Warning: file_get_contents(http://services.digg.com/stories?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.infrastructurist.com%2F2010%2F03%2F04%2Fhow-to-make-high-speed-rail-fail-dont-connect-the-lines%2F&appkey=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.infrastructurist.com&type=php) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 503 Service Unavailable in /home/groupsjr/infrastructurist.com/wp-content/plugins/diggz-et/options/digg-api.php on line 61
We want high speed rail to succeed in the U.S. For one, there’s a lot of time, money, and other resources that have already been spent, or will be soon, on HSR. Also, it has enormous potential to galvanize travel, communities, economies of scale, and even the national economy, not to mention create thousands of desperately-needed jobs.
Which is why we get worried when we hear about HSR plans that are already entering deeply-flawed territory. Like the scenario in Florida, where no agreement has been made about connecting the planned Orlando-Tampa HSR line (which, as you’ll recall, got a whopping $1.25 billion of the federal HSR funds) to SunRail, a 61-mile project that’ll be built on existing CSX tracks from DeLand to Poinicana, running through the east side of Orlando.
According to current plans, the HSR line will follow Interstate 4 and have five stations — none of which link to the SunRail. Which could severely hinder the ability of passengers to use the HSR line to get to their destinations, and consequently put a severe damper on the number of people who use both lines. What’s the point of spending millions on separate train lines in the same area if there’s no way to switch between them? The Florida DOT is reportedly worried about slowing down travel time on the HSR line — but if passengers aren’t able to access the train with ease, keeping up a lightning-fast speed won’t matter, since no one will ride the train. Plus we’re willing to bet that the average passenger would be willing to add 5 or 10 minutes of travel time for an opportunity to transfer between lines.
The debate over issues like this is coming to a head this week at the High Speed Rail 2010 conference in Orlando. The rest of the country, and the government, and all HSR supporters are looking to Florida to get this right. The time is now to look at the bigger picture and hammer out details like this, before construction starts in earnest. In the meantime, we’re working on staying positive with happy videos like this one:
March 4th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Only in America.
March 4th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Awesome Picture, I lol’d!
March 4th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
To be fair, the average Floridian does not ride Sun Rail. But they might, if there were HSR connections!
March 4th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
To be fair, the average Floridian does not ride Sun Rail.
Nobody rides Sunrail, it’s still in the planning stages.
March 4th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Yes indeed - the quickest way to kill any chance of an integrated regional/higher speed/high speed rail system in the US is t assure that there are no common stops or stations. The oil/paving/auto lobbies have figured THAT out of course, and will continue to wreck havoc on any plans for improved integrated rail transport in the US.
March 4th, 2010 at 11:19 pm
[...] How to Make High Speed Rail Fail: Don’t Connect the Lines. Apparently, no one’s taking the lead in Florida to ensure the high-speed rail line (Tampa to [...]
March 5th, 2010 at 5:01 am
The European experience is exactly the opposite: they focus on the connecting high speed rail lines to regular rail lines. Switzerland has long run TGV trains to their main cities (e.g. Zurich) and as France has expanded its HSR lines, these trains have become ever more attractive. Now the TGV from Zurich to Paris via Basel and Strasbourg is almost at capacity. Of course Switzerland has long experience coordinating its entire public transport system, so maybe this is no surprise. I think this approach: creating real networks is the key to Switzerland’s public transport success and is something everyone could learn from … it ain’t the meat it’s the motion.
I like my high speed rail videos better: http://www.youtube.com/andrewbnash#p/u/12/YNIp_APbcLY.
March 5th, 2010 at 11:40 am
A while ago, Jebediah (At least I think it was him) was talking about how a lot of critics were bashing HSR because there isn’t local rail or transit systems to take people the places they need to go once they get to their town. He was calling people out, saying that they will still get to where they need to go just the same as they do with airports.
This, of course, was completely misguided. Airports have an abundance of land to store rental cars, and they have easy access freeways and everything. If you get dumped into the middle of Manhattan at Penn Station, where are the rental cars at? You can’t find them because they don’t exist. It is too expensive to store rental cars in the middle of downtown urban areas.
Local and regional transit systems are integral to the success of high speed rail. Without them, the “convenience” advantage of getting dropped off in the middle of downtown becomes a huge inconvenience.
March 5th, 2010 at 11:51 am
Good god what a cheesy video
March 5th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Connectivity is everything for any kind of transit. In Europe and Asia many of the airports also have HSR stations. HSR works very well and is easy to use almost every where it is operating. Since it came after the cities and airports were built it can not always serve everything it should. But it does connect with conventional rail, city bus and tram systems so there is little need for a car. When I travel to Asia or Europe I seldom drive since public transit is so good there is no need to drive. Seldom is there even a need for a taxi.
As for no car rental agencies in Manhattan, they are not needed in Manhattan since using public transit it is faster and easier than driving. If you do need a car you stop at the station next to Manhattan where car rental service will be available.
I am not familiar with Orlando with only flying in and renting a car for travel out of the area. But if the HSR does not have a common station with Sun Rail or with the airports both services are domed to failure.
March 6th, 2010 at 9:02 am
No transportation system should be planned or designed in a bubble. We live in an interconnected world. Designing uni-modally rather than multi-modally would be colossally stupid.
High Speed Rail has incredible potential to change the way people think about travel, and particularly train travel. High speed rail can cover its operating costs and be profitable, capital costs should be subsidized by local/state/national gov’t just like highways. Make highways cover their operating costs and you’d have to pay a lot more to use your highway. Since electric high-speed railroads are more environmentally friendly, safer, and faster than highways, they should get preferred funding, and people should pay more for driving on highways.
Visit Japan, ride the highest speed Super Express Shinkansen, experience what heaven on rails is like. Visit Korea, ride the KTX. Visit France, ride the TGV. Visit China, visit Spain, visit (insert Non-N. Amer. Country) and ride their (insert high-speed rail service name).
There is no reason that America/Florida cannot connect different lines with different levels of service, cities and governments and private companies need to realize that if they work together and link everything together, everyone benefits. If they try to build their own little train set for their own section of their state (etc.), they will fail and people will get angry and this will be for naught.
March 6th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
The FHSR doesn’t connect to any public transit heavy downtowns except Tampa anyways. Lakeland has “transportation of last resort for those who aren’t allowed to have licenses” at 1 hour and no evening service buses, thats not a public transit town. OCCC and Orlando airport are suburban areas, and Orlando in general due to urban sprawl has a tiny CBD filled with unwalkable surface parking and even less high rise residential areas.
FHSR is ment to compete with a car, not extend mass transit. If the car is faster than FHSR because of all the extra stops then FHSR will be a flop. Extending FHSR after Orlando airport is more practical or making a branch from before or after OCCC, once the project has ridership on its mainline.
March 7th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
This is a high speed cash cow (aka ScamRail….ScumRail) for the elected Scumbags and their campaign contributors. FLORIDA HIGH SPEED RAIL HAS BEEN REPEALED BY FLORIDIANS IN THE PAST AND WE WILL DERAIL THIS “STUFF” AGAIN.
FLORIDIANS VOTED NO HIGH SPEED RAIL……WE DO NOT WANT IT AND AMERICA CANNOT AFFORD IT! WHAT PART OF NO DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? You were elected to serve the people. Being elected does not make you GOD! The arrogance of these elected will be coming to an end in November.
Only RINOs like John Mica and Charlie Crist (Obama’s guy) could support wasting billions on this totally flawed and overpriced POS. As a conservative TEA Partier…….I WILL NOT VOTE FOR RINOs! Only a RINO/Liberal like Crist and Mica could support high speed rail.
2010 Re-Elect No One…….DeRail the RINO Club of America!
March 8th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Sally, the majority of Floridians voted against it (myself included) because there were no planned stops near where we live or where we want to go.
Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes on the network. This is the principle behind the explosive growth of the internet in the last 15 years, and is easily transferable to the railway system.
For example, if the rail only has two stops, say, Tampa and Orlando, it has a value of 2^2=4. Add a third stop in Daytona and the value becomes 9 (3^2). Add another seven stops and its value leaps to 100 (10^2).
The high speed rail CAN be a cost savings to Floridians, but only if it is built LARGER, not smaller. I live in Naples, and this thing is nowhere near where I go on a daily basis. I occasionally travel to Tampa to visit friends. If I could pack a bag and jump on a train to visit them, I probably would do it more often, at a much lower cost to me, to the environment, and to the traffic/wear-and-tear on I75 than if I was to drive my own vehicle.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
:sigh: all this hype and the two great american cities we’re discussing is Tampa and Orlando. Meanwhile the the midwest is dying, the northeast is strangling itself in congestion costs, and as for california….oy.
March 27th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Doesn’t it seem like a boner of an idea to establish the debut U.S. HSR in a state with so many elderly riders?
Their flexible schedules will mean more ridership, in that the convenience and nostalgia or rail will be high and the inconvenience of longer travel time than an airline will be low.
However, their age also means considerably longer boarding/de-boarding times at stops, and likely more customer service required — as they will be less prone to booking travel via phone/internet, and will be less capable of transporting and storing their luggage alone.
March 30th, 2010 at 8:10 am
Seems like I read somewhere during the Florida Overland Express days that if Disney puts all its guests arriving by air on the on HSR instead of buses to the resort, that the revenue from them would pay operating/maintenance costs. Any revenue from business above that going to/from Tampa could be applied towards the construction of the next segment going towards Miami.
Is this still true? I know operating costs for true HSR are low.
March 30th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
The way to kill HSR in America is by building it on a very auto-centric part of the country, where it has no chances of survival. As Pete mentioned before me, these are two cities that do *not* have well-populated CBDs -let alone their sprawling metropolitan areas that do not encourage public transit use- hence there will be no demand for HSR.
I agree that interconnecitivty with other transportation modes is key (airports, ports, rapid transit systems, etc), but the same factors that keep most people away from public transit in central Florida, will also keep people away from HSR: Orlando and Tampa-St Pete are sprawling metropolitan areas that are nothing more than a bunch of suburban subdivisions, strip malls, business parks, and theme parks quilted together by anti-pedestrian roads. They’re not exactly New York, or even San Francisco/Chicago/Philadelphia/Washington DC, or even Los Angeles which has gradually gotten denser over the years.
HSR thrives when the metro areas served are densely populated, where a large segment of the population already uses public transit, and most importantly, where city centers are densely populated and have dense business activity…not tiny CBDs with lots of space dedicated to parking lots. Which is why I was surprised that Tampa-Orlando HSR was given priority over the Midwest (with a Chicago hub) and even the Northeast (Acela isn’t a real HSR, since it doesn’t run on HSR tracks, hence travel times are very slow).
As Bill mentioned before me, it’s extremely sad that we’re discussing HSR for Tampa-Orlando, and not HSR for the Northeast, which would benefit most from HSR. HSR thrives in places like the Northeast corridor (a string of heavily and densely populated, transit-orented cities, with lots of business traffic between them, and thriving dense CBDs). If we’re trying to sell the HSR to the American public, it makes MOST sense to build it in the *Northeast* (Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Baltimore-Washington) where it will thrive and where it will be appreciated by the travelers. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to build a HSR between Chicago and Milwaukee (not St Louis).
April 2nd, 2010 at 1:46 am
Erick you are so right. A strait shot D.C./Baltimore/Philly/NYC/Boston line at 160mph or more (2x the average speed on i95) would have the highest ridership and guarantee to be the most successful.All of these cities are dense and have mass transit oriented populations. Florida is sprawling and auto centric. Florida should get HSR after the system is proven in the NE.
April 22nd, 2010 at 2:02 am
To Pete, Eric and Nick. I for one couldn’t agree with you all more than when it comes to the lack of connectivity planning between the recently approved Florida HSR and Sun rail projects. Being a former resident of Brooklyn, New York, I was shocked and disappointed at the apparent lack of development in mass transit in the Tampa Bay area when I first arrived back in the fall of 1983. The most I’ve seen during the last 26+ years were more road widening, highway construction, toll road installation and incremental changes in transit bus fleets. In fact, more than a decade ago, the Hillsborough County Commission had an opportunity to vote on funding for a proposed light rail system, but in the end decided to reject it. As a result, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina became the beneficiary of both Tampa and Hillsborough County’s short-sidedness.
It was also true that Florida residents (me included) voted on a state constitutional amendment to provide funding for the proposed Florida Overland Express (FOX) back in November of 2000. However, what is not widely known nor understood was that then Governor Jeb Bush was never in favor of the HSR project and had expressed his intentions to have it reversed when it came up for a vote 4 years later. In 2002, Bush nixed funding for HSR construction and in 2004, successfully managed to convince those same voters (yours truly not being one of them) to reject the Florida Overland Express through a referendum by utilizing false and misleading information. What I didn’t know at the time was that Governor Jeb Bush had a friend who was part of the Sun rail project and didn’t see the logic of having two competing rail lines being built within the sunshine state. After being away from the Tri-State area for so long, I know pine for the days when I had almost unlimited access to several mass transit options. But as Nick said in his earlier post, I too felt that the Northeast Corridor should have been considered in the top 3, with California and the Midwest in second and third places, respectively. But only time will tell if the Obama administration did the right thing in its decision making.
June 29th, 2010 at 4:11 am
High speed rail will never take off here in the USA. For one thing we cannot even build lines without level crossings, nor do the people here have sufficient discipline to enter/leave trains on two minutes stops. When Americans come to visit me in Europe, they drive you crazy, because they do not move fast enough when entering and exiting trains!
But that aside, people here do not realize that high speed rail travel is relatively expensive in Europe and ad hoc travel prices reach almost standard air fares. Not everyone travels on General Season tickets as they exist in Germany and Switzerland. And if you travel with a four people family, you will spend a considerable amount of money. I am all for train travel, but the information on which people here want to introduce it, is often blatantly false. That will continue to keep people on the road. Unless you start taxing (road tax) cars on the size of the engine (the larger the engine the higher the road tax paid - e.g. say $2500p.a. for a 4 liter engined car - e.g. Jeep Cherokee or most SUV’s) and put taxes for fuel up to European levels, you will never ever convince people here to use railways. Railswasy here are for “poor people and blacks” as a black friend of mine expressed it!
Moreover, the measly $8 billion that has been suggested for high speed rail lines here is a joke. As is the idea of running high speed lines along the medians of the interstate systems. Hoever, what could work would be a relatively low cost system that runs at speeds up to 200 km/hr/ 125 mph. But first you have to remove the level crossings on the lines you intend to use and improve the track. The you could use 3 or 4 car FLIRT trains from Stadler Rail, the long distance version or the urban rail cars. They are well prices at $ 9-10 million a piece.