by Arlington
Bob Roberts wrote:^ some awfully big cartography errors in that map. Tidewater service has been moved south into NC, South Carolina has gained an HSR corridor and Raleigh to Charlotte is filed in the 'distant future' category?I'd like to stay on point for this thread and focus on NE Regionals to & beyond Roanoke, the salient point of which is that the Blue Ridge ('cept for CLT-ATL) has never been an HSR priority at the national level, and even big, busy Charlottesville only appears when there's an "existing network" layer.
The basic problem for Roanoke-Knoxville-whatever is that every time someone might find $1 to spend, that $1 will have a way better payback if it is used to further upgrade a parallel segment that's more populous and more tightly bound into the national HSR/Higher-speed network, particularly within 100 miles of DC or along the Richmond-Raleigh-Charlotte corridor.
Neither Clinton's Last Map (from 2001) or during the Obama revival (below is 2009's) had anything on on the Carolina-DC stretch of the Crescent. I believe the (bad geography) one above is an early "stimulus" political map but is a good indication of where "the will" is, and any better DOT map sustains/repeats/refocuses the point that even in the grandest federal plans:
- Charlottesville may appear, but it never gets HSR
- Lynchburg has never appeared
- And even IF Virginia musters the will for a hugely-expensive, low-use, low-return rail corridor beyond New River Valley (not their bipartisan style, which emphasizes operating near breakeven), the beyond-Bristol is cripplingly expensive for not much demand.
- Tennessee, if it gets anything, in a "why not both/all" world, will get HSR on a Chicago-Indy-Louisville-Nashville-Chattanooga-Altanta axis:
Or this "2009 Stimulus/Pre-Wisconsin/Ohio/Florida-opt-out" re-working of the bad-geography map above:
The opt-out era was instructive: when money was refused on one place on the map, they didn't redraw the map, the moved the $ to segments elsewhere.
"Trying to solve congestion by making roadways wider is like trying to solve obesity by buying bigger pants."--Charles Marohn