Amtrak: True high-speed rail unrealistic, Amtrak boss says

Introducing ultra-fast passenger trains to the Midwest is less important than the need for more frequent service between cities, reliable schedules that beat the time spent driving and rail connections that permit travel across the United States , Amtrak's chief official said Monday in Chicago.

[Mike]

"It's really not about the speed. It's about reduced travel times and more frequency,"
Huh?

"The key to going fast is to not go slow," added Tom Carper, chairman of the Amtrak board and a former mayor of the Downstate city of Macomb."
LOL!
Clearly the current administrators of Amtrak will not be helpful in bringing a 21st century rail system to the US

[Brad Culligan]

Last time I checked there is no national speed limit

[hhswami]

Speed = reduced travel time! The speed limit depends on the condition of the rails, how many, and where they are!

[Mike Skehan]

YES to HSR
Improvements to freight tracks, grade crossings, signals and control, dramatically improves efficient movement of goods and people.
Rail is 2 to 3 times more fuel efficient than planes, trucks, and cars, while polluting our atmosphere half as much (EPA). This is a huge deal, when oil starts its upward climb again as supplies dwindle. Rail can be electrified in decades to come to use emerging energy sources, further reducing our need for foreign suppliers.
WA and OR began deploying tilt trains, capable of 125 mph, between Eugene and Canada in 1999. To date, even being limited to just 79 for lack of improvements to freight tracks, our trains carry more people between Seattle and Portland than airliners. Travel times and ticket prices are competitive with planes and cars. We look forward to improvements that allow our fast trains to finally go fast.
Mike Skehan, Member, All Aboard Washington

[Welcome to 1938]

Per usual, we lag the world. Spain, France, Germany, Japan, China and more have the national will to do passenger rail right. The Midwest is mostly flat. We've spent trillions on highways, subsidized air travel via ATC, but we can't seem to get our priorities in gear. I expected more out of Boardman, but I guess he's part of the problem.

In 1938, the Milwaukee Road had signs saying slow to 90. Have we made progress or what?

[Railfan]

As an employee of a competing mode of transportation and as a railfan, I could not agree more with the information presented in the article. The amount of funding being appropriated ($8 billion) is nowhere near enough to do the job, even on one High Speed line. California's proposed HSR line from S. Cal to the Bay Area is estimated to cost over $40B.

For $8B there will also be many competing priorities. They may start one HS line in the norteast but it will be an incremental process over years or decades. Amtrak has to decide how to best serve the most customers with the available funds.

So would it be fair to spend the majority of the funding on a line in the northeast (where they already have some pretty good service)? Or would it be better spent increasing average speeds (to a lesser extent) on several lines covering more territory? Or some combination of each?

Of course, anohter solution is to secure more funding for infrastructure improvements. We have a good start in the works but the need is much greater. If we truely want passenger rail to be once again at least as important and viable as highways or air travel, then we must fund it accordingly and comparably with those other modes.

Yes, funding for those other modes may have to take a hit in order for rail to catch up. But if we want this to happen, we have to make fundamental changes necessary to make it happen (i.e., provide funding for rail similar to funding for highways such as 60% federal / 20% state / 10 % local / 10% railroad funds - or some other percetages).

In my opinion, these are some tough issues to be resolved and, unfortunately, there is a lot of politics involved. But consider this: alternative fueled cars and locomotives are either on the road or being designed...but there is no such development taking place as far as I know for aviation...once we pump the last of the oil, how will anyone fly anywhere?

[KAG]

Given his statements, maybe Amtrak is part of the problem. Here's the choice we face:

Spend less and get slightly faster train travel that is still a joke
-OR-
Spend the money for truly high-speed rail where the high-speed trains are on separate tracks (no slow freight trains) up on embankments (no crossings), travel at 180-230 mph like in Japan and France, and go from Chicago to St. Louis is under 2 hours, Chicago to Detroit in 90 minutes, etc.

I'd prefer the second option, but what do you all think?

[Nathanael]

What Amtrak is saying is, before we try to go at 200 mph, let's stop crawling at 5 mph.

This is entirely reasonable. If the train could maintain 110 mph over its entire distance, speeding up as soon as it left Union Station, it would be a lot better than going 200 mph in the countryside -- but 5 mph for long distances through downtown Chicago.

And by "a lot better" I mean shorter trip times. When most people think "high speed" they think in terms of maximum speed, but when it comes down to actually buying train tickets, they look at the trip time, which is based on *average* speed.

The way you get average speed up is *first* to eliminate really slow sections. Only then is it worth building really fast sections.

[J D Moore]

Boardman's got the right idea. Just get the trains going 100, 100 mph, do a few skip-stop trains, make sure they are reliable. An incremental improvement to track and the signaling system would go a long way and for a reasonable amount of money.

[DOT]

There is no national speed limit. Each state is allowed to set their own limits and even in 1995 when the national speed limit law was repealed, interstate limits were 65 mph with all other roads max. 55 mph.

[JMO]

oooooohhhh! 40mph trains serving a 50 mile radius around Chicago operating on a regular and reliable schedule...isn't that Metra?

How far we have fallen on this initiative, from high speed rail dreams of 200mph trains to 40mph Metra trains.

And none of it new, and decidedly unexciting. So the plan now, revealed in all of its disingenous drudgery is to get passenger rail back to where it was 50 years ago. I'm excited, can't you tell?

[Railfan]

I agree with the suggestions by Nathanael and J D Moore. Plus more frequent trains and better interconnections between trains would be more steps in the right direction. Right now, someone from Kansas City has to travel via Chicago to arrive at Omaha, Denver, or St. Paul. Travel times would also decrease with more direct routes.

[jim hatzis]

as an employee of amtrak for some time, i generally agree with the article. there are a great many things we need to address before hsr. the right of ways are being attended to,and hopefully we will continue to see progress.

[John in Barrington]

Boardman is right on. What is needed, and do-able, are intercity (300 miles maximum) passenger trains running 80 to 100 mph, and running on time with no padded schedules.
The very big problem is that nearly all U.S. passenger trains run as guests on trackage that's owned by the freight railroads, which have neither the money nor the inclination to upgrade their tracks and signaling for anything more than their own 45 to 55 mph freight trains.
Passenger trains and freight trains are incompatible on the same section of track. Unless passenger trains can run on trackage that's signaled and banked for passenger trains, the freight railroad dispatchers will continue to sidetrack them in favor of their own employers' traffic.
It no longer makes sense for railroad operators (i.e., companies that move goods or people by rail) to own and maintain their own mainlines to the exclusion of all other users. Rail mainlines ought to be publicly owned and maintained, as are roads and highways, inland navigable waterways, and the airlanes, for the benefit of the shipping and traveling public.