David just liveblogged the President as saying this:
“We used to have the best infrastructure. The best stuff…. And now, we go to Beijing, and we marvel at their airports. And we go to Europe, and we marvel at their trains. That’s not the American way.”
Recently, the corrupt new governor of Florida turned down a bunch of federal money for high-speed rail. Now that money is getting spent in Massachusetts and elsewhere, although for projects a lot less glamorous.
You know what trains ought to be like? Here’s the TGV in France; Translated, TGV stands for “Wicked Fast Train.”
This train goes 357 miles per hour, folks. I’ve taken the Eurostar from London to Paris, through the Chunnel. It’s … awesome. And then there’s the new Japanese Maglev train; traveling regularly at 310mph.
Just imagine if the Tea Party had been ascendant back in the 1950s. There would be no interstate highway system. “Big government”, they would have howled.
Discuss
13 Comments . Leave a comment below.I’ve rode on the Chinese MagLev a number of times. 431 km/h. It runs from Shanghai to the nearest airport, a 40 minute drive. Or an 8 minute train ride.
It’s amazing. The first time, you’re just transfixed on what’s going on outside — things close whiz by, but the traffic on the highway doesn’t seem to be going much slower… optical illusion. The second time I rode it, I pulled out my laptop to write something down, and I looked up and we had arrived… I hadn’t even noticed we’d left the ride is so smooth.
Trains that fast would absolutely transform this country. Are they the right move? I don’t know. Are 120+ mph trains the right move? You betcha — east coast, Chicagoland, maybe Texasland, and west coast.
Ease congestion on highways and airports, provide another choice [not everyone can drive], provide for a more robust transportation network for when there’s really bad weather, high gas prices, labor strikes, terrorist scares, etc., and do so with a smaller carbon footprint.
After my last-night’s interaction with the airline industry*, I’d say any alternative to it is a positive development. Before I read this, I’d been thinking about just how badly that industry has screwed up something that was once efficient, affordable, and even pleasant.
* UAL managed to completely lose an elderly couple flying in from Beijing, when they canceled a connecting flight to Manchester. We could not get UAL to say whether the old folks had actually made it onto the alternative flight to Providence that they repeatedly told us was confirmed. Halfway to Rhode Island, the airport hotel in Chicago called to say the folks were checked into a room there.
Amtrak markets the jet-nosed Acela as a TGV equivalent, but consider.
Today you can travel by train from Paris to Marseilles in 3 hours 20 minutes. That’s roughly the distance from Boston to Virginia Beach. Tickets are as cheap as e35 if ordered in advance.
At equivalent speed, Boston to New York would be about 2 hours.
Time to move into the 20th century.
PS It’s kph not mph–they are fast but not that fast.
=AWESOME.
If I really could edit my comments (any progress on that?), would fix.
Still I’d be happy with 150mph to New York–90 minutes!
from it’s European template and that has made it run less well and break down more often. What is up with that?
Is that the Acela covers the Northeast corridor, which is already densely developed, with quite a lot of people with property rights along the route, which rights are more expensive to expropriate in the US than in Europe or China.
If you live in Old Saybrook, CT, do you want a train crossing your streets, at grade, at 350 mph? I wouldn’t. If they want to go that fast, they need to get every crossing off grade, which costs some SERIOUS money.
The places in the US in which construction of superfast lines make economic sense, don’t have the demand for the service. Builidng one in Florida that zooms back and forth, empty, doesn’t seem like a very good use of money.
What’s more, if we succeed, at the cost of a few hundred billion dollars, to increase passenger rail traffic, we are going to screw up freight rail traffic, a system in which we are already pretty efficient.
The Japanese are decidedly more densely populated than the NE corridor but they’ve pretty much made rail travel central to their transportation model. Surely you’re not suggesting we’re not as capable as the Japanese…?
Remember trying to build the train through Hingham? Through the back yard of a lot of NIMBYs who thought of those train tracks as a quaint boundary rather than a transportation system? The tracks were there and operational when they slapped up their palazzos, but they still pulled their Capt. Reynaud (SHOCKED that gambling going on…) routine and held it up long enough to deep six the plans.
And because they were connected Democrats and lawyers, the words ‘eminant domain’ were never whispered.
Thoreau could take a train to Provincetown. I can’t.
Remember trying to build the trains through Hingham? The connected Democrats who bought palazzos thought of those exsiting and operational train tracks as a quaint boundary rather than a transportation system, but because there were…judges….among them, the upgrades were held up for decades.
Thoreau could take a train to Provincetown. I can’t.
Because his train tracks were built when building WAS the American Way – before turbine flicker, ocean views from compounds, noise pollution and a fine disdain for the common good became the Amerikan Way.
The reason trains seem to not make as perfect sense as they should is that we have undertaken a decentralization strategy in this country since the Interstate Highway System was built.
Driving to Boston this week, along with thousands, maybe tens of thousand of other cars, on a road that was at probably 80% capacity nearly the entire way, it seems as though it should be a no-brainer to put in a faster train from Western MA to Boston.
That is, until you think a little harder and realize that there is no single point in Western MA that captures the majority of travelers even to a destination city like Boston. That means that someone from, say, Agawam, would need to drive to Springfield and park their car to catch the train to Boston. Or they could just drive to Boston themselves because it’s easier to do this.
It doesn’t have to be this way, however there will be a period of time where we build rail lines and they will not be running at full capacity because people will still choose to live in Agawam and drive their cars in. It will take time for people to adapt – maybe 10 or 20 years – realizing that living in the hinterlands isn’t the best option for them when fast rail traffic exists between Springfield and Boston.
The reason conservatives hate rail so much is that it will mean a resurgence of the city — and conservatives *hate* cities with a passion.
This train is awesome and I would love it to only take two hours to get to new York, but I’m really not sure how big a priority that needs to be. Trains are “greener” than airplanes, so for that reason alone maybe we should create a redundant system. However, if technological improvements can make airplanes more efficient (how about hydrogen powered engines) and computer guided air traffic control can put more planes in the air what’s so much better about trains than planes (and don’t say quick security because that’s one attack from disappearing)?
In my mind the real issue we want trains to fix is traffic congestion. If the commuter train from the suburbs to Boston took 20 minutes instead of 50, there’d be a lot more reasons to take the train (for me, for instance, the commuter rail is the slowest of four commuting options. If it took 1/3 as long it would be the best option). But with lots of quick starts and stops does maglev or high speed rail work for commuter trains?
For me the issue is what infrastructure do we already have. It seems really tough to get the acela up to speed because upgrading crossings in communities is a slow, expensive proposition. I’d love more light rail and subway, but we’ve got thousands of miles of road – taxing cars off the road and making the bus system excellent seems like the cheapest best answer. We’ve also got a good commuter rail system – how do we double or triple the throughput? We don’t have an excellent interstate passenger rail system, is that really the best use of our resources or just a big idea project that can capture folks imagination?
But despite cutting corners and incurring a debt of $276 billion to build the trains, the Railway Ministry still can’t get anyone to ride its trains, which are too expensive for most Chinese to afford.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1749952/the-problem-with-chinas-high-speed-rail
Lots of problems with High Speed rail in the US.
a.) Cost, even through Amtrak is losing money the BOS-NYP is still way too expensive. $165.00 round trip – I can’t even justify it for business.
b.) High Speed rail actually uses more energy than other forms of transportation – see a. this is why it cost more.
c.) While you might like seeing peoples homes taken for the public good – I don’t want to see any more Kelo v. City of New London decisions. It’s wrong.
d.) These programs are ripe for corruption, Massachusetts can’t even buy software without corrupting politicians I can hardly wait for muti billion dollar high speed rail contracts.
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