They also have a plan for a freight network:
You can read their policy brief here (pdf), though it's pretty much your standard pro-rail boilerplate. Which is to say: I heartily endorse it!
Showing posts with label high-speed rail. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high-speed rail. Show all posts
Thursday, August 6, 2009
America 2050's Rail Plans
I have yet to see a forward-thinking and possibly pie-in-the-sky rail plan for the United States that I didn't feel like posting here, and this plan from America 2050 is no exception. They have a passenger rail plan map which includes megaregions, which points up the usefulness of rail in integrating the country's magalopoli:
They also have a plan for a freight network:
You can read their policy brief here (pdf), though it's pretty much your standard pro-rail boilerplate. Which is to say: I heartily endorse it!
They also have a plan for a freight network:
You can read their policy brief here (pdf), though it's pretty much your standard pro-rail boilerplate. Which is to say: I heartily endorse it!
Thursday, June 11, 2009
An Alternative High-Speed Rail Plan
the transport politic has an alternative proposal for a high-speed rail network for the US:
By contrast, here's the official high-speed rail plan as proposed by the White House in April:
Among the differences: the ttp plan includes a route for the Colorado Front Range which the gummint plan lacks; it also integrates the major components of HSR in the eastern half of the country, from the Northeast Corridor to Texas; and integrates the Arizona 'Sun Corridor' into the California network. Whence the differences? Well, these are among ttp's criteria:
By the way, as a Texas-based blog, The Map Scroll heartily endorses the plan to include Houston in the Texas HSR plan along with San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas-Fort Worth, which the official plan stupidly fails to do. Intermodality shows a plan specifically for Texas:
There are lots more details for the transport politic's plan, including scoring for every route based on a function of distance and expected demand. It's really a comprehensive analysis and well worth checking out.
By contrast, here's the official high-speed rail plan as proposed by the White House in April:
Among the differences: the ttp plan includes a route for the Colorado Front Range which the gummint plan lacks; it also integrates the major components of HSR in the eastern half of the country, from the Northeast Corridor to Texas; and integrates the Arizona 'Sun Corridor' into the California network. Whence the differences? Well, these are among ttp's criteria:
the transport politic’s proposal was informed by an analysis of potential travel between metro regions of populations greater than 100,000 and between 50 and 500 miles apart... The vast majority of train travel would occur on trains running at 150 mph or above on routes of 500 miles or less. Roads and airports along these corridors would be significantly decongested as more people choose to take the train instead of a car for short to medium distances (50-200 miles) and the train instead of the airplane for long distance (300-500 miles) travel...They also get into the nitty-gritty of how such a plan ought to be administered:
There is no transcontinental high-speed railroad proposed here because high-speed rail simply doesn’t attract particularly high ridership above the 500 mile travel distance; the best way to get from the East Coast to the West Coast will – and should, barring some unforeseen technological advance – remain via airplane...
In order to calculate the cost effectiveness of each route on the high-speed system, the transport politic used a relatively simple methodology based on travel between city pairs 50 to 500 miles apart. The calculations assume the following: that a big city to big city route attracts more passengers than a small city to small city route; that a big city to small city route attracts more passengers than a small city to small city route; that as distances increase, ridership decreases, though not proportionately. I recognize that these assumptions may be incorrect in many cases, but they provide a reasonable start for further research on this subject.
the transport politic’s suggestion is that the most appropriate way to get the ball rolling is to separate train operations – Amtrak – from track possession and maintenance by setting up a national infrastructure owner – let’s call it NatTrack. This agency would take hold of the Amtrak-owned Northeast Corridor and begin acquiring and assembling land for future high-speed rail corridors. Through eminent domain, it would also take possession of a large number of the nation’s freight lines, most of which are currently under-maintained and poorly managed, and begin converting them to standard-speed rail operations. NatTrack would manage route creation, not only in buying land and constructing track, but in prioritizing corridors to build new lines, deciding which to implement, and when.Here's their proposal for order of implementation:
By the way, as a Texas-based blog, The Map Scroll heartily endorses the plan to include Houston in the Texas HSR plan along with San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas-Fort Worth, which the official plan stupidly fails to do. Intermodality shows a plan specifically for Texas:
There are lots more details for the transport politic's plan, including scoring for every route based on a function of distance and expected demand. It's really a comprehensive analysis and well worth checking out.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The Real Future of High-Speed Rail in the US
We've seen the official plan for high-speed rail in the US. Now The Infrastructurist has a very handy map on what we can actually expect to see built in the near (and not-so-near) future.
Says the site:
The pink lines include the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor, which will run between Washington, DC and Charlotte, NC; New York HSR (which appears to be roughly coterminous with the officially sanctioned Empire Corridor); portions of the Chicago Hub network connecting Chicago to Detroit, St. Louis, and Milwaukee; the Cascades Corridor, which will run between Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland; a Tampa-Orlando line, the first stage in the Florida HSR plan; and the Texas T-Bone, which could end up providing the transportational spine of the Texas Triangle megaregion (and which has a more sensible orientation than the government's official plan for high-speed rail, in that it connects Houston, the state's largest city).
One thing to note is that red and pink lines together are represented in 20 states. That means 20 governors and 40 senators have incentive to push for some of that funding. Add green lines and you're talking about a majority of states (and senators) that would be invested in
high-speed rail development. Since political support will be needed to make good on these plans, that's significant, and could also lead to cascading momentum for the entire high-speed rail plan; if, for instance, progress begins to be made on the Southeast Corridor between DC and Charlotte, you can imagine an envious Atlanta wanting to get into the game, and an extension of the line to the Peach State would become all the more likely. And by the way, that's why I think the Infrastructurist's characterization of the blue lines in their map as "very unlikely to be built in the next few decades" may be a bit of an overstatement. I'm not sure how we could know what the political support for these plans might be in, say, 20 years, but it seems very possible that as progress gets made on some of these main lines, support for some of the secondary lines here will increase considerably. Another big spike in the price of oil, which would make both driving and flying more expensive, also might help to kick-start some of those plans.
You can zoom in on the map and click on rail lines, which link to more detailed information on each of the high-speed rail plans (which is the source for most of the links above). The infrastructurist also has a chart that compares some of the biggest current high-speed rail plans in the world. The most ambitious, in length, speed, and population served, is the line between Shanghai and Beijing. California is next, followed by plans for Argentina, Saudi Arabia, France-Italy, the Netherlands, and Israel.
Via Matt Yglesias.
Says the site:
The colors indicate the seriousness of planning for the corridors. Red lines represent projects that are partially funded or providing high-speed operation today; pink lines are under intensive state planning and likely to be among the first to receive stimulus funds; green lines are far off but not inconceivable; and blue lines are very unlikely to be built in the next few decades.The only existing "high-speed" rail line is the Northeast Corridor, aka the Acela, that runs between Boston and Washington, DC, and the modest speeds of that line barely qualify it for high-speed status. The first truly high-speed rail in the US is likely to be the line between San Francisco and LA. It will have speeds up to 220 mph, and a $10 billion bond was approved by voters last year to begin construction; other than the Northeast Corridor, it's the only red line on this map.
The pink lines include the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor, which will run between Washington, DC and Charlotte, NC; New York HSR (which appears to be roughly coterminous with the officially sanctioned Empire Corridor); portions of the Chicago Hub network connecting Chicago to Detroit, St. Louis, and Milwaukee; the Cascades Corridor, which will run between Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland; a Tampa-Orlando line, the first stage in the Florida HSR plan; and the Texas T-Bone, which could end up providing the transportational spine of the Texas Triangle megaregion (and which has a more sensible orientation than the government's official plan for high-speed rail, in that it connects Houston, the state's largest city).
One thing to note is that red and pink lines together are represented in 20 states. That means 20 governors and 40 senators have incentive to push for some of that funding. Add green lines and you're talking about a majority of states (and senators) that would be invested in
high-speed rail development. Since political support will be needed to make good on these plans, that's significant, and could also lead to cascading momentum for the entire high-speed rail plan; if, for instance, progress begins to be made on the Southeast Corridor between DC and Charlotte, you can imagine an envious Atlanta wanting to get into the game, and an extension of the line to the Peach State would become all the more likely. And by the way, that's why I think the Infrastructurist's characterization of the blue lines in their map as "very unlikely to be built in the next few decades" may be a bit of an overstatement. I'm not sure how we could know what the political support for these plans might be in, say, 20 years, but it seems very possible that as progress gets made on some of these main lines, support for some of the secondary lines here will increase considerably. Another big spike in the price of oil, which would make both driving and flying more expensive, also might help to kick-start some of those plans.You can zoom in on the map and click on rail lines, which link to more detailed information on each of the high-speed rail plans (which is the source for most of the links above). The infrastructurist also has a chart that compares some of the biggest current high-speed rail plans in the world. The most ambitious, in length, speed, and population served, is the line between Shanghai and Beijing. California is next, followed by plans for Argentina, Saudi Arabia, France-Italy, the Netherlands, and Israel.
Via Matt Yglesias.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
The White House Plan for High-Speed Rail
The Obama White House continues to give prominent support for high-speed rail. Here's their new high-speed rail map.
It's, um, not so different from the old one:
You'll note, however, that that sissy green shade on the old map has been replaced by a dynamic crimson; and, too, there are wavy ghost-lines to give a sense of integration to the plan. Change we can believe in!
But I kid. There's nothing wrong with sticking to the plan for high-speed rail that the government has nominally had since the nineties. The only problem is that it hasn't been funded. But thanks to a personal intervention by Obama, $8 billion got worked into the stimulus bill earlier this year; and his budget includes another $1 billion per annum to develop the system. Here's some of what Obama had to say about the plan on Thursday:
Also: Houston is in Texas! Richard Florida may believe in some mythical urban mega-region on the western Gulf Coast that stretches from Pensacola to Brownsville. But I am here to tell you: Houston (not to mention Corpus Christi and Brownsville-McAllen) is far more integrated - economically, geographically, politically - with
Austin and Dallas than it is with New Orleans. My car recently broke down in the town of Brenham, TX and I had occasion to get into a conversation with the local tow truck driver about patterns of megaregional integration in that part of the state (as one does with tow truck drivers). Specifically, he noted that the town had been growing in recent decades, and the reason was that people were finding they could commute from there to both Houston and Austin. I assure you there is no similarly oriented town between Houston and New Orleans. All of which is to say that - pace The Grateful Dead - Houston is not too close to New Orleans; it is close to the I-35 corridor megaregion of San Antonio-Austin-Dallas. The high-speed rail plan should reflect that reality.
UPDATE: Just saw that Cartophilia covered this as well. He's also got details and a map for the rail plan centered on Ohio. The high population densities, pre-existing infrastructure, and need for economic investment really make the Pittsbugh-Cleveland-Cincinnat-Detroit-Chicago area the best place to develop high-speed rail after the Northeast Corridor.
It's, um, not so different from the old one:
You'll note, however, that that sissy green shade on the old map has been replaced by a dynamic crimson; and, too, there are wavy ghost-lines to give a sense of integration to the plan. Change we can believe in!But I kid. There's nothing wrong with sticking to the plan for high-speed rail that the government has nominally had since the nineties. The only problem is that it hasn't been funded. But thanks to a personal intervention by Obama, $8 billion got worked into the stimulus bill earlier this year; and his budget includes another $1 billion per annum to develop the system. Here's some of what Obama had to say about the plan on Thursday:
What we're talking about is a vision for high-speed rail in America. Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes. (Laughter.) Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination. Imagine what a great project that would be to rebuild America.I just have a couple of quibbles with the plan. One: connect Pittsburgh and Cleveland! They're only 130 miles apart by freeway, a distance that could conceivably make for a reasonable commute by high-speed rail. And it's a part of the country that could definitely use the short-term economic stimulus of building the line as well as the long-term benefit of increasing economic integration. Furthermore, such a line would connect the Midwest's Chicago Hub Network with the Northeast Corridor, and then we'd have something actually approaching a continental HSR system.
Now, all of you know this is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It is now. It is happening right now. It's been happening for decades. The problem is it's been happening elsewhere, not here.
In France, high-speed rail has pulled regions from isolation, ignited growth, remade quiet towns into thriving tourist destinations. In Spain, a high-speed line between Madrid and Seville is so successful that more people travel between those cities by rail than by car and airplane combined. China, where service began just two years ago, may have more miles of high-speed rail service than any other country just five years from now. And Japan, the nation that unveiled the first high-speed rail system, is already at work building the next: a line that will connect Tokyo with Osaka at speeds of over 300 miles per hour. So it's being done; it's just not being done here.
There's no reason why we can't do this. This is America. There's no reason why the future of travel should lie somewhere else beyond our borders. Building a new system of high-speed rail in America will be faster, cheaper and easier than building more freeways or adding to an already overburdened aviation system –- and everybody stands to benefit.
Also: Houston is in Texas! Richard Florida may believe in some mythical urban mega-region on the western Gulf Coast that stretches from Pensacola to Brownsville. But I am here to tell you: Houston (not to mention Corpus Christi and Brownsville-McAllen) is far more integrated - economically, geographically, politically - with
Austin and Dallas than it is with New Orleans. My car recently broke down in the town of Brenham, TX and I had occasion to get into a conversation with the local tow truck driver about patterns of megaregional integration in that part of the state (as one does with tow truck drivers). Specifically, he noted that the town had been growing in recent decades, and the reason was that people were finding they could commute from there to both Houston and Austin. I assure you there is no similarly oriented town between Houston and New Orleans. All of which is to say that - pace The Grateful Dead - Houston is not too close to New Orleans; it is close to the I-35 corridor megaregion of San Antonio-Austin-Dallas. The high-speed rail plan should reflect that reality.UPDATE: Just saw that Cartophilia covered this as well. He's also got details and a map for the rail plan centered on Ohio. The high population densities, pre-existing infrastructure, and need for economic investment really make the Pittsbugh-Cleveland-Cincinnat-Detroit-Chicago area the best place to develop high-speed rail after the Northeast Corridor.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Supertrains!
Good news for fans of high-speed rail. According to Transportation for America, the final economic stimulus bill approved by the US Congress includes $8.4 billion for mass transit, $1.3 billion for Amtrak, and a whopping (and unexpected) $8 billion for the nation's woefully under-developed high-speed rail system. Those are funds that weren't present in either the original House or Senate bills, so it's a big improvement, and something of a surprise. What's more, President Obama himself evidently weighed in to get those funds included, so it looks like it's going to be a priority for his administration.
Now, hopefully, the US will make some progress in developing its ten designated high-speed rail corridors:
Of these ten corridors, only the northeast corridor (aka, the 'Acela') is already up and running. (In California, voters last year approved a $10 billion dollar bond to develop their high-speed rail service, so that combined with some federal funds ought to make the California corridor particularly ripe for progress.)
By contrast, here's Europe's HSR system:
The colored sections indicate service of 200-350 km/hr. (By dreary contrast, the average speed of the Acela is 140 km/hr.) And Japan, of course, has long been a pioneer in high-speed rail.
Meanwhile, look what China is doing:
In 2007, they opened 6,000 km of high-speed rail all at once, instantly making it the most extensive system in the world - larger, even, than all of Europe's networks combined. Seen in this light, the US system is decades behind international standards. But hopefully the US just took a big step towards catching up.
Now, hopefully, the US will make some progress in developing its ten designated high-speed rail corridors:
Of these ten corridors, only the northeast corridor (aka, the 'Acela') is already up and running. (In California, voters last year approved a $10 billion dollar bond to develop their high-speed rail service, so that combined with some federal funds ought to make the California corridor particularly ripe for progress.)
By contrast, here's Europe's HSR system:
The colored sections indicate service of 200-350 km/hr. (By dreary contrast, the average speed of the Acela is 140 km/hr.) And Japan, of course, has long been a pioneer in high-speed rail.
Meanwhile, look what China is doing:
In 2007, they opened 6,000 km of high-speed rail all at once, instantly making it the most extensive system in the world - larger, even, than all of Europe's networks combined. Seen in this light, the US system is decades behind international standards. But hopefully the US just took a big step towards catching up.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
High-Speed Rail and the Economic Stimulus
Well, the US House's economic stimulus plan is out. I was hoping for a big investment in mass transit and rail to finally get the US moving towards something resembling a modern, balanced transportation infrastructure. So what does the plan offer?
· $30 billion for highway construction;
· $10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption.
Not great. And only $1.1 billion of that transit/rail money is for new projects. Of course, we don't know yet where in particular those funds are going, but it's clearly not sufficient to move towards a comprehensive plan like this one:
This is the plan of Andy Kunz, an urban designer and director of New Urbanism.org. The map shows planned routes for high-speed rail, and it really is like a win-win-win-win-win proposition. Consider that such a plan would:
- reduce our reliance on foreign oil
- help curb global warming
- provide tons of jobs, especially in places like the industrial midwest, Florida, and California, which have been hurt so badly hurt by the housing crisis and recession
- promote the development of an industry in the US where the country has fallen far behind the EU and Asian economic powers
- help prepare us for the era of peak oil.
There are, though, a couple of things I would change about this plan. First, I don't know that a Denver-Salt Lake City-San Francisco route makes a lot of sense. Those are some vast distances with really low population densities; I would substitute a regional line for the Colorado piedmont running from, say, Fort Collins down to Pueblo, and maybe even extending it down to El Paso. I would keep the southern route but I'd run it from San Antonio through El Paso. And I'd connect Houston to Austin.
Unfortunately, you get the sense that the US has sort of reached this point of inertia where we just can't make these sort of major investments to reshape our country anymore. It seems that our institutions have just become too ossified, our economic interests have become too established and enmeshed with the political power structure, and the public has become at once complacent and despairing - not liking the way things are, but also not caring enough to change them, or not feeling like they could change. In other words, it feels like we've entered a period of national decline in which these sorts of plans are untenable.
This could all change, of course. The malaise of the last couple of decades may prove to be a cyclical phenomenon. Maybe things will change again. Maybe the US will become a global leader at something other than financial trickery once more. But if it's going to happen, this $1 trillion economic stimulus - a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-orient our priorities - would be an excellent place to start. And so far, the indications that we are going to do so are mixed, at best.
UPDATE: By the way, if you're wondering what a rising power investing in the future looks like:
· $30 billion for highway construction;
· $10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption.
Not great. And only $1.1 billion of that transit/rail money is for new projects. Of course, we don't know yet where in particular those funds are going, but it's clearly not sufficient to move towards a comprehensive plan like this one:
This is the plan of Andy Kunz, an urban designer and director of New Urbanism.org. The map shows planned routes for high-speed rail, and it really is like a win-win-win-win-win proposition. Consider that such a plan would:
- reduce our reliance on foreign oil
- help curb global warming
- provide tons of jobs, especially in places like the industrial midwest, Florida, and California, which have been hurt so badly hurt by the housing crisis and recession
- promote the development of an industry in the US where the country has fallen far behind the EU and Asian economic powers
- help prepare us for the era of peak oil.
There are, though, a couple of things I would change about this plan. First, I don't know that a Denver-Salt Lake City-San Francisco route makes a lot of sense. Those are some vast distances with really low population densities; I would substitute a regional line for the Colorado piedmont running from, say, Fort Collins down to Pueblo, and maybe even extending it down to El Paso. I would keep the southern route but I'd run it from San Antonio through El Paso. And I'd connect Houston to Austin.
Unfortunately, you get the sense that the US has sort of reached this point of inertia where we just can't make these sort of major investments to reshape our country anymore. It seems that our institutions have just become too ossified, our economic interests have become too established and enmeshed with the political power structure, and the public has become at once complacent and despairing - not liking the way things are, but also not caring enough to change them, or not feeling like they could change. In other words, it feels like we've entered a period of national decline in which these sorts of plans are untenable.
This could all change, of course. The malaise of the last couple of decades may prove to be a cyclical phenomenon. Maybe things will change again. Maybe the US will become a global leader at something other than financial trickery once more. But if it's going to happen, this $1 trillion economic stimulus - a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-orient our priorities - would be an excellent place to start. And so far, the indications that we are going to do so are mixed, at best.
UPDATE: By the way, if you're wondering what a rising power investing in the future looks like:
In an amazing move towards converting their entire country towards sustainability, China is underway rebuilding its entire transportation system from the ground up. They now realize that cars and oil have no future. China is building an amazing 5,000 miles of brand new high speed trains comparable to the French TGV (200+ mph), all of which will be open for business in just 2 short years! In addition, China is building 36 brand new, full size metro systems - each to cover an entire city. The new Shanghai metro system will be the largest in the world when complete - larger than London's extensive system. China's massive, fast track green transportation construction project is unprecedented in the history of the world, and will completely transform China towards sustainability by drastically reducing their need for oil and cars.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
