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Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

southseattleemerald.com

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Re: Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

#61
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the tracks are the most expensive part though, no? Although I'm not sure if you mean the physical tracks are in poor condition or the layout. If it's the layout, that's not much easier to fix than building a HSR. They may not even be able to fix the railroad company owned tracks?

HSR can use the same rails (standard gauge) if they are in a good state (i.e. fine in most of the rest of the world, not in the USA which is far behind on rail safety). Big differences are turning radii (HSR obviously wont go around sharp corners easily) and station distance (HSR will want stops ~50-100km apart, older railways its often more like 1-5). That generally means a new route rather than using an existing on…

Crossings and setbacks too. An HSR line is like an interchange access highway— fenced off and grade separated from everything around it.

Re: Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

#63
Yawn. So maybe we'll have a connection to Spokane in another 80 years and a connection to the Tri-Cities by 2123. Let me know when it gets to my house.

I know perhaps I shouldn't be this negative, but... let's use Germany as an example, as it is roughly comparable to Washington and Oregon. Its residents now have a 49 Euro ticket anywhere in the country, useable on multiple forms of transit. We don't even have buses, trains, etc connecting our major cities. Don't even get me started on other social issues like health care, child care, etc. And as long as Eastern Washington continues to send Republicans only to Olympia, ain't a damn thing going to change for us over here. At least we are finally getting some decent internet - decades after most cities in Europe had comparably fast / cheap internet. Maybe someday we'll have more than one functioning mobile provider.

Re: Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

#64
post #50

> They interviewed a cadre of transportation experts in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan Have they never heard of a country called Japan?

Full report here: https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Keepi...

> The proliferation of high-speed rail creates many opportunities for case studies. Cases in this report represent systems developed in areas with institutional and geographic attributes comparable to the Pacific Northwest. While this objective for research did not preclude study of the Chinese, Japanese, and full European networks, it did lead to the selection of the following cases:

> International

> • The corridor linking Paris, France to Amsterdam in the Netherlands

> • The high-speed rail systems of Spain

> • Taiwan high-speed rail, linking Taipei to Kaohsiung

> United States

> • California, linking San Francisco and Sacramento to Los Angeles and San Diego

> • Texas, from Dallas to Houston

> • Florida, linking Tampa to Orlando and Miami

p. 45:

> The rail corridor linking France, Belgium, and the Netherlands is similar in scale and scope to the project contemplated for the Cascadia corridor in the Pacific Northwest, and includes two national border crossings. The high-speed rail systems of Spain were developed after a market of suppliers had developed endogenously within France, Germany, and Japan, allowing for methods of procurement of international expertise that more likely resemble opportunities today in the U.S. The Taiwan high-speed rail project is a public-private partnership that received bids from consortia representing firms from the U.S. as well as Japan, France, and Germany, for the partial private financing of a project that incorporates real estate development of station areas into its revenue stream.

The rest of the report uses existing research about Japan's Shinkansen rather than conducting new interviews on it. Parts of chapter 2 detail some of the factors distancing Japan's system from a PNW system, such as how Japan's real-estate development and urban rail planning were mostly coterminous, creating systems that were conducive to connecting with high-speed rail, while in the U.S. history went mostly in the opposite direction.

In a subsection titled "Researchers caution against direct comparisons of proposed U.S. high speed lines with existing systems in other countries", pps. 22–23:

> This means that Japan has benefitted from a Century of transit-oriented land use development, in ways that strain comparison with conditions for rail development in the U.S. European high-speed rail lines were designed for metro-to-metro service atop existing and robust national rail networks, which served as meaningful platforms for public transportation agencies to grow and develop services. ... In Japan and China, for example, high-speed rail development began at a time when the air travel market was not as well-developed as it is today in the U.S. Compared to the U.S., there were also greater financial disincentives to owning and operating cars in Japan, China, and Europe, which likely influenced the pace and relative success of rail travel in those parts of the world (Deakin and Pérez Henríquez, 2017; Cervero, 1998).

Re: Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

#66
If you were to pick a dozen likely stops on this train, you'll likely end up with a name collision. Vancouver, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia. It's fun to think about how they would handle this. Would they use the full names in all documentation. Would they give one of the locations a nickname, such as "Southern Washington" or "British Columbia".

I also wonder what would be the largest mishap that could happen because of the name collision. Imagine going to the wrong country because of some minor miscommunication!

Re: Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

#67
The rail situation in the US is woeful and it's important to understand why:

1. Privatization has been an absolute disaster for the rail industry. Privatization has simply become a way to privatize profits and socialize losses. The advent of Precision Scheduled Railroading ("PSR") [1]. It not only decreases safety but leads to massive delays for passenger trains who can't pass the longer trains that PSR results in;

2. A car-centric culture that originated after WW2 that ultimately came from excluding poor people, particularly people of color. There is a strong cultural bias against any form of public transportation because many view it as raising taxes even though road infrastructure is heavily subsidized; and

3. Further to (2), there are some billionaires who capitalize on this attitude and fan the flames by fighting against any form of public transportation and passenger rail (eg [2][3]); and

4. The US suffered from a first mover advantage. From the mid-19th century, the US built a massive aamount of rail infrastructure. This was designed for far slower trains. You can't just put high speed trains on the same track. China in comparison didn't have that problem; and

5. The pre-eminence of private property in the US makes building anything like this difficult and expensive. Yes, there's eminent domain but local and county authorities can hold things up for years. If you look into the California HIgh Speed Rail project, you see a lot of concessions have been made with the route and stations in relatively low population centers just to get planning permission, which increases the route length and the LA and SF travel time.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165699563/how-precision-sche...

[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/koch-activis...

[3]: https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-cali...

Re: Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

#68
I’ve been reading about high-speed rail in the PNW for my 20 years in Seattle and I’ve yet to see a budget. And I’ve definitely yet to see how that budget is justified.

I don’t see how it can possibly make sense. The cost divided by ridership can’t be a friendly number. I live in Seattle and I don’t think high-speed rail to Portland/Vancouver is a particularly interesting thing.

I’m not at all a fan of 90 minute commute times. Yeah sure you can read your phone or whatever. But it’s soul crushing. Remote work is far superior to long-ass commute times powered by high speed rail.

Re: Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

#69
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure it is useful to transport 2000 kg of metal occupying a half of a rail car, just to move 80kg meatbag for a distance of 173 miles.

It's useful because the rail doesn't go to your exact destination. You will need to drive there. It is expensive to have a separate car in both cities instead of just taking a single car with you.

So how do the millions who fly each year manage?

Re: Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

#70
For those unaware allow me to present The Seattle Process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_process

Otherwise known as "decision making through exhaustion" where everyone tries to stop progress as much as possible until the other people get so sick of arguing with you that they give up and you get your way.

The Seattle region might be the part of the country least capable of building infrastructure. I'll believe they'll get high speed rail when I see it.

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