Envisioning a Future Interstate Rail Network

Amazing work (and amazing PDF), I’m definitely very impressed by all the calculations to achieve those rankings. If only policy makers actually listened to transit advocates and looked at such proposals.

I would maybe say that there should be some type of bonus added to corridors in which a small city has a bigger stature than its population size indicates. For instance, I’d expect the Albany-New York line to have more ridership than its population would suggest since all the state’s power brokers transit between those two cities, and there are obvious reasons for New York City-ers to go to Albany.

Patrick –

I’m not sure what’s up with the PDF in Firefox; it works in Safari, but the new “here” link after the PDF link should work.

In terms of the North Carolina corridor – I know it well, obviously, being from Durham.

I compared the Raleigh-Durham-Greensboro-Charlotte corridor to a new line from Raleigh directly to Charlotte, which would be better in terms of being straighter and faster… but the results are dramatically less promising in terms of ridership. Simply put, the intermediate stations at Durham, Burlington, and Greensboro make this corridor worthwhile for HSR; a Raleigh-Charlotte direct connection wouldn’t be good enough.

In terms of whether to invest in full-out HSR or not:
> This is a compromise one must always make. If we choose to invest in HSR, we are choosing not to invest in something else, maybe improved local transit.
> On the other hand, true HSR at 200 mph is likely to be more cost-effective in the long term in terms of attracting riders (and being profitable) than a slower service, so this is an open question. Faster service also makes longer distance journeys more reasonable for passengers.
> Third, diesel rolling stock is fine… but not particularly environmentally friendly. If this is supposed to be about carbon reduction as well, electric trains are where this is at. That said, diesel trains that could also operate on electric power would make a lot of sense. In part of the corridor, they would run on catenary, while in less developed areas they would run off diesel engines.

One suggestion would be to connect DC to the Great Lakes through PIT instead of having travelers go to PHI. The corridor of CHI-DET-CLE-COL-PIT has a large population and a direct link to the Capital would be good.

Additionally, anyone from NC/VA needs to go to either PHI or ATL to travel west. NC has shown that it is growing, therefore, without blasting another trail through the Appalachians, a DC-PIT line would give them quicker access to this population corridor.

All that being said, I don’t know if there is too much twisting and turning in the mountains between DC and PIT. Maybe it would follow I-68 across MD/WV and then cut up I-79?

Diesel is not the way to go as was suggested above. Electrifying the entire system has multiple other benefits including a stronger power infrastructure in this country.

I like the plan but see some flaws in it. First was mentioned above. What happens when you get off? You need to have transit. Its not a one or the other. Its a both. Also. You show both Poughkeepsie and Kingston on the NYC-ALB line. Not possible. The ALB station is already on the east side of the river and between Poughkeepsie and Kingston is not a great place to swing from east side to west side and make the rest a new run.

I like the idea. I hope you have a follow up to it that looks at once this is built this is our next plan.

Thanks Chris…
You’re right about Poughkeepsie and Kingston being located on opposite sides of the rivers, and this would be a problem. However, it could theoretically be solved simply by having a new station on the opposite side of the river from one of the towns… which would, as you say, require good transit connections.

Thanks for the hard work putting this together.

I’m wondering if you have data available on routes that were not chosen. I would think that Fort Collins–Pueblo, CO (possibly south to Albuquerque or El Paso—don’t forget connections to Mexico) would have a higher overall potential for ridership than the section from Oklahoma City to Topeka as the population is concentrated linearly along the Front Range. I realize that this line is connecting Texas cities to Chicago, but perhaps a more direct direct route from OKC to Saint Louis or a route from Houston through Memphis would attract higher ridership.

The West presents difficulties due to its dispersed population, but it includes some of the fastest growing cities of the country and future growth should not be discounted. El Paso, Denver and San Antonio (another city that would provide travel options south to the Rio Grande Valley and Mexico) are the three largest metropolitan areas in the country not included in your system and scores should at least be calculated to show why they do not necessitate HSR service. Phoenix to LA is included and that line would travel nearly 300 unpopulated miles between the two. (I’m not arguing that it shouldn’t be included, but it provides another example with few population centers between destinations).

I would also look at a direct connection between SF/Oakland and Sacramento, although this may be difficult due to terrain and density.

And echoing pagespages, I agree that a line from DC to Chicago could also be beneficial. The Harrisburg to Baltimore/DC section is not marked with standard rail and should be included as it is also a heavily traveled route. I would connect State College through Harrisburg as well; the routing you have to Hagerstown would be nearly impossible due to the ridge and valley terrain that the line would have to cross plus would have little ridership. Going through Harrisburg would connect the student population to Philadelphia and the East Coast.

This is an interesting vision, although the National Association of Rail Passengers has some very similar ideas. It will be interesting to see how they compare.

This is great! I think anyone living in the US who is familiar with what the Europeans and Japanese have accomplished has envisioned a fantasy map like this.

I thought it was interesting that a recent post on this site mentioned the “Texas T-bone” but this route map doesn’t show that. Instead, you are showing a very awkward alignment going right through Austin. The “T-bone” alignment connects the major cities in the Texas triangle (Houston, Dallas, San Antonio) with three lines that all converge on Killeen, a town in the middle of all three.

Please don’t forget the awesome extension to Monterrey from San Antonio. As the industrial capital of Mexico, it woudl be incredibly effective to provide rapid transit to and from the first major city in the US. This also goes for San Diego/Tijuana, which is probably even more critical

Thanks for the comments, Josh. However, the ranking is not based on the number of passengers per route but rather number of passengers per route mile, which gives a better understanding of the relative cost effectiveness of each route.

There is no doubt that more people will ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles than from Fresno to Sacramento. However, the route is so much longer between LA and SF that it would be less cost-effective to build per mile, according to my calculations. Take them as you may.

If you go over the data in the PDF linked to above, you’ll see that the data I used does not misrepresent the population of the San Francisco metro area.

Josh – You’re right – the entire distance between Fresno and Sacramento would not be in the “CA CrossState 3” labeled above; however, the calculations linked above consider only the new 120-mile section from between Fresno and Merced to Sacramento.

If you look at the California HSR site (http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/), you’ll notice that Merced is on the CACS3 phase, not on the CACS1 phase… I’m sorry if the maps here do not reflect that as well as they should; I’ll update them to make that clear.

If you look at the calculations, you’ll find that the following journeys are included in the calculations for CACS1:
– SF-Fresno; SF-Hanford; SF-Bakersfield; SF-LA; SJ-Fresno; SJ-Hanford; SJ-Bakersfield; SJ-LA; Fresno-Bakersfield; Fresno-LA; Hanford-Bakersfield; Hanford-LA; Bakersfield-LA
The following journeys are included in the calculations for CACS3:
– Fresno-Merced; Fresno-Modesto; Fresno-Stockton; Fresno-Sacramento; Merced-Stockton; Merced-Sacramento; Modesto-Sacramento.

Journeys shared between the two corridors and with CACS2 are proportioned according to their relative share of the journey distance.

Seriously, look at how these results were formulated before you start questioning methodology.

I love the fantasy maps! I do have one suggestion for recalculation though. Your midwest 2 route (Cincinnati-Dayton-Columbus-Akron) should actually go to Cleveland instead of Akron. This is the known as the 3C corridor (Cincinnati-Columbus-Cleveland) that is a part of the Ohio Hub proposal. The existing rails just don’t go from Columbus to Akron. In fact, Akron is kind of left out in the cold completely:
http://www.dot.state.oh.us/Divisions/Rail/Programs/passenger/Pages/OhioHubMaps.aspx

Having looked at the methodology now, I think there are two big methodological problems with your idea.

First, you don’t justify the choice of the formula, either theoretically or empirically. This is wrong; normally, when an economist wants to invoke a formula, he’ll typically argue for the form of the formula theoretically, and then try to estimate constants. In your case, there are at least two unexplained constants, the power to which you raise D and the power to which you raise Cs/Cl; you assume both are 0.5. You also ignore other important constants like economic integration, as measured for example by the volume of air travel between each city pair; this arguably measures demand better than distance.

And second, your metro populations are based on MSA numbers. The MSA measurement is a bad proxy for the number of people with good access to a station. For example, it underestimates the Bay Area, which is really one metro area consisting of both SF and SJ, and South Florida, which is on a long, narrow corridor. It also ignores the feasibility of station placement; there’s basically no way to serve the Inland Empire without missing half the population there.

BTW: I disagree w/ Alan about Binghamton connect. In term of passenger connect, it would be better to have some intermodal transit to Syracuse from Binghamton, then rail East or West. Ithaca is even easier, either transit to Syracuse or a closer stop where there is existing rail traffic.

Historically, trains ran into Pennsylvania from Binghamton, so as long as rail interconnects to NYC before Philly, it makes more sense to work on rail development South rather than Southeast of Binghamton.

While the PDF focuses upon American rail development, it may be shortsighted to ignore our neighbors to the North and South. In other words expand the view so that the greyed out area is further away and, at the very least, show some of the interconnects with Canada’s better rail syste,.

I just finished my master’s thesis evoking your exact sentiments but expanding on the angle that our bi-modal system currently is failing us and we need a circuit-breaker between the airlines and the endangered auto (ie: nearly bankrupt auto companies and fossil fuel issues). The airlines are not profitable (compare post-deregulation stats quarter to quarter vs. pre-deregulation); the air traffic control system is from another eon; and if more airlines go bust then our traveling public will be stranded (see Hawai’i; ATA + Aloha Airlines goes bankrupt stranding passengers and damaging tourism industry). With the current credit situation none of our major airlines could step up and purchase a failed airline as was the case with PanAm and TWA. Imagine if Delta/NWA went bankrupt? Who could buy it and maintain their passenger share? No one! It’s against the law for foreign ownership of an American airline don’t forget. Just one of the angles by which we can move forward with rail is pointing out the fragility of the air system.

Overall, the thesis took the tack that the policy orientation of modes competing for funds will continue to hinder the overall efficiency of our transportation system and that has to change. In order to arrive at such a goal however, planners need to link a future rail system with major airports ie: Newark, Dulles, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Denver, SFO, LAX etc. If true high-speed rail doesn’t connect to major airlines the myriad of airline/pilot/Boeing constituency groups will “rail” against rail.

Luftansa was successful with linking their major hub in Frankfurt with a rail operation from two nearby cities to feed their profitable int’l flights. Few airlines make that much money on regional jets anyway (see: Independence Air). IATA reps have said multiple times that they wouldn’t mind if rail could take over for this segment so that airlines can focus on profitable routes (TransCon and Int’l). Better yet rail and air can partner up; meaning efficiency.

So my point is these these modes need to connect and be non-rivalrous to an extent. Additionally, I love the graphic representations.

That’s nice work, but Alon Levy has an important point about the scoring formula. How does one derive it?

I think that some such formula could be derived empirically if one had Amtrak’s passenger data available, sorted by riders’ origin and destination stations. One could then find the nominal scheduled time and perhaps also the average actual time for each pair of stations, and use that as an additional input. The number of trains per day could also be significant, so we could use that also. The result would be

(Number of riders) as a function of (origin-city population), (destination-city population), (travel time), and (number of trains per day)

Failing access to complete ridership data, one could use overall data for various trains’ riderships, especially trains with big destinations at or near the ends of their routes.

Turning to Metropolitan Statistical Area population as a proxy for potential-passenger population, I agree that it is not the best possible choice, but any improvements on it will require analysis of local population densities and access convenience.

Thanks everyone for all the comments.

In terms of the methodology, I fully recognize that the formula I used for comparing different lines is no panacea; however, I simply wanted to take advantage of the data I had: the population of metro areas according to the U.S. Census.

While Alon and others make good points, I would like the point out that I derived this formula in order to take into account three things in considering ridership between city pairs: the population of the two metro areas involved, the proportion of the small metro area to the big metro area in each pair, and the distance between the downtowns of each city. My formula assumes that there is more travel between two big cities than two small ones, and that there would be proportionately more travel from a small city to a big one than from a small city to another small one. It also assumes that there is more travel between cities the closer they are (between 50-500 miles), though I squared this ratio, because I don’t think that distance increases and ridership decreases proportionately.

You may quibble with this formula, but it provides a simple method to compare ridership. By using Census MSAs, I could estimate ridership for cities and their suburbs between than using city populations or Census CSAs would allow. I would like to point out that using MSA numbers rather than city populations does seem to be appropriate considering that a high-speed rail system would exclusively provide inter-MSA travel, never intra-MSA travel, meaning that there’s little reason to calculate populations within the MSA. I’m also not particularly convinced by the argument that travel might depend on density of MSAs; for inter-city travel, people from all metro areas are able to get to the airport – why wouldn’t they be able to get to the train station? Density I think is far more important when considering transit than HSR. For those concerned about the Bay Area, let it be known that San Francisco and San Jose are in separate MSAs and I calculated them separately.

I do not have flight data between city pairs – I looked for it, but unfortunately could not find it (if someone has it or can tell me where to find it, I’d be interested!). I do not think existing Amtrak ridership statistics are applicable, because honestly they present very small numbers for a service that is far from high-speed rail. Using existing Amtrak numbers, in my opinion, would sort of be like using the transit ridership of a city with only a bus system to estimate how many people will ride a new light rail system; we’ve seen in numerous circumstances that the two numbers aren’t necessarily parallel at all.

Anyway, thanks again for all the comments. To say the least, we can be sure that the discussion level here proves the great unmet desire for HSR in this country!

An interesting idea.

One nitpick: you show “standard speed service” along the North Shore of Lake Superior between Duluth, MN and Thunder Bay, ON. Except for a short distance between Duluth and Two Harbors, no rail line has ever existed along that corridor, and due to the topography along there, no rail line likely ever will.

Regarding Binghamton, NY (which has NO P, by the way — another map error) — you want the direct Lackawanna Cutoff connection from Scranton to NYC. The route from Binghamton to Albany is actually not really very appropriate. Binghamton-Albany-NYC would be significantly slower than Binghamton-Phiiladelphia-NYC. And the intermediate-point ridership would be very low; that’s a genuinely low-population route.

Binghamton-Cortland-Syracuse, on the other hand, would provide faster access to “the north and west” for Ithaca, Elmira, Binghamton, and Scranton. Therefore it should be included.

Eventually, both Scranton-NYC service (Lackawanna Cutoff) and Allentown-NYC service (any of several routes) should be added to the map too.

And in *another* area — the existing Amtrak Adirondack route is not the greatest even though it’s the one usually proposed for high-speed service. The west (NY) side of the NY-Vermont border simply has fewer people than the east (Vermont) side. Running up the east side of Lake Champlain is the logical thing to do, along the Rutland-Burlington-St. Albans corridor, before reaching Montreal. This is approximately the Vermont Railway route occassionally proposed for upgrades to passenger service.

Yeah, these are all quibbles. But getting the city connections right *matters*. The fact that Detroit currently lacks a reasonable rail route to NYC — change via Chicago?!? — is very important. Building a rail route to Ithaca but making it stupid would be a way to handicap it badly.

Here’s the deal with airports. Lot of planes fly from O’Hare to Milwaukee, but no PEOPLE fly from Chicago to Milwaukee (O’Hare-Milw. used for illustrative purposes–same idea applies lots of places). Those flights are bringing connecting customers from, say, Seattle or Denver. People are not going to ride trains from Seattle to Milwaukee; nor are they going to get off at O’Hare and travel 20 miles by bus or cab or subway to the train station to then ride a train to Milwaukee.

Building a HSR link from O’Hare to the Milwaukee airport (and continuing downtown) makes enormous sense. Integrating baggage handling and ticketing into the transportation service is even smarter. If United thought of itself as a transportation company rather than an airline, they could expand their service and reduce their costs. They could sell their takeoff and landing slots in Milwaukee, free up their planes for longer haul (more profitable) flights and actually provide more reliable service (think snow closings of O’Hare in winter and thunderstorms in summer–probably won’t stop the train).

The airports already have infrastructure in place that does not exist at most rail stations:: hotels, rental cars, parking, etc. that make these kinds of connections the smart way of doing business. And conceived intelligently, it could draw the airlines in rather than making them opponents. Add Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Detroit, and even St. Louis to the O’Hare network (with a few intermediate stops) and you’ve just eliminated the need to build the $20 billion third Chicago airport. Now that’s a smart investment!

Very nice article and nice feedback. And an important step toward a solution to a critically important problem that we all share.

A few comments based on a several decades of exposure to ideas and discussions re transportation.

1. As noted previously the solution requires really big thinking and really big ideas. Apollo Project-sized thinking and ideas. The existing rail system and its 150 year-old concept cannot be allowed to be the tail that wags the dog. The problem requires Jeffersonian-level visionary thoughts to be applied.

2. NASA has had a mandate for decades to study transportation issues ranging from earth orbit to our front doors and everything in between. They’ve studied everything from SST’s, SuperJumbo jets and airport capabilities to process 800 people and baggage unloading from one flight to connecting multimodal transportation and infrastructure. It would seem logical to have NASA deeply involved in the planning of this enterprise. The benefits being access to decades of investigation, NASA’s left-brainpower (good critical thinkers) and their (theoretical) separation from political and business influences.

3. An Idea Too Big: A Short Story
In 1991, a woman stood up in the Hingham, Massachusetts town meeting. The topic under discussion was the town’s position on the planned reactivation of a pre-Civil War rail route that ran through the town. The “Greenbush Line” was planned for commuter service. The woman, a critic of the Greenbush Line, cited a proposal made by a European company back in the 1970’s to the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. It was proposed as a solution for high-speed transit for Boston’s expanding South Shore communities. The concept proposed a monorail that ran in the median of Massachusetts Route 3, an important north-south limited access highway. It took advantage of all of the connector routes already in place. It settled NIMBY issues. It was a green solution. It would involve high-tech MIT-level problem solving that Massachusetts has long been famous for. Best of all it could become a revolutionary national model for high-speed transit solutions. It made such terrific sense.

Of course the idea was dismissed and ultimately “the easy solution”, the diesel-powered, 40 mph, already obsolete, rail line was built and opened a few years ago. The Big Idea was dismissed because it was literally too big an idea for the small-thinkers and vision-impaired that I normally associate with most public problem-solving. Certainly it was a concept with difficult technical problems to overcome. But so was the Apollo Project. The missing ingredient was a JFK-level vision with its “we do it not because it is easy but because it is hard” inspiration. I’ve often wondered if that project had been built how much we would have learned from that model that could have been applied to high-speed national transit system today and in the future.

4. The above concept would well apply to the Boston-Washington corridor since Amtrak’s existing rails are speed-constrained due to their ancient location. A totally new solution would allow truly high-speed travel here. And the problems it would be forced to solve could be applied elsewhere, even globally.

5. It’s time to reread JFK’s speech at Rice University made on September 12, 1962.

Simple question… why does the plan not call for a connection between Dallas and Tucson?

ALSO, we need a President calling for a national system… and a legislation to write a federal law for it, including an SERIOUS eminent domain clause and a large budget. This SO could be done within 20-25 years with the right people running it and the right technology applied. America needs the economic stimulus and American people WOULD LOVE to take an alternative to flying these days.

Somehow, greed and corruption in the automotive and airline industry will prevent it though. You need a megalomaniac business man (who digs trains) to get behind this, to manipulate the nation’s status quo in the right manner. Who is that gonna be?