What anyone getting into these types of projects really need is an experienced partner. There have not been these types of projects in this country in a long time, there is no able to manage these kinds of projects. What should be done is bring Chinese companies into this deal, have them establish manufacturing plants to build rail stock and manage construction. To understand why, you have to visit China. They built I believe 11 metro lines in Shanghai within 5 yrs. Just look at Chinese cities around Hong Kong, and their metro systems. How about high speed rail lines?
Now lets look at NYC and construction time for the 2nd Ave. line, and cost overruns. It is pathetic. They will never finish it.
And CA? It is going to cost probably 10X what they say it will. Plus I am sure they will buy everything overseas. Because someone will get some money in their Swiss bank account, or wherever.

ALL rail systems cost a gazillion dollars. HIgh speed rail systems cost a gazillion plus 35%. Cheaper to buy everybody who would ride it a Nissan Sentra.

BTW, that’s been proved beyond a resaonable doubt. Not just my opinion.

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Re#1. . .

Yet in CA you’ll be able to speed from Turlock to Manteca! Oh joy!

Some of those Chinese trains have been landing on the glass side lately.

Brooklyn to JFK can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 2.5 hrs. by car. Totally unpredictable. And the state of the roads is disgraceful. It’s shameful and embarrassing that this is the visitors’ first view of our greatest city.

You are forgetting the cost of ownership.

To add insult to injury when you get to JFK, you have to pay $5.00 for a cart. I have not seen this in any other country.

I am quite sure for a few deaths you may have occasionally in train accidents, you have thousands dying in car accidents. There is no perfection in life.

No. The oil changes and alighments are included in that figure. Just not hte insurance.:-)

And the rail transit toward Manhattan is on the other side of the parking facilities. I saw “toward” Manhattan because it doesn’t actually take you directly into the city.

It’s not cheaper when you factor in the congestion and pollution. Given the dilation of US cities you still need a car when you get to your destination, but this can be handled by having rental agencies locate near the terminals, as they surely would if intercity train use became common.

It’s free in civilized countries, where they don’t ttry to nickle and dime every little thing to death (except for that extra pattie of butter in German restaurants).

That is not the fault of the train concept, it is the fault of designers and, in NYC, politics. Obviously if anything is designed by idiots… well, you know. I’ve lived here for 50 yrs, and it is beyond me how they are unable to get anything done on time and on budget. You can be sure that any construction project in NYC is going to line pockets.

On this blog, right now, if you read it carefully, you will see that all the thinking revolves around cars. I detest cars, and although I have one, I would just love to get rid of it. But this country is designed around car, and there is no escape from it. Many cities in other countries were designed at a time when there were no cars, so everything is more compact. Everything is close, because they were either designed for walking, horse or bicycle.

Airport carts have to be free, since we pay airport taxes on our tickets, and you can’t carry your luggage much of the time. That is part of running an airport. Here they figured out that you should pay twice for the cart.

A government that can war everywhere but not provide basic services at home is governing a failing state and by all standards of measurements, the US is failing slowly, but it may someday fail quickly. Little is being done to prevent that. More than 800 military bases in foreign countries yet it isn’t able to keep children from being sexually molested by roman catholic [and other] ‘men of the cloth]; nor prison rape; nor raise living standards for most of its population; and has increased poverty levels. and on, and on, and on. “So it goes.”

Considering all the travel to either an airport or train station, which come out better on a per customer travel cost? How does that come out in regards to the carbon footprint and effect on global warming?

Anyone have a handle on this aspect?

Depends on if it goes anywhere useful. SF and LA remain to be seen.

Heck – back in the 70′s there was already a high speed rail link between Toronto and Montreal, from TO’s downtown Union Station into the Central Station in downtown Mtl. It was even in those days about the same time as getting to the airport, going through checkin, flying, getting baggage and bus into the city. And hugely more convenient and pleasant. Even before Air Canada fell apart.

This is not rocket science. The fossil fuel industry can’t stand it and since they own the Congress they’ll do anything to stop it – the airlines are enormous consumers of oil.

As a transit user who has lived car-free in Portland, Oregon for more than ten years, I disagree completely with newcarguy. Sadly, many cities are paved-over disasters in which walking and transit use are impossible, but why would anyone want to live there? The awfulness of a place and its car dependency are directly correlated.
I consider it a gift to not drive; driving is a dreary chore in the best of times, and an infuriating, or even deathly travail at the worst ones.
Here, the “higher” speed rail just barely beats the car trip time from Seattle to Portland, but is so much more pleasant; the Tacoma Narrows and the Columbia river are much prettier that the Fred Flintstone cartoon of bland landscaping and fast food emporia along I-5. And as a previous commenter noted upthread, the flight there, barely an hour in the air, takes much longer and is substantially more expensive and annoying. (In Portland, there’s a MAX train you can take downtown for $2.50; Seattle is finally completing a line that might eliminate its $60 cab ride…)
Obviously, incremental improvements on routes with already growing ridership is the way to go; more train travelers will eventually clamor for a system worthy of the current century.
Big things like the California project may do more harm than good to the movement for better intercity train service; unless it went from SF to LA in the first phase, and thus became instantly popular, it will set back high(er) speed rail for years.

If there is such a great demand for rail services, why does Amtrak have to be subsidized to the tune of $1.5 billion a year, approximately $50 per ticket? If you can’t make existing trains at least self-sustaining, if not profitable, expensive new trains, with questionable demand for their services, appear to be a waste of money.

And considering that Amtrak loses money on food and beverages, even when charging ‘movie theater’ level prices to a captive audience, improving management ought to be as much a priority as improving existing services.

Agree to all this. I always consider that at least half of our state tax goes to corruption. I’m sure someone profits by making the airport train inaccessible.

How is this possible, then?

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2011/09/24/after-30-years-tgv-service-prospers-even-as-its-future-is-questioned/

That is why you need someone with experience in running rails to run the system. Even the British lured a MTA guy, Bob Kiley, to run their underground system. U.S. rail system needs a person to run the system, so they should bring in someone from France, Germany, Japan or even China. This is where all the innovation is taking place. But I am sure if we get a good person to do the job, he is going to get chased out by politics.

How much of those subsidies goes to “rental” of the tracks from the freight train company? Isn’t that CSX? And wasn’t that Snow — GHW Bush Secretary of Commerce (or was it Transportation?) Can someone jump in here and correct me?

And per capita Americans consume 25% more gasoline than Canadians and twice as much per capita gasoline than Germans and Japanese. American cars are changing the earth’s atmosphere. Trains are the future.

High-speed rail in Europe and Asia is an entirely different creature from train systems here.

The single biggest difference is that Amtrak has to run on rail lines that are privately owned by the big Class I rail freight companies(Union Pacific, Canadian National, CSX, Canadian Pacific, Norfolk Southern, Burlington Northern-Santa Fe) as well a few Class II companies. There are exceptions – Amtrak owns the tracks that make up most of the Northeast Corridor, as well as some of the tracks along the Chicago-Detroit route.

That means 1)while the rules stipulate that Amtrak is supposed to given priority to run its routes, it rarely gets that. If a two-mile freight is ahead and there are no sidings to pass it, Amtrak is stuck behind it – also many of the routes are single tracked, so, for example, a southbound Amtrak will have to wait for the northbound freight to clear before it can travel on the tracks 2)the quality of the freight tracks vary greatly, most are not in good enough shape to allow Amtrak to travel at a speed to be competitive with flying or driving. Also, in most cases, where the tracks of two or more rail companies cross at grade, the speeds can be unbearably slow.

Because Amtrak has to run on tracks that also host freight trains, the Federal Railroad Administration requires that Amtrak locomotives and passenger cars be built to a standard that increases survivability should a passenger train collide with a freight train. That means train equipment that is very heavy, which decreases possible speeds and fuel efficiency. Designs of the new double-level railcars just ordered jointly by California and the Midwest regionals are based on designs that are several decades old. Many companies that manufacture trainsets(almost exclusively foreign) will not dedicate the resources needed to develop FRA-compliant equipment because they can not be guaranteed sufficient orders to make the venture profitable, so fickle is the US passenger rail system. One only needs to look at how Spanish manufacturer Talgo took it in the shorts after Scott Walker got elected in Wisconsin…

http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2012/05/31/murphys-law-did-the-state-screw-talgo/

With few exceptions, passenger rail in Europe and Asia doesn’t have to deal with those types of problems.

There is another disadvantage passenger rail in the U.S. must deal with-a nearly complete lack of support from the government. For all the complaints about “all the money” spent on Amtrak, the government has spent less money on Amtrak during its entire 40-plus year existence than it has spent for one year on roads, and far, far less than it has spent on airports, air traffic control, and TSA.

So, for all its problems, those responsible for attempting to bring “higher speed” rail to the U.S. are doing the best they can with the sh*tpile they’ve been handed. Consider that the CHI-STL route has, for years consisted of – a)the route from Chicago-Union Station to Joliet(about 40 miles outside of Chicago) using tracks owned by the Canadian National – while they are currently in dispute with CN over the fact that the freight railroad has been less than cooperative over the use of their track, resulting in long delays b)the route from Joliet to Alton, IL(just outside of St. Louis)that has almost exclusively been single-tracked, tracks that have been pounded for years by massively heavy freight trains. c)getting into St. Louis means crossing the Mississippi over one of two antiquated bridges, while having to jockey for position with freight trains using the same bridges.

It is not currently the goal of those building “higher speed” rail to create a coast-to-coast nationwide rail network. The idea is to establish a number of regional networks. In studying the feasibility of upgrading rail service, they discovered that there exists a “sweet spot” where passenger rail is an ideal mode of transportation – between major metropolitan areas that are anywhere between 100 and 500 miles away. And that is the philosophy behind the Chicago Hub Network, of which the Chicago-St. Louis route is a major part. And, of course, this route isn’t just about serving the residents of Chicago and St. Louis. As is the case with nearly all Amtrak routes, there are a number of stops along the route that serve small and medium-sized towns – many that are not served by air service and, in some cases, even bus service.

I have no doubt that those building the CHI-STL route would love nothing better than to have 220-mph luxury trainsets racing on fully grade separated tracks built on rights-of-way owned exclusively by Amtrak, and I am also sure that there are more than enough Americans who could build and manage such a route, indeed networks of those trains. But, given the incredible short-sightedness on the part of much of the US population, there isn’t any chance of that happening anytime soon.

So, what they have to do is build, with whatever resources they can scrounge up, a rail line that is comfortable, safe, and convenient, that is faster than driving, with a price point that makes it competitive with flying.

Many of the regional routes, despite all the adversity they face just to get the routes up and running, have shown steady increases in ridership. The key to profitability(or just breaking even), is to increase speed, increase capacity, and increase frequency.

You’re also forgetting the cost of infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.) and the added cost on its maintenance caused by the overuse that the added vehicles would cause. Additionally, there is the lost time caused by traffic jams due to the increased volume. Mass transit is more efficient, cost effective and promotes a healthier lifestyle than the personal automobile.

The US is no longer a leader in transportation. Our airlines suck. Fly overseas. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Australia, etc. All better.

Hi speed rail in Taiwan, Japan, Europe. All better. Make money on building rights at the stations, is how it is done. The new transit center currently being built in San Francisco is making money off a 60 story building next door. $250MM for one building alone, paid by private interests to co-locate.

20 years to build the incline to the SF Bay Bridge after the 1989 earthquake. 20 years! All of the infrastructure to build the new Hong Kong Airport took only 8 years including bridges, highways, trains, tunnels, and the airport itself.

The US used to be a leader. We need to invest in infrastructure or fall farther behind.

The US is no longer a leader in transportation. Our airlines suck. Fly overseas. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Australia, etc. All better.

Hi speed rail in Taiwan, Japan, Europe. All better. Make money on building rights at the stations, is how it is done. The new transit center currently being built in San Francisco is making money off a 60 story building next door. $250MM for one building alone, paid by private interests to co-locate.

20 years to build the incline to the SF Bay Bridge after the 1989 earthquake. 20 years! All of the infrastructure to build the new Hong Kong Airport took only 8 years including bridges, highways, trains, tunnels, and the airport itself.

The US used to be a leader. We need to invest in infrastructure or fall behind.