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South Station to Capitol Hill in Three Hours
By Cynic on Tue, 09/28/2010 - 10:44pm
Amtrak unveiled its vision for a Next-Gen High Speed Rail system along the northeast corridor, and it's pretty spiffy. The Super Express would travel non-stop between Boston and New York City in just 83 minutes - and, after stopping at Penn and Grand Central in New York, and again in Philadelphia, get passengers all the way to Union Station in Washington DC in just 3 hours and 23 minutes. That's about as long as the typical Sox game - and probably a little faster than flying, once travel to the airport and security screenings are factored in.
In place of the current route, which passes over the congested MetroNorth tracks and the twists and turns of the Connecticut shoreline, the report analyzes a new route, that "parallels the existing NEC from New York to just north of New Rochelle, then follows a combination of highway, rail and overland routes through Connecticut and Massachusetts, before rejoining the existing NEC south of Rt. 128 in Massachusetts and paralleling it into Boston." Bad news for Providence and New Haven. But Hartford will like the project, and that should get Connecticut on board.
Of course, there's no funding for this dream project. It would take roughly $4 billion each year for three decades to build the full route. But that's a pittance, compared to what we've spent on highways. And for Boston, the project may well be vital. Our economic future is tied to the northeastern megalopolis. Increasing the speed and ease of travel among its four key cities is essential; as individual nodes, they're not nearly so compelling as they are as an assemblage. We mark the northern edge. The more closely we're tied to the rest of the urban corridor, the better we'll fare.
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Comments
I'll believe it when I see
I'll believe it when I see it. No one wants to fund ANY infrastructure and most certainly not trains.
It would take roughly $4
"It would take roughly $4 billion each year for three decades to build the full route. But that's a pittance... "
Oh, well then....
It would take thirty years to build? I'll be right on it.
I hope so. The sooner we
I hope so. The sooner we start, the sooner we begin to reap rewards. And as sections come on-line, we can start to see improvements in service in a much shorter time-frame. More to the point, it would have a massive stimulating effect, and jump-start an entire domestic industry. Wouldn't that be nice to have right now?
I should also have spelled out that the completed system is projected to produce a $900 million annual operating surplus, after covering its own maintenance and operating costs. What that means, in practical terms, is that it's realistic to build this as a privately financed project - whether that means partnering in its construction, floating bonds securitized against the future revenues, or some other scheme. In other words, in addition to the already allocated stimulus funds and seed money for research and development, there would be only modest need for additional outlays of federal or state tax dollars. This thing could be built by borrowing, one way or another, against the cash it will generate once operational. And that's precisely what Amtrak's president is proposing.
$120 billion?
Yeah, that's a great thing to add to a $14 trillion national debt. Let's invest in something that leaves a handful of times a day instead of making things better for cars that leave whenever they want.
Who wants to hang around Philly or D.C, anyway?
Mmm...
I love the smell of right-wing talking points in the morning. Smells like...inanity.
That's silly
I hardly believe that eliminating waste is the exclusive domain of the right-wing.
Al Gore
Took out loads of it in his first term as VP. This made him quite the target of the right wing, since he "gored" several of their sacred cows of pork barrel spending.
I agree. Eliminating waste
I agree. Eliminating waste is not even close to being important to right-wing fanatics. All they care about is borrowing money from China and giving tax cuts to billionaires.
40 billion, actually. 120 is
40 billion, actually. 120 is the cost 40 years from now.
A tiny insignificant speck, compared to the 900 billion in tax breaks for the rich the republicans are pushing.
We've spent untold fortunes
We've spent untold fortunes making things "better" for cars. Why not spread the love around some? As someone who lives in Boston but has family in New York I've got to say that I hate driving between here and the Empire State. A high speed rail line would be a big plus. The current Amtrak between Boston and Albany is SO slow.
You mean those cars powered
You mean those cars powered by foreign oil? From governments supported by Islamofascists?
Yes, there is substantial demand for a train that can go from Boston to New York in an hour. It's practically the Financial District's wet dream.
or just about anyone without
or just about anyone without their head stuck up glenn beck's arse
Target date 2040? Get real!
Hoover Dam took only five years to build, back in the 1930s! Why are they estimating that this would take 30 years? I almost threw up in my mouth when I heard a target date of 2040!
Nowadays labor is more
Nowadays labor is more expensive comparatively and there are small things like worker safety that the project needs to take into consideration.
The Hoover Dam had an official death count of 96 workers. If one worker died today the project would immediately halt pending an investigation.
The Hoover Dam was also in
The Hoover Dam was also in the middle of nowhere. Less property rights to worry about. This high speed corridor will be going through one of the most densely packed residential areas in the country. That's been one problem with high speed rail in this country: getting the right of ways. Ideally the track should be as straight as possible in order to decrease the number of turns the train has to make (since a turn requires it to slow down).
Right of Way
Only 13 billion to buy new right of way for 44% of the track? Even assuming unchallenged use of eminent domain, this seems like lowballing it.
Right of What?
Eminent Domain is such a long, expensive battle. Hmmm, how about a TUNNEL?
I'm assuming most of the ROW
I'm assuming most of the ROW is already contiguous from the first time we built railroads.... it's just a matter of a few acquisitions I imagine, not buying out every little farmer along the way.
The report appears to indicate otherwise
The constraints for laying out the track a hundred years ago were entirely different. Going from a half-mile to a three-mile curve requires an entirely different property. You might also note that in the report it states that 32% of the alignment would run parallel to existing rail lines or highways. That seems to count the part of the ROW you refer to.
This suggests to me that the half located on new ROW or bridges would require piecemeal purchase. I expect that the curve up by Danbury is motivated by the desire to minimize ROW purchase costs in a very pricy area. It's still a lot of land. Considering how much of the analyzed route follows I-84, I-90, and I-91, a lot of the 44% is probably land that borders the existing ROW, which must be widened - even following the existing corridors, you still need more land there.
smackdown! thanks for looking
smackdown!
thanks for looking closer than i did!
The question is, what will happen first...
...this or the green line extension thru Slumerville?
Whine all your want, the traisn won't roll there much before 2018 ;)
fun with numbers
120 billion to completely revolutionize the relationships within the economic heart of the US
vs
3 trillion to off Saddam Hussein. Thats, 3 million million, 3,000,000,000,000.00
I don't know about you, but I would take a Hussein regime if it meant that we could build one of these high speed systems in each of the 11 US megaregions.......
and give every major city its own big dig (plus another one for Boston so we can sink 93....
and rebuild, from scratch, every single mile of interstate highway in the United State..... 2.5 TIMES
Great idea...but...
The fact that it will take decades to build means that even a career politician won't be around to take credit for it once it's unveiled.
It's hard enough to get politicians interested in something that will happen after their next re-election campaign, much less after they retire.
Oh, and they can't even get the Acela to perform up to its original expectations, why don't they work on that first.
I do think it's great to upgrade mass transit to NYC especially if it is faster than airplane travel. Question is will it still be cost prohibitive?
*edited b/c I got a couple 'before's and 'after's mixed up
for acela to perform up to
for acela to perform up to expectations it would need to run in a straight line on its own track..... hence this report.
its like watching a lamborghini go up Salem Street and then asking why isn't it going faster
Yes, which makes the original representations more ridiculous
The fact that they knew Acela couldn't perform up to its potential, didn't stop proponents from hyping the crap out of its potential when it was unveiled.
Ironically the Acela is still very popular even though it only cuts a few minutes off travel time. Business travelers love it...because they're not paying for it.
I am all for a service like the one this thread is about. In fact, if something like this were in place last year I could have sought an absolute dream-job in NYC and still lived in Boston. I just have a lot of doubts about whether it would really deliver passengers that quickly, given Amtrak's history of misrepresenting things like this.
I hope this happens, but I am
I hope this happens, but I am just a bit dismayed by the time line. I'd like to see something like this before I retire, not for afterward when I may well prefer a slower train.
Anything that takes 30 years
Anything that takes 30 years to complete is not a viable solution. We have all witnessed and experienced first hand what happened with the Big Dig. Now multiply that to the scale of half of the east coast!
How about 50 plus years?
No, nothing that takes that long to build is a viable solution.
time scale
Or you could link to any major public works effort from before the 20th century. Generations would work on Cathedrals. These works of art are still around and in use. My father was a structural engineer. In his life time he saw many of the buildings he put up be torn down and new ones put up in their place. We expect everything to be immediate and then it's not actually designed to last (such as our crumbling roads and bridges). If you grow like bacteria in a petrie dish chances are you will die like it too.
That being said, the headaches of trying to move large projects these days while respecting everyone's civil, labor and property rights, not to mention providing time for their input into design considerations, and balancing that with environmental concerns, it's enough to make you stark raving bat-shit, leave a manifesto, Osmond family fanclub captain insane.
There's a difference between
There's a difference between an entire country-wide transportation infrastructure project, and a single stretch connecting a handful of cities in the Northeast.
This sounds like a nice idea, but the budget and time requirements seem pretty high for such a small section of the infrastructure.
Where are the high-speed trains to San Francisco? Chicago? Atlanta? The Northeast Corridor is a valuable route, but not the only one. If just this one route takes 30 years, will connecting up the rest of the country take a couple hundred?
I keep on being hopeful about Amtrak, and keep being disappointed. Trains that are far slower than flying are also much more expensive. The high-speed trains only shave a fraction of the travel time off, and add far more expense. The only real development I see seems to be in the Northeast Corridor, and it's glacially slow.
I'd generally much rather take the train than fly (due to all the extra hassle from security measures, checked baggage, etc), and am willing to deal with the train being a bit more expensive and a bit slower, but given how much more expensive and how much slower it is, it's just not worth it.
Yes, I thought about this
Yes, I thought about this example, too. The thing is, we aren't talking about a complete nation-wide system. If we were, then 30+ years would be eminently reasonable. Imagine various components of the interstate system, say, just I-95 from Boston to Washington. Did that take 50 years? Could it have been built quite quickly if it were the only part of the system?
I'm not 85 years old
50 years is what the entire system took, not a single 400 mile segment.
Having moved with the construction of three sections of the interstate that my dad worked on during my childhood (I-5, I-84, and I-205), sections of that system built from scratch took much less time. It took about ten years to build 250 miles of I-84 through Oregon (then known as I-80N) to link with an existing piece through the Columbia River Gorge. This included a lot more blasting and grading through mountain passes than will likely be needed for the Acela.
If the outcome of this is as
If the outcome of this is as good as the Big Dig's outcome then that's good. The Big Dig was a fiasco in terms of efficiency and cost but the result has been fantastic.
Oh yeah...
....leaks into the tunnel. Unfiinished surfaces and only ONE driver smashed by a collapsing ceiling. Fantastic!
Tranportation that incorporates speed, comfort and convenience?
A trip from Boston to NYC in 90 minutes is a great idea. This train could be the premier NEC transportation method: faster than a car, far more comfortable than a bus, quieter, more comfortable and vastly more convenient than a jet.
In that case it can not be the United States where the new train system is built. On the whole we seem to prefer our various forms of rail transit to be broken down, slow, fitful and ultimately always on the verge of disappearing.
It is ironic that we claim to be such as great country but in areas such as mass transit we strive for failure.
Sobering perspective
IF this thing actually gets built by 2040, and that's a HUGE if, then SEVENTY-SIX years will have elapsed since the debut of the Tokaido line Shinkansen, the 500km route between Tokyo and Osaka.