speed rail and that future administrations and congress will continue support.
 
avatar299 said:
High Speed rail is expensive and wasteful on a state level. Why the hell would it change now?

How much would this cost, who would actually use it, who would maintain it, Are there better alternatives

People are trying to run before they even crawl
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This. As much as I would love to have a real alternative to flying - this is an undertaking that is about 20 years too late.
 
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