General US High Speed Rail Discussion

electricron wrote: ↑Thu Apr 11, 2013 10:50 pm Assuming a realistic operating max speed of 186 mph for economic reasons, what would you consider a valid average speed? Keeping it simple, let's assume the HSR train stops three times every hour for 5 minutes, meaning it loses 15 minutes of traveling every hour, decreasing the time moving by 25%, so the max the average speed could be is 140 mph. With a maximum competitive 5 hour run, that HSR train could travel 700 miles.

One can look at a lot of HSR schedules to get a typical range of numbers. Like go to eurail.com and plan a lot of trips.

Using Boston as the north and east terminal of the NEC:
Boston to Raleigh is 702 miles. You can't get to Florida, Charlotte, Charleston, or Atlanta.
Boston to Cleveland is 639 miles. Boston to Toledo is 752 miles. You can't get to Detroit or Chicago.

Boston is a bad choice as a reference for the NEC. NYC and DC would be better. I also don't know how these distances were measured. Google Maps highway distances gets close for Boston-Raleigh: 718 mi. The great-circle distance is more like 610 mi.

• Cleveland -- Boston 640 mi, NYC 463 mi, DC 368 mi
• Chicago - Boston 983 mi, NYC 789 mi, DC 696 mi
• Cincinnati - Boston 870 mi, NYC 639 mi, DC 501 mi
• Atlanta - Boston 1076 mi, NYC 863 mi, DC 639 mi

However, Chicago is a good hub city for the northern Midwest. It is much more populous than most other northern-Midwest cities, and it is the third most populous metropolitan area in the nation.

scratchyX wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 11:33 am

RRspatch wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 1:01 am

trainhq wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 3:01 pm These days, it's almost impossible for anyone in an HSR corridor to build anything on a new ROW.
The amount of legal expense and difficulty in taking land, even with eminent domain, makes
it very difficult. The country is long past the stage where people can lay down much rail
in rural or unpopulated areas, at least in HSR corridors.

I agree. Look at the problems Texas Central is having building an all new line from Dallas to Houston. Every farmer, rancher and NIMBY is up in arms and lawyered up to fight it. The days of laying railroads across the country in the 1800's or bulldozing the countryside and cities for Interstates in the 50's and 60's are over.

And yet, people seem fine with interstates, i guess as they assume they may drive that mega road, one day?

That's because this is car country, as far as public funding for infrastructure goes. Unfortunately, this car-driven government would rather fund highways than public rail. I even heard a while ago that Milwaukee spent as much for maintaining one portion of one highway as 14 years of rail transport in the city. Yet, I think I read an article recently about Texas saying that they are done with building highways. Hopefully Texas and other states can follow Texas Central's example and get back into railroads.

Milwaukee has some interesting highway structures that are expensive to maintain. They also recently installed a street car system. The spending on highways isn't crazy when one considers the number of passenger miles each year - plus the freight miles needed to get loads to their final destinations.

There is still the virgin ground issue with long distance highways. It cam take decades or lifetimes to get a new alignment intercity interstate built. (Something comparable to "high speed rail" between major cities ... not just a couple more miles added to an existing interstate.)

Look at I-11 Phoenix to Las Vegas. It’s 98% desert scrub in Arizona, and they haven’t poured a foot of new concrete east of the Hoover Dam bypass (made necessary by 9/11), and probably won’t until 2030....

justalurker66 wrote: ↑Sat May 02, 2020 12:11 am Milwaukee has some interesting highway structures that are expensive to maintain. They also recently installed a street car system. The spending on highways isn't crazy when one considers the number of passenger miles each year - plus the freight miles needed to get loads to their final destinations.

There is still the virgin ground issue with long distance highways. It cam take decades or lifetimes to get a new alignment intercity interstate built. (Something comparable to "high speed rail" between major cities ... not just a couple more miles added to an existing interstate.)

What's sad about milwaukee's highways is that half are on the ROW of what was relatively high speed transit lines.