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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

#121

Post by georgeoliver »

ghaff wrote: post #99
foota wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Construction is expensive, and purchasing right of way in populated areas is ridiculously expensive. Short tracks are more expensive because you want to do inconvenient things in order to keep them short (like tunneling and building bridges) instead of taking the path of least resistance. You need all of these things for a good high speel rail, but you need a lot of it to even improve the existing rail. There's some…

1 hr Seattle to Portland probably doesn’t even really make it commuting distance because very few people are going to live and work close enough to the endpoints to keep things to 90 minutes total. Boston to NYC is 4 hours or so and that’s useful for a lot of purposes although that’s admittedly in part because driving and parking in Manhattan is so awful. (I could drive from my house to Manhattan faster but I hardly…

Why is 90 minutes the magic number? For example lots of people commute from New Haven to New York City, where the train ride alone is 90+ minutes.

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

#122

Post by CaliforniaKarl »

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,…

Six years ago, my coworker said he'd never see BART reach Santa Clara County in his lifetime. That changed in either 2017 (with Warm Springs opening) or 2020 (with Milpitas and Berryessa opening). He was surprised, too.

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

#123

Post by poulsbohemian »

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.

eye roll I knew there would be some pedantic that would come along with this and I should have self edited to make it clear I was talking about square miles - which is why I included BOTH WA and OR which is especially relevant given that the article dreams about connecting not only WA and OR but also BC. Pop doesn't matter and neither does density for this subject. Every pissant village in Europe has a bus route, street car, or milk run train that will connect you to wider transit options. My only way to get to Seattle is a 12 hour (!!) Greyhound, a 4.5 hour car ride, or a $200 plane ticket.

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

#124

Post by rendang »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #112
quailfarmer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

There's been quite a lot of building around Northgate, Othello and Columbia City. I'm surprised there hasn't been more upzoning at Rainier Beach, though - maybe displacement concerns on the part of planners

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

#126

Post by DoreenMichele »

foota wrote: post #125

Sometimes I wish transit development was... Less community oriented and more build it and they will come. It's frustrating watching them waffle back and forth while things stall.

I like the piece because it's research-based. I did a study of a rail plan based on "Local incorporated cities get together and divide up the political pie, thereby leaving out essential entities that weren't municipalities, and then hired a consultant to pick the best rail locations for each city that had already been granted a rail station based on political jockeying."

Suffice it to say, political jockeying did not exactly pick optimal sites for the county in question.

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

#127

Post by ConanRus »

carabiner wrote: post #79
CSMastermind wrote: post #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…

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.

[dead]

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

#128

Post by ojbyrne »

hx8 wrote: post #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 h…

My favorite name collision is Ontario, CA (city, state) and Ontario, CA (province, country).

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

#129

Post by ghaff »

georgeoliver wrote: post #121
ghaff wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 hr Seattle to Portland probably doesn’t even really make it commuting distance because very few people are going to live and work close enough to the endpoints to keep things to 90 minutes total. Boston to NYC is 4 hours or so and that’s useful for a lot of purposes although that’s admittedly in part because driving and parking in Manhattan is so awful. (I could drive from my house to Manhattan faster but I hardly…

Why is 90 minutes the magic number? For example lots of people commute from New Haven to New York City, where the train ride alone is 90+ minutes.

Manhattan is sort of a special case and I can tell you from personal experience that 90 minutes is pretty bad even if a lot of it is spent on a train. I commuted into Boston a few days a week when it was about 90 minutes door to door and IMO it was not sustainable. If I go into my downtown office now which I do rarely it’s 2 hours.

That some people are forced into super-commutes now and then doesn’t make it a really sustainable most days situation. So you’re up by 6am or earlier and you’re not getting home until 8pm or later depending on your work hours.

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

#130

Post by rob74 »

ghaff wrote: post #99
foota wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Construction is expensive, and purchasing right of way in populated areas is ridiculously expensive. Short tracks are more expensive because you want to do inconvenient things in order to keep them short (like tunneling and building bridges) instead of taking the path of least resistance. You need all of these things for a good high speel rail, but you need a lot of it to even improve the existing rail. There's some…

1 hr Seattle to Portland probably doesn’t even really make it commuting distance because very few people are going to live and work close enough to the endpoints to keep things to 90 minutes total. Boston to NYC is 4 hours or so and that’s useful for a lot of purposes although that’s admittedly in part because driving and parking in Manhattan is so awful. (I could drive from my house to Manhattan faster but I hardly…

I don't think commuting should be the main focus - if you want HSR to make sense ecologically, it should replace existing car and airplane trips, not enable people to make longer commutes.
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