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The Return of Rail
- Thread starter tonybelding
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If I'm not mistaken, the "longer distances" meant here are more than, say, 500 miles. For shorter distances, like Boston-Washington or Los Angeles- San Francisco, trains are incredibly effective. Overall travel time is equal or less than flying, comfort far exceeds airline standards, and travel hassles like security checks are nearly eliminated. Flying really can't compare (and just for reference, I like flying and happen to be a GA pilot). High speed trains decimated air travel in Spain between Madrid and Seville, a distance roughly equivalent to LA-SF. I would expect similar results in California.
OK. I agree (and said all along, perhaps not clearly) that on shorter, high traffic routes railroads can be competitive. Perhaps SF to LA is one of those routes. Unfortunately, those will not be the only routes built.
Here in Texas there was a proposal for a transportation corridor from San Antoinio through Austin to Dallas. It looks more like a trendy project in search of justification, rather than a solution to a need. (Lets build ourselves a high speed rail line, like those cool Europeans!)
The economic analysis went against it. The package has been defeated, for now, but the pieces live on.
Here in Texas there was a proposal for a transportation corridor from San Antoinio through Austin to Dallas. It looks more like a trendy project in search of justification, rather than a solution to a need. (Lets build ourselves a high speed rail line, like those cool Europeans!)
The economic analysis went against it. The package has been defeated, for now, but the pieces live on.
Bob,
The routes on your linked page are around 250 miles on the Dallas - Austin/San Antonio axis and 280 miles on the Dallas - Houston axis. Those conurbation areas contain approximately 6, 4 and 6 million respectively. This is not some long distance route with small population centres - it is very similar in nature to the London / Paris / Brussels geography and certainly well under the distance of many of the routes in Spain. I suspect political and airline lobbying is holding this back more than an economic case, frankly.
The routes on your linked page are around 250 miles on the Dallas - Austin/San Antonio axis and 280 miles on the Dallas - Houston axis. Those conurbation areas contain approximately 6, 4 and 6 million respectively. This is not some long distance route with small population centres - it is very similar in nature to the London / Paris / Brussels geography and certainly well under the distance of many of the routes in Spain. I suspect political and airline lobbying is holding this back more than an economic case, frankly.
Arnold Panz
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Amen! For anyone who has had to travel within Texas to these various cities, a high speed rail option would be fantastic. Driving can take 6-8 hours depending on the cities. Flying comes with all of its inconveniences (delays, security lines, far from downtown etc.) for a short (45 minutes to 1.5 hour) flight. It would be fantastic for the economy in Texas to have all of its major cities connected in this way.
It's not just the distances on the map, or the hassles of driving them.
I too have driven I-45 from Dallas to Houston. It's no fun. The road is in lousy shape. There's almost no place to stop unless you get way, way off the highway.
Is the economic benefit from rail service worth the cost, especially if it also kills Southwest Airlines? That's not an idle concern. Southwest serves more cities in Texas than the rail link would serve. Those cities would be hurt if their air service goes away.
I suspect it's much cheaper to build and run five airports than it is to build and run high speed rail. Especially since we already have the airports.
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Heathrow runway may cost £13bn ($19bn) v.s. around $15m per km for HSR (the figure in France or even Spain - Europe's second most mountainous country).
In other words, the proposed Texas system could be built for less than the cost of a new runway and terminal in the UK - if Spanish practice is followed (whom the Californians have hired as consultants).
I'm afraid that's FUD. Europe's HSR routes have decimated air traffic over the past 30 years where they exist, but that hasn't stopped the likes of Easyjet, Ryanair and a plethora of other low cost carriers that mirror the Southwest model from going from strength to strength elsewhere. HSR works well on trunk routes, but air is still very profitable on feeder links and low to medium flow routes.
Furthermore, in the UK case, two different studies cited cost-benefit ratios of a new network between London and Scotland of up to 1:2.8 and 1:4. The former study performed a sensitivity analysis showing that even the least optimistic outcome would give a ratio of 1:1.9. That is still more than enough to move forward with the project under UK Treasury rules, and hence it is.
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Airline business between New York and Washington, D.C. continues to be profitable despite the train, although I would expect flights to fall if true high speed rail were ever installed. If Southwest stays as nimble as it has been in the past, it will find a way to make money.
I suspect that airlines ultimately will have more difficulty from rising oil prices than from competition from trains. To put it another way, with or without trains, people will stop flying when it gets too expensive. When that happens, rail may be the preferred (and only) solution.
I suspect that airlines ultimately will have more difficulty from rising oil prices than from competition from trains. To put it another way, with or without trains, people will stop flying when it gets too expensive. When that happens, rail may be the preferred (and only) solution.
It should also be remembered that there is nothing fundamentally stopping airlines from running the trains. This is what Air France-KLM is likely to do on routes including Paris-London and Paris-Amsterdam when the European market is deregulated next year.
Further to this, SNCF has found that rail still takes 50% market share on journeys of four and a half hours (rising to 90% at two hours). The former is enough time to reach Chicago from New York or Washington, or for Seattle-Portland-San Francisco.
The first thing is that you have to be carefull when comparing Europe to the USA. Conditions are different. We are much more spread out.
For example, Europeans often wonder why US companies bother with CDMA when TDMA is so superior. The wider coverage per cell tower makes a CDMA network much cheaper here, where we have much more territory to cover.
Irrelevant. Nobody's proposed to use that money to build high speed rail in Texas instead of a new runway and terminal at Heathrow. It says nothing about the relative costs in the USA.
You don't actually know that. Travel between the major cities is Southwest's bread-and-butter in Texas. The service from other towns feeds into those routes.
An aircraft's greatest fuel consumption is during takeoff and landing. The airline can't get paid until they've done one of each for a passenger. In Texas the distances between major towns limit the number of times the airline can get paid per aircraft per day.
You are messing with people's lives, their livelihoods, here. The rail proposals would subsidize competition against the airlines. The airports may have been built with public money originally, but user fees pay to run and maintain them.
If the HSR proposals weren't asking for public financing, plus eminent domain to acquire the right-of-way, I'd say good luck and godspeed. They do, so I don't.
They didn't do that analysis here.
For example, Europeans often wonder why US companies bother with CDMA when TDMA is so superior. The wider coverage per cell tower makes a CDMA network much cheaper here, where we have much more territory to cover.
Irrelevant. Nobody's proposed to use that money to build high speed rail in Texas instead of a new runway and terminal at Heathrow. It says nothing about the relative costs in the USA.
You don't actually know that. Travel between the major cities is Southwest's bread-and-butter in Texas. The service from other towns feeds into those routes.
An aircraft's greatest fuel consumption is during takeoff and landing. The airline can't get paid until they've done one of each for a passenger. In Texas the distances between major towns limit the number of times the airline can get paid per aircraft per day.
You are messing with people's lives, their livelihoods, here. The rail proposals would subsidize competition against the airlines. The airports may have been built with public money originally, but user fees pay to run and maintain them.
If the HSR proposals weren't asking for public financing, plus eminent domain to acquire the right-of-way, I'd say good luck and godspeed. They do, so I don't.
They didn't do that analysis here.
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Certain parts are / certain parts aren't. A quick look at population density maps suggests that at least east Texas is pretty similar to France in terms of population and distance between cities. People think Europe is densely populated, but when you get out of the main cities in France and Spain, they are quite sparse. It's an ideal scenario for high speed rail.
OK, let's not give the DoE money to Tesla for fear of messing with peoples' lives in Detroit. Or let's not put any public money into any disruptive technology. Let's not have the government try to change anything and let big industry keep its status quo.
I don't believe any of the proposals are asking for operational subsidies and it's not that uncommon for public money to be spent on establishing the infrastructure, even in the US.
Can you explain to me how this is different from the $41.2bn subsidy - sorry investment - that the federal highway program made last year alone? Or the Essential Air Service Program (which exists even in Texas)?
You implied that these systems get built in Europe because they are cool or because the neighbours have them. I was pointing out that is not the case.
Did I? I didn't mean to. I apologize for my clumsy writing. I need more practice.
What I meant to say is that too many in the USA take the European example uncritically. They look at all the cool things Europeans do and want to do them here, whether they fit or not. There's a joke.
Even the Americans aren't stupid enough to buy bottled water.
We'll tell them it's French.
Then there are the Europeans who assume that European solutions will all work in the USA. That was the point of the cell telephone example.We'll tell them it's French.
Then there are the idiots in the USA who think American ways will work everywhere.
People can be so parochial.
By the way, the CIA factbook estimates the population of France to be 62,150,775 in 2009.
In 2008 Texas had 24,178,180.
Ironically, of course, the newest 3G systems use W-CDMA and the French are driving the adoption of the system at 900MHz precisely so that they can get the coverage in their wide open spaces...
I know - that's why I specifically said east Texas :wink: West Texas is a different story altogether - no one is going to build a 500-mile spur to El Paso.
Cost of highways in America
I've been fortunate enough to take the train in many countries -- through much of Europe, parts of China, Japan, India, etc. -- but it wasn't until I rolled out of bed one day with half an hour before departure from Paris, took the subway to Gare de Lyon, and then in three hours found myself 400 miles south in Marseilles, that the business use of rail really made sense. A similar trip from L.A. to S.F. usually means a bleary-eyed morning, dealing with all the hassles of air travel, renting a car at the other end, and hoping to get into the city on time for whatever appointment I have.
There's really no comparison.
One problem with rail here is that most Americans haven't had a chance to experience it as an integral part of life. Many Americans travel, of course, and a good number of them might take the train for a bit -- from London to Paris, say -- but so often they then board a bus for the rest of their "seven capitals of Europe" tour. The rail part of the trip might have been pleasant, even revealing, but it was much like a Disneyland ride. The "real business" of touring took place -- where else? -- in a bus.
I've been fortunate enough to take the train in many countries -- through much of Europe, parts of China, Japan, India, etc. -- but it wasn't until I rolled out of bed one day with half an hour before departure from Paris, took the subway to Gare de Lyon, and then in three hours found myself 400 miles south in Marseilles, that the business use of rail really made sense. A similar trip from L.A. to S.F. usually means a bleary-eyed morning, dealing with all the hassles of air travel, renting a car at the other end, and hoping to get into the city on time for whatever appointment I have.
There's really no comparison.
I'm not sure we're that much more spread out. From what I understand, Europe has a land mass roughly equivalent to the U.S., and the distance from top to bottom is substantial (Kirkenes, Norway to Algeciras, Spain is about 2,500 miles). The East-West distance seems to change daily as Europe's borders keep expanding, but it's fairly long as well.
By the way, I'm not sure the CDMA vs GSM-TDMA example is apt. The big advantage of CDMA is actually capacity per tower, not distance, which I understand is more a function of frequency. This advantage would be more useful to the Europeans than us, as their population density is generally higher. AT&T and T-Mobile decided that CDMA's advantages were outweighed by GSM's economies of scale and cooler phones. With Verizon and Sprint going with CDMA, we ended up with a polyglot split, and the jury is still out whether we benefit.
Isn't that the point? A government intervention to install high speed rail between the population centers may have undesirable side effects on the rest of the state.
I'm starting to feel that way.
Governments do things for reasons other than economic. That's the point of government. It's dangerous when government plays in the game against private enterprise. It cheats. Let's restrict the government to its proper role as umpire.
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