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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

#111

Post by ghaff »

bombcar wrote: post #59
charcircuit wrote: post #2

It would be useful if you could drive your car onto the rail and it carried you and your car at 300 mph.

IIRC the Auto Train is the only long-distance route Amtrak runs that is net profitable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Train It's possible other corridors could be identified that could run something like that, though it probably needs to be about 800-900 miles to make it "worth" it time wise - shorter and it's simpler to just drive.

It’s mostly the Northeast Corridor from Boston to DC where Amtrak makes the majority of its profits though—which it then mostly loses in the rest of the country.

The auto train to Florida is sort of a special case. That’s not people traveling for a long weekend or even a week. It’s historically been people going south for the winter. Not sure it’s profitable though don’t see recent numbers.

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

#112

Post by forrestthewoods »

quailfarmer wrote: post #89
forrestthewoods wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. That’s the opposite of sprawl. It’s having dense points along the route. It doesn’t make any sense to have high-speed rail that only stops in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. For it to even possibly make sense there needs more to be more points along the way. And those points need to be very dense by transit. Aka the opposite of sprawl.

I don’t think that’s a given. If you’re constantly stopping/accelerating, average speed is much lower. The rail from downtown Seattle to the airport has a comical number of stops that barely see any traffic. The optimal system to connect a large number of places is a car. The optimal system to connect a small number of places efficiently is a train.

For some definition of small. Which I suspect is larger than “180 miles apart”.

I quite frankly just don’t see the value is connecting Portland and Seattle by high speed rail. Who gives a shit? Spend billions of dollars so that hundreds, perhaps even a whole thousand, of people can take a weekend trip that is slightly faster than a 3 hour drive?

I’d rather see Renton and Kenmore/Bothell quintuple in density and get connected by a nice, fast loop.

Seattle to SeaTac probably has about the right number of stops. Well, a few too many, but should be more than zero. Those stops just need to have something at them. We built a minimal amount of transit and then failed to upzone the neighborhood.

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

#113

Post by irrational »

Vancouver to Seattle would be doable. It’s the Portland to Vancouver part that would be hard. There were plans to rebuild the interstate bridge to allow more lanes, include pedestrian/bike crossing, and train crossing. It got so bogged down in disagreements that it was eventually scrapped. I’m not holding my breath on allowing a high speed rail crossing between Portland and Vancouver. Fortunately the rail yard in Vancouver is just on the other side of the Columbia.

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

#114

Post by xboxnolifes »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #101
poulsbohemian wrote: post #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,…

Germany: population: 84,270,625 area: 357,592 km^2 density: 232/km^2 WA: population: 7,785,786 area: 184,827 km^2 density: 39.6/km^2 In almost no way are they comparable. 1/10th the population, 1/2 the area, 1/8th the density.

State population density simply doesn't matter. City population and distance between cities matters. Nobody realistically expects train lines to enable transportation to every square mile of the state.

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

#115

Post by jaggederest »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #106
cyberax wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole WA is just around 7 million people. Portland area is around 2. Yet the distance between Seattle and Portland is the same as between Frankfurt and Munich. There's simply not enough traffic to justify a train. Another lane on I-5 would help a lot more.

> Another lane on I-5 would help a lot more. That rarely works out how you would think: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

To play devil's advocate, induced demand is a good thing - more people getting to go where they want to go. I'm all in favor of HSR but you have to balance the viewpoint - roads are a good thing, in general, they just should be a (much smaller) part of the mix instead of the only answer. Most freight should move by boat and rail, most passengers should move by rail and bus, and roads should be mostly for adhoc trips and deliveries rather than daily commutes.

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

#116

Post by favflam »

blq10 wrote: post #19
frankus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If done right the stations will be in locations where having a car is more of a liability than a convenience (i.e. downtowns with lots of traffic and expensive parking).

Yeah see this is the problem - urbanist aesthetics demanding everyone live a very particular lifestyle, which includes a lot more than just urban living hamstringing projects.

Respectfully, suburban guys want to use urban cores rent free. If people with cars actually paid anything close to market rates for the precious real estate they take up with their cars, then most of them would just walk/bike/bus in the city. Car drivers have the government on their side, so they get heavily subsidized real estate (roads, parking).

I don't think this treatment is very equal or fair. Keep your house and your car (SUV?), but pay real tolls and real parking fees.

The US managed to build cities and suburbs fine before car drivers got government priority.

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

#117

Post by a2xd94 »

23B1 wrote: post #91

As a PNW native: no thanks. I'd much rather we spend tax dollars on ways to prevent the need for commutes – especially ones that require highway travel.

How are tax dollars supposed to help prevent the need for commutes? By subsidizing remote work? I truly cannot follow the logic, curious to hear what you mean.

Public transport has been proven time and time again by numerous studies to be one of the best investments of tax money around. Just take a look at the absolute mess of a traffic situation that basically the entire Los Angeles metro area experiences, a direct result of no useful public transport system.

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

#118

Post by guitarbill »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #101
poulsbohemian wrote: post #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,…

Germany: population: 84,270,625 area: 357,592 km^2 density: 232/km^2 WA: population: 7,785,786 area: 184,827 km^2 density: 39.6/km^2 In almost no way are they comparable. 1/10th the population, 1/2 the area, 1/8th the density.

So it should be easier to find unpopulated, cheap land to build lines on between population centers, yeah?

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

#119

Post by tzs »

slt2021 wrote: post #14
charcircuit wrote: post #2

It would be useful if you could drive your car onto the rail and it carried you and your car at 300 mph.

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.

People find a similar thing (with boats rather than trains) quite useful for smaller distances (see the Washington state ferry system), so it is not obvious that it would not be useful with trains.

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

#120

Post by irrational »

throwaway-blaze wrote: post #105
carabiner wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol California would disagree. I am amazed at how much is being built here. I wouldn't be surprised if Seattle is the fastest building urban metro area in the US. I still think WA has a libertarian streak (hence no income tax) that moves things along.

WA does but Seattle does not. Worse, the one big city / region we have completely swamps the rest of the state politically so our "leaders" only ever get leftier and don't have a moderating influence from the other side. It's worse in OR to the south (Portland)...it's so out of balance there that 11 rural counties voted to secede and join their eastern neighbor Idaho.

Why does there need to be a balance? Wyoming is considered the most Republican state. Do people there talk about there needing to be more balance?
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