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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

#241

Post by carabiner »

sbierwagen wrote: post #193
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.

>I wouldn't be surprised if Seattle is the fastest building urban metro area in the US. It's tied for fastest building Democrat MSA along Minneapolis. (6.5 permits per capita). SF is at 3.4. Orlando is at 11. https://twitter.com/mnolangray/status/1682489858881884160

There we go.

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

#242

Post by jdlshore »

23B1 wrote: post #216
jdlshore wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the difference, and chose my words intentionally. What evidence do you have that the purpose of the high speed rail project is primarily for commuting to and from work? I’d be willing to wager that the actual report (which I haven’t read) probably names a variety of reasons for high speed rail in the PNW, of which commuting is one of many. Setting your passive aggressive pedantry aside, you haven’t answe…

Did you RTFA? The cited UW report is entirely about commuters. If you want to visit granny in Portland, take a car no problem. If a Seattle exec needs to meet with his dev team in Olympia once a week, make it a zoom.

The actual report is here. It’s quite readable:

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

The word “commuter” appears 19 times, always in the context of “local commuter rail,” in contrast to the high speed rail the report discusses.

High speed rail is very clearly described as a metro-to-metro solution, in competition with air travel. Commuting is not the stated purpose. The stated purpose is to “overcome long-term problems of affordable housing, traffic congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions.”

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

#243

Post by vel0city »

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,…

> We don't even have buses...connecting our major cities.

https://us.megabus.com/

Sure looks to me like there are busses connecting the major cities of Washington.

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

#244

Post by 23B1 »

jdlshore wrote: post #242
23B1 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you RTFA? The cited UW report is entirely about commuters. If you want to visit granny in Portland, take a car no problem. If a Seattle exec needs to meet with his dev team in Olympia once a week, make it a zoom.

The actual report is here. It’s quite readable: https://mic.comotion.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Keepi... The word “commuter” appears 19 times, always in the context of “local commuter rail,” in contrast to the high speed rail the report discusses. High speed rail is very clearly described as a metro-to-metro solution, in competition with air travel. Commuting is not the stated purpose. The stated purpose is to…

[flagged]

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

#245

Post by ghaff »

LeanderK wrote: post #239
ghaff wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not from the area but does anyone actually fly from SEA to PDX assuming they have a car? It’s not like SeaTac is even that close to Seattle. And depending on where you live and destination plans it’s hard for me to imagine trading a less than 3 hour drive for a train trip.

I can't relate to this at all. I would trade driving for a train trip if the total duration is somewhat comparable (or even a little bit longer), especially if I would have to make the trip regularly. I don't think flying is convenient but taking a HSR-train is.

It depends on a lot of factors. Where do you live relative to the train station? How annoying is the drive? Do you want/need a car on the other end? New York checks two of those boxes for me. (Getting to the train is out of the way.) But a lot of places that could be train trips I’d want a car once I got there.

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

#246

Post by s1artibartfast »

specialist wrote: post #215
rz2k wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yup. Those massive land grants begat timber companies. Which in turn begat real estate and development companies. The story's similar for ranching, mining, power, telecommunications, etc, etc. TLDR: The government is the source of all wealth. Which is terrific. So long as the government's ongoing investments are repaid in kind.

>TLDR: The government is the source of all wealth. Which is terrific. So long as the government's ongoing investments are repaid in kind.

Governments are important but I think this is terrible logic. The government didn't use magic to create the land out of nothing.

It also seems to imply some sort of Perpetual debt, which can never be repaid. Like a parent that claim stuff on everything a child makes or creates.

If the government grants or sells land, the obligations end at the terms of sale.

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

#247

Post by Hnaomyiph »

peyton wrote: post #197
afavour wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can’t they just pay for priority? With what money? Oh, the extra money they could be allocated by… Congress?

Amtrak sells tickets.

And for a large portion of their routes are already overpriced and less convenient than almost any other means of travel (except for a handful of actually reasonably-priced routes. A local route on Amtrak costs almost $100 for a one way ticket traveling <200mi A bus ticket for the same route is $30. The bus takes an hour longer. I want amtrak to thrive, but they need to attract customers, not drive more away with higher prices.

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

#248

Post by dumpsterlid »

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.

[dead]

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

#249

Post by jaredhallen »

Balero wrote: post #175
forrestthewoods wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-speed rail isn’t really for daily commuters. Shinkansen tickets are quite expensive. We’re talking $100 each way. I don’t see trains having a huge advantage over a clean grid and EV fleet. And the latter is much easier and faster to build.

> I don’t see trains having a huge advantage over a clean grid and EV fleet. And the latter is much easier and faster to build. The latter requires building millions of individual cars, each with large expensive lithium batteries, plus the road network and upkeep of that. Then building green energy, solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, plus storage! The other includes building some train tracks and trains. The planning syste…

We already have road networks and power grids. They need upgrades, but moving to clean electricity generation makes sense regardless of what we use for transportation. And sure, millions of cars need to be built, but they'll be built anyway. If not EV's, then traditional ICE vehicles. And those are built by various private companies and sold directly to individuals. Comparing the difficulty of an existing industry to continue doing what it's already doing to a giant public infrastructure project just doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

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

#250

Post by lukas099 »

jaggederest wrote: post #77
yurrzz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the vast majority of the population of Oregon and Washington is along the I-5 corridor.

Yes, that's why I said "a substantial portion". About 25% of OR/WA don't live within an hour of the corridor. I live in Oregon, along the I-5 corridor. I've been looking at the feasibility of HSR for years. The math does not yet make sense. If the population was doubled, it would be a no-brainer.

How long until the population doubles? How much harder would it be to build HSR on a route with double the density?
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