One of the problems with passenger rail is that for many people what they see in their mind’s eye when it is referenced is a steam locomotive from a movie out of the Old West; a technology of a time before the acceptance of the germ theory of disease, before the light bulb, and before the automobile. For many the only acceptable new investment in rail has to be in much more advanced systems involving mag-lev, or some other “bullet train” technology.
I’ve ridden on Spain’s Talgo, a diesel train that can go over 150 mph, and so I know that none of that is required to travel much faster than one can legally and safely travel in a car, and without the hassles involved in air travel. Improving passenger service on existing lines to go faster along most of the routes between cities requires a certain, fairly humble, level of investment. Creating an entirely new system on a continental scale at speeds in excess of 200 mph would require hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions of dollars.
In the early 2000’s Jim Kunstler made this point in his own inimitable way: Yes, we have a passenger rail system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of and we have to get to work improving it, but we have to forget about high speed rail, it ain’t gonna happen, we’ve missed the window when our nation’s finances could accommodate it.
Comparing California High Speed Rail and the Northern New England Intercity Rail Initiative makes the case perfectly. Around 2008 voters in California approved a ballot to move forward on a plan to connect all of the state’s major cities with a brand new ultra modern high speed rail system.
It would cost $40, ummm $64, errr $77 billion dollars, connect to 24 mostly brand new stations, travel at a speed of 220 miles per hour, and incorporate all of the state’s population centers on brand new rights of way.
The Northern New England Intercity Rail Initiative seeks to improve access along mostly already existing rail corridors by making incremental improvements which will allow the Diesel engine locomotives already traveling on those routes to reach maximum speed more often.
It piggy backs on 4 already completed improvements:
*CT Rail Hartford Line service and line improvements
*The opening of Springfield’s Union Station
*Massachusetts acquisition of and improvements to the north/south corridor stretching from the Connecticut line to the south, and north to the Vermont border.
*The new Montreal Central Station Customs and Immigration Facility
And two projects in varying stages of planning:
*The “Vermonter” extension to Montreal
*The expansion of Boston’s South Station.
Massachusetts is already committed to a pilot project adding two round trips per day from Springfield to Greenfield for the next two years starting in June, and has begun a two year study of creating commuter service between Springfield and Boston. Both of these initiatives inch closer to full implementation of the NNEIRI.
These improvements would better connect Montreal, Boston, Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, New Haven, and Burlington and would provide an alternative “inland route” for service between Boston and New York City. The cost for a complete build out, which includes hundreds of millions already spent on the aforementioned improvements, comes to about $1 billion.
77:1
It’s not an apples to apples comparison. Actually, that’s the point. The economic capacity and populations aren’t so different, though Los Angeles is a primary focus of the “High Speed” plan, whereas New York City is tangential to the New England program. With that as a given the size and significance of the other cities in each are comparable though not identical, but almost everything else is strikingly distinct.
*500 miles from north to south compared to just over 300.
*Brand new rights of way versus, at most, some new “double tracking”.
*New stations and completely new service to dozens of cities versus possibly reopening one station closed less than 10 years ago.
*Building from scratch the newest and best technology or tweaking current rail-lines and rolling stock to maximize speeds.
*220 mph Max speeds along the entire system or occasionally hitting 120 when circumstances allow.
The most significant difference at this point seems to be the fact that one of these plans is well on its way to full implementation a decade or more ahead of schedule and without anyone ever really “deciding” to do so; the plan was presented but all of the separate pieces that I outlined above have been or are being done for other much less grandiose reasons: The Hartford Line exists to bring the Connecticut capital closer economically to New York; the state of Vermont sees a rail link to Montreal as vital for Burlington; and Massachusetts wants to spread Boston’s prosperity westward to relieve housing and employment pressures around the economic engine of the Bay State.
On the other side of the country the California HSR program is being hotly debated even as only the middle section appears to be getting built. People debate whether or not Governor Newsom has given up on the plan, whether or not $3.5 billion in funding will need to be returned to Washington, and whether or not the new intermodal transportation facility in San Francisco can be salvaged.
Fuggedaboutit? I have no opinion on what California should do going forward, I think I’d need to know a lot more than I do about the state and its state of affairs. On this side of the continent we’re happy to be on the verge of rubbing the nose of those snotty Bulgarians in the grandeur of our transportation excellence. Next up, Romania!
We ride on the INSIDE of our planes.
I agree with your analysis – and with Kunstler’s. Let’s get back to the 1950s standard of rail service and reliability with plain old regular trains. Personally I’d be thrilled to get from San Francisco to Sacramento or Los Angeles on a train that travelled as fast as a car – minus the bumper to bumper traffic.
The problem isn’t one of engineering or even cost. It’s cultural. We’ve built a dispersed physical environment that’s dominated by cars and trucks. Trains work best when they connect one compact urban center with another compact urban center. If I’m traveling to just about any place outside of San Francisco (the compact walkable, bike-able, transit served anomaly) I’m going to get off at a station at the other end that leaves me in a pretty barren spot where getting around requires a car. If I’m going to buy a train ticket and then rent a car at my destination it makes more sense to just drive and skip the train.
Lyft and Uber also work best in relatively compact locations where there are lots of rides available and the trips are short. Taking a cab from downtown Sacramento to Citrus Heights or Folsom doesn’t work. It’s not that the twenty minute ride itself is too long or expensive. It’s that once you’re in these suburban environments you need a car to do everything all day long.
By the way, I was in Worcester, Mass last year and made a point of visiting the train station. It was almost completely empty and wasn’t as good as anything in Bulgaria. Across the street were multiple city block sized multi-level parking garages – a few of them brand new and under construction. The talk around town was whether or not to bulldoze a gorgeous old church to make way for more parking. That’s the beginning, the middle, and the end of the rail situation in the US.
I’m with right up to that last bit. As an aside the Notre Dame church was torn down but, loathe as I am to speak well of Worcester, the plan is to build a pretty decent mixed use building there. (I actually wrote a blogpost about it but I can’t find it!!)
As far as rail goes, here in the northeast we have built as much crap as demand could muster since WWII, but we’ve been lucky to be a place most people wanted to leave thus cutting down on demand. On the other hand we boomed at the right time for walkability and, connecting to what you said about really needing walkability on both ends, the train stations in Northampton, Hartford, New Haven, and obviously New York City, just to name a few connect to my very walkable neighborhood.
To take Springfield as an example, if you get here on the train you can walk to 6 museums, 7 hotels, a national park, all the local entertainment venues, and a college while being AT an intermodal connection to buses which leave 8-9 times an hour via the various routes to MassMutual or Forest Park.
New Haven’s State Street station puts you in the heart of the city. In Northampton you can walk to Smith, the Calvin, and all the shops and restaurants…
It can work here. It does. The Hartford Line’s biggest problem has been the Amtrak runs turning people away instead of allowing for standing. NYC and Boston have afforded the region some memory of transit. If they expand it, it will be utilized I have little doubt.
Meh. I saw the mixed use projects that were under construction in Worcester. I also saw the new parking garages with solar panels on the roof. Is it better than a Jiffy Lube? Sure. But it wasn’t just the soon-to-be-bulldozed church that put me off. It was the collection of magnificent civic buildings that were mothballed and rotting while the city threw all its energy into new projects that won’t be half as good or last half as long. I left Worcester thinking it was just another forgettable town I never needed to visit again.
I understand but I think what pains me is that many people leave Springfield with the same thoughts.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Leon Krier’s lecture on classical vs vernacular architecture but my experiences in Spain have taught me that a few great buildings here and there are enough if you get the urbanism right. I would take one of those Texas Donuts on every surface parking lot in the city if they respected the build to line and had non blank walls on the ground floor because Springfield would look amazing with the great buildings we haven’t torn down to build a new Family Dollar!
Your post aligns with what I wrote years back, in regards to the Midwest and low-speed rail
https://www.kevinklinkenberg.com/blog/lowspeed-rail
It makes so much more sense to approach rail like other good ideas – incrementally and affordably. I’ve also ridden the HSR trains in Europe, and dearly love them. It would be fantastic to have them here. But our gold-plated infrastructure choice was highways, not trains. The least we can do is have some semblance of a well-connected, slower system here that is run well. It won’t serve everyone, but it can serve a niche very well.
Great minds…