Plans develop for high-speed rail in the PNW

Post by Balero » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 11:04 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #204

Balero wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That route at the top would make any high speed rail pointless. You would never get up to a speed to make it worth while. All to stop at places like Castle Rock population 2500. Going down to Eugene and Salem would make sense, but with the intent that they places would aim to grow in size considerably. Places like Gresham to Forest grove are better for the Portland tram network, they are just part of the one metro ar…

You can cut some of those out then if you think they don’t make sense. It was a quick and dirty example I came up with from my minimal knowledge of Oregon/Washington geography (not nothing but not exceptional) and tracing a route through Apple Maps. Anyone with better knowledge of the local geography can take a second pass and come up with something more reasonable. You do want some local service at some in-fill stat…

Post by pxmpxm » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 11:20 AM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #26

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.

Use a bike instead of a car and you'll be there. (Ideally you can even have your bike be foldable for maximum convenience)

Post by specialist » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 11:41 AM UTC

rz2k wrote: post #202

johngladtj wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was sold by the government in return for the railroad being built. Every bankruptcy was the direct result of government intervention. The railroads did their part, in spite of being hamstrung at every step by the government.

I think you’ve misunderstood the arrangement. They were not granted the land where the rails were laid alone. They were granted vast amounts of additional real estate, and the value of that land could have maintained the railways in perpetuity. However, similarly vast fortunes were extracted from the railways instead, and the generational wealth created during these events in the 1800s has proved more durable than th…

Post by paulcole » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 12:12 PM UTC

NegativeLatency wrote: post #7

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…

Even just reliability, I regularly make this drive for visiting family and it would be preferable to be able to kick back and relax instead of driving, but currently it’s just too snow and infrequent to be a viable option for me.

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 12:40 PM UTC

genocidicbunny wrote: post #167

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah fine, I fully believe in the Vancouver->Vancouver (cough) train line. The justification for it, however, is not "WA is just like Germany". First of all, it's gone to be a relatively single-line system, paralleling I-5, which is quite unlike Germany, Second, even with the full west-of-cascades population, you're still not even remotely close to the population of Germany. You not even really that close to the popu…

> The justification for it, however, is not "WA is just like Germany". Of course not, they're not the same. But we are still talking about a region of about 8-10 million people. It's also a region that has grown by 2 or so million people in a decade. Washington alone has had a pretty steady 14-20% growth per decade since the 60's. Oregon is fairly close in its decadal growth as well. So by the 2030's we might be talk…