Forgive me for talking about high speed rail even though Ryan Avent says I'm not allowed to. I just can't control myself, I'm afraid.
As libertarians go, I'm a big fan of high-speed rail. I think it would be very nice if we had some in the Northeastern United States, where it might actually work, rather than the pathetic Acela that shaves a whole fifteen minutes off the trip between DC and New York. Unfortunately, that is apparently never going to happen, because in the United States, acquiring new rail rights-of-way seems to be virtually impossible. That means that the Acela has to run on existing track, which is not very good for high speed rail because, first, it was not designed for a train that accelerates to hundreds of mph, and second, there are other trains on it that don't go hundreds of mph, which slows everything down.
So we're not going to get true high speed rail in one of the two areas of the country where it stands a decent chance of working. Instead, we're going to get high speed rail in between Dallas and Houston or some other likely location--at least if the HSR part of the stimulus actually has its intended effect.
Ryan Avent defends these sorts of rail links on the grounds that if you view intercity rail as a substitute for air travel rather than car travel, they make sense. And I think that's fair. But I think that Avent underestimates the difficulties in doing this. The northeast corridor is the only place where people use trains as a substitute for cars for relatively short distances (sub 4-5 hours), because you don't need a car when you get there--and also, because road congestion makes car travel dicey, schedule-wise. This generally isn't much of a problem in flyover country.
Ah, but what about all the people who do fly between Houston and Dallas? Surely they might be persuaded to take a train if it existed?
Maybe. But I think there are a number of problems with this. First of all, many of the people flying between Dallas and Houston are not actually ending up in those cities; they're going somewhere else, because Dallas is a major hub. When I want to fly up to see my family in upstate New York, I don't take Amtrak to Penn Station and then trek out to LaGuardia, even though I much prefer rail travel to air travel. So high speed rail doesn't readily substitute for air travel unless you have a lot of connections running out of Dallas. I don't think it's an accident that the two places in America where rail kind of works--the northeast corridor, and the LA-San Diego route--are coastal runs where the regional links run down a basically straight line. And the reason that they are conveniently in a straight line is that both regions happen to be sandwiched on a narrow strip between the coastline and a big mountain range that limited inland development during the formative years. In the middle of the country, where you need to add an east-west axis to your planning, things rapidly get more expensive.
The other reason I don't think that rail is going to compete with air in most places is the very thing that makes air travel so environmentally problematic: frequency of service. For high speed rail--or any sort of rail, really--to be an environmental boon, the trains have to run pretty full.
During peak times, by my count a flight leaves Dallas for Houston every half hour, the better to allow people to tailor their flights to their schedule and their connections. But most of these flights are tiny regional jets that carry perhaps 60 passengers when full. An Acela, by contrast, carries 300. If every single one of those planes was full, and every single one of the passengers switched to rail, you'd have a peak schedule of once every hour and a half to run the train at 80% capacity. But of course, those planes aren't all full, and not all of the passengers will switch to rail, because as I mentioned above, many of them are connecting to other flights.
Maybe you could put the train station in the airport, but that doesn't encourage dense urban development, and also, even then I doubt people would use it. Once you have to clear security, you're going to fly, because for all but the shortest trips, it's faster.
More realistically, moderately cost effective and environmentally friendly trains are going to run, in most places, at best once every several hours. This multiplies the already large disadvantages of trains over air travel, because it means long layovers in a (usually) small train station.
None of this is exactly original insight to most rail professionals, which is why I don't understand why so many rail advocates get so angry at Ed Glaeser for pointing out some of the difficulties.
I'm not particularly opposed to the high-speed rail stimulus, though I do have a strong opinion that the money ought to all go to the LA-SF line, which is the only one I can see that has any probability at all of working. But I think that Ryan, and other high speed rail advocates, are guilty of severely downplaying the obstacles to ever having a European-style system. Yes, America is dense in many parts, but our areas of densest population are several thousand miles away from each other. The distance between New York and LA is greater than the distance between Paris and Istanbul--a trip that in my experience, most Europeans would hop on a plane for.
Like Will, I think that a lot of libertarians underestimate both the charms of urban density, and the role of the state in creating our current built environment. (Though I do sort of notice that the most avid mass transit advocates I know have one or none children, while the suburban ethusiasts tend to have more than that. So Will and I may be missing something.)
On the other hand, I think that liberals underestimate the role of people's preferences in the decisions the state makes. Yes, there are political failures and market failures, but the fact remains that people voluntarily move to suburbs with large lawns and no train service, which means that some of them must like to live there. They also underestimate the role of geography. It is true that most Americans live near relatively dense cities. But that is still very different from the European situation, where virtually every town is basically a suburb of one of a handful of major national cities. (Before the various regionalists start stoning me, I mean this geographically; almost every town in Europe is close enough to a major city that in America, it would be considered to be a suburb.) This enables them to build rail networks on a scale that I just don't see us being able to match here.
That's not a total argument against high speed rail; I think it does have a shot at succeeding on the coasts, where even conservatives should love its ability to relieve the congestion at airports and on highways. But as I see it, the primary obstacle to high speed rail in those locations is not conservatives of any stripe--it's community activists, environmental groups, and various other sorts of lawsuit-happy left-wing institutions. They tie up the projects in so much procedural nonsense that by the time they're built, they're way over budget, and crippled by the various compromises that had to be made along the way. The Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor, established in 1992, is expected to finish its final environmental impact statement sometime in 2011. Some unspecified time after that, it will begin building out the links between Washington DC and Charlotte, North Carolina. For somewhere between 2-5 billion dollars, and three or more decades, we will finally be able to travel from Washington to Charlotte in 6 hours and 50 minutes--just 30 minutes more than it takes to drive the same route. On the plus side, you can read while you travel. On the minus side, it will cost at least three times as much, and you'll still have to rent a car when you get there.
People who are really serious about rail should probably spend less time yelling at Ed Glaeser, and more time trying to herd the obstructionists among their own ranks into some sort of agreement. Because whether or not high speed rail theoretically could succeed in America, if the process of building it keeps going on like this, it definitely won't.
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I adore the "Southeast High Speed Corridor" analysis here.
Welcome to your government at work. The same government that so many people would like to see running health care. Classic.
High Speed Rail is a good idea, with a patently obvious recipe for success...
...but we can't make it work. It's simply beyond our political framework to produce something of consequence that is both simple and efficient.
I don't. It misses the forest for the trees.
The selling point of that particular line isn't the time it takes to go from Charlotte to D.C. any more than Metro's Red line is designed to get you quickly from Bethesda to Silver Spring. The advantages are D.C. to Richmond and D.C. to Raleigh, both of which have comparable travel times to car travel now, with slow single-track trains. Charlotte to Raleigh will also be faster by train. Sure, the public transportation infrastructure in the NC cities leaves much to be desired, but even now you can rent a car at the train station.
And the slam at Ryan Avent is petulant and beneath you. No one is saying you're not allowed to discuss high speed rail - we're just wondering wy we should care, especially when so much of the libertarian side of the discussion is devoted to a straw-man route in Texas no one is proposing.
While we're on the subject of rail: does anybody ever even consider building more general purpose rail lines, with the intention of lessening truck traffic?
Trucks account for more than half of the serious accidents on our freeways. There lumbering size make them traffic-congestors even when they aren't broken down or jack-knifed. They are clearly responsible for the lion's share of our infrastructure destruction.
And yet, largely because of patronage and labor, nobody ever so much as mentions "maybe we can find a way to get the long haulers off the road, replaced by rail...?"
This would have a far greater social impact than high speed rail would.
I'm pretty certain I've seen a variety of liberal bloggers make just that suggestion.
As Megan mentioned, it's almost impossible to get enough right of way. You've got to buy the land, it's got to go to places you want it to, and you've got the NIMBY problems. Running trains through peoples backyards lessens their property values (through increased noise, loss of access, etc.), which is a taking, so they've got to be compensated.
Lots of other things make it still more difficult. Look at the trouble Maryland is having with getting light rail into the Silver Spring PG County corridor. Along an existing right of way.
Railroads generally don't need to add additional right of way to add freight capacity. Existing rights of way are often large enough to add additional tracks (sometimes restoring tracks that were taken out during the 1960's and 1970's). A lot can be done with signalling systems to allow more trains to run on the same amount of track without reducing speed.
The reason you need seperate HST right of way is more because you don't want any at-grade crossing with other railroads or especially highways at the speeds those trains are moving.
A lot of long-haul freight does go by rail. But rail isn't always as convenient: a shipping container has to be loaded onto a truck, then loaded onto a rail car, then loaded onto another truck to reach its destination. While the loading doesn't take a lot of time, coordinating it does. And that assumes that the rail network doesn't get all bollixed up with cars left on sidings for weeks like happened a few years ago.
Also, most of the congestion that trucks cause is short-haul trucking in metropolitan areas, which is rather harder to replace with rail freight.
I'm not sure I agree with the short-haul statement. In Metro-NY all of the highways into the city are jammed with long-haulers every rush hour. Routes 80, 95, and 78 (and their feeders and branches) are packed with cargo that could have been railed into the city and moved to a short-hauler for the last 10 miles (or less).
The trucks that are causing the massive traffic jams are tractor-trailers, typically with sleepers. Not 10 wheelers, etc. These are also the wheels that are tearing up the surfaces, and vibrating the bridges into dust. A constant pounding of loaded trailers and tandems.
I understand the transfer issues, but that's one of those things you'd want to see addressed as part of an infrastructure upgrade. Make the system better.
I think that up the West Coast between San Diego and San Francisco would make a pretty good HSR corridor. Luckily, the SD and LA airports happen to be in or very near dense urban areas so having the trains stop there would be nice. The SFO airport is also in town. The SD airport is currently at max capacity, and the only place to build one would be to take an air base off the government hands or build it out of town. Being able to take a train to LAX would be nice. One of the reasons I don't like to just drive to LAX for a flight, is that LA traffic is that bad. It can turn a 1:30 drive into a 4:00 drive in no time. The current train doesn't go near LAX, so you still have the same problems getting there.
Ehh...
I live in San Diego and drive up to LA frequently and have not found the train to be very convenient. The biggest problem is that I very rarely need to be anywhere near downtown LA and I don't live near downtown SD.
As for an extra airport in San Diego, I think the natural thing would be to build an airport far away from downtown (either in East County, up near Poway or in North County). SD Airport does get congested, but their is a fair amount of land outside downtown to build.
For passenger rail to work on the west coast something needs to be done about light rail in LA. There's no point in taking the train from San Diego or San Francisco if you're going to be stuck with the execrable bus systems in the LA area.
Last I looked into it rail expansion in LA was stalled as a result of lawsuits.
An interesting topic for a post would be for you to go back and read your colleague James Fallows's article on air taxis and contrast and compare the benefits of them to high speed rail for business travelers.
If you have three or more people in the car, you may as well drive from an environmental standpoint. Train travel is best for solo travelers. This does not mean just single people and urbanites, though.
As a regular traveler on Northeast Corridor trains, I can say that business travelers are a huge percentage of the total. Students and student-aged military are also well represented, as are single people (young and old) visiting their married-with-children relatives at the holidays. But I think the business travelers, who range widely in age and lifestyle, are the biggest group.
If you can get us to use the train instead of flying or driving, high speed rail has a chance. If not, then not. Suburbanites traveling with the whole family aren't the biggest rail users in Europe, either. But even people with kids don't take them on business trips.
Actually, families are. Families in Europe make great use of the auto trains (AKA Autozug, Motorail, etc.) to move them and their cars to vacation destinations. The distances are such that an overnight can get you most places. For instance, leave Berlin mid afternoon, arrive early next morning in Trieste, and easily drive to your rental on the coast in Croatia. Paris to Nice, same deal. Now, admittedly, the high price of gas in Europe adds to the attractiveness of this service.
The other phenomenon occurring in Europe (which Glaeser points out in Spain -- also in France in Lille and Reims) is that as HSR arrives, cities previously too far away, are now close enough to be bedroom communities -- sort of high speed transit villages.
Skeptics of HSR in the US think that it will replace air from NY to Florida. Heck, as many have pointed out, HSR isn't even practical from NY to DC. Large urban masses with open areas between them are the best targets, as the dedicated lines can be built that allow the 300 KPH speeds. Think of one hour or less flights -- as the French have done Paris-Lyon, Paris - Brussels (where the TGV has wiped out air travel). Detroit could become a bedroom community to Chicago if we did this right. Dallas-Austin, Dallas-OKC/Tulsa, Atlanta-B'ham, J'ville-Orlando-Tampa/St. Pete. All of these make sense, and with dedicated lines and 180KPH speed, could deliver a better experience than driving. Once you do that, then you will get people out of their cars.
"...the pathetic Acela that shaves a whole fifteen minutes off the trip between DC and New York."
Ah, the Acela. Gets you to Penn Station 20 minutes earlier than the regular train, at more than twice the cost. I wonder how much Amtrak (i.e., the taxpayer) shelled out to a "branding consultant" to come up with that wonderful name? I'm in the wrong business.
Anyway, you're spot on about the real impediment to high-speed rail--NIMBYs. They want urban density--except near their "leafy" neighborhoods. They want mass transit--for everyone else to use, so road space can be freed up for them. And let's not forget the NIMBYs close cousins, the BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).
I used to live in South Bend, Indiana and was always hoping that they'd get a high speed train to O'Hare airport. Instead we took little commuter flights that were unreliable and unpleasant, often meaning we'd miss our connecting flight.
DaveinHackensack has a good point - I'd like to see an analysis of whether, from an environmental standpoint, high speed rail is better or worse than small commuter flights.
Just to clarify, I was talking about what would be preferable for business travelers, not what would be best from "an environmental standpoint". Depending on who is defining it, that environmental standpoint can get tendentious, and, in any case, if business travelers don't like it, it's going to be a boondogle we can't afford to subsidize.
Ann: Your experience highlights why it NOT feasible.
You were taking SMALL planes - meaning few people. A train needs lots and lots of people to even come close to breaking even. When you throw in the cost of acquiring right of way, laying track and building bridges, etc,, maintaining track, acquiring rolling stock, maintaining rolling stock, and then add the cost of staff for all that, the cost becomes obscene.
Then you have the timing. How many trains can be run at profit or even break even? The answer is "not many". Would you like to take a 7AM train that got you to the airport at 9AM for a 4PM flight? Yet, running a train every 2 or 3 hours, with 60 people on each train would lose tons of money.
Good points, Ed.
My current experience commuting by train also probably illustrates some of the drawbacks. I live in a suburb 30 miles from my office and take the train in. It works great, but only because I work downtown, only about an 8 block walk from the station. If I had to go into downtown and catch a connection out again to somewhere else, or needed a car once there, the convenience would decrease dramatically.
Now, here is your problem:
They clearly don't know what is actually good for them like Avent and others do, so "voluntary" just doesn't matter.
To be fair, some of us work at places where the public transportation sucks horribly (in my case Mesa, AZ). If we're going to have to drive anyway, we might as well get a nice big house and yard for the same monthly payment as an apartment would be.
Nelson,
If mass transit were what most people desired, it would still be available. And it wouldn't require the huge subsidies flowing to all mass transit systems in the U.S. Contrast that with toll roads, which are gladly paid for by users almost everywhere.
Americans have voted with their wallets and their time consistently for over a century. They have eagerly accepted the commute time trade-off in order to enjoy their detached housing and large suburban lawns.
I'm not sure HSR will ever be practical in the US for a few reasons. One, US cities are pretty spread out when you compare them to other regions like Europe. For instance, the trip from say DC to Chicago is longer than that from the UK to Germany. I would argue that it's cheaper to fly from London to Munich than it is by train, and I imagine that it is similarly cheaper to do the same distance in the states. Which brings up point two; Air travel rates are increasingly competitive, and the cost per mile for traveling today by plane makes a HSR simply seem cost prohibitive.
It's romantic to travel by train, and I always feel like I'm in "From Russia With Love" whenever I've been in a sleeper car, but from a purely rational standpoint it makes no sense.
Oh, and we need to stop subsidizing Amtrak. That isn't helping anyone.
I think you're remembering Daniela Bianchi and forgetting Robert Shaw.
People who are really serious about rail should probably spend less time yelling at Ed Glaeser, and more time trying to herd the obstructionists among their own ranks into some sort of agreement.
It's my sincere hope that Obama will be able to squelch some of the dissenters on his side, but no dice.
I live in Houston, and used to travel to Dallas frequently on Southwest Airlines. They flew out of Hobby every 30 mins on 737s, which seat about 130 people if my memory serves. There are also other airlines flying to Dallas from both Intercontinental and Hobby.
No matter, I doubt that high-speed rail is any where close to being economic. The infrastructure is in place for air travel, while rail would need not only a new corridor, but grade separations as well.
Megan,
Both Dallas and Houston are major international hubs, there are very few people from Houston (IAH) flying to DFW to catch a connection. Actually there are relativelly few flights from IAH to DFW. Most people flying between those cities do it from Dallas Love Fields (DAL) and Houston Hobby (HOU), since those airports are closer to center. Souwthwest has something like 25 flights a day nad Continental has 8. American also about 10 flights from DFW to HOU, and Continental 8 between DAL and IAH.
I agree somewhat about connecting passengers between IAH and DFW. But both Continental and American have deals with corporations which encourage business travelers to connect even when direct flights are available. Still, your point is valid that few passengers will connect when they can easily fly direct.
A few Southwest passengers from Dallas connect in Hobby for some destinations. That's due to the Wright Amendment - or actually the post-Wright Amendment compromise - which restricts the destinations to which Southwest can fly from Love Field.
I traveled out of Houston weekly for almost two years for business-- to points east, west, north and south-- and never once had a connection in Dallas. I did fly to Dallas for business several times. There are plenty of reasons not to like high speed rail in the Houston-Dallas corridor (which could also include Austin-San Antonio, thereby connecting metro areas with about 11 million people). But the argument that most people flying from Houston to Dallas (or vice versa) are just passing through is pretty weak. Also, most of the Hobby-Love planes are not regional jets.
Having lived in Europe I can confirm that rail travel is wonderful to have available to you, and many times least convenient option--if you value your time more than money.
Car is faster. Plain is faster. For long distance, plains are usually cheaper (if you can plan ahead, not for spur of the moment trips unless you get a lucky sale) and that is including Europe's heavy taxation of air and subsidization of rail.
A trip that will take 7-8 hours by car will take 12 hours by normal train, 7-8hours by high speed train, and 1 hour and 15 minutes by air.
oh dear... plain plane.....
Having lived in DC, Houston, and Dallas, not to mention Denver, San Diego, and Santa Cruz -- I generally agree with you. The six years I spent in DC, I would have loved to have had a true high-speed rail between DC and NYC, and even the Acela was better (more pleasant, more productive) than flying the shuttle from Reagan to La Guardia. But it's not going to happen (except perhaps post-apocalypse) in the NE Corridor, and it just doesn't make much sense -- logistically, economically, or environmentally -- in most of the rest of the US.
Air routes are more fungible than rails. They can be (and are) adjusted daily, as those of us who have had a flight canceled out from under us can attest. High-speed rail lines are highly inflexible and require a tremendous upfront cost with no way of adjusting if you guess wrong or if traffic patterns happen to change.
Beyond that, high speed rail (outside of, say, the NE Corridor) requires a significant public/private transit infrastructure at each hub. Airports already have that -- taxis, sedans, shuttles, rental car agencies, and so on. It's one thing to get off a train at Penn Station (NYC) or Union Station (DC); it's another to get off a train in the middle of Dallas, Houston, LA, etc.
But the real key problem is what you said up front: "acquiring new rail rights-of-way seems to be virtually impossible." It's the same problem that makes any freeway/rail/subway expansion in LA obscenely expensive (and thus not cost effective); the same is true for most other metropolitan areas. The cities grew up before the technology existed, and the cost of putting the necessary infrastructure in place almost always outweighs any actual cost benefit of the transit system itself. They become money pits, supported by taxes and other non-transit forms of revenue, and used only by a tiny, tiny fraction of the populous. ..bruce..
Excellent, that is a capsule summary of the biggest impediments.
what is it about progressives and trains? They just love, love, love them--
a variety of relatively spread out western cities have all gone light rail --- Seattle, LA and Phoenix. All have experienced cost over runs in building and all will need to subsidize regular operations. All of them run well below projected use. (and please spare me the "well roads gets subsidized too" argument -- millions use those roads, both directly and indirectly as opposed to thousands who use the train)
At least here in Phoenix, the impact on commuter traffic has been non-measurable. All it has done is raise the downtown's "hip-ness" quotient -- at the cost of billions of dollars.
a variety of relatively spread out western cities have all gone light rail --- Seattle, LA and Phoenix. All have experienced cost over runs in building and all will need to subsidize regular operations. All of them run well below projected use. (and please spare me the "well roads gets subsidized too" argument -- millions use those roads, both directly and indirectly as opposed to thousands who use the train)
Nice cherry-picking. What about Denver and Portland, where costs have come in fairly close to budget and traffic has exceeded expectations?
Close to budget in Denver with FastTracks???? Here's the first line of the wikipedia entry:
"FasTracks is a twelve-year, $6.2 billion (originally $4.7 billion) public transportation expansion plan for the Denver-Aurora and Boulder metropolitan areas in Colorado, USA, developed by the Regional Transportation District."
The coming cost overruns will be much greater than past ones as much more ambitious lines are on the way and half the money has been spent just on right of way studies (e.g. building through Boulder's Green Belt). Right now the only real line is Littleton to downtown, however that route is well used. Denver is an example where this won't really work well other than in a very limited scope, b/c so may people go from outlying suburb to suburb for work, Golden to Littleton, Boulder to Tech Center, Commerce City to Parker....etc. They've already got their best line up and running.
The fact of the matter is that budget overruns haven't been too severe to date. Whether they are so in the future is a different question. But the guy I was replying to was speaking in the past tense, as was I.
I agree that (one of) the best lines is one of two that has already been built -- though I note that ridership on the Lincoln line is also pretty brisk. (I run to work and take the bus because I can actually sit down, unlike the train, which is standing room only during commuting hours.) But I think you grossly underestimate the other lines that could be well-populated. There is no service from Boulder (and the intermediate burbs) or Aurora to Denver, for example.
And yes, a lot of people work in the Tech Center -- but there is already a line going there that has pretty significant ridership. And once you carve out the Tech Center and downtown, does Denver really have any more widespread workforce than any other city? Not any more than Chicago, at least (the other city that I've lived as an adult).
a 30%, $1.5 billion cost over run is described as "not too severe"
Joe,
I hope you're right. Colorado is usually pretty good about budgets as far as states go. I'm not sure they'll reel this one in though.
My experience is Philly - a very built up Center City where regional rail works very well (by SEPTA standards). I took it daily. That and NYC are the comparisons I'm thinking of for Denver as far as compact versus dispersed workforces.
I agree that Denver-Boulder could work well, but buying the property in Boulder, clearing Green Belt hurdles.....etc. That worries me cost-wise. I'm definitely not convinced of Inter-City rail outside of the coasts, but I think Denver could possibly make their regional rail work.
Joe: How's the rider-ship whens it's not rush hour? Do the trains run all day and night? One of the problems with these things is that they are only financially feasible fro a few hours each day and have little traffic the rest of the time.
Pretty sparse, with one exception -- my house is right by the tracks, and it looks to be about 1/3 full. Oh, and weekends it's usually about 1/2 full due (I assume) to people wanting to drink.
But here's the thing: The exception is when there is ANY sporting event. The line is within a short walk of virtually all arenas/stadiums, and it is usually packed for all football/baseball/basketball/hockey games. So you have packed trains during rush hours and sporting events, and OK rideship on weekends. That easily could be sufficient to support the midday times and non-sporting-event evenings where ridership falls off.
you'll still have to rent a car when you get there
Car rentals are readily available at airports. At train stations? Er, not quite.
The other point implicit in this is that if air travel to certain place dips, the airlines fly that route less and it's no biggie. However, if you lay down rail and people stop going those places, even after a decade, it's a HUGE loss in infrastructure investment.
The northeast corridor is the only place where people use trains as a substitute for cars for relatively short distances (sub 4-5 hours), because you don't need a car when you get there--
Not that I've done so recently due to the economy but when I travel to business conferences and meetings I not only rarely get a car, but I actively avoid it since it just costs extra to park it.
Well and good if your total commute route never takes you more than a shuttle ride away from the airport, and that preferably in a big city where the conference site and multiple restaurants are always available within a few blocks of the hotel, but when I travel for business, I routinely put 100-300 miles on a rental vehicle just to get to the final destination(s) and back to the airport again.
Megan, you have no clue about what you are talking about re: Dallas and Houston air travel.
First, the overwhelming majority of the intercity traffic is on Southwest from Hobby to Love. Dallas may be a major hub, but that is out of DFW.
This is for good reason. First, Southwest doesn't even operate on a hub system, so it can't be a hub by definition. Second, due to the Wright Amendment, you can only connect out of Love if you are going somewhere in Texas or a neighboring state -- and given that the major cities in that geographic subset, really the only routes that it would make sense to connect on are Houston to cities in Oklahoma or Arkansas (and this is despite the fact Southwest does have nonstop flights over that route). Any other route, and there are adequate flights from both airports. This is not to mention that Dallas and Houston are -- BY FAR -- the biggest metropolitan areas in that region, so one would think they see the vast majority of traffic anyway.
In any event, my own experience involving the Dallas-Houston flight is that 90% of the passengers get on and off at those two cities.
The numbers disagree with you. There are more non-Southwest flights than Southwest, and I get about 24 flights between Houston and DFW, versus thirtysomething between Houston and Love Field. That's not 90%. And you need 100% to make the trains run at anything like acceptable intervals.
Please read more carefully. I said that my personal experience flying between the cities (probably 100 flights over my lifetime -- I grew up in Dallas and most of my family lived in Houston, so we'd make the trip at least once a quarter) was that 90% of the people got off and on the planes at those cities.
I said the vast majority of air travel between the cities was between Love and Hobby on Southwest. In any event, I count 27 flights on Southwest from Dallas Love. Eyeballing it, it looks closer to 45% -- so I was wrong there. (The Continental service from Intercontinental to Love wasn't there when I last lived in Dallas, otherwise I wouldn't be). But still, 60% or so of the traffic is through Love, which as I explained, simply couldn't support a significant number of connections due to regulatory restrictions.
I suppose Continental could have an appreciable number of people flying out of Love and connecting through Intercontinental, so there is that. But that's what, 8 flights a day?
I'd guess that the majority of the Love Field flyers are going point to point--though you underestimate the enticements of cheap one-stop flights, even when your city has direct service. But I'd guess that the majority of the American and Continental traffic is connections. The point is, you're not going to capture the percentage of that traffic that you'd need to in order to support high speed rail. I too have flown that route, and at least my plane wasn't anything like full.
I too have flown that route, and at least my plane wasn't anything like full.
Must not have flown before 8:30 AM or between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM, then. Unless things have changed drastically, if you missed your flight on SW during those times you had to wait until midmorning or late evening to get on standby because the other flights were completely full.
And even using your hypothetical (SW traffic is point to point, AA and Continental is connecting -- and I agree with this, by the way), there are 27 flights each way between the cities on SW, and 13 or 14 (there looks to be one fewer AA flights out of Houston) on the other two airlines combined. Assuming equal numbers of passengers per plane (and this is probably gives AA and Continental too much credit), that means that roughly 70% of the traffic doesn't go on.
Now, whether that is sufficient to support HSR is a different question. My guess is that the traffic is high enough, but I have some question as to whether the dispersed nature of business travelers in Dallas and Houston makes it impratical. This isn't Chicago or NYC, where 75% plus of the business takes place within a short cab ride of the train station. It's not even Denver where a similar percentage takes place either in downtown or a "secondary" downtown that could be a second stop.
But that is a different issue than the one you raised, which was that HSR between Dallas and Houston was impractical because most of the current air traffic was connecting and not point to point.
I think that's less of an issue than you do, since presumably, they have to get wherever they're going from the airport too. But that still leaves the problem: the regional planes have about 20% of the capacity of an Acela. The Northeast rail route has a capacity of 600-800 people an hour, every hour, during the day. That's ten flights. If 30% of your flyers are making connections, you need 14 flights worth of people every hour. Okay, cut it back to one trip every two hours. You still need almost four flights full of people to switch to the train, which by my count, is more than half of the flights that are currently taking off in that time.
But now any time/convenience edge of the train is sharply eroded, because your whole flight time, including security, arriving early, etc, is probably two hours. If you have to wait an hour to take a train that takes a couple of hours to get there, you'll fly. Further cutting the load factor of the train, meaning schedule cutbacks, etc.
I think that's less of an issue than you do, since presumably, they have to get wherever they're going from the airport too.
I guess that's my point. If you don't have the time/convenience savings of being able to get off the train, hail a cab and be at the place of business within 10 minutes or so (like you do in Chicago or NYC), then the train really does become interchangeable with the plane -- and there are a lot more of the latter, plus you are only strapped into your seat for about a third of the total commute time. (In my mind, going through security and getting to the gate early is offset by the fact that there is stuff to do in the airport.) It's only when you don't have to deal with getting to and from the airport, renting a car and turning it in, etc., that a roughly equivalent train travel time becomes worth it.
By "Houston and DFW", do you mean "IAH and DFW"?
And by "Houston and Love Field", do you mean "HOU and LUV?"
Southwest took off because it served primarily Dallas and Houston, and only served, and still serves, LUV and HOU.
There really is not much of a need for anyone from Houston to stop in Dallas to connect, unless they are flying American Airlines. The same can be said of someone flying from Dallas. You do not need to stop in Houston, unless you are flying Continental.
The number of flights really do not say much. If you live in Fort Worth, and are doing business in the Woodlands, then it makes sense to travel DFW to IAH or vice versa.
If you live in North Dallas and are doing business in Houston's Uptown, then make senses to travel LUV to HOU.
A few years back a couple of powerful legislators in Pennsylvania got the high-speed rail bug and proposed a new line linking Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. That's some tough terrain to try to traverse, there is a reason the Horseshoe Curve at Altoona is considered an engineering breakthrough and tourist attraction.
Then the horse trading started, other legislators would vote for funding if the high-speed rail stopped in their communities.
Even the biggest train enthusiast of the bunch realized there was nothing high speed about a train that departed Philadelphia and stopped at Lancaster, Harrisburg, Lewistown, Huntingdon, Altoona, Johnstown and Greensburg on the way to Pittsburgh. "But you can't pass through my town without stopping, our taxpayers want to use the train, too". Ha!
Wildly expensive, rigidly inflexible, subject to the whims of the political class... yep, high-speed rail is a signature issue for the currently prevailing cast of characters on the national scene.
One of the problems with rail is that it is inflexible. Once a route is in place, that is the route - all investments are locked up. With planes, buses, and automobiles, the routes are not fixed. If you spend $50 M on a plane, that plane can service any route. If Houston-Dallas becomes less traveled in 20 years, the plane can start servicing Dallas-SF. Or if travel is down during a season, the plane can service a more popular route.
For rail to make sense from a long-term perspective, you need to be sure that the route will be well used in the future. So I agree that the west coast or east coast routes make the most sense to develop. Plus, the coasts have more cities on a line, so if one city becomes less popular, travel to the others could make up for it. Unlike Houston-Dallas where there is nothing in between them (besides A&M).
But, but, but...Dagny could change her routes all the time because she worked hard! Thus your point is clearly invalid. Those that cannot change their routes are simply lazy leeches clinging to the back of productive society.
Also, I see some discussion of the number of intercity flights. If you look at the daily flight schedules, the DC(IAD & DCA)-NYC(JFK) route has significantly more flights than Houston-Dallas (I counted awhile ago, can't remember the exact number, and don't feel like recounting). And that doesn't even count LaGuardia or Newark. Nor does it factor in existing train service or buses. Fact is, Houston-Dallas is nowhere near as well traveled as the east coast routes.
A few points – sorry that I can't cite sources.
Two high-speed rail lines in the world break even – Paris-Lyon and Tokyo-Osaka – every other HST in the world loses money.
Every Amtrak ticket costs American taxpayers an average of $50 in subsidies. In fact, I believe that riders on every major mass transit system in the US and Europe receive massive subsidies from non-riders.
As has been mentioned, rail is incredibly inflexible compared to cars and planes to changing traffic, destinations, etc.
Once Americans have children, they want to live in a house with a yard and not in the city. Too many young singles and young marrieds living in Manhattan, Washington and Chicago are influencing transportation policy based on their personal experiences.
Future employment growth will overwhelmingly happen in the suburbs where commuting patterns are a giant web. Is Manhattan going to double the number of jobs it offers in the next twenty years? No.
A high degree of employment mobility, a strength of the American economy, means that trying to live near where you work lasts for 2-3 years, then you're back to commuting unless you want the massive expense of selling a house and buying a new one.
Has anybody compared the number of people per hour that can and will be moved twenty-four hours a day on ten billion dollars worth new rail line vs. ten billion dollars worth of freeway? I'll bet on the freeway.
This sounds like a good argument for discouraging home ownership and construction.
One more point I forgot to mention - per an NPR story yesterday, inter-city trains traveled at speeds of 100-120 MPG in the US in the 1930's
High speed rail? Been there, done that, moved on.
My favorite solution to this problem remains Personal Rapid Transit, perhaps modified a bit for higher speed / long distance cars. "Mass" transit is directed at a 19th century lifestyle and world, not a 21st century one.
Yes, I am also in favour of personal rapid transit.
Argh. Personal rapid transit.
Sounds to me like high speed rail ain't gonna happen. Too bad- I like train travel. But the arguments here seem convincing.
A caveat might be -so long as gas stays below $5 per gallon. Let's say gas goes to $10 per gallon and stays there, as the peak oil guys say it will ( Aviation fuel goes up in tandem). Will high speed rail make sense then?
It might. I presume that if we're really at peak oil, this discussion rapidly becomes moot, because flying and driving will become too expensive for many people.
I cannot envision electric aircraft, but electric cars have already arrived. Can we really say that technological advancement will not solve any peak oil problem in a few decades?
Not sure why $10 per gallon gasoline is a big issue. Miles driven hardly budged when gasoline was $4. If it goes to $10, everyone will just buy hybrids. The extra capital for a hybrid car is not that much compared to the costs of changing lifestyles.
Depends on how much it costs to power those trains. I don't think we have nuclear-powered locomotives, and if oil gets really expensive, the price of coal will go up as some users will be able to switch. If gas goes to $10/gallon, the railroads will be hurting, too.
2,000 passengers per day each way between Houston (IAH+HOU) and Dallas (DFW+DAL). That's the total number of air travelers starting their trip in Houston (Dallas) and ending it in Dallas (Houston).
Assuming you could capture all of them, you would have enough passengers for 7 or 8 trains per day each way -- departures every two hours on average from 6am to 8pm. Part of the problem is that American will still fly DFW-IAH and Continental will still fly IAH-DFW (several times per day each to enable connections at their hubs), and they're not shy about discounting tickets to fill the remaining seats.
Thanks for putting a number on it. In any event, I'm not sure the goal of HSR would be to replace ALL Dallas-Houston air travel -- or even most of it. More likely, it would be to capture about a third of the travelers, mostly those who are traveling between the downtowns.
Right now, you have to drive to Love (20 minutes), check-in (5 minutes), go through security (10 minutes), be at the gate 30 minutes early, fly to Hobby (45 minutes), then take a cab to downtown Houston (20 minutes). That's what, 2:10 under ideal conditions? (This exactly matches my experience, by the way -- a little over two hours door-to-door.)
If high speed rail can get you there in about that, then it provides a pretty good market alternative given the relative comfort and work-friendliness of train travel.
Arthur C. Clarke may get a posthumous prize
for his alternative: Really big hovercraft.
Or maybe the Wing In Ground effect (WIG)
almost-aircraft shown here:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org
/question/aerodynamics/q0130.shtml
The WIG, at least, could use any path
which covered flat territory, on land
or water, where 10 meters of altitude
was sufficient clearance: Farmland,
rivers, abandoned highways.
The "hundreds of miles per hour" part
needs to be more specific; Above ~200
MPH, conventional aircraft might still
be the best option.
Speaking of DAL-HOU... I wonder if adding 2 dedicated "through" lanes to I-45 (with very few exits) would be more or less expensive than building an HSR line. Gut feeling tells it would be much less. Of course one would also have to push some sensible speed limit (85mph should do the trick) through the legislature. If those lanes reached all the way at least to Sam Houston or, even better, to I-610, they'd cut a lot of time from the trip.
I've lived in Dallas for 16 years and Houston for 8, for what that's worth.
Anyway, HSR doesn't have to be viable based on airplane traffic alone. The idea is, there's enough vultur-able plane AND car traffic to make the route viable. I don't have the I-45 numbers, but I'd guess that something like 30% of the HOU-DAL traffic on Southwest plus 10% of the car traffic would be sufficient.
And while it's harder to vulture car traffic, it's not impossible, either. Plenty of folks driving from one to the other are doing it because it's the cheapest way to get there, not because they need a car on the other end. Living in Houston, I could easily get a ride to the train station, and with relatives/friends in Dallas, I don't need a car when I'm there. A train that undercut the flying cost ($200+ if you wait until the last minute) could make some real headway for these types.
(I'll also dissent on those contending that most of the AA and CO traffic is for connections. I know plenty of Houston business travelers, myself included, who would take a crappy CO regional jet to Dallas either a) because they live closer to IAH than HOU, b) are going somewhere closer to DFW than DAL, or c) have status on CO and value those miles/status more.)
Worth noting, also, that Southwest would lobby HARD against Houston-Dallas HSR.
While high-speed rail is fast, planes are faster. The only advantages rail has over planes are:
* No trip out to the airport
* No security checkpoint clusterf***
* Can use cell phones/internet on board
* You arrive in the middle of the city
The only real advantage that stands out to me is the security checkpoint aspect, with the other more marginal. If you live in the suburbs a trip to the rail station is probably no closer than the airport. Arriving in the middle of the city can be nice, but a lot of business is now conducted at office parks in the suburbs. Dulles is a lot more convenient if you have meetings in the NoVa tech corridor than Union Station. And more and more carriers are installing wifi on board.
It seems to me that our energy and money would be better spent trying to improve air travel in this country than rail. We should revisit our security procedures -- which contribute little to real secucurity -- and privatize air traffic and other aspects of air travel to boost efficiency. (Canada has privatized its ATC)
To the extent rail is needed I can only see it as a nice path from the airport to the city, kind of like Beijin's MagLev. That said, the 5A bus from Dulles to L'Enfant Plaza in DC is a bargain at under $4.
I have, in the past, looked into buying train tickets. They've always cost more, and been slower, than flying.
Always.
Given a choice between a six hour car ride, or a six hour train ride that costs more, I'm going to drive my car. That way I leave when I want, listen to my music, and don't have to sit next to / deal with people I don't know, and don't want to know.
I train supporters want to work to nuke all the environmental laws that various left-wing fruitcakes use to block development, I'll be happy to join with them.
But I'm not willing to pay more in order to get less. So long as that's what they're selling, I'm not buying.
Southwest was started just providing triangle service on the Dallas-Houston, Dallas-San Antonio, and Houston-San Antonio lines. It seems to not be a particular stretch to imagine that a high-speed rail service with the same three endpoints could work, if it was comparable in speed to and less of a hassle than air travel.
Regarding the possibility of fueling trains with nuclear power, it can be done and is being done. You just have to electrify the line. The Northeast Corridor trains from Boston to Washington run on electricity, which is why you don't smell any diesel when you sit in the front car. I believe there are plans to electrify certain other Amtrak lines, which all currently run on diesel fuel.
Joe --
The trouble is that at 1/3 of the market (about 700 pax/day/each way), you have enough for 3 or 4 trains in each direction. At that level there isn't enough schedule coverage for business travelers, who comprise a large share of Dallas-Houston air traffic.
Dear Ms. McArdle:
The discussion of "High Speed Rail" is not correct! The correct name for the discussion should be "High Speed Passenger Rail". As a former regional freight railroad employee, yes the extra word will make a difference.
The citizens, taxpayers, and voters of the USA need to understand 3 very important concepts:
{1}All railroad track in the USA is owned by a freight railroads, with small exceptions for Amtrak and the commuter rail operators. In the current legislation, that means taxpayer money will be given to "for-profit" freight railroads to build HSR corridors.
{2}Americans have not used passenger rail travel over the past 50 years because of cheap petro-fuels, AND because many hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars have been invested in air travel (building municipal air ports), and invested in the national highway systems [the interstate, US highway, and state highway systems].
{3}There is no Passenger Railway Travel industry in the USA!! One company, Amtrak, does not make an industry. It makes a monopoly!
As long as these three problems {above} continue to exist, there will never be passenger rail travel as good as Europe and Japan, let alone better. I am not for one minute suggesting we need to nationalize rail travel! The USA needs an Interstate Railway System. Start spending a few hundred million each year on tracks that are owned and maintained by the Government, (just like the highways) and this will create the free market arena necessary for passenger rail travel to take off. Please don’t forget, the days of cheap oil and oil substutes are over! Air travel will be priced beyond even more American's budgets. Driving in the future will be more costly, and the cars will be smaller. An Interstate Railway System will go a long way towards addressing the problems of access (problem#1 above), poorly maintained track (problem#2 above), and will introduce competition (problem#3 above) which will provide the traveling public the services they want, at the price they can afford to pay.
Thanks for the opportunity to be part of this very important debate.
Well, Chicago already has an excellent ground transportation system and is the number one business travel destination in the U.S. There is a constellation of cities around Chicago (Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Madison, St. Louis, etc.) that are an inconvenient drive and an inconvenient flight. Even if you want to drive, you may not like the idea of parking and driving in Chicago for a few days.
I think trains going from Chicago to say, Columbus, might have a problem because of poor public transportation, but certainly not the reverse. Tying Midwestern cities to the provincial capital via rail has obvious advantages in tying the region together. Indianapolis, Madison and Milwaukee, being 1 to 1.5 hours away by rail, could become a fully integrated economic zone. Also, people already drive from hours away to use Ohare as an international hub. When I'm in Europe, I am always dropped off at the local train station by car, and then head to Frankfurt by rail on a two hour train ride. It's easy to imagine a similar dynamic in the Chicago hub.
So: Miami to Atlanta, I see your point. I think the Chicago hub works as well as any zone anywhere.
The Chicago hub you envision, with trains feeding central Chicago and O'Hare airport from midwestern cities already exists in the form of MegaBus and other bus lines. If the challenge is mobility and not finding something for rail to do, then bus services have stepped up. In Chicago MegaBus departs from next to the Amtrak station. Chicago - Cleveland as an example is $40 fare, less than half of Amtrak's $96 fare, though the bus trip is two hours longer. Indianapolis is presently a five hour train ride from Chicago, but four on the bus. Interestingly a four hour trip between those two cities by bus is listed on the Amtrak site as available for sale only to those who also take a train journey by state law (!) The bus and train compete head to head in time and price between Milwaukee and Chicago. As for airport access, at least seven private bus companies offer scheduled service between Chicago O'Hare and many locations in that airports cachment area (including parts of Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan).
A LA-SF high speed line would be horrifically expensive due to the rather large mountain range separating the LA area from the Central Valley. The project that built the original Ridge Route through those mountains (eventually giving way to the I-5) was a mini-epic akin to the Panama Canal. Anyone who has driven this stretch can tell you how unsuitable it would be for passenger rail, never mind anything really fast.
That would the direct route. The next best choice, following the coastline, is already consumed by freight lines and also prevents some rough geography if you want to make new lines for HSR.
The next choice is to cut east and avoid the mountains but this is so far out of the way as to be a questionable choice for a 'direct' route between LA and SF. What could make more sense is a HSR between LA and Las Vegas, another connecting Las Vegas and Reno, then finally another line between Reno and Sacramento continuing on to San Francisco. A bit circuitous if you're just heading up to SF from LA for a weekend event but it would serve vastly more people. For my own business needs, a fast line to Las Vegas has at least as much value as one to SF.