Gas Costs Spark High-Speed Rail Interest
Seven hours after boarding a train in Kansas City, Douglas Lewandowski finally arrived at Chicago’s Union Station - rested after the 500-mile trip but anxious to get home to Elkhart, Ind.
“How long it takes on these trains is so frustrating,” said Lewandowski, 55. “I’d be more likely to take more trains if they were faster, but I’m afraid I’ll be six feet under before that ever happens.”
While sleek new passenger trains streak through Europe, Japan and other corners of the world at speeds nearing 200 mph, most U.S. passenger trains chug along at little more than highway speeds - slowed by a half-century of federal preference for spending on roads and airports.
But advocates say millions of Americans may be ready to embrace high-speed rail for everything from business travel to vacations because of soaring gas prices, airport delays and congested freeways that slow travel and contribute to air pollution.
“We have to change these things really fast. The era of cheap oil is over,” said Rick Harnish, executive director of the nonprofit Midwest High Speed Rail Association. “People want choices in how they travel, and it’s time for the states and feds to start providing those.”
Still, getting trains moving fast enough, and in enough places, to entice travelers is a funding and logistical challenge.
Track and safety improvements for already-proposed projects could cost billions of dollars - and require reprioritizing of federal transportation funds.
Congress is considering a six-year Amtrak funding bill co-sponsored by 40 senators that would provide the first matching federal grants for rail projects. The measure proposes $100 million in first-year grants, paltry considering that California alone needs $40 billion for a mammoth bullet train project that would link San Francisco and Sacramento with Los Angeles and San Diego.
Some argue federal money would be better spent to research electric-powered cars and other cutting-edge travel alternatives, rather than the ribbons of steel that triggered America’s westward expansion in the 1800s.
“Solutions to our current problems have to be found, not imposed from previous centuries. High-speed rail is just a polished version of 19th century technology,” said William Garrison, co-author of “Tomorrow’s Transportation” and a retired civil engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
But supporters contend high-speed trains could be an important alternative, rivaling even air travel once home-to-airport travel times and delays cause by airport security measures are taken into account.
A new European rail line that hits speeds up to 199 mph has cut the 292-mile ride between Paris and Frankfurt from 6 hours and 15 minutes to 3 1/2 hours. At those speeds, the 260-mile ride between Chicago and St. Louis would drop from 5 1/2 hours to just over 3 hours.
“They’d have to go awful fast. When I go somewhere I like to get there in a hurry, not take all day,” John Wilson, 79, said while waiting for his son’s plane at an airport in Bloomington, Ill.
Few envision U.S. high-speed rail would stretch coast to coast or match the dizzying speeds of other countries in the next few decades, even if Congress approves the matching funds for intercity rail projects.
Instead, supporters see most trains running at about 110 mph between major cities 200 to 300 miles apart, similar to Amtrak’s Acela line that trimmed about a half-hour from the usual 4-hour trip from Boston to New York and about 15 minutes from the three-hour ride from New York to Washington.
The six-year-old Acela Express is the only U.S. rail line that tops the 125 mph considered “high speed” by international standards. And even supporters concede it barely qualifies, hitting its maximum 150 mph for less than 20 miles from Boston to Washington, D.C., and averaging just 86 mph over the full 456-mile run.
Even so, Acela’s ridership rose 20 percent in May as gasoline prices topped $3 a gallon nationwide, said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Cole. Nationally, Amtrak is poised for its fifth straight year of ridership gains this year, said Marc Magliari, a spokesman for the railroad.
Ridership was up nearly 18 percent through May on a Pennsylvania line that bumped speeds from 90 mph to 110 mph last October, cutting 15 to 30 minutes off the two-hour ride from Philadelphia to Harrisburg.
States across the country have gambled on increased interest in rail travel, investing millions of their own dollars in studies and construction for high-speed projects that helped launch about a half-dozen routes that now run above 90 mph.
Illinois has sunk about $80 million into track and crossing improvements over a decade, but has finished less than half of a planned high-speed route from Chicago to St. Louis that would shave 90 minutes off the current 5 1/2-hour train ride.
Completing the estimated $400 million project will take years, but is projected to boost ridership from 300,000 last year to 1.2 million, said George Weber, chief of the Illinois Department of Transportation’s passenger rail division.
Weber said trains could begin running at 110 mph by 2009 on 120 miles of the 280-mile route after the state recently settled on safety technology that will ensure faster trains can coexist with cars and slow-moving freight traffic that shares the line.
“To think this state (Illinois) has known for 10 years how to get Chicago-to-St. Louis to three hours and 45 minutes, and we kind of languish at five and a half to six hours,” Harnish said. “Imagine what difference that would make to the St. Louis economy if you could get to Chicago by train (that much quicker).”
California has proposed the nation’s most ambitious plan: a 700-mile electric-powered train that would run at up to 220 mph from San Francisco to San Diego, cutting the roughly 9-hour drive to about 3 1/2 hours.
The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association said recent forecasts show the system carrying up to 117 million passengers a year by 2030.
The massive project, which would lay all new track, could complete its first phase from San Francisco to Los Angeles within 15 years if voters approve a $10 billion bond issue scheduled for next year. But the vote has been pushed back twice and could be postponed again because of worries that it could hinder the state’s bonding authority for roads, schools and other projects.
“How can we say we can’t afford this in California, the biggest state in the country, when these systems are being built all over the world? … It’s a matter of priority,” said Dan Leavitt, deputy director of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
John Spychalski, a transportation expert and professor at Penn State University, says high-speed rail will continue to languish unless lawmakers provide the same financial backing as highways and air travel. He said some could be swayed if high-profile projects such as California’s succeed.
“I don’t think there’s any question that it would help build momentum for making this kind of service a reality where it makes sense to have it,” Spychalski said. “There just needs to be a political will, and right now not enough elected officials see it as a viable alternative.”
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Associated Press writers Michael Tarm in Chicago and Jim Suhr in St. Louis contributed to this report.
© 2007 The Associated Press
“Solutions to our current problems have to be found, not imposed from previous centuries. High-speed rail is just a polished version of 19th century technology”
What a preposterous statement. And the, dirty, smelly, inefficient rubber-tired technologies of Otto, Dahmler and Benz aren’t from the 19th century as well?
Only in the US do such attitudes exist. I wonder if the efforts of a particular group of big industries based in Michigan and Texas had something to do with it.
I would love to see high-speed electromagnetic trains built inside the medians of all interstate highways, holding passengers and freight. You should even be able to drive your electric car into an EM-railcar cargo space.
What do you think is the logical alternative to interstate trucking, air traffic, and our national automotive fleet and the pollution and congestion they all cause?
I hear on this site all the time that I should live and shop locally, that I should use commuter transportation rather than a car, and that we need to get onto electricity and off hydrocarbons. Do you think that solar panels on every square foot of rooftop and factory space could power EM-Trains and all of our electric cars? Maybe homeowners would even make money off the deal.
(Personaly, I absolutely love train travel, and took many to and from Chicago, until they took away my route. I hope and pray for its return!)
I welcome any information or links to help usher in better trains.
As with most things on a progressive agenda, the goal is clear and the tools are available- but, it’s our/goverment priorites that are prohibitive… and those change with awareness, so thank you for the article.
awareness and the long process of democracy and protest
Nader and Jerry Brown have been saying this for years and got media ridicule for their efforts.
GM killed the electric car and public transportation in many places.
Unfortunately, there’s a texture to this whole pattern — history has already shown us how it lays out, whether the early railroad barons, shipping, or the street car systems.
Private industry clamors for socialized R&D, and the taxpayer foots the bill for (possibly) useful mass-transit, but extraordinarily expensive — never the most cost-effective method. It runs for a few decades, then it’s privatized when it becomes reasonably profitable.
I’m unsure the US is politically capable of pulling off large-scale and geniunely useful mass transit solutions without severe corruption.
Billions of dollars? No, no, that is way too expensive. We must spend that money in Iraq fighting “them” over there so we don’t have to fight “them” over here. And whatever is left over should be given to the productive classes (the top 1% of incomes) as tax cuts.
The lobbyists working for Boeing and other aerospace vendors will assure that the US Congress never adopts, approves or sanctions design standards for world-class high speed rail in the US. Without such standards no financial institution will finance high speed rail in the US. Without financing it won’t happen in the US.
Footnote: Acela is high speed rail by US standards, not by European or Asian standards.
Personally, I’d much rather see the money put into development of slow movng airships, (90 to 100mph jobs) Build giant, luxerious, rigid frame blimps that transport up to 500 passengers at a time in first class hotel style comfort. The outer skin? ___ Solar panels and electric powered, full ducted props. Phase out most jet powered airliners and take it easy on a trip with no sitting in a terminal for three days waiting for your flight to be announced. It would be fun to fly again. We could also carry freight by that method, train the truck drivers to fly an airship._________
Dreamin.
If California gets the go-ahead for their proposed 200+mph electrified high-speed rail line, high-speed rail in the USA will be set back 30 years.
I’m a rail fan myself, but warn that US rail systems and corridors are not adaptable to those speeds. The environmental impact of ’straightening’ and ‘leveling’ rail lines is immense. So, I’ve submitted the viewpoint that 150mph non-electrified rail is optimal in most US rail corridors.
Electrification is about 1/4 the cost. The mostly rural routes will see little environmental benefit of electrification. Grade separation costs are less with the 150mph goal. Average speed of 200+mph systems is actually closer to 150mph. Building non-electified systems does not rule out future electrification and higher speeds when demand builds.
A 150mph system can be expected to serve a few more cities along a route where resident’s are likely to want rail service. The faster the travel, the fewer people high-speed rail can serve. A 200+mph high-speed rail system will indeed become expensive, exclusive service for the wealthy.
There’s lots of reasons to limit US high-speed rail systems to 150mph. California’s environmentally-conscious types have bought into the super high-speed rail hype and can’t see that it’s a trap. “Oh, so sorry,” Big Business with crockadile tears will cry, “We really tried to build high-speed rail. Why not buy a new car, instead?”
Yeah Kem. That’s also been a dream of mine. Cruiseships of the air.
Better than high speed rail is the magneplane, http://www.magneplane.com/
High speed rail is not the answer, it is simply not flexible enough for the transportation demands of our country and our world.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ideas worth taking from high speed rail and maglev rail.
Maglev provides a frictionless surface and is capable of speeds over 300mph.
What we need is to develop a maglev highway system that is capable of moving resources, cargo, and people all on the same highway system.
It needs to enable vehicles to change lanes so vehicles can move from onramps to low speed lanes to high speed lanes without any mechanical switches.
Every vehicle needs to be computer controlled by a central system to prevent accidents and traffic jams and ensure the smooth high speed flow of traffic.
These new vehicles should have the ability to recharge their batteries while moving along the maglev highway system drawing energy from the highway in transit.
And every vehicle should be able to drive on normal roads as well so people don’t have to keep changing vehicles to get to their destination.
Finally, the highway system should be built eliminating turns that would require vehicles to slow down. The use of eminent domain would allow the government to seize and compensate property owners in the paths of the new highway systems. Some people might object to this but when shown proof that the system would dramatically shorten their commute times and eliminate traffic jams during rush-hour I think it would be a fairly easy sell.
Best of all this system could be powered by renewable energy resources since it uses electricity and doesn’t have a preference as to how that energy is generated.
Why not monorails? Laying track for them requires less land and they can easily coexist with freeways in congested urban areas.
“If California gets the go-ahead for their proposed 200+mph electrified high-speed rail line, high-speed rail in the USA will be set back 30 years”.
If we go ahead with this project, we will put high speed rail in america’s largest state. It will not set high speed rail back, it will spur similar action in other states. As a california resident, this system is needed asap, the freeways are congested and they are projected to get worse with population growth.
The faster the travel, the fewer people high-speed rail can serve. A 200+mph high-speed rail system will indeed become expensive, exclusive service for the wealthy.
Negative, I disagree, the rail will serve the higher populated areas. Fares have yet to be determined.
This is no time for a “we can’t do it” attitude.
Learn more about the proposed california system at:
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/
What do they got that we ain’t got? Public ownership of the railways, that’s what.
Nice locomotive in that picture from China. Wonder if I could stop– err never mind.
As long as it is free to dump carbon dioxide into the air, trains will not be able to “compete”.
http://www.freepublictransit.org
What our future was to have been according to the 1910’s
http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/09/french-prints-show-year-2000-1910.html
See.. they have cruiships.. and flying fireman! ;>P