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High speed rail!
geckahn
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Kerry and Spector have just introduced a high speed rail bill. Highlights:
And this ridiculous high speed rail network comes one massive step closer to reality, as long as its passed and signed in the next congress.
Also note the minimum max speed for these high speed bonds is 110 mph, thus making the acela obsolete. Thank god.
The High-Speed Rail for America Act of 2008 builds upon the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 which reauthorizes Amtrak and authorizes $1.5 billion over a five-year period to finance the construction and equipment for eleven high-speed rail corridors. It provides billions of dollars in both tax-exempt and tax credit bond and provides assistance for rail projects of various speeds. The bill creates the Office of High-Speed passenger rail to oversee the development of high-speed rail and provides a consistent source of funding.
Specifically, the High-Speed Rail for America Act of 2008 provides $8 billion over a six-year period for tax-exempt bonds which finance high-speed rail projects which reach a speed of at least 110 miles per hour It creates a new category of tax-credit bonds – qualified rail bonds. There are two types of qualified rail bonds: super high-speed intercity rail facility bond and rail infrastructure bond. Super high-speed rail intercity facility bonds will encourage the development of true high-speed rail. The legislation provides $10 billion for these bonds over a ten-year period. This would help finance the California proposed corridor and make needed improvements to the Northeast corridor. The legislation provides $5.4 billion over a six-year period for rail infrastructure bonds. The Federal Rail Administration has already designated ten rail corridors that these bonds could help fund, including connecting the cities of the Midwest through Chicago, connecting the cities of the Northwest, connecting the major cities within Texas and Florida, and connecting all the cities up and down the East Coast.
And this ridiculous high speed rail network comes one massive step closer to reality, as long as its passed and signed in the next congress.
Also note the minimum max speed for these high speed bonds is 110 mph, thus making the acela obsolete. Thank god.
geckahn on
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I think most of us were drunk that night in [chat].
the rocky mountains?
OH FUCK YES.
The Acela railway corridor met with a lot of problems due to running on a crappy Depression-era electrical grid system, so hopefully these new corridors will be able to support high speed trains that can actually run at an average mph above 100 or so.
I got to ride the new high speed rail in Taiwan last year, and it was glorious. Having a system like that in the US would do wonders to ease both aerial and highway congestion.
Also, what are the benefits over a plane? Cost? Emissions? Safety? I guess it is quicker than driving if you happen to be going to one of the cities it services.
edit: mad beat'd.
I wonder how much support this actually has in Congress at the moment.
Amtrak could have engines faster than the speed of light, but if it still can't get me across 200 miles of track in less than 6 hours it's kinda pointless.
I was wondering that as well. Would be neat though, I'm all about my trains.
that map is the result of board input. Connecting toronto, mondtreal, and vancouver were considered very good ideas. With canada obviously footing that part of the bill.
As for the speed, I'd like to see the bond requirements for speed changed to a 120 mph average. minimum.
from wiki:
So basically it seems the problem with Acela is all in the tracks themselves, which these bonds are meant to solve.
Actually, that's just a map people here put together.
edit: probably under the fake guise of environmentalism and irony
Must of been fun as per the Wiki link the train you rode can go 186mph. However, I cannot endorse the planned US system as it is too slow IMO. If we're to build a rail system that goes cross state it must go faster than 110mph, 200mph at a minimum.
Sheep, the whole point of these routes should be for long haul trips between major cities, and excessive stops should be cut out. If the stops are reduced, this system would be viable.
How long it take to go from New York to LA if they decided to use the fastest system possible, with minimal stops?
If this gets passed at all, I wouldn't expect it to work as an independent bill but as something rolled into the stimulus package Obama wants to sign on his first day in office. That lets it capitalize on the whole "gogo infrastructure" thing Obama is pushing and it's better PR for the cost (a few billion in the stimulus package of a half trillion versus $10 billion for trains).
Because magnetic anything is awesome.
It's faster, cheaper, and more environmentally sound than flying when you're traveling a distance of ~500 miles or less, IIRC. So it wouldn't be worth it to take a train from New York to LA, that's where planes are useful. However going from LA to Frisco is kind of stupid to fly. Or Boston to NYC, Chicago to...well a lot of the cities around the Great Lakes and St. Louis. There's also the added bonus of arriving downtown, rather than an hour outside of the city, and no real security concerns which is an extra hour of productive activity rather than standing around at the airport.
Right now Amtrack is basically comparable to driving, only without the added benefit of having a car at your destination. It's somewhat cheaper thanks to gas prices and parking costs, but when it comes down to it being able to leave whenever you want generally wins out. Shifting that to highspeed gets you there faster, though, and it's still cheaper. If cities where to start making investments in intra-city mass transit --or just getting a lot more taxis-- where you don't necessarily need to have a car when you arrive in the heart of downtown, it'll truly beat the pants off of driving.
Airlines practically lose money for the short hop flights. If they could abandon those and just say 'take the train' instead of subsidizing them with the larger margins from transatlantic and transcontinental flights I don't think they'd be crying themselves to sleep. Flight Attendant unions might get angered by this, however they could probably become conductors; so it'd kind of come out in the wash.
I'm all for this. Why do we not already have this system in place? Certainly this isn't the first time that this sort of thing has been proposed? What keeps it from getting off the ground?
Also it's about god damn time.
Seriously, do you want to ride in this:
or this:
Also, everybody needs to watch Top Gear S11E04 for relevant background on the Shinkansen.
Very glad to see this is on the radar for Congress and hopefully Obama, even if this isn't yet an ideal plan.
I will do fucking backflips if this ever sees the light of day, but the truckers union is going to fight it pretty hard too.
Why would they fight it? Will this rail system be used for commercial purposes as well?
It has the potential to, and that's bad enough. The trucking industry is a massive lobby in this country with its hands in all kinds of shit. They will be leading the fight against this system, whether you hear about it or not.