Quote:
Originally Posted by Alon
I question whether NY-Buffalo will really be built before Philly-Pittsburgh. On the federal level, nobody's yet committed to even looking at HSR on these corridors, and a cost-benefit calculation should show that they are close in both costs and benefits. On the state level, neither state is interested in HSR, and the Cuomo administration just explicitly rejected studying HSR further on the grounds that the state can't afford it. (In Cuomo-land, the economic conditions of 2012 should dictate what spending the state should take on in the 2020s.)
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Interesting discussion which should be taken a little further down the line.
If New York and Pennsylvania are satisfied with 110 - 125 mph max speeds between their largest cities and capitals due to costs; 150 plus mph operations between the Midwest and East Coast will be unlikely for a long time to come, if not forever. The Midwestern states, with Florida (FEC), Virginia, and North Carolina are also looking at limiting max speeds of existing corridors to 110 mph as well, again due to costs.
The only places in America considering building faster than 125 mph train operations are where they're discussing building completely brand new corridors from scratch. Both are in California; CHSR and XpressWest projects. And both of them are
now considering using portions of existing rail corridors owned by public transit agencies to limit costs.
I believe these facts show that the dream of building a national network of 150 mph plus HSR system is dead. At best we'll see HSR corridors between specific city pairs - not a network of interconnected HSR corridors. We need to change our national passenger rail dreams (goals if you prefer) to a vision less ambitious.
Instead, I suggest at the national level we should be setting a higher priority at increasing max speeds on the existing corridors to what the owners of the corridors will allow, eliminating congestion, and eliminating slow orders. Adding mainline tracks, upgrading existing tracks, and re-signalling the corridors for faster trains should be the extent of investment by the federal government on a year to year continuing funding basis. No Federal grants should be given to intercity HSR projects, at best the Federal government should provide is low interest rate loans.