Obama’s $11 Billion High Speed Rail to Nowhere

Fiscal Times ^ | 08/08/2014 | By Brianna Ehley

[woodbutcher1963]

“I really think the only possible solution that could be feasible would be to set up a monorail system that runs along interstate highways, assuming if there is a way to handle engineering over the overpasses.”

I agree this would be the only way to make it work because the government already owns the right of way. However, this still may not work in places like eastern CT and around NYC. The I95 corridor through towns like Greenwich, CT do not have the space in the median for a train. IF they had to buy the houses just through Greenwich it would probably be about a $100 million/mile.

I actually think that the one place high speed rail MIGHT work is from LA to Vegas. I think that the casinos in Vegas would probably subsidize the cost to get it built. Also, it is desert for 200 miles in between. Once you got outside the LA basin the cost to buy the right of way would be minimal. In this location you could build a magnetic levitation track that could be straight as an arrow for 100 miles or more. You could probably reach speeds in excess of 250 miles/hour.

[Dr. Sivana]

The Berlin-Hamburg Railway shares tracks with freight and commuter trains, and yet the fastest trains on there get up to an average speed of 118 mph.

Well, either they have a LOT more tracks running in parallel, or they have some REALLY fast freight trains.

Another problem for fast rail in the U.S. is that our cities are FAR less centralized than in Europe. Looking at the map of Berlin to Hamburg, there just isn't a whole lot in between. The distance between NYC and DC is similar, but passengers would get on and off at Newark, Philly, Baltimore, and Wilmington. Those starts and stops really interfere with getting to full speed.

[Olog-hai]

Back when the Metroliner was fairly new, they had one train a day each way that would make no stops; the average speed (on tracks that had welded rail but still had wooden ties) was about 90 mph. They tried something similar with the Acela, i.e. just one stop in Philadelphia, and got a similar average speed. Nobody rode the trains in both cases.

The Acela is close to twice as heavy as other tilting trains, mostly due to the Federal Railroad Administration instituting new rules relating to “crashworthiness” in the late 1990s. The trains were supposed to be allowed 9 inches of “cant deficiency” (unbalance) around curves; the FRA restricted these trains to 4½ inches IIRC. (When Sweden’s X2000 train was tested, it ran at 9 inches, and was tested at 11 inches at Pueblo, Colorado.)

They’ve been steadily getting rid of freight on most of the “Northeast Corridor” anyhow. Between the New York City area and Washington DC, there is still the former Baltimore & Ohio route, mostly freight with a few commuter services on it.

German freight trains are generally faster than US ones, but they are also lighter in terms of gross load weight; the tracks would not handle the loads that US freights can. Still and all, the speed of US freight trains has been slowed down thanks to federal regulations; the last attempt at fast freight, by Union Pacific (for 90-mph service) was a victim of those regulations.