Mark McGlone
Baltimore, Maryland
July 5, 2021
Dear Ladies and Gentleman,
Good afternoon, my name is Mark McGlone, a volunteer with the office of Congressman Seth Moulton, and I am writing to you to urge your support for the bill which Congressman Moulton recently brought again before the House of Representatives, the American High Speed Rail Act.
This legislation would help to address multiple challenges facing the nation, and indeed the world, including access to transportation for both lower-income residents and others, global warming, and job creation.
It would do so by facilitating the construction of high-speed rail networks around the country, akin to those already flourishing in other areas of the world, which could among other things compete with longer-haul bus options to provide affordable long-distance transportation for those without access to a car, in a manner much more friendly to the environment than either these bus routes or the airline flights which other train passengers would otherwise take.
In their construction and operation, these networks would also provide employment opportunities in a variety of fields to all sorts of people with varying skill sets, from construction workers and engineers to conductors and computer technicians.
At a time when the nation’s need for infrastructure is once again in the headlines, it is hard to imagine many infrastructure projects more worthy than this, so I urge you to read the details of the bill on Congressman Moulton’s web site at https://moulton.house.gov/press-releases/moulton-boyle-and-delbene-introduce-the-american-high-speed-rail-act, and to lend their voice in support of it to the rest of Massachusetts’ congressional delegation, to President Biden, and to any other national and local leaders who could assist in this endeavor.
Sincerely,
Mark McGlone
This is one of those areas in which we seem to be embarrassingly behind other countries.
I wish there was more focus on “rail” and less on “high speed”.
The need to address our collective carbon footprint is far and away the most important driver for these vital transportation changes. That means reducing energy needed for any of these trips.
Any technology uses exponentially more energy for each extra unit of speed. This is because kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity.
The most effective way to bring a measure of sanity to the relative pricing of airplane, automobile, bus, and train travel is to adjust federal subsidies to match the desired relationship. The reason that airplane, automobile, and bus travel is today so much less expensive per passenger-mile than rail is that our federal, state, and local governments have spent the last 50+ years making it that way.
The most effective use of those tens of billions of rail dollars is to:
“High-speed rail” is yesterday’s headline. America’s first order of business should be to just plain GET THERE, rather than trying to get there at 150+ mph. Our own state is an excellent example — it makes far more sense to run conventional passenger trains between Springfield and Boston (with an intermediate stop in Worcester) at 100MPH than to waste enormous amounts of money seeking a top speed of 200MPH.
The distance, by rail, between Springfield and Boston is 98 miles. The published time between those two points on the Lake Shore Limited is 2:28 (two and a half hours). That trip is reduced to 90 minutes by simply building separate right-of-way and reducing slow-order segments (by doing things like straightening curves). The change in “timetable speed” (distance/scheduled time) is from 40MPH to 65MPH.
Perhaps if Mr. Moulton spent more time traveling by train and less time grandstanding, he might be more aware of these obvious realities.
I assume high speed is for cross-country trips rather a Springfield-Boston commute.
High-speed rail has been consistently proposed in the ongoing discussions about contemplated rail service between Boston and Springfield. It is becoming the “oat bran” of pretty much every discussion of passenger rail funding — sort of like the way that every condo is now advertised as a “luxury condo”.
There is apparently a perception that conventional passenger rail is useless. Conventional passenger trains have been running at 100+ MPH for more than fifty years. That’s plenty fast enough for nearly all passenger rail service.
No, it’s really not. I agree with you that as to intra-regional inter-city routes like Boston to Springfield it’s not absolutely necessary, but I disagree as to major intercity routes.
When you travel on high speed rail in France and Spain andJapan, and then you return to the United States and compare the level of service, the suggestion that we would expect business travelers to use rail instead of air unfortunately becomes laughable.
There is absolutely no reason that we cannot have high speed rail between major cities in this country such as exists in Europe and China. And it is the only form of rail that will challenge other modes of transportation.