At 100mph you still only get there in 2.5 to 3hrs. HSR can get you there in under 2.
I see your point regarding the potential for driverless cars, but its all hypothetical and still pretty far out. HSR is a present and fairly reasonable solution. Why wait for a future technology when the current technology is already a great solution?
The most important thing with getting riders on the train is reliability. People are okay with riding a train for 4, 5, 6 hours if they know that it will get them to their destinations on time. That's why their was such a big boost in ridership after the California, MO siding was built, it helped boost on-time performance from 70% to 90%. The currently under-construction Osage River Bridge will improve the rating further.
I think the best and most economical investment for Missouri tax-payers would be to double-track the Missouri River Runner route from Jeff City to Kansas City. This would help get on-time performance up toward 100% consistently. Then MO could start thinking about upgrading to the concrete ties with 110-mph capability that Illinois is currently installing. Combine full double-tracking between St. Louis and KC, 110-mph rails, and an express train that only stops in Jeff City, and you'll be down around 3.5-4 hours and 100% on-time at a fraction of the cost of a new HSR corridor.
Higher speed in Missouri would be huge. I prefer the train when I travel to Chicago; but the train to KC takes almost twice as long as driving, over a shorter distance, so it's pretty hard to justify.
realclear wrote:These urban dwellers would presumably be the target market for high speed rail but, even for them, if the costs are comparable and a car can take you door to door across the state at almost 100 mph, which mode of travel would you prefer?
It will be interesting to see what is to become of driverless car tech, but I really can't see anything like this for at least many decades, if ever. Such vehicles would be immensely expensive.
wabash wrote:The most important thing with getting riders on the train is reliability. People are okay with riding a train for 4, 5, 6 hours if they know that it will get them to their destinations on time. That's why their was such a big boost in ridership after the California, MO siding was built, it helped boost on-time performance from 70% to 90%. The currently under-construction Osage River Bridge will improve the rating further....
Combine full double-tracking between St. Louis and KC, 110-mph rails, and an express train that only stops in Jeff City, and you'll be down around 3.5-4 hours and 100% on-time at a fraction of the cost of a new HSR corridor.
I agree improving the current MRR for higher-speed is the way to go (at least w/o the Feds stepping up in a big way). If we have a transportation tax like the one that proposes about $8 billion over 10 years, if we used just 10-15% of that for rail investment, that would be huge. I'd be happy with 12.5% for passenger rail, 12.5% for public transportation and the other 3/4 for everything else.
markinlondon wrote:Interesting talk on Bloomberg Radio about Hyperloop being the future of high speed travel. Could high speed rail be a thing if the past soon?
Wasn't that the same mentality that sent the railyards to Chicago instead of St. Louis?
markinlondon wrote:Interesting talk on Bloomberg Radio about Hyperloop being the future of high speed travel. Could high speed rail be a thing if the past soon?
Wasn't that the same mentality that sent the railyards to Chicago instead of St. Louis?
Except they're not building HSR here. It's only "higher speed rail" at an exorbinant cost. True HSR is twice the speed of the 110 mph that STL -> Chicago may reach. That, and the fact it only shaves 30-60 mins off the current system is disappointing.
California's real HSR would cost about $70B. To roll that out to the rest of the states may cost anywhere from $750B - $2.5 trillion via a wild-ass guess. For that kind of expenditure, it may be smart to hold off on real HSR deployment to gauge viability for a true transformative system like Hyperloop.
Sure, Hyperloop is quite alpha but the technological challenges don't seem so difficult that it can't be effectively rolled out within 10-20 years.
^Agreed. Although we don't have the density over the same span as China, we certainly have parts of the country where HSR is very applicable.
I'm still a firm believer that instead of doing this piece-meal, "spread the money around" approach, we should have picked a corridor for 200mph service somewhere in the country, done a full federally funded build-out and proved that it worked. Its going to be tough now to upgrade trains to those speeds (especially STL to CHI) after we've just spent time and money on it.
^ not sure.... progress is being made but I don't know of timelines for completion.
^^ yeah, we should have made the California HSR line a moon landing-type project of national priority. Or even a shorter line like Tampa-Orlando or Chicago-Saint Louis!.
Too bad we didn't have similar vision as a country.
This is really cool. The chinese are really fascinating in that their civilization is about three thousand years older than ours, and while dynasties and various government structures have come and gone, the bureaucracy has largely persisted intact through all this time. And bureaucracy isn't a dirty word over there either. While we in the US often cling to our individualism and little projects, they know that bureaucracy, despite its possible corruption, allows for the mobilization of an entire civilization to create projects for the common good.
It all falls to the philosophy of government. We in the US, have the philosophy that everything must be done to prevent the rise of an all powerful tyranny since we arise from a rebels at root. The Chinese, with the experience of civilization that goes back into the dawn of recorded memory, kind of have the philosophy that enlightened tyranny is good and possibly the best thing that could happen to push development and civilization, and that the tools should be in place for such a leader or group of leaders to do the maximum good should he/she/they arise, with the acceptance that there will be occasional bad eggs.
The University of Illinois released the final report of a preliminary feasibility study for a 220-mph high-speed rail (HSR) passenger service between Chicago, Champaign-Urbana and beyond.
The study concluded that a 220-mph HSR service from O’Hare Airport through downtown Chicago to Champaign-Urbana and on to St. Louis and/or Indianapolis is feasible and would be likely to cover its operating costs without subsidies. Express high-speed trains would travel from downtown Chicago to Champaign in approximately 45 minutes, to Springfield in approximately one hour and twenty minutes and to St. Louis or Indianapolis in approximately 2 hours.
If they go forward with additional planning, we need to do everything we can to get them to include St. Louis service.
I would imagine they would include St. Louis service. They listed it as the most profitable corridor at $132,000,000 a year.
Problem is how does something like this ever get funded in our current environment? We already know the problems with the federal government. Illinois is going broke. And MO is only focused on roads, roads, and more roads.
pat wrote:
Problem is how does something like this ever get funded in our current environment? We already know the problems with the federal government. Illinois is going broke. And MO is only focused on roads, roads, and more roads.
What is even more amazing is that this is the era of low interest rates and high unemployment and we can't get this done. Money is easy to borrow and labor is cheap, meaning this is the perfect time to do infrastructure improvement. We just don't have the political will to do it. For some reason, we want to wait until borrowing costs are higher and labor is more expensive when the economy picks up. At that time, we'll happily pay more for the exact same product.
This whole project is a bit of a pipe-dream for the academics down in Champaign-Urbana. A high-speed rail (okay, pretty high-speed rail) project is already being developed between St. Louis and Chicago. The Federal Government and Illinois are investing billions ($1.6 billion so far) to upgrade the track between Alton and Dwight to 110 mph status. Now, it's not 220-mph ROW, but it is a huge improvement, and the Lincoln Service is already seeing ridership increases because of it. Considering Illinois and the Fed's budget whoas, I don't think a $50 billion bullet train makes the most sense, when major and realistic investments are being made in a parallel track.
While you have a point, what I think you're really pointing out is the problem.
Instead of investing more in a true high-speed rail that would really have an impact, they invested a bit in a kinda-sorta faster on some parts of the route track that will have a minor bump of impact.
It can't all be attributed to the recent upgrades and investments, but ridership on the Lincoln Service grew more than any other line in the country in fiscal year 2013. Ridership grew 4.5x faster than the national average, and revenue grew 5x faster than the national average. While admittedly it's not bringing the benefits of a 220-mph bullet train, the investments are having a significant positive impact.
How are the investments having an impact? The trains are still running at the old speed, which I believe is no more than 85mph. I think all of the media attention has reminded people that trains are still around and fairly convenient.
The CHI-STL Line will demonstrate demand it's when up and running at a full, regular 110mph. From there, should demand dictate (and signs point to yes), then they can look to expand routes to cities like Champaign-Urbana and U of I, and doing so at 220mph. That their research shows the routes being self-sustaining is a great sign towards getting this done, but theory only goes so far. If they can see success in the CHI-STL route, then they'll be more apt to consider putting monies towards this.
The issue is money. The national economy is damn well in stall mode, and I'm quite concerned personally in the sustainability of US GDP. The State of IL is twelve figures in the red and keeps spending monies it doesn't have.
It must also be noted that, while the State of MO is frequently criticized here for being more road-centric than rail-centric, MO is largely out of this entire conversation. All these rail lines are in IL. The only stretch of the CHI-STL line in MO is the not-quite-a-mile stretch from the middle of the Mississippi River to the Multimodal Exchange at 14th Street. This is IL's project, and it's doing a lot of this with Federal monies supporting it, thanks to our Chicago-based POTUS, who remains their best hope at keeping the money pipes flowing into IL. (Note: Not being political here, and no partisanship sought; this relationship is clearly evident)
The role of STL & MO here is to get the academics at U of I, and the decision-makers in Springfield (de facto Chicago), to recognize that routes to STL are more valuable to them than routes to other cities for HSR.
wabash wrote:It can't all be attributed to the recent upgrades and investments, but ridership on the Lincoln Service grew more than any other line in the country in fiscal year 2013. Ridership grew 4.5x faster than the national average, and revenue grew 5x faster than the national average. While admittedly it's not bringing the benefits of a 220-mph bullet train, the investments are having a significant positive impact.
Keep in mind that part of the gains ( and thus perceived out performance) are attributable to long construction disruptions in service the previous year. There were some this year too. These are leading to volatile numbers. Here's a month-by-month of the trains IL sponsors (So for STL_CHI it excludes the Texas Eagle and one of the Lincoln trains). You can see for the state FY of Jul-Jun showed only 1% increase whereas Amtrak's FY of Oct-Sep showed 10% increase because it captured Jul and Aug of 21013 rather than Jul and Aug of 2013 which were in the state's FY13. There were a few days of disruptions this month. Anywho I'll be curious to get a period of little to no construction-disrupted numbers. No doubt improvements and increased public awareness from all the coverage have helped. The ride is smoother. A proper station in STL has helped. I hope they will add another run or two along with 110 from Alton to Joliet and new rolling stock. The morning departure times really stink
gone corporate wrote:The role of STL & MO here is to get the academics at U of I, and the decision-makers in Springfield (de facto Chicago), to recognize that routes to STL are more valuable to them than routes to other cities for HSR.
So long as no other state kicks in a lot of the money, STL route will be favored because it'll be almost entirely in IL. Tragic would be if it terminated in East STL. I would hope that MO would at least offer to pay for the bridge over the Mississippi if this ever actually got close to being a reality.
I prefer to add frequencies, routes, destinations, improve on-time performance in order to create a viable convenient network. I think that would build enough support for eventually paying for a 220 MPH service.
Honestly if I was IL I might INSIST on the terminus being in East St. Louis. All that money spent and you are going to let the end point be in another state. I'd probably try rework the 5th and Missouri Metrolink Station with the HSR terminal housed under one roof somehow to make it feel cleaner and safer.
Also on a side note I would probably try to change the name of East St. Louis to St. Louis IL.
