REUTERS: As oil rises, Americans rediscover the railroad

Some time ago (within the last 2 weeks) a very prominent politician made a comment concerning our need to use more mass trainsit. I would dearly love to see the old Auto Train nationwide. Ride my motorcycle to the nearest depot, clamp it down, have a seat and enjoy a couple hundred mile ride to my destination. Somebody SLAP ME and WAKE ME UP! Even if the fare is half the price of the fuel the vehicle would have consumed, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Oh jees, I forgot about the lawyers! "You scratched my car!", irate passengers " Are we ever going to leave the station?", etc., etc., etc.

If a railroad won't allow a steam excursion on a mainline, they certainly would be scared to death of a national policy for passenger rail transit.

Most of us are too young to remember passenger rail traffic and too old to see it come back again.

 

At least the American railroads could build a common, general electrical system. In Europe, each country used its own system and today we are facing the problems of this policy: in Holland (and southern France) we have 1500 V DC, 3000 V DC in Belgium, Italy and Spain, 15.000 V in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 25.000 V in northern France and the UK and on our Dutch HSL and new freight line...... This calls for complex engines that can handle the different systems, so that the need for changing engines at the borders isn't necessary anymore. Some engines can handle four different systems!

So, if American railroads will electrify, there will be enough pulling power available to run the trains. European manufacturers and the Canadian Bombardier have enough experience.

 

True. We already have a common gauge, too. I remember riding a train from Spain into France and the Talgo set changed gauge one truck at a time at a spot near the border. It was pretty impressive from this railfan's perspective, but I could see how that would also be a huge pain in the neck operationally.

 

The Spanish are now building high speed lines wirh standard gauge: now it will be possible to go from France to Spain without changing wheelsets or gauge. But in Russia, the coaches still need to be changed because Russia has the same broad gauge as Spain and some parts of Portugal.

Well, our first railway had also that broad gauge...

 

Actually, no. Russian gauge is 1520 mm; Spain and Portugal have 1668 mm.

 

Let’s assume we had all the funds to build a passenger rail infrastructure throughout the United States.

We decide to build these new rails down the center medium of the current interstate highway system.

I live in one of the towns on the I 40 corridor apx midway between OKC and and Amarillo TX

With a population of apx 11,500 we are the largest town west of El Reno and East of Amarillo. A distance of roughly 250 miles.

How does a rail passenger network survive in such a low population region. And this is a high population region compared to what lies between Amarillo TX and Albuquerque NM.

Passenger rail works only in densely populated regions or where those regions are geographically close as in Europe.

A return to something like the old interurban system such as the Sacramento Northern might be in our future but it will be the states that get this up and running

 

I think there are some regions ripe for increased passenger rail development.

Right at the top of the list is the NE corridor. I would say that California comes in close. Oregon and Washington have been working on pushing their own a bit (with some cooperation from B.C.) with the Amtrak Cascades train service. My hat is off to Washington for being the primary mover on that one.

I am not as familiar with the area, but I would guess that Florida would have a density necessary to make something like this worthwhile, and then that corridor between New York and Chicago. Pretty soon the dots start connecting.

Short of telling people they cannot have kids or move, the middle parts of the country will eventually fill out some more.

 

Oregon and Washington are trying to tie together Seattle, Tacoma and Portland everything else is to empty to bother with, as far as the legislature is concerned.

California is the most populated state in the union but get away from the coast and it looks more like Texas or Arizona with regards to population density.

There are regions in California where you could perform above ground nuclear testing and the closest people would look at the horizon and ask “Wow!! What was that?”

 

There are remote areas in Europe, too. I remember taking the train across northern Spain and between the coasts there weren't many towns of any consequence.

California has a lot of potential along the coast, and then perhaps between the LA area and Las Vegas, Nevada. I wasn't proposing major rail infrastructure development in, say, the remote areas of the Sierras or some of the more remote deserts.

Cascades service presently operates between Eugene, Oregon, and Vancouver, B.C. The Talgo trainsets could go faster even over the unbanked track, except that there is class I traffic that needs to be considered.

There are opportunities that I think will be seized upon given some time... and maybe six dollar gas.

Adam

 

And yet, people along those transcon Passenger corridors would be cut off if the long distance service were removed.

Congressmen love to pooh pooh the Southwest Chief or the Empire builder, but the fact is that most of the ridership is between the intermediate stops. It IS a corridor service already. One without any replacement if it is removed. It would actually significantly hurt those regions.

As for California. If the only worthwhile population is on the coast, then please explain to me why the capital corridor and San Joanquin trains do so well? And why are they contemplating better service to Reno? And the inland empire and and and. California isn't as dense as the northeastern Megalopolis is, that's for sure, but there's a far cry between that and empty Nuclear test worthy land.

Also, part of the problem IS the population centers and a lack of space.
The advantage of a high speed train connecting Sac/San Francisco and LA is the intermediate stops in Stockton and Bakersfield, because it would allow people to move to those communities at a lower cost of living and commute in. Similarly, Seattle and Portland benefit from the ability to connect to Spokane and Boise with intermediate stops to support Extra-urban commuters.

 

You are describing what exists at least in the southern half of England, perhaps extensively throughout Europe, where there are many small communities connected by high speed rail, yet each community is commutable to major employment centers with travel times of less than an hour.

The difference between most of the UK and the US is that the UK refused to allow their rail infrastructure to be torn up for scrap, instead maintaining it through thick and thin as a significant contributor of the transportation infrastructure. That, and keeping petrol (gas) at or above $4/Gallon, thus never allowing the automobile to become the least expensive, therefore preferred mode of transportation.

We'll just have to wait and see how our elected "Leaders" in Congress and the White House handle the various complex options. Hopefully they will make logical and long-term decisions that will be the best for our Country, and not mindlessly bowing to their own political party lines.

I paraphrase an old saying that I wish members of Congress would take seriously - "Progress is four kids in a sandbox with no fighting!"