Speed demons

This post reminds me of another discussion I was recently in: why is America's high-speed rail so dreadful? The Acela delivers you, at enormous added expense, to Boston one hour ahead of the regional. On the DC-to-NY run, the added benefit is 10-15 minutes. The answer is that the Acela uses existing track, which is twisty, the better to serve every congressional district between here and Boston. Real high speed rail needs to be fairly straight, for the same reason you don't take hairpin turns at 120 mph in your car.

Of course, if we were not going to build high speed rail, the sensible thing to do was not to have a high-speed program at all. Instead we got the dreadfully expensive, yet basically useless, Acela.

Comments

Certainly most countries with "real" high speed rail built dedicated tracks for such, as with the shinkansen. At the same time, it certainly is still possible to upgrade existing track to support higher speeds; such would be possible even without Acela's special (and specially expensive trains), but has not happened, partially due to the complicated ownership of the right-of-way, which is certainly not by Amtrak. One hour of faster transit time often seems much less relatively important when you're talking freight instead of passengers.

Posted by John Thacker | November 23, 2007 1:36 PM

We don't have high-speed rail because it is useless. For long trips airplanes are better. For short trips automobiles are better.[1]

Apart from commuter trains in a few large cities, tourist-oriented short lines, and a few long-distance trains for sightseers and nostalgia travellers, we wouldn't have passenger trains at all without heavy government subsidy.

Europe only has trains because of very heavy government subsidy. (European government tax the hell out of motor transport and divert the funds to rail infrastructures run at an immense loss.)

The answer to your question then, is that America's high-speed rail is dreadful because it's run by the government but in a half-hearted fashion (because the American government is still less socialist than most foreign governments, and as we just discussed, passenger trains are nearly useless in a free economy with a lot of wide-open space).

[1] Over short distances time spent waiting for the train, boarding, detraining, collecting luggage, etc. plus accellerating time for the train itself dominates rail travel time so high-speed doesn't do any better than standard. Unlike Europe's socialist trains, Japan's trains have some economic justification but the uniquely road-hostile terrain of Japan and the Japanese practice of living in very dense cities mean that incentives for rail are very different there than in America.

Posted by Mark Seecof | November 23, 2007 1:37 PM

I've done the NYC-DC trip in both Acela and ordinary Amtrak, and I got the impression that the ordinary one was much slower. More importantly, it was really drafty, and very unpleasant, rather like the Southampton-London trains late on a sunday night used to be.

Posted by Marcin Tustin | November 23, 2007 1:50 PM

Mrs Thatcher negotiated a good deal, whereby the London-Paris train was much used by Britons but almost entirely subsidised by the French. Naturally, little Blair could not resist blewing British money on it.

Posted by dearieme | November 23, 2007 3:25 PM

High speed rail actually makes great sense, and I say this as an airline pilot.

The problem with air travel is not in the actual air transit time, it is in the intermodal mess at either end. You have to drive, park, navigate a concourse, wait, do some (efficient) flying, and then reverse the drive-park time. This situation gets even worse when you're dealing with a city where you don't own a car (and must rent one) or when you're dealing with a car-served airport that's in an outlying area, but going to a downtown area where cars are impractical.

High speed rail, on the other hand, can drop you dead in the middle of downtown. Door to door, Eurostar beats Ryanair every time.

That's the engineering problem. Rail is incredibly superior because trains easily fit into cities, and because a train only consumes enough energy to overcome parasite drag due to speed. An airplane consumes more energy due to the need to pay not only for parasite drag, but also induced drag (drag generated to create lift) plus drag induced due to the extra weight caused by carrying fuel (and the structures needed to carry fuel)

From a transportation and energy efficiency standpoint, nothing beats rail.

This isn't an engineering problem, it's the social problem - and there are two very serious ones:

High-speed rail is that it is incredibly inflexible - even more inflexible than normal rail, because the railpath must be wider, straighter, and without at-grade crossings. This means that today's high speed rail would only run to the cities that were big forty years ago. That means that today you could easily go from Cleveland to Detroit, but you've got no chance to go from Las Vegas to Phoenix.

Add to this the moral problem associated with building high-speed rail - since the railpath must be wide and straight, the only way to build it would be a totalitarian use of eminent domain that would be tolerated only by third-world dictators and first-world liberal elites. This would involve literally steamrolling over everyone in the way for hundreds of miles, destroying families, communities, and businesses in the fashion of William T. Sherman.

So, we have airplanes.

Airplanes can be re-routed in minutes, not decades, and airplanes at thirty thousand feet don't involve uprooting everyone beneath them. It's an inferior engineering solution, but far superior socially.

Airplanes, like the automobile, allow a man to choose where he goes. Rail, unfortunately, only allows a man to go where the government chooses (or perhaps where the government has forced him to go, if he's been evicted out of his house)

Posted by secret asian man | November 23, 2007 3:45 PM

The railroad right of ways and track route were largely established by private firms well before the US government got involved directly in the railroad
business well after WW II.

Your assertion that it is a function of congressional interference just has no basis in fact.

If I travel from suburban Boston to downtown NY I need to figure on about four hours for the door to door trip if I fly, take the train or drive. I've done each way numerous times and the most pleasant, convient trip is by rail except it is not as frequent. By the time you use a realistic per mile cost of driving, plus tolls and parking rail is also the least expensive especially when you start adding the taxi fares to the airline fare. Actually, I need to look at the bus as it is by far the least expensive. Of course the Chinese bus line does not have the best safety record.

Posted by spencer | November 23, 2007 4:00 PM

"We don't have high-speed rail because it is useless. For long trips airplanes are better. For short trips automobiles are better.[1]"

Wait till oil reaches 400$ a barrel somewhere in the next decade and we will see how useless rail is. Currently trains are more or less the only mode of transportation that can be powered by nuclear energy.

"Europe only has trains because of very heavy government subsidy. (European government tax the hell out of motor transport and divert the funds to rail infrastructures run at an immense loss.)"

In Europe the countries with the highest rail use are Luxemburg and Switzerland. These also just happen to be the countries with the highest standard of living, and the lowest cost to own and operate a car... People use the trains because they're convenient. Try answering your email while driving a car.

Long distance passenger rail travel is operated on a commercial basis in quite a few countries (like in Switzerland and Germany). It is local transit that gets subsidized heavily, but that is no different from the US.

"The answer to your question then, is that America's high-speed rail is dreadful because it's run by the government but in a half-hearted fashion (because the American government is still less socialist than most foreign governments, and as we just discussed, passenger trains are nearly useless in a free economy with a lot of wide-open space)."

When it comes to running trains the US government is an order of magnitude more socialist than many European countries. Staffing levels on trains in the US are a multiple of what is common in Europe. On a commuter train in Germany you will find one staff member, the driver. On a regional train there will be one driver and one ticket collector. On longer distance trains there might be one or two catering staff.
When it comes to running trains the US is also a few decades behind the rest of the world. US trains are more than twice as heavy as their European or Japanese counterparts, all because of government interference. US rail agencies cannot buy off the shelf equipment, making rail projects very expensive.

"Over short distances time spent waiting for the train, boarding, detraining, collecting luggage, etc. plus accellerating time for the train itself dominates rail travel time so high-speed doesn't do any better than standard."

You have little experience with rail travel obviously. It is the time spend waiting for your plane, getting on the plane, getting of the plane and collecting your luggage that makes trains faster than planes up to about 500km. Even when they're not particularly high speed.
It takes a few seconds to board a train. It takes a few seconds to detrain. You don't need to collect your luggage as you have it with you. And you don't wait for your train as you are free to turn up one minute before departure.

Posted by Krist | November 23, 2007 4:05 PM

I don't know the cost numbers, but shaving an hour off the NY-Boston run was a major event in my life. It makes rail travel competitive with air between those cities at least, for those in my socio-economic bracket, i.e., those for whom the price differential between the two isn't a particularly big consideration. Which is probably why substantially every seat on the Acela from Boston to NYC was full this morning. (Actually, the last seats filled at Providence.)

Posted by y81 | November 23, 2007 5:34 PM

Speed boarding and exiting are not necessarily a good thing. I took a trip with my husband, a friend, two little kids, a carseat, a booster seat, a double umbrella stroller, etc. from DC to Philadelphia and then on to NJ last year, and we had a couple close calls because it just took so much time to get our stuff and ourselves on and off the train (I don't think that particular route allowed checked baggage), and all our stuff piled at the exit created a bottleneck. At one point, the train started chugging away with my husband on board, and the rest of the party on the platform. This is just a logistical point--an extra minute at the station would have saved us. On the other hand, the time on the train was extremely civilized, with lots of legroom, seatroom, and the ability to get up and walk around easily with kids. That side of it was fantastic.

Posted by Amy P | November 23, 2007 6:29 PM

In Europe the countries with the highest rail use are Luxemburg and Switzerland. These also just happen to be the countries with the highest standard of living, and the lowest cost to own and operate a car...

And a slightly higher population density too, mind you. The fact that more more dense countries find it efficient to have trains does not mean as much in the US. Trains a priori are more efficient environmentally, if loaded. The incredibly empty long-haul passenger trains in much of the country are worse for the environment than airplanes, though.

When it comes to running trains the US government is an order of magnitude more socialist than many European countries.

True, the rail operation in the US is more "socialist," in that there's ridiculous featherbedding. Amtrak is heavily unionized, and the unions have shown little interest in taking a lead to propose solutions that would make rail more competitive.

I second that Acela competes with airplanes in a way that the regionals do not, and for that reason it is priced to compete with planes. It does mostly make a profit, like few other lines (outside the Northeast Corridor, I think only Milwaukee-Chicago regularly turns a profit on passenger lines.)

Posted by John Thacker | November 23, 2007 7:07 PM

The problem with air travel is not in the actual air transit time, it is in the intermodal mess at either end.

...hmm, that sure reminds me of transferring between intercity trains and subways or cars. I'm not seeing the difference.

High speed rail, on the other hand, can drop you dead in the middle of downtown. Door to door, Eurostar beats Ryanair every time.

Door to door if you happen to live right next to and do everything next to a high-speed train station. Which will never happen because it's very, very, very expensive to replace every road in the world with high-speed trains, and it's no longer a high-speed train if it stops at every door where somebody wants out.

...that makes trains faster than planes up to about 500km.

Up to 500km, in the US (even NE corridor), the fastest way by far to travel between cities is, of course, by car. That's because you don't have to spent time waiting for public transit to arrive.

That, along with density, are why high-speed rail isn't big here.

Posted by Jon | November 23, 2007 8:22 PM

Mark S - All I can say is that you've obviously never driven from DC to NYC on a weekday morning or evening. As a weekly commuter from NYC to DC, I can say that the Acela does manage to cut off a half-hour or so on that route but it's rarely worth the substantial extra money over the 'slow' train. Given the choice though, and considering the cost of parking a car in NYC, there's absolutely no doubt that taking the train is more pleasant and saves a substantial amount of time if you're going to spend time in Manhattan. I've also done the economics and taking into account wear-and-tear on the car and using an advance purchase ticket with a 15% veteran's discount, the train beats the car, cost-wise every time.
We should cut lose the the DC-Boston corridor from the rest of Amtrak and just let it compete directly with air. If you think you can make it from mid-town Manhattan to Laguardia in the morning or evening, get on the never-on-time flight to DC and then metro or cab it into DC in less than 3 hours, then I want to know the name of the helicopter service you're using. Even doing the NJ turnpike at 75+ mph, it's a physical impossibility to drive the route in less than 3 hrs 50 mins.

Posted by Michael W | November 23, 2007 11:48 PM

Lateness is my biggest gripe with the Amtrak trains in general -- it seems the Acela trains are late less often and by less time than the others. (I used to travel Amtrak between central and south Florida every few weeks, and I would expect to add several hours to whatever arrival time was on the schedule...)

I like taking rail from DC to Philadelphia or NYC. The big draw is that I can have my electronic devices on the whole time *and* bring liquids. (Same with the DC-NY buses.) The Boston trip is long enough that I'd prefer to fly, particularly as the plane ticket is usually cheaper.

Posted by Kat | November 24, 2007 12:18 AM

Surely one reason why every congressional district clamors to have the Acela run through it is the overall paucity of other train lines. Provinces in the Netherlands don't all insist on being included on the high-speed line to Paris; they're assured that the intercity link to Rotterdam or Amsterdam will get them there within an hour, and they can transfer. If you only build one train line, you'll have everyone clamoring to be on it; build three, and each one may be more rational.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 24, 2007 2:32 AM

The Acela route from NYC to Boston probably owes more to the development pattern of New England in the mid-19th century than it does to contemporary politics, except to the extent that a straighter, dedicated HSR corridor would bring out the NIMBYs and cost more; with rail subsidies in the northeast corridor understandably not being a high priority for 80% of the House and 90%+ of the Senate, the cheaper routing via 19th century rights-of-way was the clear winner.

Continental European HSR probably owes much of its success to governments being less constrained by planning reviews and easier eminent domain exercise. (The British experience with the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, with NIMBYism and planning review procedures that make American attitudes seem positively streamlined, is the exception that proves the rule.)

Posted by Chris Lawrence | November 24, 2007 3:43 AM

Up to 500km, in the US (even NE corridor), the fastest way by far to travel between cities is, of course, by car.

This is certainly false for travel between NYC and Boston. I make this trip often and the Acela is both faster and more convenient than driving.

And unlike the intermodal problem at an out-of-town airport you are a few steps from the subway at either end of the trip. Often the only non-train "mode" needed is your feet, since it is easy to walk to many useful places from the train station.

Posted by byomtov | November 24, 2007 9:46 AM

For short trips automobiles are better.

This depends on how you define "better." Do you mean faster? There are some arguments that that isn't true (see above). Do you mean cheaper? Once you add in gas, tolls, depreciation etc... that may not be true. Do you mean safer? Absolutely not true. Better use of time? When on a train you can work, read or sleep. You can't do that when driving. Healthier? Recent studies have shown that sitting in one position as you do when driving is bad for one's back and can cause weight gain. On a train you can change positions often and walk around. Lower social costs? Cars pollute more and, per passenger-mile, require greater investments in public facilities.

So, how do you mean better?

Posted by wsahcycle | November 24, 2007 11:01 AM

The European, as distinct from British, attitude to getting planning permission for building new railway lines was decribed by Mitterand: "When you drain the swamp you don't consult the frogs". The remark was much appreciated in Britain.

Posted by dearieme | November 24, 2007 3:19 PM

It took ME 5 1/2 hours to get from DC to NYC by car. The Acela claims 3 1/2 to get from Union Station to NYC Penn Station. It takes 50 min to get most places in NYC by subway, and I had to leave 1 1/2 hr early to get from suburban home to Union station in time to catch the train - it would've added up to a little under 6 hours total. It still would've been 20 minutes slower for me, even assuming no late departures. The Acela is finally fast enough to be almost in the same league, but still probably half an hour slower.

My car costs were about $1,000/yr, and my maintenance and gas costs pretty low (30MPh, $1/gal for gas, tot $10ish). Conservatively, total car costs were well below $20/trip. Probably more like $15/trip. Gas and other costs have gone up since then, of course, making it now more like $40/trip. Still, well under 1/2 of the $98 Acela ticket + subway fares. It's possible it could've been more polluting and taken more investment (link please?). Remember that the train also costs more than the ticket says.

Now, it's true that I lived in the northern DC suburbs. I can see where it'd at least be evener from the southern ones. It's also true that I enjoy driving. I've gotten plenty of thinking done. No blogging, true, I'll grant you that. My health's always been far better driving than in public transit, which involve plenty of germs to scrub and far higher diesel fume density.

Posted by Jon Kay | November 24, 2007 3:57 PM

For short trips automobiles are better.

This depends on how you define "better." Do you mean faster? There are some arguments that that isn't true (see above). Do you mean cheaper? Once you add in gas, tolls, depreciation etc... that may not be true. Do you mean safer? Absolutely not true. Better use of time? When on a train you can work, read or sleep. You can't do that when driving. Healthier? Recent studies have shown that sitting in one position as you do when driving is bad for one's back and can cause weight gain. On a train you can change positions often and walk around. Lower social costs? Cars pollute more and, per passenger-mile, require greater investments in public facilities.

So, how do you mean better?

How about that I can load up my car with as much stuff as I want, without having to worry about packing it compactly into a piece of luggage I need to keep an eye on to avoid having it stolen? And then I can leave when I want, without having to conform to the train's schedule? And when I get to my destination, I'm actually at my destination -- I don't have to spend more money to get from the station to the destination, or arrange for someone to pick me up? (Nor do I have to spend money/call in a favor to get me from my house to the station.)

And I can take someone with me with virtually zero marginal cost, rather than doubling the cost?

Posted by David Nieporent | November 24, 2007 4:00 PM

The problem with high speed rail in America is low population density as compared to Europe.

Posted by Randall Parker | November 24, 2007 4:35 PM

Lower social costs? Cars pollute more and, per passenger-mile, require greater investments in public facilities.

One person in a car pollutes more, but if the car has one additional passenger then the tally is close to even. In the case where a car has four people in it, then cars generally pollute less per passenger mile and are certainly cheaper, though absolutely still less safe.

Posted by John Thacker | November 24, 2007 7:59 PM

Government citation for relative energy use of transportation modes. The automobile figure is based on average number of total occupants, a figure that is around 2, being close to 1.6 for intracity and higher, around 2.3 for intercity driving. A full car thus consumes less energy than the average train operations. Granted, at the margin it still makes sense for an individual group to save energy by taking a train rather than driving since you're unlikely to force the running of an entire new train.

There's a question of what eventually the long-term result would be if "everybody did it," of course.

Posted by John Thacker | November 24, 2007 8:08 PM

Currently trains are more or less the only mode of transportation that can be powered by nuclear energy.

The U.S. Navy and the folks at General Dynamics' Electric Boat division would probably argue "less."

Posted by Colby Cosh | November 24, 2007 9:32 PM

Rail becomes more useful when there is a combination of density and appropriate distance. If we put in HSR in the DC to Boston corridor, it would be heavily used. That is probably true in the Houston-Dallas-San Antonio triangle as well, and possibly in the Santa Barbara-San Diego corridor. Maybe, maybe, it could work along the Great Lakes (say, Buffalo to Chicago and Milwaukee, via Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit). But that's really it. RAil in the US has to be regional - from region to region the distances are too long relative to the densities to be really useful.

Posted by stuart | November 24, 2007 10:24 PM

I think I had better clarify one thing. I didn't mean America's passenger trains were less socialist than Europe's (obviously they aren't, because Amtrak is a creature of the Federal government). I meant America was less socialist overall, so our government doesn't try so hard to force people onto trains, particularly for long-distance (intercity) travel. Of course, we have a political anti-mobility movement which has pretty much choked off highway construction in (sub-)urban areas now, and those people sure want to force commuters onto trolleys and urban rail, but their plans are so grossly stupid that they will fail (though they'll waste astonishingly large sums of money along the way).

(In Europe the subsidy to trains takes two forms: direct subsidy, financed by taxes levied on other things, and indirect subsidy-- for years European governments stinted highway construction in favor of rail. So yes, in Europe rail travel is often more convenient than highway travel, but that reflects government policy rather than free-market choices.)

Switzerland is the Japan of Europe, so far as rail travel is concerned. As for passenger trains in Germany being "commercial," give me a break. Besides the fact that virtually all the infrastructure was built and is still maintained by the government, most "commercial operators" bid for state contracts to operate passenger services. Germany has contracted-out many rail operations but has not ceased to subsidize them.

I also think it's funny how people who live in the largest Eastern-US megalopolises think their vision of downtown-to-downtown travel by high-speed-rail would serve the whole USA just fine, thank-you. As one of my colleagues pointed out above, if the train doesn't stop near my suburban home then it isn't convenient and if it does then it isn't fast.

(P.S. Thank you, David Nieporent.)

Posted by Mark Seecof | November 25, 2007 1:30 AM

I also think it's funny how people who live in the largest Eastern-US megalopolises think their vision of downtown-to-downtown travel by high-speed-rail would serve the whole USA just fine, thank-you.

Who said that? They said it would serve the Eastern US just fine. The rest of you nincompoops can continue racing towards that $200-a-barrel cliff if you like.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 25, 2007 11:08 AM

I wonder how the cost of law enforcement on public roads figures into things.

Personally, I'd love it if there was a cross country train that I could park my car on, so I could ride (and read) half way to my destination and then drive the rest. It'd be worth it even if it cost as much as the gas used and didn't save any time.

Posted by Ryan W. | November 25, 2007 11:09 AM

If we put in HSR in the DC to Boston corridor, it would be heavily used. That is probably true in the Houston-Dallas-San Antonio triangle as well, and possibly in the Santa Barbara-San Diego corridor. Maybe, maybe, it could work along the Great Lakes (say, Buffalo to Chicago and Milwaukee, via Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit). But that's really it.

Interestingly, while those other corridors were explored by the DOT, the only one currently being investigated and funded for high speed rail is the Southeast Corridor. Basically, linking Richmond (really Petersburg, the end of the Northeast Corridor right now) to the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Cary-Chapel Hill), Triad (Greensboro-High Point, possibly Winston-Salem), and Charlotte across North Carolina, three 1.5-2 million population MSAs about 100 miles from each other. Part of the attraction is that it also connects those new cities directly to the Northeast Corridor, and also allows eventual expansion to Columbia, SC and Atlanta. It was the only one judged to remotely pay for itself.

Posted by John Thacker | November 25, 2007 11:36 AM

Of course, high speed rail by itself is no environmental panacea. To the degree that it enables people to live farther away from work by making their commute more pleasant, it's not that different from highways. Avoiding the congestion is a unalloyed good thing, however (though roads should have congestion charges for that reason).

Most of the blame for that situation should be laid on various zoning regulations that lower density, which are the real culprit. I save some particular ire for the city residents I know who slavishly support light rail and subway extension to their neighborhoods, but unalterably oppose any increase in density. (See for example the Roosevelt neighborhood in Seattle.) The combination vitiates most of the benefits, environmental and otherwise, of rail.

Eliminate the zoning regulations and most of the rest could fall into place. Keep the zoning and low density and even the best efforts don't yield much real benefit.

Posted by John Thacker | November 25, 2007 11:45 AM

Recently ran the numbers - using the IRS cost per mile, it is currently cheaper for me and my wife to cab to Metropark NJ, take a NE Corridor train to Union station, metro to Springfiled, and cab to destination, than it is to drive.

Now, my costs to operate my car are lower than the IRS numbers - and schedule flexibility is desireable. But, given the chance, I'm probably taking the train to Orlando if I ever go to Disney, rather than fly. But that's more due to TSA hijinks than anything else

Posted by Ian Argent | November 25, 2007 10:00 PM

The Acela route from NYC to Boston probably owes more to the development pattern of New England in the mid-19th century than it does to contemporary politics, except to the extent that a straighter, dedicated HSR corridor would bring out the NIMBYs and cost more...

If I had a time machine, and I've said this before, I'd go back in time and get the King to put together a 100 yard-wide straight swath of land between Boston and NYC.

The track between NYC and Trenton is realatively straight and I've read somewhere (sorry) that this is where US trains go the fastest.

YMMV.

--Mike

Posted by Mike P | November 26, 2007 8:01 AM

Ever consider the benefit of basing your commentary on facts and evidence, instead of complete (and stupidly obvious) fabrication? Many readers would probably consider it a plus.

If you actually did any research you would quickly discover that the track routing for Amtrak was decided decades, if not centuries ago by private companies looking to have the largest addressable market. Amtrak inherited the tracks that were in place. Amtrak obviously hasn't re-routed tracks in its history because of congressional politics.

Note that I have no love for Congress, nor do I have any particular attitude about Amtrak, though I am a happy Acela customer from time to time.

Posted by Brent W | November 26, 2007 10:23 AM

If you actually did any research you would quickly discover that the track routing for Amtrak was decided decades, if not centuries ago by private companies looking to have the largest addressable market. Amtrak inherited the tracks that were in place. Amtrak obviously hasn't re-routed tracks in its history because of congressional politics.

New rights of way are expensive for multiple reasons. It is, however, perfectly possible to upgrade tracks, straighten curves, and deal with superelevation in order to raise speeds. There's somewhat less incentive to do that for freight than for passengers, however. Still, the railroads in North Carolina are about a hour faster from Raleigh to Charlotte because of similar upgrades, and it would be possible to raise the speed limit from 90 mph in the Northeast Corridor's slowest parts, if the owners of the track would agree.

Posted by John Thacker | November 26, 2007 5:27 PM

That is probably true in the Houston-Dallas-San Antonio triangle as well

Personally, I doubt it. Not one of these three cities has a useful public transportation system. If you wanted to compete with SouthWest, you'd have to have a large number of car rental outlets somewhere near the station. The resulting complex would not be much smaller than Hobby or Love Field and the time savings on fast boarding/unboarding would be decimated. Where's the advantage?

And of course the sheer scale of rush hour in Houston makes these concerns look rather insubstantial :-) One observation though: downtown would be THE WORST place for a high-speed train station in any of the large Texas cities. Unless of course the idea is to provide transportation exclusively to [some] lawyers, [some] bankers and [trade show-bound] sales reps. Everybody else would be just suffering for no good reason -- and making the traffic jam even worse.

Posted by ...Max... | November 26, 2007 6:59 PM

Don't count improved travel time because of less TSA than airlines face, in favor of high-speed rail. If we had real high-speed rail which was used by a lot of people, we would end up with TSA-level security on it the first time some yahoo put a big enough bomb in the front passenger car to create unfortunate results for the cars behind it. For that matter, securing the track could be a logistical nightmare, if someone has the bright idea of detonating a section of track, or a bridge, 15 seconds before the train arrives. (Ever seen the result of a head-on collision on a two-lane highway? That is 150 mph, similar to the speed at the beginning of a high-speed train derailment.) The only reason we haven't seen that with Amtrak or freight in a residential area is that it isn't high enough profile to attract the top-drawer terrorists. Roads at least have the virtue of being decentralized transport, meaning easy to clean up and hard to collect large victim populations in one go.

Posted by rvman | November 27, 2007 11:24 AM

The only reason we haven't seen that with Amtrak or freight in a residential area is that it isn't high enough profile to attract the top-drawer terrorists.

It's always frightening thinking of (and reading) "you know, if the terrorists were really smart instead of kind of dumb about their target choices, they'd do this" ideas, but certainly you have a point. There are freight lines whose destruction at the wrong time would enormously harm the economy, worse than a bomb in an aircraft.

Amtrak obviously hasn't re-routed tracks in its history because of congressional politics.

Speaking of looking up facts before you post:

Amtrak used to route trains on the old SCL "S Line" from Petersburg to Raleigh. However, the 88 mile section from Centralia, VA to Norlina, NC was removed by CSX, the current freight track operator, in the 80s since they didn't use it. Amtrak was forced to reroute in a slower manner, using other existing track. This points out one of the real problems-- the freight companies (or sometimes local governments) own the track, not Amtrak, which just uses it. It's not the case of the corporations which were subsumed into Amtrak deciding where to put the track in years ago-- it's largely the case of all the decisions being made for the sake of freight, not passenger rail. (Understandably, given both ownership and use.)

Posted by John Thacker | November 28, 2007 5:27 PM