Posted on Friday November 20th by Alex Lessard-Pilon | 587
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- Say it ain’t so! A conference at Berkeley reflected growing concern about the practicality of California’s HSR projects. Projected ridership seems unrealistic, and unless it reaches a certain level, emissions won’t be lower than those from air travel. (Berkeley)
- GE inked a deal with China’s Rail Ministry that will allow it to pursue high-speed projects in the US with the help of a Chinese manufacturer (GE can’t build HS locomotives, yet). They’ll work with another Chinese manufacturer to build their most efficient diesel train. (Earth2Tech)
- China’s airlines are up the creek, and they know it. The country’s largest carrier is adding shuttle services, and passengers will only need to check in half an hour before their flight. How long do you have to check in before a train ride? (Bloomberg)
- The biggest obstacle to California HSR is systematic: instead of convening opposed parties on issues like land-use, the government both designs and plans and forces opponents to file lawsuits in order to have their voices heard. (CAHSR)
- A blog about cars argues (quite aggressively) that the US needs HSR. Looking at efficiency, safety, comfort, noise pollution, community friendliness, and travel times, there’s just no question: rail beats every other option. (Jalopnik - pic via)
- The 19 hour train ride from Denver to Chicago is longer than the drive. The New York-Chicago route averages 34 mph. The Acela can reach 130 mph, but only over 18 miles of its track. What a mess. (Greenopolis)
- A blogger explores the various possibilities of joint US-Canadian HSR lines. Four possibilities exist, but the obstacles are sizable: Canada isn’t as motivated as the US, there are many rail owners who would have to cooperate, and immigration/customs is a whole other issue. (Trains4America)
November 20th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Apparently the conference was much more positive than the report would indicate. Controversy gets attention, I guess?
See this criticism.
November 20th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
I attended the conference and it was very positive, here’s my review:
http://andynashnetwork.blogspot.com/2009/10/high-speed-rail-challenges-and.html
November 20th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I have little faith in CAHSRA. The northern CA routing stinks. The politicos in charge have brought us such other great projects as BART to SFO/Milbrae, VTA LTR, BART to Warm Springs/SJs.
If done right, this project seemingly has great potential. If done as currently planned, it will become a poster child for all those opposed to HSR investment in this country.
November 21st, 2009 at 2:45 am
On China rail —
I don’t remember EVER checking in, in “small” regional hubs, or Beijing, Shanghai, or Nanjing. Basically, if you didn’t already have a ticket, you bought it at the entrance, and as fast as you could make it through the crowds you could be in your seat (assuming the train had reached the platform.)
Only Smithsonian security checks were less obtrusive and time consuming than China rail security. Actually, the momentum of people in China made the lines much faster than the casual security screening at the Smithsonian. However, the same half-hearted perfunctory screening was the norm. You mull through chinese rail screening alongside rural workers bringing giant bags home the size of four human beings, three times as fast as Americans move.. no one was paying attention to the x-ray machine or metal detectors.
November 21st, 2009 at 6:49 am
Andy Nash’s observations on the symposium have been discredited elsewhere. He is acting like a shill for the CHSRA. the conference was hardly positive.
November 21st, 2009 at 2:17 pm
@Carrick,
The less known part of China’s high-speed rail craze is that China is building hundreds of new train station to handle the high-speed rail passengers (the number I read was 560+). Some of these new train stations in big cities are going to be more like an airport, without the airport security check and screening. Some of these new train stations have already been completed, the best known ones are Beijing South Railway Station, Shanghai South Railway Station.
The main motivation for building separate and new train stations is to attract high-end passengers (e.g., business travelers) to compete with airlines. The experience you described above in Chinese train stations is very typical of today’s train stations. It’s a known secret that the Ministry of Railway wants to raise the train ticket price; but they could not do this easily for today’s low-speed train due to the public utility nature of the Chinese rail passenger service. They’re therefor building a separate high-speed rail network and separate train stations. The new network in China is called Passenger Dedicated Lines (PDL). Hopefully by providing faster and better service, they can raise the train ticket price.
In a few years, you will have a quite different rail travel experience in China from the one you described above. We’ll see how effectively they can compete with airlines for high-speed passengers. But the Chinese airlines are feeling the pressure now, that’s for sure.
November 21st, 2009 at 10:25 pm
“The New York-Chicago route averages 34 mph.”
The horrifying thing about this is that it’s largely due to:
(1) horrible slowdowns within the city limits of Chicago, and horrible rail congestion there.
(2) horrible slowdowns within the city limits of New York City due to lack of money for maintenance.
(3) horrible slowdowns and congestion at a couple of other spots in upstate NY due to bad behacior by CSX.
(4) Padding time at Albany and Cleveland to account for congestion-related problems elsewhere. (These are the switchover points between rail companies.)
The train cruises at 80 mph most of the distance. Fix the bottlenecks. Fixing the bottlenecks is *cheap* — hundreds of millions for the lot, huge payback.
November 22nd, 2009 at 12:19 am
Greg, I recently took a slow train out of Shanghai South, and I can confirm Carrick’s experience. There’s a security check, but it consists of putting your luggage through a conveyor belt, waiting in a line of about 4 people, showing your ticket, and getting your luggage back. The entire procedure takes maybe 2 minutes.
November 22nd, 2009 at 1:37 am
And Nathanael, the Lake Shore Limited most certainly doesn’t cruise at 80 mph. Even on straight track in Upstate New York, it averages a little over 60 mph. And that excludes the worst bottleneck, the Amtrak-owned Albany-Schenectady segment.
November 22nd, 2009 at 2:06 am
“immigration/customs is a whole other issue.”
Might it (gasp!) be time to finally make US/Canadian borders as transparent as Eurozone borders? I know the American xenophobes and the annexation-fearing Canadians may throw a fit, but if the US and Canada combined forces to make sure the international boundaries are well-policed, then it would be no problem allowing the American-Canadian itself border to become effectively police-less.
Though allowing Detroit-Windsor, Sault Ste. Marie, Seattle-Vancouver, Rochester-Buffalo-Niagara Falls-Hamilton-Toronto, and all those little towns in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine develop organically in a bi-country manner must for some reason be a bad idea, not to mention the possibilities in economic development between Boston-Montreal, New York-Montreal, New York-Toronto, or Detroit-Toronto.
November 22nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
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