Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

https://southseattleemerald.com/2023/07/18/plans-develop-for-high-speed-rail-in-the-pnw/

by DoreenMichele • 3 years ago

170 279 3 years ago

It would be useful if you could drive your car onto the rail and it carried you and your car at 300 mph.

frankus• 3 years ago

If done right the stations will be in locations where having a car is more of a liability than a convenience (i.e. downtowns with lots of traffic and expensive parking).

bpodgursky• 3 years ago

There are (at most) 2 of those locations in the entire US PNW... downtown Seattle and Downtown Portland. And frankly I'm not sure Portland counts.

upon_drumhead• 3 years ago

There’s a little problem with that. You want people who live close but not directly near one of the stations to also drive and park and take it. So you do need stations continently outside of the super dense metro area.

blq102• 3 years ago

Yeah see this is the problem - urbanist aesthetics demanding everyone live a very particular lifestyle, which includes a lot more than just urban living hamstringing projects.

DoreenMichele2• 3 years ago

From the article:

And Whittington says the designers must also ensure the rail remains dedicated to its high-speed route and that people have the ability to get to the rail through other means of public transportation. “There are going to be a lot of communities you want to serve,” Whittington said, “but you want to find a way to bring those communities to the routes as opposed to bringing the route to the communities.”

slt2021• 3 years ago

I am not sure it is useful to transport 2000 kg of metal occupying a half of a rail car, just to move 80kg meatbag for a distance of 173 miles.

charcircuit4• 3 years ago

It's useful because the rail doesn't go to your exact destination. You will need to drive there. It is expensive to have a separate car in both cities instead of just taking a single car with you.

tzs• 3 years ago

People find a similar thing (with boats rather than trains) quite useful for smaller distances (see the Washington state ferry system), so it is not obvious that it would not be useful with trains.

littlestymaar3• 3 years ago

Use a bike instead of a car and you'll be there. (Ideally you can even have your bike be foldable for maximum convenience)

charcircuit4• 3 years ago

A bike is too slow. It would mean just driving to the destination without a rail would be faster.

pxmpxm• 3 years ago

Single, childless 20 year old's ideas. You will get zero traction with this mentality.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

IIRC the Auto Train is the only long-distance route Amtrak runs that is net profitable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Train

It's possible other corridors could be identified that could run something like that, though it probably needs to be about 800-900 miles to make it "worth" it time wise - shorter and it's simpler to just drive.

ghaff7• 3 years ago

It’s mostly the Northeast Corridor from Boston to DC where Amtrak makes the majority of its profits though—which it then mostly loses in the rest of the country.

The auto train to Florida is sort of a special case. That’s not people traveling for a long weekend or even a week. It’s historically been people going south for the winter. Not sure it’s profitable though don’t see recent numbers.

sfpotter2• 3 years ago

Amtrak Cascade has trains that can do 125 mph but are throttled to 78 mph because of low quality tracks, as I understand it. Amtrak also recently just started running many more trains per day between Seattle and Portland. High speed rail is great, but maybe a good starting point would just be… fixing the tracks. Get 3 1/2 hours from SEA to PDX down closer to 2…

NegativeLatency4• 3 years ago

Even just reliability, I regularly make this drive for visiting family and it would be preferable to be able to kick back and relax instead of driving, but currently it’s just too snow and infrequent to be a viable option for me.

ryanSrich• 3 years ago

Exactly. I also do this drive every few months and still can’t believe driving is more efficient than taking the train. It’s the absolute perfect setup for a train too.

paulcole• 3 years ago

I never learned to drive and it turns out the Portland to Seattle train is a good option for getting between the two cities.

Everybody says they’d take the bus/train/whatever instead of driving if only this or that were true. If the train was faster and more frequent you’d find another reason not to take it. The stories we tell ourselves.

foota7• 3 years ago

I think the tracks are the most expensive part though, no?

Although I'm not sure if you mean the physical tracks are in poor condition or the layout. If it's the layout, that's not much easier to fix than building a HSR. They may not even be able to fix the railroad company owned tracks?

sfpotter2• 3 years ago

I don’t know the answer to either of your questions. Is track more expensive than new high-speed trains?

seanmcdirmid3• 3 years ago

It is the layout. They had a nice bypass set up, but the first day the train derailed and it has just recently re-opened.

Sharing track with freight is a PITA: the freight trains don't care about going fast (so no really straight tracks) and they often have priority especially if the cascade is running off schedule, causing even more delays.

Not sure where they are going to build new straight-enough HSR track unless they employ lots of viaducts like china does.

twelvechairs• 3 years ago

HSR can use the same rails (standard gauge) if they are in a good state (i.e. fine in most of the rest of the world, not in the USA which is far behind on rail safety). Big differences are turning radii (HSR obviously wont go around sharp corners easily) and station distance (HSR will want stops ~50-100km apart, older railways its often more like 1-5). That generally means a new route rather than using an existing one.

kposehn• 3 years ago

The line is owned by BNSF and has quite a lot of BNSF and Union Pacific trains running on it daily, in addition to the Cascades services. No amount of improving the tracks will fix congestion, so moving to a separate line entirely for passenger service makes a ton of sense.

andbberger7• 3 years ago

organization before electronics before concrete. some amount of infrastructure will fix congestion, how much depends on what precise timetable will be run. the swiss manage to run a huge amount of freight alongside many passenger trains because they did their homework and built infrastructure where it was needed.

in general, "precision scheduled railroading" has fucked passenger-freight interoperability in the states because the freight railroads are running trains too long to fit into any of the sidings, which forces amtrak into the pocket

stuaxo3• 3 years ago

In the article they point out that for proper HSR you need segrated straight tracks.

Sure, for faster ordinary trains 100mph - 125 you need to improve tracks too, but a lot of that is also improving junctions implementing flyovers and extra track so that trains aren't delayed or stopped.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

You don't even really need to get to 100-125 MPH to greatly improve travel times; usually the first step is just double tracking all the things; once that's in place you've shaved 20-30 minutes off a 3 hour trip.

Then you can worry about running faster trains.

Lammy• 3 years ago

because of low quality tracks, as I understand it

Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Washington_train_derailme...

chrisandchris• 3 years ago

Preliminary information from the data recorder showed that, when the incident happened, the train was traveling at 78 mph (126 km/h),[4] nearly 50 mph (80 km/h) over the speed limit.

In what sense relevant?

andbberger7• 3 years ago

i am unfamiliar with the condition of the tracks on that corridor but in general the vast majority of lines in the US are limited to below 80mph due to the infamous FRA 79 mph rule which mandates in cab signaling to exceed 80mph.

with the near ubiquity of positive train control now following the FRA's unfunded mandate (another brilliant piece of policy from the boys in blue) this rule should no longer apply. but due to reasons unknown to me (bureaucratic mire?) trains on many corridors are still limited.

there are also some grade crossing related speed restrictions

the FRA and its cronies should be hurled into the sun

freitzkriesler2• 3 years ago

Amtrak needs to own its own rails and it have to share them with freight.

throw0101a• 3 years ago

High speed rail is great, but maybe a good starting point would just be… fixing the tracks.

The problem is that there is little 'glory' in simple maintenance. The 'concept' is often called "state of good repair":

* https://www.transit.dot.gov/regulations-and-guidance/asset-m...

It's much more tempting to announce a new project with a ribbon cutting ceremony. The topic often comes up in Toronto, often as it relates to our transit system:

* https://www.tvo.org/article/toronto-is-falling-apart

xnx• 3 years ago

/glory/money/s In the US public transportation primarily operated as system to transfer public money to large engineering firms, subcontractors and politicians. Any transportation utility is incidental. Cost over-runs are the rule and have no consequences (More money for everybody!). The US has the highest cost per mile because no involved parties benefit from making it practical and cost effective. Self driving cars are probably our best chance to break up this system and reinvent public transportation.

mgarfias• 3 years ago

I want to know how they’re going to keep the homeless off the tracks.

I ride Amtrak to Portland 3d/wk and the amount of weird stuff happening along the tracks is staggering.

jaggederest10• 3 years ago

Extremely unlikely. The population density just isn't there. There are 12m people in Washington and Oregon combined, a substantial portion of whom are not on the I-5 corridor. The corridor in general is about 800km long. Compare to ~70m within 500 km of Paris.

NegativeLatency4• 3 years ago

Did you know there are nice and fast trains in Europe outside of the Paris region?

b112• 3 years ago

Which carry all those people mentioned, around? Europe is crazily, densely populated.

jaggederest10• 3 years ago

Yes. I've ridden on many of them. I'm a huge HSR proponent. I just don't think it works for Eugene to Vancouver. If we had double the population it would be a no-brainer.

The math is very clear. Below about 25,000 people per linear kilometer of lines, they require massive subsidies and never really pay off. Eugene to Vancouver BC is <12,000 people per linear kilometer. Honestly I would love to be wrong.

cyberax4• 3 years ago

The whole WA is just around 7 million people. Portland area is around 2.

Yet the distance between Seattle and Portland is the same as between Frankfurt and Munich.

There's simply not enough traffic to justify a train. Another lane on I-5 would help a lot more.

kspacewalk22• 3 years ago

Now compare to Spain.

jaggederest10• 3 years ago

Spain has double the population density of OR/WA, much less if you include BC. What's your point?

bin_bash• 3 years ago

and it looks like they have 7 high speed lines coming from Paris. Seems the PNW could afford 1.

seanmcdirmid3• 3 years ago

Vancouver BC to maybe Salem is pretty densely populated. They won't get much density past that to get to SF.

stuaxo3• 3 years ago

And before the 70s there were none.

yurrzz• 3 years ago

I'd say the vast majority of the population of Oregon and Washington is along the I-5 corridor.

fisherjeff• 3 years ago

Yep. Half live in the Portland and Seattle metro areas alone.

jaggederest10• 3 years ago

Yes, that's why I said "a substantial portion". About 25% of OR/WA don't live within an hour of the corridor. I live in Oregon, along the I-5 corridor. I've been looking at the feasibility of HSR for years. The math does not yet make sense. If the population was doubled, it would be a no-brainer.

melling• 3 years ago

You probably don’t realize this, but you’re just perpetuating misinformation that’s been debunked repeatedly for decades.

jcranmer3• 3 years ago

Normally, I'd agree with you, but the Portland-Seattle HSR corridor is around the low end of viable HSR corridors. You're connecting the 17th, 27th, and 28th largest cities in US+Canada, with no realistic prospects to connect anything else approaching a major city--the next largest city is Boise, but that's 350mi away as the crow flies (and mountains means it's quite further in practice), and smaller than even places like Fresno/Bakersfield, which people complain about CAHSR considering to visit. Oh, and one of those three cities is on the other side of an international border, which tends to dampen ridership a fair amount.

By contrast, all the other standard HSR candidates anchor regions that involve at least one, and for all but the Midwest two, cities in the top 10, with many more in the top 50.

jaggederest10• 3 years ago

I mean I've been doing the math and looking at ridership, transportation and population density mapping in hopes of justifying it for about two of those decades.

Show me a similar area with fewer than 12,000 people per linear kilometer that has HSR and I will be impressed and take notes. I don't know of anywhere on earth that has fast trains and that few people.

neilv2• 3 years ago

If a rail is built successfully, there will be an extraordinary increase in transportation abilities — saving commuters time while reducing environmental harm.

This high-speed rail is intended for people getting between home and workplace on a daily basis?

Edit: I'm not asking whether it can be used for daily commutes, but is daily commutes the reason for building this? Or what is the reason?

fnordpiglet4• 3 years ago

I have several friends that commute from Portland to seattle via bus or Vancouver to seattle via car or occasionally seaplane taxi. I’m sure they would really appreciate a high speed rail infrastructure particularly if it exits at a transportation hub as they propose.

neilv2• 3 years ago

I know people with long commutes, too. Just eliciting requirements for this project, which I didn't see stated.

hx82• 3 years ago

If the train have an average speed of >200mph it's likely to be a <55minute ride. It's not uncommon for people to have similar timed Amtrak rides in the North East as part of their commute. You can use a laptop to work on the train.

cco• 3 years ago

I think it'd be roughly an hour between Portland and Seattle, so a daily commute would be within the realm of possibility.

But I think what they mean is say Tacoma or Olympia to Seattle.

jdlshore2• 3 years ago

It’s low-quality journalism. The actual report says that HSR competes with metro-to-metro air travel, and explicitly contrasts it to commuter rail. It says that when managed poorly,—for example, trying to serve too many communities—HSR ends up as an expensive version of commuter rail, which is a failure.

hiram112• 3 years ago

They allocated $150M according to the article.

I can't see that being enough to even break ground on a single mile of track.

If California boondoggle is any indication, it will be enough to staff an army of middle managers, bureaucrats, and environmental impact and DEI staff for a year, and, of course, pay out some political kickbacks.

leemailll• 3 years ago

China high speed rail costs about US$ 17-21m per km in China, which has a substantial low cost for labor. This much can't make much

bombcar7• 3 years ago

California's spent something like $9 billion and they hadn't a single mile of track by 2022.

Maybe we should do a crawl/walk/run instead of jumping directly to HSR.

foota7• 3 years ago

Sounds like construction started in 2015? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-S....

jeffbee• 3 years ago

“Single mile of track” is one of the dumbest memes ever. Yes, they lay the tracks last, because that is by far the easiest part of the project and there’s a machine that can poop out HSR tracks at 1km/hour.

hifromLA• 3 years ago

Yeah but they’re actually making progress. The project has plenty to criticize but it’s way more of a punching bag than it needs to be. The hard part is land acquisition, lawsuits, grade separations, etc. once you have that tracks are a piece of cake.

CA also is walking with basic train service. The Pacific Surfliner (3rd most used Amtrak route) and the San Joaquin (5th most used Amtrak route). Literally the 2 most used Amtrak routes outside of the northeast.

djcapelis2• 3 years ago

This is what zero miles of track looked like in 2022: https://youtu.be/gAZqaESaZLg

This is what zero miles of track looks like a year later: https://youtu.be/luX35wVJt84

You can today in the Central Valley look at large construction sites and structures, some of which are finished. Go 100 miles up the alignment, and see construction and structures there too. None of those sites have laid track yet, but there’s hundred of miles of trackway under development.

Track comes last.

rendang3• 3 years ago

There are now only 3 decent sized concentrations of people in that corridor, but maybe building something like this would allow a whole new 1MM person metro to develop, e.g. around Olympia or in the Skagit Valley

fnordpiglet4• 3 years ago

I sincerely hope not. Sprawl is the anti pattern maximizing human impact. The skagit valley in particular is beautiful - the last it needs is a suburban megaplex.

forrestthewoods8• 3 years ago

Huh. That’s the opposite of sprawl. It’s having dense points along the route. It doesn’t make any sense to have high-speed rail that only stops in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. For it to even possibly make sense there needs more to be more points along the way. And those points need to be very dense by transit. Aka the opposite of sprawl.

rendang3• 3 years ago

An advantage of building on farms or other greenfield land is that you can start off with dense, walkable planning rather than car-oriented suburban expanse.

foota7• 3 years ago

Ok, but how about South of Olympia? :-)

systemvoltage• 3 years ago

I love trains but the discussions on HN have a quality of a cargo cult, anyone who even slightly slides off tracks is punished. It exhibits similar characteristics found in climate change movement or other progressive agenda. No room for nuanced discussion, only extreme conformism.

It actually has a reverse effect on me. Why is this thing pushed through without debate? It might gather more support if you allow criticism.

fomine3• 3 years ago

cargo cult vs passenger cult

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 3 years ago

My guess is that it will be tied up for at least a decade in multiple environmental impact lawsuits no matter what route they pick.

ekianjo• 3 years ago

They interviewed a cadre of transportation experts in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan

Have they never heard of a country called Japan?

starkparker2• 3 years ago

Full report here: https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Keepi...

The proliferation of high-speed rail creates many opportunities for case studies. Cases in this report represent systems developed in areas with institutional and geographic attributes comparable to the Pacific Northwest. While this objective for research did not preclude study of the Chinese, Japanese, and full European networks, it did lead to the selection of the following cases:
International
• The corridor linking Paris, France to Amsterdam in the Netherlands
• The high-speed rail systems of Spain
• Taiwan high-speed rail, linking Taipei to Kaohsiung
United States
• California, linking San Francisco and Sacramento to Los Angeles and San Diego
• Texas, from Dallas to Houston
• Florida, linking Tampa to Orlando and Miami

p. 45:

The rail corridor linking France, Belgium, and the Netherlands is similar in scale and scope to the project contemplated for the Cascadia corridor in the Pacific Northwest, and includes two national border crossings. The high-speed rail systems of Spain were developed after a market of suppliers had developed endogenously within France, Germany, and Japan, allowing for methods of procurement of international expertise that more likely resemble opportunities today in the U.S. The Taiwan high-speed rail project is a public-private partnership that received bids from consortia representing firms from the U.S. as well as Japan, France, and Germany, for the partial private financing of a project that incorporates real estate development of station areas into its revenue stream.

The rest of the report uses existing research about Japan's Shinkansen rather than conducting new interviews on it. Parts of chapter 2 detail some of the factors distancing Japan's system from a PNW system, such as how Japan's real-estate development and urban rail planning were mostly coterminous, creating systems that were conducive to connecting with high-speed rail, while in the U.S. history went mostly in the opposite direction.

In a subsection titled "Researchers caution against direct comparisons of proposed U.S. high speed lines with existing systems in other countries", pps. 22–23:

This means that Japan has benefitted from a Century of transit-oriented land use development, in ways that strain comparison with conditions for rail development in the U.S. European high-speed rail lines were designed for metro-to-metro service atop existing and robust national rail networks, which served as meaningful platforms for public transportation agencies to grow and develop services. ... In Japan and China, for example, high-speed rail development began at a time when the air travel market was not as well-developed as it is today in the U.S. Compared to the U.S., there were also greater financial disincentives to owning and operating cars in Japan, China, and Europe, which likely influenced the pace and relative success of rail travel in those parts of the world (Deakin and Pérez Henríquez, 2017; Cervero, 1998).

tjpnz• 3 years ago

Maybe Taiwan will put them in touch. There's a Shinkansen line linking the international airport to Taipei.

bluGill5• 3 years ago

Spain is the place to look if you want to build HSR. They have built a lot of it for much cheaper than any other country. Japan has the most used HSR trains, but that is about population density, not that they do anything in particular right.

I'd drop the Netherlands for Turkey, and France for south Korea in a heartbeat if I was in charge. Probably Taiwan for Italy as well.

The above is about building. Once it is built Japan and France have a lot to teach the world about operations.

gurumeditations• 3 years ago

Only useful HSR is maglev like SC line in Japan. HSR is such a boondoggle it’s not worth it anyways.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

Ironically, I just posted this on Sunday night: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36843136

it deals heavily with the California "Bullet Train" and why it's such a shitshow.

I read (or skimmed) their 80-page report. They seem to have learned the lessons of other megaprojects, but I'd call this more of a realistic meta-plan than a plan:

The reasons for this dismal record of performance are not inherent in the technology or the environment, they are mainly due to human behavior. It is possible to build a megaproject under budget and on time. However, the ways in which people behave in the planning, development, and delivery of megaprojects, and the choices that result, render that outcome unlikely.

There are political reasons that turn projects like this into disasters. I don't know how you avoid them, except maybe by facing them upfront.

josh_carterPDX• 3 years ago

While I am excited to see a study has been done, the pessimist in me thinks I will not be alive when this finally happens.

poulsbohemian3• 3 years ago

Yawn. So maybe we'll have a connection to Spokane in another 80 years and a connection to the Tri-Cities by 2123. Let me know when it gets to my house.

I know perhaps I shouldn't be this negative, but... let's use Germany as an example, as it is roughly comparable to Washington and Oregon. Its residents now have a 49 Euro ticket anywhere in the country, useable on multiple forms of transit. We don't even have buses, trains, etc connecting our major cities. Don't even get me started on other social issues like health care, child care, etc. And as long as Eastern Washington continues to send Republicans only to Olympia, ain't a damn thing going to change for us over here. At least we are finally getting some decent internet - decades after most cities in Europe had comparably fast / cheap internet. Maybe someday we'll have more than one functioning mobile provider.

Exoristos2• 3 years ago

They probably don't suffer from as much graft as we here in the U.S.

PaulDavisThe1st6• 3 years ago

Germany: population: 84,270,625 area: 357,592 km^2 density: 232/km^2

WA: population: 7,785,786 area: 184,827 km^2 density: 39.6/km^2

In almost no way are they comparable. 1/10th the population, 1/2 the area, 1/8th the density.

genocidicbunny3• 3 years ago

I do want to point out that unlike Germany, where the population centers are relatively spread out over the area, in WA and OR, the vast majority of the population lives in a fairly narrow band largely following I5. The density of the Portland - Seattle - Vancouver corridor is a little less dire. Eastern WA and OR are relatively sparsely populated, so HSR to those areas is almost a non-starter.

xboxnolifes• 3 years ago

State population density simply doesn't matter. City population and distance between cities matters. Nobody realistically expects train lines to enable transportation to every square mile of the state.

guitarbill• 3 years ago

So it should be easier to find unpopulated, cheap land to build lines on between population centers, yeah?

poulsbohemian3• 3 years ago

eye roll I knew there would be some pedantic that would come along with this and I should have self edited to make it clear I was talking about square miles - which is why I included BOTH WA and OR which is especially relevant given that the article dreams about connecting not only WA and OR but also BC. Pop doesn't matter and neither does density for this subject. Every pissant village in Europe has a bus route, street car, or milk run train that will connect you to wider transit options. My only way to get to Seattle is a 12 hour (!!) Greyhound, a 4.5 hour car ride, or a $200 plane ticket.

CaliforniaKarl• 3 years ago

Six years ago, my coworker said he'd never see BART reach Santa Clara County in his lifetime. That changed in either 2017 (with Warm Springs opening) or 2020 (with Milpitas and Berryessa opening). He was surprised, too.

zmgsabst• 3 years ago

The reason that we don’t have those things is the rabid partisanship and graft, eg you ignoring the Homeless Industrial Complex and Sound Transit being black holes of tax money that deliver negative (homeless) or mediocre (transit) results for huge sums.

Obviously a lot of people object to writing checks that are perennially siphoned off by white collar crooks — but yes, the problem is those people from that town.

They’re just rubes who don’t understand your obvious greatness and should feel privileged to pay for your graft!

vel0city• 3 years ago

We don't even have buses...connecting our major cities.

https://us.megabus.com/

Sure looks to me like there are busses connecting the major cities of Washington.

slyall2• 3 years ago

The "Railways Explained" Youtube channel did a video about the proposals a few days ago.

https://youtu.be/KnGjwOCie3c?t=87

hx82• 3 years ago

If you were to pick a dozen likely stops on this train, you'll likely end up with a name collision. Vancouver, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia. It's fun to think about how they would handle this. Would they use the full names in all documentation. Would they give one of the locations a nickname, such as "Southern Washington" or "British Columbia".

I also wonder what would be the largest mishap that could happen because of the name collision. Imagine going to the wrong country because of some minor miscommunication!

doogblood• 3 years ago

Amtrak Cascades literally has this problem today. Idiots like myself occasionally buy the wrong ticket and end up having to bus home instead. Took a floatplane to BC planning to take the train back, whoops the ticket is for Vancouver, WA.

ojbyrne• 3 years ago

My favorite name collision is Ontario, CA (city, state) and Ontario, CA (province, country).

denimnerd422• 3 years ago

I had a friend from Ontario tell me she was going to school in London. That was confusing initially.

resolutebat• 3 years ago

If you book flights to Sydney on Concur, you are given a choice between two places called "Sydney NS". One NS is Nova Scotia, Canada, the other is New South Wales, Australia, and they're about as far away as is possible on this globe.

theluketaylor• 3 years ago

The Ontario’s are funny. I often get something shipped and think it’s close at hand for southern Ontario, only to be disappointed when I realize it’s in California and it’ll be a few days before it even hits the border.

Saint John NB and St John’s NL is one I find endlessly funny. On paper it should not be a collision, and even out loud it really isn’t one, yet I know multiple people who have independently flown to the wrong one.

erik_seaberg• 3 years ago

I’m reminded of an ad in a thick Jersey accent:

“Here’s your non-refundable ticket to Auckland.”

“You mean Oakland.”

“That’s right, Auckland, New Zealand.”

CPLX• 3 years ago

They already have Newark NJ and Newark DE on the northeast corridor.

jmyeet• 3 years ago

The rail situation in the US is woeful and it's important to understand why:

1. Privatization has been an absolute disaster for the rail industry. Privatization has simply become a way to privatize profits and socialize losses. The advent of Precision Scheduled Railroading ("PSR") [1]. It not only decreases safety but leads to massive delays for passenger trains who can't pass the longer trains that PSR results in;

2. A car-centric culture that originated after WW2 that ultimately came from excluding poor people, particularly people of color. There is a strong cultural bias against any form of public transportation because many view it as raising taxes even though road infrastructure is heavily subsidized; and

3. Further to (2), there are some billionaires who capitalize on this attitude and fan the flames by fighting against any form of public transportation and passenger rail (eg [2][3]); and

4. The US suffered from a first mover advantage. From the mid-19th century, the US built a massive aamount of rail infrastructure. This was designed for far slower trains. You can't just put high speed trains on the same track. China in comparison didn't have that problem; and

5. The pre-eminence of private property in the US makes building anything like this difficult and expensive. Yes, there's eminent domain but local and county authorities can hold things up for years. If you look into the California HIgh Speed Rail project, you see a lot of concessions have been made with the route and stations in relatively low population centers just to get planning permission, which increases the route length and the LA and SF travel time.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165699563/how-precision-sche...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/koch-activis...

[3] https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-cali...

gruez• 3 years ago

1. Privatization has been an absolute disaster for the rail industry.

Privatization implies it was previously nationalized. Was that ever the case?

jcranmer3• 3 years ago

Technically, yes--the railroads were temporarily nationalized during WWI.

Exoristos2• 3 years ago

The answer is much simpler. U.S. cities are too far apart for rail to be practical here.

govg• 3 years ago

That is true in a broad sense, but there are certainly many city pairs / areas where cities are within few hundred miles of each other. For example, there are flights from SF to San Jose, there are flights from Chicago to Madison, there are flights from Chicago to St Louis and so on. All city pairs where a HSR would be faster / same time duration as a plane end to end.

DiogenesKynikos2• 3 years ago

Large parts of the US are ideal for high-speed rail.

The Eastern Seaboard is basically perfectly laid out for high-speed rail (Boston - NYC - Philadelphia - Baltimore - DC). The Midwest has tons of ideal city pairs, such as Chicago - Detroit or Chicago - St. Louis. Even a line between Chicago and NYC would be practical (3.5 hours downtown to downtown with modern HSR).

The main problems for HSR in the US are: extremely car-centric development, highly individualistic politics, incapability of pulling off large public projects.

forrestthewoods8• 3 years ago

I’ve been reading about high-speed rail in the PNW for my 20 years in Seattle and I’ve yet to see a budget. And I’ve definitely yet to see how that budget is justified.

I don’t see how it can possibly make sense. The cost divided by ridership can’t be a friendly number. I live in Seattle and I don’t think high-speed rail to Portland/Vancouver is a particularly interesting thing.

I’m not at all a fan of 90 minute commute times. Yeah sure you can read your phone or whatever. But it’s soul crushing. Remote work is far superior to long-ass commute times powered by high speed rail.

poulsbohemian3• 3 years ago

When you realize that we are just barely caught up with what Forward Thrust was supposed to bring us when voters rejected that in the 1970s (like before I was born...) it's hard to imagine any of us will benefit in our lifetimes from any significant I-5 corridor high-speed improvements. The legislature really needs to be considering the housing benefits of improved transit, not only along I-5, but also for those who might live in say Ellensburg, Yakima, Spokane, who could conceivably be just an hour or two by rail away from their office in Seattle. Maybe not as every day commuters, but certainly in a blended work model.

CSMastermind• 3 years ago

For those unaware allow me to present The Seattle Process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_process

Otherwise known as "decision making through exhaustion" where everyone tries to stop progress as much as possible until the other people get so sick of arguing with you that they give up and you get your way.

The Seattle region might be the part of the country least capable of building infrastructure. I'll believe they'll get high speed rail when I see it.

carabiner2• 3 years ago

lol California would disagree. I am amazed at how much is being built here. I wouldn't be surprised if Seattle is the fastest building urban metro area in the US. I still think WA has a libertarian streak (hence no income tax) that moves things along.

throwaway-blaze• 3 years ago

WA does but Seattle does not. Worse, the one big city / region we have completely swamps the rest of the state politically so our "leaders" only ever get leftier and don't have a moderating influence from the other side.

It's worse in OR to the south (Portland)...it's so out of balance there that 11 rural counties voted to secede and join their eastern neighbor Idaho.

andbberger7• 3 years ago

california does indeed have it's own special brand of Process

it is truly amazing that san francisco, which would be one of the largest cities in the world if its growth weren't checked by its idiotic politics, remains the underdeveloped relative backwater that it is

and of course the high speed rail project, probably the most important transport megaproject in US history (by virtue of the influence its legacy it will have on the rest of the country), has been so spectacularly mismanaged through a combination of corruption and the California Process such that if i ever does reach the termini, political compromises made during its design will cripple both HSR and caltrain's operations and increase the journey time to no longer be competitive with airlines. in all likelihood the legacy will be the palatial viaducts built in literal cornfields that serve no purpose other than to enrich contractors (see: hanford viaduct)

psunavy034• 3 years ago

Are you kidding me? Washington's "libertarian streak" is long-dead and buried.

Whether you think it's a good thing or a bad thing, at this point, Seattle is basically San Francisco's insecure younger sibling and Washington is basically California Lite. As an example, since you brought up income tax, there is now a state capital gains tax, which the state Supreme Court cleverly danced around and called an "excise tax." Again, whether you think it's a good thing or a bad thing, Washington is every bit as much a single-party deep blue state as California now, and it's marching lockstep in the same direction as every other single-party deep blue state.

sbierwagen2• 3 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Seattle is the fastest building urban metro area in the US.

It's tied for fastest building Democrat MSA along Minneapolis. (6.5 permits per capita). SF is at 3.4. Orlando is at 11.

https://twitter.com/mnolangray/status/1682489858881884160

Gibbon12• 3 years ago

Full report this article is based on

https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Keepi...

salamiboy• 3 years ago

"Along with community engagement, limiting political sway is important. The study shows that if political representatives convince planners to route through different locations — deviating from the design — cities could end up with an expensive commuter rail system instead of a competitive high-speed rail."

Good luck, it's Seattle

23B13• 3 years ago

As a PNW native: no thanks. I'd much rather we spend tax dollars on ways to prevent the need for commutes – especially ones that require highway travel.

jdlshore2• 3 years ago

What would prevent the need for travel between Portland, Seattle, and BC, and how would you like the government to make that happen?

mynameisvlad• 3 years ago

How exactly would you prevent the need to travel between cities? Vancouver-Seattle or Seattle-Portland isn't exactly a "commute".

a2xd942• 3 years ago

How are tax dollars supposed to help prevent the need for commutes? By subsidizing remote work? I truly cannot follow the logic, curious to hear what you mean.

Public transport has been proven time and time again by numerous studies to be one of the best investments of tax money around. Just take a look at the absolute mess of a traffic situation that basically the entire Los Angeles metro area experiences, a direct result of no useful public transport system.

23B13• 3 years ago

There's a hundred different ways to disincentivize commutes – without subsidies either: simple tax incentives.

jboydyhacker• 3 years ago

I wish we had trains just like Japan and Europe have, but we don't have geography or population density like Japan or Europe has.

We have surmountable problems in regulation that drive up our costs to 6x per mile what it costs other countries but the problem is the revenue per ticket mile. Hard to match the city and population density.

amrocha• 3 years ago

There's plenty of high density in certain corridors of North America. Vancouver -> Seattle -> Portland, potentially extending down to California. Geography is not an excuse. Japan and China have horrible geography too.

irrational4• 3 years ago

Vancouver to Seattle would be doable. It’s the Portland to Vancouver part that would be hard. There were plans to rebuild the interstate bridge to allow more lanes, include pedestrian/bike crossing, and train crossing. It got so bogged down in disagreements that it was eventually scrapped. I’m not holding my breath on allowing a high speed rail crossing between Portland and Vancouver. Fortunately the rail yard in Vancouver is just on the other side of the Columbia.

beembeem• 3 years ago

Aha, to clarify for others - Vancouver WA is what you're referring to, not BC.

irrational4• 3 years ago

Oh, yeah. In Portland, if you say Vancouver, it means the one right across the river. You have to specify Vancouver BC if you mean the other one.

foota7• 3 years ago

Sometimes I wish transit development was... Less community oriented and more build it and they will come. It's frustrating watching them waffle back and forth while things stall.

DoreenMichele2• 3 years ago

I like the piece because it's research-based. I did a study of a rail plan based on "Local incorporated cities get together and divide up the political pie, thereby leaving out essential entities that weren't municipalities, and then hired a consultant to pick the best rail locations for each city that had already been granted a rail station based on political jockeying."

Suffice it to say, political jockeying did not exactly pick optimal sites for the county in question.

scythe• 3 years ago

For a region with relatively low population and big mountains, this is surprising. Sure, Florida built Brightline, but Miami plus Orlando alone equals the population of Portland + Seattle + Vancouver... on flat ground, with few changes to an existing rail corridor, over a shorter distance, and most importantly, it's all in the same country, in the same state even.

On the other hand, if it can work in PacNo, that's a call-out to all of the laggard corridors that have it so much easier: Atlanta-Charlotte, Washington-Richmond, etc.

elchief• 3 years ago

Take the $50B and build something that'll make a dent in climate change

_ah• 3 years ago

This is dumb.

In a high-density environment (hey there Japan!) HSR makes tons of sense. In a much lower-density area, moving people isn't the biggest problem, it's moving stuff.

Next time you take a long-distance flight in the USA, look out the window and ponder how dang big AND EMPTY the country is. People can be transported quickly by air, but for cargo you want energy efficiency per kg (not speed). For most of the USA, it's completely rational to build a slow, efficient cargo rail network. The overhead of airports makes sense for human transport given the distances involved. This is different from Europe/Japan where the overhead of air travel matters proportionally more given the short distances between destinations.

It gets worse. The value of a (human) rail network grows as its density grows. Germany is awesome because the rail network connects a bunch of different cities. Even if the Seattle+Portland route makes sense in isolation, that's basically the entire network right there. Maybe add Vancouver? There's no other population center even close... just 3 cities in a line on the coast. There's absolutely no multiplier effect on the new HSR links. They'd be better served by building a small dedicated airport at either end and running frequent commuter planes back and forth all day.

SllX3• 3 years ago

Eugene -> Albany -> Salem -> Woodburn -> Wilsonville -> Tigard -> Portland -> Vancouver WA -> Woodland -> Long View -> Castle Rock ->Centralia -> Grand Mound -> Olympia -> Lacey -> DuPont -> Tacoma -> Federal Way -> Seattle-Tacoma International Airport -> Burien -> White Center -> Seattle -> Shoreline -> Lynnwood -> Everett.

You could keep going, but that gives you the spine of the populated places between Seattle and Portland and a little past them too covering basically the Willamette Valley in Oregon. You could extend through Mount Vernon and Bellingham up to British Columbia. You could run an East-West line connecting Forest Grove and Gresham through Hillsboro, Beaverton and Portland.

I know Seattle and Portland are the big ones, but the value to people in passenger rail is the whole rail network, not just two points. That said, I’m not going to defend the economics of high speed rail in America either, I’m a bit soured on it, just thought your characterization was unfair that Portland and Seattle were the only two points that mattered when you’ve got most of metropolitan Oregon and Washington around them.

Balero3• 3 years ago

That route at the top would make any high speed rail pointless. You would never get up to a speed to make it worth while. All to stop at places like Castle Rock population 2500. Going down to Eugene and Salem would make sense, but with the intent that they places would aim to grow in size considerably.

Places like Gresham to Forest grove are better for the Portland tram network, they are just part of the one metro area, they are not different metro areas like Seattle and Portland.

DiogenesKynikos2• 3 years ago

I don't think anyone is proposing building high-speed rail in empty places like Wyoming.

Most Americans don't live in those vast empty areas. There are large parts of the US that are as densely populated as Western Europe. HSR would make sense on the Eastern Seaboard, in the Midwest, California, the Texas triangle, and the Pacific Northwest. There are plenty of city pairs in the US with a few million people, separated by a few hundred miles, which is ideal for HSR.

hparadiz• 3 years ago

High speed transportation tends to grow the low density areas.

doom2• 3 years ago

Shanghai to Beijing has a high speed line and no cities nearly as big as either of them between the two. Not to mention China's HSR network covers a number of cities over large distances. I think that'd be the better comparison to the US, no? Large geography with pockets of higher population?

scyzoryk_xyz2• 3 years ago

Man, whenever all this train talk comes up, I get this impression that Americans really know their shit when it comes to trains. All these plans and documentations, speeds, infrastructure details, hundreds of comments, expertise - you’d think it’s all the other way around.

I live in Poland, and all I know is that it all just works here (more or less).

achates• 3 years ago

Trains aren't a good fit for the US outside the northeast corridor. We have a fantastic interstate highway system for medium distances and for longer trips flying is cheaper and faster.

scyzoryk_xyz2• 3 years ago

Yeah, I think I can say we were/are intensely jealous of that interstate infrastructure. And yet you don’t see the same amount of people poring over all the minutae details that you see with trains - just funny how that works isn’t it?

dclowd9901• 3 years ago

Let me see if I can get this straight. $150 million for 200 miles of high speed rail track, trains and stations. Even in Taiwan, where it has existed for a minute, it’s $80 million PER MILE.

This, though, perfectly illustrates how Oregon likes to spend money: wasting it on projects that could never even possibly get off the ground based on the tiny commitment it’s willing to give.

Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

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