Congressman: 110 mph high-speed rail really isn't that fast

Daily Herald ^ | 04/21/10 | Marni Pyke

[KevinDavis]

Critics rained turkeys and dogs on the Midwest high speed rail parade at a congressional hearing Tuesday.

The region received about $2.6 billion out of $8 billion in economic stimulus funding to create fast train corridors, including a Chicago to St. Louis route that would travel at speeds of up to 110 mph.

U.S. Rep. John Mica of Florida mocked the Chicago plan, saying true high-speed rail in Europe and Asia is 220 mph.

[ctdonath2]

Self-driving cars?

GM is working on it.

[ctdonath2]

He did. Our Interstate system is better suited for high/unlimited-speed driving than the Autobahn (I’ve driven there - it’s smaller & tighter than we’re used to, yet cruising speed is an easy 100MPH).

[ArrogantBustard]

very very low-tech methods can be used to break or bend a little piece of rail, timed (even manually!) to blow right before the train hits,

Medium tech methods can be used to manually blow the track from anywhere in the world. It could be done days or even weeks after the "infernal device" is emplaced.

[ctdonath2]

100MPH for a train is paltry when you average in load/unload/stopover times and travel to/from stations. 100MPH fast becomes 50 when a half-hour of standard delays gets tacked onto a half-hour trip - and few ever mention the overhead of getting in a car/taxi/bus just to get to the "high speed rail" station, then again to travel to the destination.

American sub/urban sprawl is built for door-to-door automotive transport, not like European towns which have a train station within easy walking distance of anywhere in any town/city. There, you can have a nice stroll to the station; here (Atlanta outlying areas), just walking to the sub shop for lunch will get you run over.

This push for "high speed rail/ferry/whatever" always entails some of...

[GovernmentShrinker]

Very true. I really hope we don’t invest huge amounts of money in high-speed rail systems. If we do, the fares will be heavily subsidized and they’ll end up carrying a lot of light cargo like mail and FedEx. The whole system could be disrupted remotely all at once, by blowing track in multiple locations simultaneously, causing colossal economic damage as well as loss of life.

[AFreeBird]

Actually from a design, construction and maintanence standpoint, our interstate highway system is nowhere near up to Autobaun specs.

[ctdonath2]

OK, I'll grant that maintenance is addressed as a serious issue there and a tolerable nuisance here. My comment assumed the road was in maintained condition suitable for >100MPH driving: our freeways are much wider with broader curves and longer straight-line hauls, able to handle higher speeds easier (to the degree of being suitable for emergency landing strips, demanding a straight mile out of every 5) than the tighter tolerances of the Autobahn. Such high speeds does, however, demand greater maintenance cost and design therefor: where we just patch a crack/hole with some rammed-in asphalt, they'll take out the entire section of road and rebuild it twice as thick as we do to ensure that section is perfect as long as humanly possible.

[N. Theknow]

110mph is called a “local” train in most parts of the developed world.

My Grandfather engineered steam locomotives at 110 MPH between Richmond, VA, and Jacksonville, FL in the 1930's.

[Mr. Lucky]

Exactamundo. When there was actual market demand for high speed passenger rail service, privately owned US railroads were the fastest in the world.

[Godzilla]

Forget about going to Mars, we’re going to build trains that go 100mph

[KevinDavis]

Which no one will ride..