Posted on Friday May 29th by The Infrastructurist | 505
- The global rail equipment market will be worth $150 billion by 2015, and European companies like Seimens are salivating. But, of course, there’s no reason to think about that here. Cuz Amewica don’t know how make twains :( (WSJ)
- Getting trains to run reliably is more important than getting them to run fast, says Amtrak’s CEO. “The key to going fast is to not go slow,” adds the company chairman in a line worthy of Yogi Berra. (Railway Gazette)
- All about slowness these days, Amtrak’s CEO also says cool your heels with all those crazy expectations that we’ll get speedy trains anytime soon. Think looooooong term. Like when your grandkids have jetpacks. (Richmond Times Dispatch)
- European rail companies have been competing against airlines for quite a while. Starting in December, they will be competing against each other as rail deregulation hits the EU. “Lower prices [and] faster trains,” will be the result, predicts Time. Hmm. Sounds nice. (Time)
- Washington state wants ten percent of that $8 billion in sweet, sweet HSR loot to double the number of daily Seattle-to-Portland trains and boost the speed to 110 mph. (Seattle Weekly)
- The Central Valley portion of California’s fancy fast train may be built after the SF-to-San Jose and LA-to-Disneyland segments. (Valley Voice)
- Perhaps picking up on the Infrastructurist’s Dukakis interview (?), the Boston Globe cites Duke’s urgent message that it’s time for New England governors to get together to make it happen up north. (Globe)
- Lord Adonis, the awesomely-named UK transport minister, is serious about establishing true high speed service between Britain’s largest cities. At 200 mph, London to Birmingham would take all of 40 minutes. (Transport Politic)
- In Wisconsin, students hit the road to advocate high speed rail. They are demanding “access to advanced public transit,” says one. Crazy kids these days. (Wisc Radio Network)
May 29th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Can we please get some real leadership at Amtrak. I’m really tired of hearing Amtrak leaders tamp down expectations of high speed rail. There has never been a better time to improve rail service in this country and the person in charge of the passenger rail operation needs to be someone who is smart enough to take advantage of that momentum.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
The Amtrak CEO is pretty much right. Both speed and availability can be increased on existing lines by having more frequent trains of fewer cars (so, say, a two-car train arrives every twelve minutes rather than a ten-car train every hour) and having more non-stop trips, which waste less time for passengers who all want to go to the same destination and less fuel stopping for passengers in between. This of course requires buying more engines (or buying self-powered cars) and hiring more engineers, and likely renovating some stations so that they have off-line platforms that don’t interfere with through traffic, none of which is cheap. But the increased speed and availability that results from these improvements could well make rail travel much more attractive to prospective users than it is now, and thus boost ticket sales as well as the public’s willingness to invest public dollars in the system.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
The fact that improvements can be made in existing rail lines doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider HSR at all. It just means that when deciding where to invest the next dollar of transit money, one has to look at the efficiency improvement resulting from a dollar invested in HSR versus a dollar invested in conventional rail. In other words, HSR has to justify itself.
It would be nice to compile some data on how many car/airplane miles a marginal dollar investment in HSR versus conventional rail replaces.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Oh, also, having more frequent trains means having to close railroad crossings more frequently, likely requiring a change to a grade-separated right-of-way to avoid pissing off drivers. Running trains on or along existing freeways is one way to do this “on the cheap”.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I know there are mixed opinions about this, but personally I think running rail on highway ROWs makes a huge amount of sense.
-Jebediah
May 29th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
We haven’t made serious investments in passenger rail for a long time. Its going to take steady funding over a number of years before we see the high speed rail system we both want and deserve. There is a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed, a lot of issues that need to be addressed. Making the system more reliable will go a long way to making it possible to go fast.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
The Amtrak guy is right - he’s the one who’s been trying to improve the railroad we ALREADY HAVE, and nobody would give him a dime. Now there’s $8B of free money flying around, and everyone wants to spend it on (mostly) pie in the sky HSR.
His point, which is a good one, is that that money, and more, needs to be spent making the system we already have work, before we sink it into a morass of pork barrel dead end HSR pits. I’m not against HSR, but this money will disappear overnight and nobody will have anything to show for it except some “consulting” contracts that went to various Congressman’s brothers-in-law.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Amtrak did get a nice “plus up” of its own in the regular budget, but they have needed serious investment for years.
In addition to the infusion of cash, there are some important policy issues to be addressed. The legislation that forms Amtrak stipulates that only Amtrak can operate intercity rail. Should we continue to shut out the private sector from rail operations? Should the government operate the infrastructure and the private companies operate the trains? Currently, we do the opposite in most of the country. Should rail financing use the same formula for state and federal funding as is done with other public transit projects? Do the “buy American” rules apply when we produce virtually none of our own passenger rail equipment?
I am not advocating these positions, simply offering them as fundamental issues that need to be reviewed as we look at modernizing our approach to passenger rail.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
I would be extremely surprised if any of the highly-admired HSR systems in other countries (Japan, Germany, Spain) were privately owned or operated. As far as I know, they are heavily subsidized and are even then very expensive.
If Germany needs a $2-3B/yr subsidy to run their system, then the US should be willing to commit to $10B/yr in operating subsidy alone once everything is built….
That is probably where the wheels will come off the train…pun intended.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Ask and ye shall receive:
Courtesy of today’s NYT, about Ray LaHood’s tour through Europe looking at HSR:
“Such benefits, however, come with a huge price tag. By 2020, Spain plans to spend close to 100 billion euros on infrastructure and billions more on trains. That figure could give pause to places like California, a potential high-speed corridor whose area and population are about four-fifths the size of Spain’s.
“High-speed rail is good for society and it’s good for the environment, but it’s not a profitable business,” said Mr. Barrón of the International Union of Railways. He reckons that only two routes in the world — between Tokyo and Osaka, and between Paris and Lyon, France — have broken even.”
That’s two ROUTES! Not even systems. Does anyone in DC have the stomach to propose eternal billions to operate these systems? I’m sure not. And Spain is spending close to $200B (Euro exchange rate plus the un-quantified rolling stock costs) over the next 11 years… Are we in a position to do that?
Look, like I said, I’m a big fan of HSR, but we have so much crawling, and walking, to do before we run.
May 31st, 2009 at 12:54 am
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