BBC News: Could the US crack high-speed rail?

[Digital_Islandboy]

Article: Could the US crack high-speed rail? - By Tom Geoghegan
Date: 14 October 2011 Last updated at 06:07 ET
Source: www.bbc.co.uk - BBC News, Washington

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15251180

-- A conference in New York is looking at plans to spend $600bn (£380bn) on a national network of high-speed railways, to rival continental Europe's. But how likely is it to happen? --

The fastest train in the US pulls slowly out of platform 10 at New York's Penn Station, heading west.

Keeping a leisurely pace on the other side of the Hudson River, the Empire State Building sticks stubbornly to the horizon before eventually receding into the distance. Thirteen minutes later, the Acela Express makes its first stop, in Newark.

This is high-speed rail, American-style.

[ hmmmmmmmm--? ]

I've always wondered about why- so many stops in Connecticut? Just as you feel like it is going at a good clip, slows down again.

[datadyne007]

Originally Posted by Digital_Islandboy

I've always wondered about why- so many stops in Connecticut? Just as you feel like it is going at a good clip, slows down again.

iirc, they trailed some sort of Acela Express Express a few years ago that only did BOS-NYC-PHL-DC.

[BostonUrbEx]

Conn has so many speed restrictions that it probably doesn't matter all that much if they don't stop. Connecticut is the only state where the Acela sees grade crossings IIRC. The bridges are also in a terrible state. Basically, it's the worst part of the entire route, barring the areas which are merely double track and shared with commuter rail and/or freight. (Such as 128 to Providence, and I believe some parts in New Jersey or Maryland or so)


Frankly, taking a look at our infrastructure, I find it amazing that the Acela even exists in such a great state. It may be mediocre given other highspeed rail networks, but given what I'd say is shitty investment, it works exceedingly well.

[whighlander]

Originally Posted by BostonUrbEx

Conn has so many speed restrictions that it probably doesn't matter all that much if they don't stop. Connecticut is the only state where the Acela sees grade crossings IIRC. The bridges are also in a terrible state. Basically, it's the worst part of the entire route, barring the areas which are merely double track and shared with commuter rail and/or freight. (Such as 128 to Providence, and I believe some parts in New Jersey or Maryland or so)


Frankly, taking a look at our infrastructure, I find it amazing that the Acela even exists in such a great state. It may be mediocre given other highspeed rail networks, but given what I'd say is shitty investment, it works exceedingly well.

Stops for Acela were driven by Congressional Districts -- try to cut stops and some Congressperson will scream to the relevant committee chair -- 1 phone call to the Federal Rail Administrator or if necesary to the Secretary of the department of Trnsportation -- and voila no talk of closing the stop

Actually, given the density of Congressional Districts around NYC -- I'm surprised that there is no RT-128 equivalent for NYC on the Connecticut side

[Ron Newman]

isn't that called 'Stamford' ?

[F-Line to Dudley]

Originally Posted by BostonUrbEx

Conn has so many speed restrictions that it probably doesn't matter all that much if they don't stop. Connecticut is the only state where the Acela sees grade crossings IIRC. The bridges are also in a terrible state. Basically, it's the worst part of the entire route, barring the areas which are merely double track and shared with commuter rail and/or freight. (Such as 128 to Providence, and I believe some parts in New Jersey or Maryland or so)


Frankly, taking a look at our infrastructure, I find it amazing that the Acela even exists in such a great state. It may be mediocre given other highspeed rail networks, but given what I'd say is shitty investment, it works exceedingly well.

CT's also been negligent eliminating those grade crossings...11 total. Most of them are not hard at all to zap and don't cross any major streets, especially the 2 in Waterford and Groton and 4 in Stonington that are between stations on full-speed track. New London and Mystic are clustered at or within a couple blocks of station stops where trains slow, so they're lower priority. But the last crossings anywhere else on the NEC were gone by the 80's, so time to lay down the law with CT to get this show on the road. Raising all of the Shore Line East stations and Providence Line to full-height platforms should also help, and Amtrak is poking CDOT and the T to commit to a schedule for those stations (they're already funding it for Kingston and Westerly in RI).

What can't be fixed are the moveable bridges (although they're one-by-one getting rehabbed), the extreme curviness of the shoreline portion, and the congestion on Metro North. Triple tracking will eventually come to nearly all MBTA territory and nearly all RI, but it simply can't be done for most of New Haven to Westerly. This is why Amtrak's long-term NEC vision (http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobSe...rt92810RLR.pdf) calls for a whole new inland HSR line hitting Hartford. There's really no other way. They can do some things to straighten curves from NYC to D.C. and get better speeds...those upgrades have been planned, and deferred, since the 80's. They're changing out the overhead wire right now to allow higher speeds. The Gateway Project will finally build that second pair of tunnels to Penn Station. And they'll be filling in the last gap of quad tracking to New Haven and getting the Springfield Line upgrades in place to resume Inland lower-speed service via the Worcester Line. But once natural growth taps out the shoreline, it's tapped out and they're screwed without a bypass.

[HenryAlan]

Originally Posted by Digital_Islandboy

I've always wondered about why- so many stops in Connecticut? Just as you feel like it is going at a good clip, slows down again.

Whenever I take Acela, the only Connecticut stop is New Haven. That seems reasonable enough. The Regional stops about 10 times in CT, but not Acela.

[Riverworks]

Originally Posted by HenryAlan

Whenever I take Acela, the only Connecticut stop is New Haven. That seems reasonable enough. The Regional stops about 10 times in CT, but not Acela.

That's probably because you took one of the few Acela's that runs express from NYC to New Haven. Many of them stop in Stamford, some in Bridgeport and New London. I recently rode an Acela express from New York to Providence - very nice (and short) ride!

Another point to add on F-Line's response - the track is owned and maintained by Connecticut DOT from the CT state line to New Haven - thus Metro North commuter traffic often has priority over Amtrak. Not always the reason why trains are delayed, or running behind Metro North, but another point to add into the mix.

Amtrak looked at several options between Boston and New York for their high-speed rail feasibility study, because the shore line alignment was simply not feasible for 220 mph operations. The old New York and New England 'Air Line" alignment was considered, among a variety of existing and abandoned right-of-ways. The current proposed alignment between Westchester > Danbury > Waterbury > Hartford avoids all of Fairfield County and connects with many of under utilized networks. It connects the spokes of Metro North in Danbury and Waterbury, connects with the New Haven to Springfield Shuttle and provides another way across New England without taking the currently congested coast or inland routes.

Amtrak is supposed to be releasing their updated report in the next week or two, so hopefully they can keep the momentum going for the Northeast.

[F-Line to Dudley]

The NYNE right of way was bulldozed between Newtown and Waterbury to make way for I-84, so there's currently nothing connecting the existing Metro North non-passenger Beacon Line from Brewster-Newtown with the Pan Am Highland Line Waterbury-New Britain. It would be extremely expensive to stuff it on the I-84 grading because it's dense settlement and uneven terrain, and they'd have to tunnel through almost a mile of downtown Bristol, CT to eliminate a hairpin curve. Throw into that all the Westchester County NIMBY's and I think Plans B thru Q are going to have to be studied for the western routing with groundbreaking in the 24th century. But Metro North is 4-track to New Haven. Using the Springfield Line via New Haven should be workable if they do due diligence on the second NYC tunnels and a bunch of curve straightenings NYC-DC that have been on the planning books since...oh...1983 thereabouts. The 2-track shoreline New Haven to RI is the one that's unexpandable 2-track with all the crazy slow curves.



East of Hartford is easier because there's multiple ROW options and multiple fully intact landbanked ROW's, ability to open service in stages and still get to the end destination, and much lower density. I kind of like this combo as a first phase:

-- Build the long-needed, oft-thwarted I-384 expressway extension to Willimantic. The Feds have repeatedly offered, then un-offered, fast-tracking for this because it's so critical to mitigate the "Suicide 6" congestion/deathtrap, but everyone's been at loggerheads on a routing. Get it done already...this isn't optional long-term. Last design before the circa-'05 kibbosh was a greenway with 100+ ft. forested median separating carriageways. Prebuild a 3-track rail grading onto the highway construction with buried conduit piping for RR utilities. And leave it empty, waiting, and paid for by asphalt pork.
-- Springfield Line + active Manchester Secondary (ex-NYNE) to Buckland Hills Mall. Fairly straight, Manchester Sec. doesn't have any tough grade crossings to eliminate. Overpass the I-84/I-291/I-384 ramps maze and slide onto the existing I-384 median. It's wide here, and the highway's a ridiculously overbuilt 8 lanes so they could take the left lanes of 384 if they still want a large grass buffer.
-- Slide onto prebuilt ROW where the highway extension starts. Now you've got 160 MPH to Willimantic, as opposed to trying to restore the old NYNE ROW which is so curvy through Bolton Notch you'd be hard pressed to hit 45 in some spots. Plus it keeps the area trail network intact, and the highway will have fought and vanquished every NIMBY battle on the routing. 3-track ROW mitigates freight, because NECR in Willimantic needs to use this line to interchange with CSOR in Hartford (they're both owned by the same parent company).
-- Slide off the highway in Willimantic where it meets the old ROW at the junction with the NECR mainline. Slow-speed connections southeast to New London and Mohegan Sun. CDOT commuter rail can end here, and can use the 384 routing before any other segments are built.
-- Air Line alignment, Willimantic-Putnam. If they can mitigate the East Coast Greenway trail displacement, this is the all-landbanked former high(er) speed route to Boston. Probably 125+ MPH in most parts...no freight allowed.
-- P&W mainline Putnam-Worcester. Choosing this over the full Air Line to Boston for the regional hub connection in Worcester (MBTA, RIDOT Providence-Worcester, Amtrak to Albany & points west, continuing Boston-bypass service north via Concord, Lowell, Portland). Straight route, passing sidings can mitigate the considerable freight co-mingling. If they can keep it 80+ MPH sustained with maybe a couple 100 MPH straightaways, that's better than good enough.
-- Worcester Line to Boston. Worcester hub means commuter rail will probably be electrified before then, so if it's spruced up to Metro North New Haven Line like speeds and uses all of the ROW's former 3-track width (Worcester-128) it should be able to handle every passenger train thrown at it. All remaining freight except for Worcester-Westborough Auto Yard shuttles can be diverted onto detours (Boston/Framingham via P&W to Blackstone + restored segment of Franklin Line). Better first option than the full Air Line on capacity because of the 3-tracking and fact that it doesn't slam head-first into the overstuffed NEC at Readville.


That's immediately faster than the shoreline, maxes all of the existing lines that can get a bump to 100+ MPH speeds, and folds in a large connecting piece of true HSR into a highway project to save money and NIMBY fighting. The only 100% fresh build not shared with an existing transit mode is the Air Line Willimantic-Putnam. Which is in the middle of nowhere and under legal protection for reactivation.

And of course you can add other things later and make it a sort of "Choose Your Adventure" route. The Putnam-Blackstone segment could very easily get second-phase restoration to peel some trains off via Franklin. I-384 could get extended further (but I wouldn't bet on it) to I-395 in Plainfield, where the ROW could diverge in the woods for 2 miles and meet up with the NYNE at Route 14 for a straightish near-HSR to Providence. Or, they could forget about the highway ever happening and just use the active (but curvy) Willimantic Branch to Plainfield to restore the NYNE at regular speed to Providence for a mainly CT-RI audience.

In fact, you'll probably have to do 2 out of the 3 inland "Choose Your Adventures" to ram through the traffic and political will to make the west NYC-HAR bypass ever happen.

[Riverworks]

Wow lots of good ideas there! Nothing that a NEC Programmatic EIS can't fix!

[stellarfun]

^^^ No Acela stops in Bridgeport or New London. Only CT stops are New Haven and Stamford. Couldn't even stop in New London if it wanted too, given the short, single car length, high-platform,

[whighlander]

Originally Posted by stellarfun

^^^ No Acela stops in Bridgeport or New London. Only CT stops are New Haven and Stamford. Couldn't even stop in New London if it wanted too, given the short, single car length, high-platform,

Whole thiing is a collosal anachronism and will never happen

High speed rail --- need only be medium speed non-stop point-point, high freuncy of departure rail system -- implemeted with a modern version of Budliner single cars -- electric drive either with power from overhead, 3rd rail, or even aircraft aux-power gas turbine for the wide-open country with no wiring

This gets rid of issues related to curves & need for TGV-like long straights is avoided

at 100 MPH non-stop downtown BOS to
from South Station:
midtown Manhattan in a bit over 2 hours
New Haven in 1+ hours
New London in 1 hour
Providence in about 30 minutes
Springfield in about 1 hour
Worcester in about 30 minutes

From North Station:
Portland ME in 1 hour
Manchester NH in 30 min


you would change in NYC for Phil, Balt, or DC

change in Worcester for Pittsfield 7 Albany NY; Burlinton Vermont & Montreal

Change in New Haven or Springfield for Harftord

[F-Line to Dudley]

Originally Posted by whighlander

Whole thiing is a collosal anachronism and will never happen

High speed rail --- need only be medium speed non-stop point-point, high freuncy of departure rail system -- implemeted with a modern version of Budliner single cars -- electric drive either with power from overhead, 3rd rail, or even aircraft aux-power gas turbine for the wide-open country with no wiring

This gets rid of issues related to curves & need for TGV-like long straights is avoided

at 100 MPH non-stop downtown BOS to
from South Station:
midtown Manhattan in a bit over 2 hours
New Haven in 1+ hours
New London in 1 hour
Providence in about 30 minutes
Springfield in about 1 hour
Worcester in about 30 minutes

From North Station:
Portland ME in 1 hour
Manchester NH in 30 min


you would change in NYC for Phil, Balt, or DC

change in Worcester for Pittsfield 7 Albany NY; Burlinton Vermont & Montreal

Change in New Haven or Springfield for Harftord

Something less intensely customized than the Acela trainsets would also be nice. Something more-or-less like regular coaches that can run at high speeds and are more interchangeable than the Acela consists that can only run with each other. There's nothing so revolutionary here that a little ingenuity can't super-rate a normal FRA-spec railcar to handle curves at >100 MPH without having to make an oddball design so expensive Amtrak can only afford to run a handful of them, with no flexibility to configure into different kinds of trainsets. I think HSR can go much wider-scale if the equipment between Regionals and Acelas started to blur on a continuum. In addition to running a lot more of them at cheaper capital cost, it would make the service more affordable and suitable for different distances to be able to rig up differing coach/first class car configurations, dinner cars, sleeper cars. There'd also be no need for Amtrak to adopt a completely different MU make like its old (and problematic) Budd Metroliners that used to run on Regional service. If their fleet is push-pull locomotive and unpowered coaches, it's best to stay that way for scale. Just as it would be pointless for the nearly all-MU Metro North to start changing over to push-pull. Make the standard push-pull mode better at high speeds.


Ditto for diesels. Gas or jet turbine engines have been tried. Amtrak had its Turboliners for years (now mothballed), and Penn Central + Amtrak ran a few tilting TurboTrains in the 60's and 70's as an early HSR-ish experiment on the NEC. There's even a more current model called the JetTrain that is essentially a gas turbine Acela locomotive, and was floated to Amtrak as a way of putting Acela trainsets on diesel HSR routes. But they are voracious gas guzzlers despite some tricks by the JetTrain and other modern designs to increase efficiency. That's a nonstarter with fuel costs swinging as wildly as they do today. Diesels have pretty steady fuel requirements at wider range of speed, and a lot of the more recent innovation has been at making them more miserly and lower emission. They make standard diesel locomotives that top out at 125 MPH. I think that's a reasonable goal for a lot of lines they're upgrading...even the NEC can barely muster that speed in places. Getting above 125 isn't hard to do evolving current designs. If 160 MPH on diesel is still not feasible on a wide scale, I'd be perfectly fine trading down to much more 125 MPH service on upgraded lines rather than achieving true arbitrary full-rated HSR at twice the cost on a fraction of lines.

Dual-mode diesel/electric locomotives are also old hat for running non-electrified routes into Penn Station. They already have a fleet of them for running Empire Corridor trains to Penn. Extend the current technology for building out rather than reinventing it. So many lines need electrification in the northeast that it's going to have to come piece by piece with some services living for years with chunks of diesel until the gaps are filled. Inland Route service might get electrified to Springfield this decade. Maybe the T will even get into this century and electrify the Worcester Line. But that gap from Springfield to Worcester isn't going to get wires for decades, though the track could probably go 80-100 MPH in places with modest investment. Find a way to bridge that gap without needing to design some whole extra-special Acela locomotive.




Also should be said, the NEC has a lot more deficiencies than the shoreline route. Metro North doesn't allow tilting trains at all from NYC to New Haven, so the current Acela can't perform at top speed on track that would allow it. They need to space the tracks out a few inches to 1-2 feet further apart so tilting trains can mix seamlessly with commuter rail. Shoreline tracks east of New Haven were re-aligned for the Acela...MNRR territory was not. That's an unnecessary restriction because much of that 4-track ROW can handle 150 MPH, but MNRR and CDOT have been very tardy on doing those track-spacing capital improvements (ditto for overhead upgrades and all the horribly speed-restricted bridges). Same deal with the curve straightenings that have been planned for 30 years between D.C. and NYC, and the grade crossing eliminations CT is also 25 years behind every other NEC state in tackling. A whole lot of the NEC west of New Haven has that infrastructural capability, but has been nickeled-and-dimed to the point where they don't have their shit together on even the inexpensive and incremental speed boosts. I think they have to demonstrate some sort of proficiency at upgrading the small stuff like that before dreaming up new HSR routes.


But also figure if they did get D.C.-NYC and Metro North up to those specs planned but languishing since the early 80's, they would have the throughput to New Haven to mitigate the shoreline restrictions and supply an Inland HSR branch north to Hartford and east on a fresh-build alignment. The NEC's not tapped out yet. It can milk a couple more decades at another service level before it runs out of space if the country would only put an honest effort into its investment.