Train travel is also impractical because no train is ever going to be competitive with an airplane on a Chicago-Houston, Chicago-Boston, or (heh) Chicago-Seattle route, simply because of the distances involved, even assuming the train runs the top operational speed of the Shanghai Maglev for the entire route.
(Chicago isn't what's important; substitute Minneapolis, St. Louis, or Indianapolis; the point is: trains can't efficiently get you from any coast to or from the midwest, or for that matter from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California).
Don't be too sure of those long-distance travel routes.
Air travel is reliant on cheap and abundant petroleum. And in the U.S., peak aviation fuel has come and gone. Departures and total passenger miles are both above that level, as more efficient aircraft and higher load factors are rolled out, but peak aviation fuel was reached in 2000 -- that's nearly 15 years ago. The 2000 FAA RITA estimate for 2012 fuel use was 52% higher than actual consumption.
Petroleum supplies past 2020 are going to be increasingly volatile (US EIA projects fracked oil extraction to peak by then). The airline industry is scared, and doesn't seem to have a good plan going forward (Boeing's "biggest breakthrough there is" is quite disapointing).
Rail travel can be electrified, which liberates it from dependence on any specific fuel source.
At 120 mph average speed (allowing for station stops), the 2,000 mile trip from Chicago to the West Coast would be 16 hours 40 minutes. A 4pm departure would have you arriving at about 7am the next morning for east-west travel, 11 am for west-east. Higher speeds are possible, though stops and dwell tend to reduce this. I see high-speed long-distance rail as viable.
The question is how long the present energy/fuel economy can sustain itself.
Why are you providing trips that are 1000 miles rather than ones that are less than 500 or 600 miles? Everyone already knows that jets are better for 1000 mile trips.
Because most of the economically important trips in the US are more than 600 miles apart, except for the part of the country that is already well-served by rail?
To which trips are you referring? Do you have any data to support your statement? I created a quick list of cities where high-speed rail should fit the distance metric.
Here, for your reading pleasure, are the ground travel distances between all of those cities:
New York
Los Angeles 2475
Chicago 790
Washington D.C. 226 **
Houston 1416
Dallas 1389
Philadelphia 94 **
San Francisco 2907
Boston 215 **
Atlanta 750
Los Angeles
Chicago 1745
Washington D.C. 2288
Houston 1379
Dallas 1235
Philadelphia 2401
San Francisco 380
Boston 2611
Atlanta 1947
Chicago
Washington D.C. 696
Houston 1083
Dallas 924
Philadelphia 759
San Francisco 2130
Boston 983
Atlanta 716
Washington D.C.
Houston 1400
Dallas 1328
Philadelphia 136 **
San Francisco 2816
Boston 437 **
Atlanta 639
Houston
Dallas 239
Philadelphia 1544
San Francisco 1927
Boston 1848
Atlanta 792
Dallas
Philadelphia 1464
San Francisco 1726
Boston 1791
Atlanta 781
Philadelphia
San Francisco 2876
Boston 307 **
Atlanta 783
San Francisco
Boston 3099
Atlanta 2472
Boston
Atlanta 1099
I have, I hope helpfully, starred the sub-700-mile routes that are already served by the Acela.
The average ground distance between these cities is (wait for it) 1,356 miles.
Later
You edited your comment upthread to include specific routes.
My response --- apart from wondering why taxpayers in Arizona should fund a rail linkage to Orlando, the 30th biggest economy in the country, to Tampa, the 27th --- is to suggest that adding Florida to this graph would not improve the average cost of the edges.
what does the average distance have to do with anything? Build between the cities where the distance makes sense. looks like there are several options. What about other population centers? Why is the gdp your criteria? Tampa and Orlando and Miami wouldn't make your list.
most of the economically important trips in the US are more than 600 miles apart, except for the part of the country that is already well-served by rail
You disputed this and asked for data.
I provided data.
If you would like to change the argument to "most of the important theme parks in the US are poorly connected to second-tier Florida cities by rail", I will happily concede that point. :)
In the graph of the 45 trips between top-10 US cities, only two --- LA to SF, and Houston to Dallas --- fall under your "less than 700 mile" criteria. Just 4% of the most economically important trips not already served by the Acela are amenable to rail transit.
Once again: most of the economically important trips in the US are more than 600 miles apart, except for the part of the country that is already well-served by rail.
Incidentally: if you think "top 10" is unfair as a threshold, consider that the 11th city would be Seattle, and the 12th Miami. The average would go up if we included them.
The average distance is irrelevant. Do the distance and population warrant the high-speed train service? Are there lots of flights between any two of these cities?
The population of Spain is 50 million, for example. They've made high-speed rail work effectively.
That's why my data is based on the top US cities by GDP. You can also find the busiest domestic airport pairs to back the analysis up. Oddly, the busiest air route in the US is NYC-Miami --- which is not amenable to rail travel.
I'm simply trying to identify the markets where HSR would work. For some reason, you identify as the critical factor. Then you identify NYC to Miami as the busiest air route, and Miami isn't on your gdp list. So, perhaps we only need one city from the list to another highly populated city?
At any rate, we've both identified a handful of US cities that meet both our criteria. Shouldn't we agree that's where to start building?
So, look: you've lost the context of the thread a little. Skim from the top:
* Someone commented that freight right of ways were impeding passenger rail in the US.
* I said geography had more to do with rail's status in the US than freight.
* You asked, "why are you talking about trips of 1000 miles or more"?
* I said "because those are the most economically important trips in the US".
* You said "no".
* I said, voluminously and conclusively, "yes".
Now you seem to think I'm opposed to SF-LA high speed rail. I am not, nor have I said that I am.
Where rail makes sense, it makes sense. If there's a cost effective way to get passenger rail rights of way from SF to LA, we should do that. We should get 200mph service from Chicago to MSP and to STL. We should get 200mph service from Houston to Dallas.
But even after we do that, rail is going to be a second-tier mode in the US, far surpassed by air, which will through economies of scale also be cost-competitive with HSR even in places where HSR is viable. The tactical routes we're talking about, the under-700-mile routes, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to deploy, and will probably never recoup their costs or meaningfully change patterns of transportation in the US. HSR between SF and LA isn't going to make SF-NYC any less economically important, and SWA alone is going to remain more important to the economy than Amtrak.
Shit, I think I talked myself out of Chicago-MSP a little there.
It's also irrelevant. NYC-Miami is a popular air route. Tampa-Miami is not. The inclusion of Miami in the list I gave upthread would, as I said, make the numbers worse for his argument.
Train travel is also impractical because no train is ever going to be competitive with an airplane on a Chicago-Houston, Chicago-Boston, or (heh) Chicago-Seattle route, simply because of the distances involved, even assuming the train runs the top operational speed of the Shanghai Maglev for the entire route.
Under your hypothetical, I'd certainly take the train on some of those routes. The Shanghai Maglev's top operational speed is 268 mph. Chicago–Houston is a little over 1000 miles, so that'd make the trip 4 hours, pretty competitive with a plane (the flight is a little under 3 hours, or about 5 if you want city center to city center).
Of course that hypothetical is exceedingly unlikely. But TGV-style speeds would be fine on the route, too; I'd take it if it were a 6- or 7-hour trip, if the cost were reasonable. I think the reasonable-cost part is a bigger barrier than any technical feasibility, since the economics are unlikely to work out.
Most Rail stations are in downtown areas. Most large airports are outside of cities. If you're going downtown to downtown you get the driving, parking, security and waiting time back.
Air travel may still be better in a pure $ and time basis, but for people like myself looking for a more comfortable travel experience than air, I would still take rail for a few $ more and a little extra time.
Hey, I'd rather spend the time I spend in airports and airplanes in the Acela. I'll probably never fly between two Acela-connected cities. I have a strong preference for trains.
That doesn't mean a massive investment in rail is a good plan for the US, or, for that matter, that Brookings is right that we're in the middle of a rail renaissance.
I think the authors of the study are in agreement with you. They've specifically structured their analysis to point out that despite the growing passenger traffic, it is only a small handful of short routes that don't lose money.
I think the best use of taxpayer money would be improving the airport experience.
The high speed rail initiatives suggested cost many billions of dollars per city served. Suppose that, instead, we spent those billions to remake our airports.
For instance, imagine moving the "terminal" to the city center, with a high speed rail line (inside security) that takes you directly to the runway. There must be some way to use a billion dollars for significantly faster baggage service, and another billion for faster security.
Hopefully this would cut a lot of time from the average flight. Airports would get much smaller because people wouldn't be waiting around in them.
It wouldn't crush it in travel time, but yes likely so in cost. Travel time is realistically 5 hours right now by plane, if everything goes well, often 6+ when it doesn't (which is about half the time, because IAH-ORD on-time performance sucks). I'd definitely take a high-speed train if it existed and somehow managed to not be a bazillion dollars, which admittedly means I never will.
Yeah, even with dedicated lines, there's no way Amtrak could ever compete on a time basis with air travel over long distances. Just a matter of distance and speed.
Where the freight is a problem is on the predictability of Amtrak schedules. Delays for freight can throw off long distance Amtrak by many hours, which can make it hard to plan for your arrival.
Freight makes better use of rail infrastructure than passenger transit does. Freight should monopolize the rails; that's the allocation that does the most good for the most people.
The distance from Chicago to Houston is roughly 1100 miles. Non-stop flights from O'Hare to Houston Hobby are listed on Kayak.com at 2 hours and 45 minutes. Add approx. 1 hour for pre-flight check-in, security and an average delay factor (it's O'Hare after all). That's a 3 hour and 45 minute trip time. We could add post-flight transportation from the airport to where you actually want to be and probably add another hour, but let's ignore that detail.
In 2007, the French TGV set a speed record on conventional track of 357 mph. The unconventional track (maglev) record belongs to the Japanese SCMaglev and is 368 mph [0]. These were set under very experimental conditions, but if it were possible to realize equivalent speeds in a practical setting (perhaps via underground tunnels), the train trip from Chicago to Houston would require only 3 hours(!).
But let's assume the above is impossible in real operating conditions. French TGV passenger routes regularly attain speeds of 200mph. This makes our Houston trip a little under 5 1/2 hours. That strikes me as quite efficient.
I'm not an expert, but given the deplorable state of American infrastructure, especially rail, implementation of a system like this would most likely require starting from scratch. As such, equivalence of the French TGV seems very attainable.
More likely, new innovation would lead to performance improvements over their system, which was conceived in the 1970s. Is 300mph attainable? I don't know, but it seems like a reasonable goal. That brings our Houston trip to roughly the equivalent of a flight, when including pre-flight check-in procedures. Of course, trains are safer, less energy and infrastructure intensive and a lot more pleasant.
All of this without mentioning the fact that SCNF, the operator of the French TGV, achieved a $1.75 billion operating profit in 2007.
Amtrak issued a report saying that SNCF and other European rail companies only report "profits" because they have higher public subsidies which are unaccounted for.
Did you read the report, or is that innuendo? The report makes actual arguments about the structure of the public financing that European trains get. Refute one of them.
The top operating speed of the TGV is in the neighborhood of 230MPH, isn't it?
If you can cost-effectively deploy rail that averages 300MPH, rail becomes more attractive. But the average speed of the Shanghai Maglev is 155MPH. It's nothing close to 300MPH.
It is extraordinarily unlikely that any train using current technology is going to average 200MPH between Chicago and Houston. Even with TGV-comparable trains, the trip from Chicago to Houston will take 8+ (heh) hours --- and that presumes an expenditure of public resources unparalleled in the last 50 years... all to get to a place where it would still be still be irrational not to take one of the many tens of airliner trips between those two cities every day.
Unattributed, but per Wikipedia: "In mid-2011, scheduled TGV trains operated at the highest speeds in conventional train service in the world,[citation needed] regularly reaching 320 km/h (200 mph) on the LGV Est, LGV Rhin-Rhône and the LGV Méditerranée." [0] You're right, though, that this is different than average speed.
Still, 300 mph would be a stretch goal for sure, but it doesn't seem ridiculous if you're starting from scratch today. The Shanghai system was built over a decade ago. At minimum, automated computer controls should be significantly improved.
I'm also operating with the assumption that the budget for such a project would be unlimited, since it's just a thought exercise.
Again: average speed. Peak doesn't matter. Your stretch goal doubles the average speed of one of the fastest trains in the world, running on a route built from scratch to accommodate it.
I'm thinking boldly here. The French are able to peak at 200-230mph on operating trains running on conventional track. The Japanese and Chinese can push Maglevs up to 360+ mph. As a "disruptive" technology, 300 mph seems like it's attainable or at least worth considering.
It may require new approaches. It would be a monumental engineering effort. It would probably ensure full employment for a decade or more. But I don't think it's any more ridiculous than, say, sending a manned mission to Mars.
It's pretty silly to compare the average speed of the Shanghai Maglev. It's like a 7 minute trip with 1 minute at top speed. There's several, traditional HSR, routes in china with faster average speeds.
The Paris-Lyon TGV averages 140MPH. Wuhan-Guangzhou managed to average 195, but was reduced to 186. Beijing-Tianjin 146. Japan has 130-145MPH. So:
* None of these average speeds would make Chicago-Houston competitive with air. Even if you add the hour on both ends for the air trip, the fastest train in China operating above the Chinese speed limit still loses to Southwest Airlines.
* None of these average speeds make a 300MPH average speed train any more realistic.
Once again: I was comparing the peak speed of one rail line to that of another. Read in context. This snark doesn't even make sense on this part of the thread.
>Train travel is also impractical because no train is ever going to be competitive with an airplane on a Chicago-Houston, Chicago-Boston, or (heh) Chicago-Seattle route
When the weather is good.
In the post-winter-break rush the last few years, air traffic on the East Coast went down for a few days and was backed up for several more. The only New Yorkers who made it back to school in time were the ones who got seats on the Lake Shore Limited.
When air traffic is functioning smoothly, it's faster, but in a serious winter storm/holiday travel fiasco, ~24 hours on a train beats ~1 week of delays for a flight.
Come on. Like nobody has a horror story about an Amtrak train stopping in the middle of a route, having to disembark from the train, and wait half a day for the bus that comes to finish the trip?
(Chicago isn't what's important; substitute Minneapolis, St. Louis, or Indianapolis; the point is: trains can't efficiently get you from any coast to or from the midwest, or for that matter from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California).
The problem is geography, not freight traffic.