Locals in Rochester speculate that Mayo either wants the DM&E (CP) right of way for expansion, or they are trying to prop up the local airport (which is operated by Mayo).

But every time a train hits a pickup truck in a grade crossing many passengers get bunged up with bruises, scrapes, cuts, and bone breaks.

What is really needed is seat belts and maybe air bags. Not invented here, I guess.

God, that would be a godsend. We can sure hope the FRA will revise its rules to match reality soon. That would help every rail proposal in the country, period.

Agreed that the FRA “crashworthiness” standards which don’t match reality are a major handicap and have been bloating expenses unnecessarily. I would love to see those changed as much as you; lighterweight equipment (with proper crumple zones, of course) would improve literally every rail system in the country, and being able to buy European designs nearly off-the-shelf (with only couplers, signalling, and occasionally clearances varying, *no heavyweight requirements*) would make designs both better and cheaper due to more competition.

We can hope. :-)

St. Paul Union Depot should have no problems here, since it’s actually a through station.

Chicago is another matter, but until the West Lake Transportation Center is built or Union Station is totally reconstructed, capacity is fixed at its current state. Luckily north side capacity is not nearly full yet.

(2) *If taking the river route*, FRA track standards for freight will have to be followed, because that is a *busy freight route* and there is *no room* to expand it to four tracks along most of the distance. Remember, this is valuable riverfront property, and it runs through a bunch of downtowns.

*If taking a different route dedicated to passengers* FRA standards might not need to be followed for track construction — but it is correct to assume that the river route is limited to FRA standards.

The river route is a pretty terrible choice for HSR, period. The Eau Claire alternative *or* the Rochester-La Crosse alternative are *both* better.

That is also from the state sponsored Tri-State II (MN/WI/IL) study. Hopefully the Midwest HSR Association 220mph study will revisit that – it is clearly a more easily justified use of the funds provided by members of a broad Midwestern rail advocacy group than the funds provided by members of a Southeast MN rail advocacy group.

With 3:00, the difference between 5 and 45 minutes is 6:10 versus 7:30 for a roundtrip. The line capacity difference isn’t large; the main issue is platform capacity at the terminals, which, as we know from the case of California, matters a lot. And, again as we know from the case of California, it showcases competence in general.

The Southern Corridor/Northern Corridor difference is another problem – as you note, it’s easy to include Eau Claire in the Southern Corridor approach. The people who designed I-94 didn’t seem to think that going through Eau Claire means avoiding Madison.

This is a bug, not a feature. SEMN Rail didn’t pay TEMS to produce an objective study; it paid TEMS to produce a study that confirmed its biases, in favor of the Rochester route, incremental upgrades such as single-track diesel service, and moderate speeds of 110 mph.

What you are complaining about here is that SEMN did not pay to produce the study that you want to have commissioned to critique the MWRRS approach.

You can well criticize the previous state of MN sponsored studies over a decade’s span that came up with the route for being too path dependent – Eau Claire was in the Northern Corridor, and you may well argue that when the Southern Corridor was chosen, the alignment from Madison through Eau Claire should have been included in the Southern corridor alignment options.

But its perfectly appropriate for an advocacy group to compare their proposal to current proposed alignment. Demanding that any advocacy group that commissions a study of an alternative must re-open every prior decision already made is absurd.

it’s equally true that there’s no way of running high-speed services when locomotives have to weigh 100 tons.

The critique of the 220mph technology as discussed in the report is, on the other hand, a valid critique.

The Electric High-Speed Train assumed for this study would utilize existing Acela locomotives, regeared and with perhaps some additional power added (as has already been done for Amtrak’s HHP-8 electric locomotives, increasing from 6,000 to 8,000 available horsepower, or for the Eurostar Channel Tunnel trains, by adding a booster under the first and last coach car.) The study assumes that the coach cars would be redesigned using Stainless steel or Aluminum construction to reduce their weight, but that they would retain their existing FRA Tier II compliance. With additional power and lighter coaches, an upgraded Acela train could achieve 185-mph on dedicated track. 220-mph speeds would require even more power with traction motors distributed underneath the coaches, as the latest generation of European high-speed
trains such as the ICE-3 and Eurostar has.

Clearly, they are fudging in this section. I would hope that the 220mph report commissioned by the Midwest HSR Association does a better job in this regard.

I think the fact that the company is oblivious to the fact that the ICE’s turnaround envelope is an order of magnitude less than 45 minutes is significant. Your mileage may vary.

ICE’s service turn-around is on the order of 30 minutes to 45 minutes, though they don’t turn around services at the end of each route. Turning around in MPS or Madison and running through Chicago might be a more realistic operating regime …
… but how many trains would be saved by turning the service around after each round trip or each second round trip? In the 220mph version, 4:15+0:05 means four one way trips is 16:15, so the first and possibly second service of the day can run two full round trips and the balance of the services can run one round trip and one way.

So running one service through the day and turning the service around when the system shuts down for the night cuts the required number of trains by at most one or two. That’s why its quibbling, posturing as a major “gotcha”.

It is well understood that, first, the NEC may reach top speeds of 125-150mph, but can not reach those speeds for long stretches of its route, and second, that Amtrak fares are not set to generate best possible operating ratios.

The NEC does reach its top speed for long stretches of its route south of New York. Between Newark and Frankford Junction, there is only one section with a speed limit lower than 100 mph, an S-curve in Elizabeth. The areas where Regional trains run significantly below top speed are the curvy tracks in Connecticut and parts of Maryland.

NEC fares are set to maximize revenue. That’s why even Regional trains are so expensive by the standards of state-subsidized routes like the Surfliner.

Using the study’s projected river route times, the average speed for nonstop trains is slightly lower than Acela speed from New York to Washington. The average speed for regional trains is slightly higher than Regional speed from New York to Washington. At those speeds, even reaching the NEC’s operating ratio of 1.15 would be a miracle.

They are proposing a modification of the alignment presently on the table. If a group wants to propose pursuing the Eau Claire alignment as a modification of the alignment presently on the table, that would be their prerogative. I am sure that TEMS would be more than happy to produce a parallel report on that alignment.

This is a bug, not a feature. SEMN Rail didn’t pay TEMS to produce an objective study; it paid TEMS to produce a study that confirmed its biases, in favor of the Rochester route, incremental upgrades such as single-track diesel service, and moderate speeds of 110 mph.

That’s been an assumption of the MWRRS all along, and they explicitly inherit the assumption from the MWRRS. It will be interesting to see if the Midwest HSR Association follows the same path in the 220mph study they have commissioned this year.

It’s the job of good planning contractors to say, “You can’t do it like this.” It’s understood that there’s no way of running high-speed services when curve radii are 500 meters; it’s equally true that there’s no way of running high-speed services when locomotives have to weigh 100 tons.

45 minutes is a reasonable turn-around envelope for ICE services, though of course they keep services running for more than a single route. Making a big issue of that for the fleet calculation would, of course, be hysterical over-reaction.

I think the fact that the company is oblivious to the fact that the ICE’s turnaround envelope is an order of magnitude less than 45 minutes is significant. Your mileage may vary.