• For eleven years, Mehdi Morshed has championed the high-speed effort in California as the executive director of its Rail Authority. At 72, he is stepping down, noting in his letter to the board that he believed the LA-SF route would become a reality. A toast to Mr. Morshed. (SacBee)
• The proposal to link Scotland and London by HSR has some citizens in a fury. One editorialist calls it a “bullet-nosed glamour project” that would “bleed the rest of the railway of money and care.” (Green Shoot News)
• Connecticut approved $26 million for the environmental and design components of “high-speed” rail in the state, which actually just means restoring double-tracking on a segment of track to allow Amtrak to run more “efficiently.” (NBC CT)
• In Hong Kong, people gathered to protest the HK-Guangzou (China) high-speed project that will destroy a village and raze lots of rural land. The project stands to be one of the most expensive per-kilometer in the world. (Reuters)
• To revisit the California pricing models: it’s possible that the recent recalibration of fares to be roughtly 83% of airfare was done to cater to the private interests involved in the project, a move that doesn’t sit well with taxpayers. (Systemic Failure)
• The state Attorney General’s office in California put its foot down on the termination point for HSR in San Francisco, saying it must be at the Transbay Terminal. Of course, where that terminal will go is a source of great turmoil. (SF Gate)
• Canada will do a feasibility study for an HSR route from Windsor to Quebec City; sounds like a pipe dream to us. (UWO Gazette)
Tags: Hong Kong, Mehdi Morshed
Really? 56.8% of the Canadian population lives on that corridor. To quote Wikipedia: “In its relative importance to the country’s economic and political infrastructure, it has many similarities to the Northeast megalopolis in the United States.” [Article>]
Consider: The constituents of the majority of MPs in federal parliament would benefit from HSR. If that’s not at least political feasability, I don’t know what is.
Oops! Forgot to close that a-tag… you guys should really get a preview feature!
Connecticut approved $26 million for the environmental and design components of “high-speed” rail in the state, which actually just means restoring double-tracking on a segment of track to allow Amtrak to run more “efficiently.”
More proof that creating a regulatory process to advance a policy goal is not the same thing as advancing a policy goal. All these environmental impact review requirements were meant to advance the environment, and yet it’s wound up being so much easier to lay down road than it is to lay down track.
Canada has been studying high-speed rail on the Quebec City-Windsor corridor for decades. Every time someone suggests doing something, the government’s response is to study the project again.
That said, Toronto-Windsor HSR is marginal unless the trains continue on to Detroit. Windsor is not a large city.
So why not continue on to Detroit? It seems to me that HSR links from Canadian cities to US cities is a particularly good use for the service.
“All these environmental impact review requirements were meant to advance the environment, and yet it’s wound up being so much easier to lay down road than it is to lay down track.”
There should have been no environmental impact review on this line. It is actually one of the oldest lines in the country, having been in service since the 1840s. A second track was extant into the 1980s. Yet it’s been held up for years because of this unneeded review forced upon the state by the Bush Administration and somehow continued now.
The I-95/Q Bridge debacle in New Haven has destroyed landmarks with no regard to the environment, yet a second track can’t be built on a bed that used to hold one? The corridor can’t support real HSR because it has grade crossings? An elevated structure was never even considered?
God Bless America.
Why not continue the Toronto-Windsor though Detroit to Chicago.
“To revisit the California pricing models: it’s possible that the recent recalibration of fares to be roughtly 83% of airfare was done to cater to the private interests involved in the project, a move that doesn’t sit well with taxpayers. ”
Ummm…what taxpayers? Are you just talking about the person who wrote the blog? There isn’t any sort of outrage happening in California. In fact, I know lots of taxpayers who are quite pleased by the measure, because they recognize how insanely biased the CHSRA’s cost and ridership forecasts are. Its going to take a miracle to make the thing profitable…and when I say miracle, I mean $20/gallon gas prices and a good number of terrorist attacks on planes.
As it stands, more private investment is better…it means less accountability for taxpayers.
Continuing from Detroit to Chicago would require a brand-new HSR line from Detroit to Chicago (which would be a good thing by itself). Continuing from Windsor to Detroit would only require electrifying the Michigan Central tunnel and getting an FRA mixed traffic waiver.
> As it stands, more private investment is better…it means less accountability for taxpayers.
Like in Taiwan?
Ummm…almost exactly like Taiwan. Because the project was poorly conceived (just like CA), was poorly planned (just like CA), suffered from severely inaccurate cost and ridership forecasts (just like CA), the private company couldn’t turn a profit (just like CA will be), and the government of Taiwan acquired, through bankruptcy-like concession, a $16B train system for almost nothing.
The private company could turn a profit, just not at an 8% interest rate on construction debt.
FYI, there is serious talk of moving all the freight traffic out of the Michigan Central tunnel (eventually).
The State of Michigan, despite being near-bankrupt, is in negotiations to buy the portion of the Detroit-Chicago corridor not owned by Amtrak within Michigan. The portion owned by Amtrak is being sped up as we speak.
The portion from Michigan City, Indiana to Chicago is the subject of a very large number of high-speed rail proposals.
So higher-speed rail from Toronto to Chicago via Detroit is not unimaginable — but as long as the border crossing takes extraordinary amounts of time, it seems unlikely.
Meanwhile, most of the “Quebec City -Windsor corridor” is actually ideally suited for high(er)-speed rail and may well actually get it. Expect Toronto-Ottawa before anything else. GO Transit is already separating passenger traffic from freight traffic (and buying all the passenger lines) in the Toronto area, and planning electrification; VIA already has a good VIA-owned route in and out of Ottawa. The intervening land is sufficiently empty that the ROW acquisition will be less difficult than in many such projects. It just needs money, and not that much of it. Montreal approaches are more than a bit of a mess and will probably take a bit longer to sort out.
Is GO Transit really planning electrification? I thought that its response to community demands for electrification was a firm no.