Your comment seems to suggest it’s somehow either/or. Why?

Woody- I also support the expansion of conventional rail networks (and bus networks!) throughout the US. But I am also concerned that if we consider a rail line from Denver to Chicago as a “other potential” high-speed service we will be diluting the definition of HSR in the way that Bus Rapid Transit has been cheapened in the USA to mean new shiny buses and better-than-miserable amenities.

Another way to achieve what I am talking about with this map is to relabel the other corridors “possible conventional rail corridors.”

As we pour another $14 million into worthless maglev studies from Atlanta to Chattanooga, I’d like visions for high-speed rail to focus on where HSR makes the most sense and can be built with the greatest benefit- and that is in metropolitan America.

The Brookings Institute wisely points out “the largest 100 metros represent just 12 percent of the nation’s land area and 65 percent of its population but account for 74 percent of the nation’s college graduates, contain 77 percent of all good-paying “knowledge” jobs, originate 78 percent of all patent activity; and handle 79 percent of the nation’s air cargo in this global trade economy.”

We have recently achieved a breakthrough spending initiative on High Speed Rail. It will be partially squandered if we spend this money improving 59 or 79 mph tracks across large stretches of rural America rather than linking metropolitan areas or large and medium size.

And superimposing the French TGV routes on the US map was sobering. We have a long way to go and a lot of ground to cover.

That would indeed be a strange conclusion, given the extremely heavy volumes of bus, car and rail traffic that already exists between Hartford, NYC, and points in between.

I believe they even went so far as to lay out plans for acquisition of right-of-way for the rails.

The project was shelved when the state refused to provide loan guarantees to the private consortium. But all the ground-work was FINISHED. TWENTY years ago.

Think about it a little bit…

(I also heard unsubstantiated noise at the time that Southwest Airlines was heavily opposed to the plan, and fought it vociferously, since it was going to be in direct competition with the then still-fledgling airline, whose major cities were still DFW-Austin-Houston.)

-blaine

Alternatively, there are enough passing sidings on the NEC to permit both 125 mph Regionals and 220 mph Acelas; the long-distance trains would run as Regionals. Much of the route in New Jersey is six-tracked. Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland have light enough commuter volumes (3 tph, peak) that the Regionals could share track with commuter rail. All that’s needed is schedule discipline, and maybe one six-track section located halfway between Philadelphia and Wilmington.

In fact, of the top 10 money losers both per passenger-mile and per seat-mile, only two are short-distance, the Hoosier State and the New Haven-Springfield Shuttle.

“EngineerScotty: it’s all of those issues, together. Montana gets service because it’s between Chicago and Seattle, Mississippi because it’s between New York and New Orleans.

The real issue is that Amtrak shouldn’t be operating such trains in the first place.”

Of course, Andrew Seldon argues (YouTube) that its the short corridor services that lag the long corridor services in terms of the actual measures of performance – load factor, passenger miles, revenue – which implies that if they were to shut down services based on cost per passenger mile, its the regional corridor services that would get shut down first, not the long haul services.

Which is not at all surprising – shorter regional corridors will not be able to fully tap their other competitive advantages until the trains are as fast as driving, and will not gain a time of travel competitive advantage, obviously, until they are faster than driving.

But Amtrak has a clear conflict of interest here. Between Washington and New York it runs almost as many long distance trains as Acelas. It runs them on the same tracks, only a little slower. It timetables to make this possible. Were Amtrak to upgrade the Washington-New York track to enable 220mph, it would no longer be able to run the long distance trains on that track. It would be put to a choice: start, say, the Crescent at Washington or run it on the local track shared with commuter trains — MARC, SEPTA and NJT — which run slower even than the freights it encounters outside the corridor. Neither solution is satisfactory. As long as Amtrak doesn’t upgrade the track that much, it isn’t faced with this problem. Leave the track with Amtrak and it will never be upgraded.