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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

#131

Post by sfink »

charcircuit wrote: post #31
slt2021 wrote: 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.

It's useful for the dozen people you're transporting, but transporting a dozen people isn't exactly worth building a train system for.

The economics only make sense if you're hauling around masses of people, and you can't do that if all those people want to bring their cars with them.

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

#132

Post by foota »

bombcar wrote: post #56
hiram112 wrote: post #17

They allocated $150M according to the article. I can't see that being enough to even break ground on a single mile of track. If California boondoggle is any indication, it will be enough to staff an army of middle managers, bureaucrats, and environmental impact and DEI staff for a year, and, of course, pay out some political kickbacks.

California's spent something like $9 billion and they hadn't a single mile of track by 2022. Maybe we should do a crawl/walk/run instead of jumping directly to HSR.

Sounds like construction started in 2015? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-S....

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

#133

Post by Gibbon1 »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #114
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are correct. Most of Washington state is empty. Few people live in the Cascades or the eastern plains.

Most of the population of Washington and Portland Metro live inside a long rectangle with an area of 10-15000 square miles. Call it 400 people per square mile. Or probably 15000 people per mile of track which likely is a better number.

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

#134

Post by andbberger »

sfpotter wrote: post #3

Amtrak Cascade has trains that can do 125 mph but are throttled to 78 mph because of low quality tracks, as I understand it. Amtrak also recently just started running many more trains per day between Seattle and Portland. High speed rail is great, but maybe a good starting point would just be… fixing the tracks. Get 3 1/2 hours from SEA to PDX down closer to 2…

i am unfamiliar with the condition of the tracks on that corridor but in general the vast majority of lines in the US are limited to below 80mph due to the infamous FRA 79 mph rule which mandates in cab signaling to exceed 80mph.

with the near ubiquity of positive train control now following the FRA's unfunded mandate (another brilliant piece of policy from the boys in blue) this rule should no longer apply. but due to reasons unknown to me (bureaucratic mire?) trains on many corridors are still limited.

there are also some grade crossing related speed restrictions

the FRA and its cronies should be hurled into the sun

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

#135

Post by foota »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #42
rendang wrote: post #24

There are now only 3 decent sized concentrations of people in that corridor, but maybe building something like this would allow a whole new 1MM person metro to develop, e.g. around Olympia or in the Skagit Valley

I sincerely hope not. Sprawl is the anti pattern maximizing human impact. The skagit valley in particular is beautiful - the last it needs is a suburban megaplex.

Ok, but how about South of Olympia? :-)

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

#136

Post by 23B1 »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #96
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 exactly would you prevent the need to travel between cities? Vancouver-Seattle or Seattle-Portland isn't exactly a "commute".

[flagged]

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

#137

Post by scythe »

For a region with relatively low population and big mountains, this is surprising. Sure, Florida built Brightline, but Miami plus Orlando alone equals the population of Portland + Seattle + Vancouver... on flat ground, with few changes to an existing rail corridor, over a shorter distance, and most importantly, it's all in the same country, in the same state even.

On the other hand, if it can work in PacNo, that's a call-out to all of the laggard corridors that have it so much easier: Atlanta-Charlotte, Washington-Richmond, etc.

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

#138

Post by 23B1 »

a2xd94 wrote: post #117
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…

There's a hundred different ways to disincentivize commutes – without subsidies either: simple tax incentives.

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

#139

Post by 23B1 »

jdlshore wrote: post #95
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.

What would prevent the need for travel between Portland, Seattle, and BC, and how would you like the government to make that happen?

[flagged]

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

#140

Post by zmgsabst »

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,…

The reason that we don’t have those things is the rabid partisanship and graft, eg you ignoring the Homeless Industrial Complex and Sound Transit being black holes of tax money that deliver negative (homeless) or mediocre (transit) results for huge sums.

Obviously a lot of people object to writing checks that are perennially siphoned off by white collar crooks — but yes, the problem is those people from that town.

They’re just rubes who don’t understand your obvious greatness and should feel privileged to pay for your graft!

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