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…
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:
/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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
Then you can worry about running faster trains.
Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Washington_train_derailme...
In what sense relevant?
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
I ride Amtrak to Portland 3d/wk and the amount of weird stuff happening along the tracks is staggering.
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.
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.
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)
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
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.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
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.
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!
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.
https://us.megabus.com/
Sure looks to me like there are busses connecting the major cities of Washington.
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.
I live in Poland, and all I know is that it all just works here (more or less).
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.
Maybe we should do a crawl/walk/run instead of jumping directly to HSR.
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.
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.
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.