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How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

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Re: How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

#21

Post by masklinn »

eru wrote: post #16
masklinn wrote: post #8

At this point, for europe it might just be a better idea to let the TGV network grow outwards from France. It's already started to spread its tendrils in other countries anyway. Not that the network is that good in France though, Paris-Lyon-Marseilles has been nice for years, the connection to Lilles (and now to Bruxelles in Belgium as well) and to London via the channel tunnel is nice, a line recently opened to the…

> At this point, for europe it might just be a better idea to let the TGV network grow outwards from France. It's already started to spread its tendrils in other countries anyway. You can make the same argument about the ICE network.

> You can make the same argument about the ICE network.

Nope. First because there are big issues with ICE in germany alone, the program isn't in its best shape where TGV is proven and pretty healthy, and second because TGV has already started expanding its network into neighboring countries.

Re: How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

#22

Post by Retric »

Tangurena wrote: post #12
akadruid wrote: post #3

this article is a good demonstration of the all-or-nothing big-government requirements of high speed rail. In the two countries which have working, effective, high speed rail networks (France and Japan) it cost billions, took many years and required 100% government commitment to achieve. Only a few countries have the political setup to achieve something like that.

High speed rail is breathtakingly expensive, especially in urban areas. When BART was planning on a high speed branch out to silicon valley, it was budgeted to run $120,000,000 per mile of track. Part of the cost is that you cannot have any at-grade crossings, every road crossing has to be an over/underpass.

That's still fairly reasonable compared to interstate construction costs in a city.

For ~30 Billion you could build a DC to NY line that runs through Baltimore and Philadelphia.

"The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the U.S.[2] Although the project was estimated in 1985 at $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006[update]),[3] over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars)[3] had been spent in federal and state tax dollars as of 2006[update].[4] A July 17, 2008 article in The Boston Globe stated, "In all, the project will cost an additional $7 billion in interest, bringing the total to a staggering $22 billion, according to a Globe review of hundreds of pages of state documents. It will not be paid off until 2038." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

PS: It was probably not worth the cost: "The result was a 62% reduction in vehicle hours of travel on I-93, the airport tunnels, and the connection from Storrow Drive, from an average 38,200 hours per day before construction (1994–1995) to 14,800 hours per day in 2004–2005, after the project was largely complete.[28] The savings for travelers was estimated at $166 million annually in the same 2004–2005 time frame.[29] Travel times on the Central Artery northbound during the afternoon peak hour were reduced 85.6%.[30]"

Re: How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

#23

Post by eru »

masklinn wrote: post #21
eru wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point, for europe it might just be a better idea to let the TGV network grow outwards from France. It's already started to spread its tendrils in other countries anyway. You can make the same argument about the ICE network.

> You can make the same argument about the ICE network. Nope. First because there are big issues with ICE in germany alone, the program isn't in its best shape where TGV is proven and pretty healthy, and second because TGV has already started expanding its network into neighboring countries.

You may be right about the first points. I only wanted to say, that the ICE network, too, has started expanding into neighbouring countries. You can go from Paris to Frankfurt by ICE. Or to Switzerland, or Brussels.

Re: How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

#24

Post by fghjkoi8uygt »

bonsaitree wrote: post #6
melling wrote: post #2

I wonder how many more decades before we get high-speed rail in the US... I've been on the trains in France and Japan and it's a great way to travel.

It will NEVER happen due to the lack of a sustainable economic model for passenger service. The U.S. lacks both the population density and the dearth of a legacy bulk airline/airport network to make large-scale roll-out of high-speed rail service viable. That said, I'd still be the first one to vote FOR a referendum on a build-out. Journeying by train is real, civilized travel. Outside of private charter service and…

>It will NEVER happen due to the lack of a sustainable economic model for passenger service.

What about the oil for Jet-A reaching $500/barrel?

Re: How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

#25

Post by pjhyett »

masklinn wrote: post #9
bonsaitree wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will NEVER happen due to the lack of a sustainable economic model for passenger service. The U.S. lacks both the population density and the dearth of a legacy bulk airline/airport network to make large-scale roll-out of high-speed rail service viable. That said, I'd still be the first one to vote FOR a referendum on a build-out. Journeying by train is real, civilized travel. Outside of private charter service and…

> The U.S. lacks both the population density and the dearth of a legacy bulk airline/airport network to make large-scale roll-out of high-speed rail service viable. As a whole yes, but that's not really relevant. The US have several big metropolitan areas or groups for which HSR would be perfect: the western corridor between San Diego and SF, the north-east around NY, Ohio (Chicago area), ... Is HSR competitive for N…

It's hard to say if I'll still be in SF in another decade, but I'm excited about this project:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

Re: How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

#26

Post by Tangurena »

Retric wrote: post #22
Tangurena wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High speed rail is breathtakingly expensive, especially in urban areas. When BART was planning on a high speed branch out to silicon valley, it was budgeted to run $120,000,000 per mile of track. Part of the cost is that you cannot have any at-grade crossings, every road crossing has to be an over/underpass.

That's still fairly reasonable compared to interstate construction costs in a city. For ~30 Billion you could build a DC to NY line that runs through Baltimore and Philadelphia. "The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the U.S.[2] Although the project was estimated in 1985 at $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006[update]),[3] over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in…

It is 3x the cost of light rail (which only goes 50mph) construction in a city.

It is 4x the cost of highway construction in a city.

In an urban environment, land acquisition is the most expensive part of the cost of large construction projects.

We've had one successful large construction project (T-REX) here in Denver that involved both highways and light rail. It was completed 4 years ago, on time and under budget. At that time, the light rail construction costs were about 20 megabucks/mile. The cost of construction materials have shot up since 2006 and the next large (FasTracks is almost all light rail) construction project is currently running about 50% over budget (official estimates) to 100% over budget (unofficial estimates). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_T-REX_Project_(TRanspo... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTracks

Construction costs for rail go up sharply with the speed of the trains. Once one gets into "high speed rail" categories (which in the US means average speed > 90 mph between cities), grade crossings have to be replaced with overpasses, as the European experiences with HSR is that the time taken to stop a train is greater than the visible horizon for the train - so a "stuck" vehicle on the tracks will be hit as the train cannot possibly stop in time. To get some perspective on costs, rural freight lines run about 1 megabuck/mile, with passenger lines running about 2x that. Paving interstate highways runs about 1 megabuck/mile/lane.

Disclaimer: I ran for election in 2008 for an office related to this.

Re: How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

#27

Post by aidenn0 »

bonsaitree wrote: post #7
noonespecial wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got the somewhat unpopular opinion that its probably too late for us Americans to put something like that together. I live in DC and have witnessed the nearly 2 decades of political whinging it took to get started on a 20 mile extension of DC's already sorry little system out to the airport. It would take a change in attitude so radical to get national high speed rail to a decent number of cities that I'm not su…

As a D.C. metro resident (living in NoVA), I share your pain. When I moved, I made sure to live close to at least 1 airport (ended up being IAD) for that verysame reason.

I grew up in Reston. When I started elementry school (1985), the furthest the metro rail went out was Vienna, though they were talking about running a line out along the Dulles corridor.

I visited home last year; the furthest the metro rail went out was Vienna, though they were talking about running a line out along the Dulles corridor, and they have a website[1]. Now that's progress!

1: http://www.dullescorridorrail.com/

Re: How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

#28

Post by aidenn0 »

masklinn wrote: post #13
jameskilton wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget that our current "solution" ... AmTrak ... is probably the worst public train system in the developed world. I've had the pleasure of riding the ICE and as an American who never knew such a train service, it was awesome. If we could break a few misconceptions, setup a high speed corridor along the east coast, along the west coast, and a few cross-country lines through the north and south, we could ha…

> And don't forget that our current "solution" ... AmTrak ... is probably the worst public train system in the developed world. In absolute, that's true. When you take in account their limitations, mandates and everything however, they're really doing pretty good. Amtrak has pretty been much treated as an enemy (of everybody) from the start, doesn't help.

Yeah, I don't have the numbers, but I would bet a that AmTrak gets far fewer government dollars per passenger-mile than any western european rail system.

Re: How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

#29

Post by Anechoic »

Retric wrote: post #22
Tangurena wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High speed rail is breathtakingly expensive, especially in urban areas. When BART was planning on a high speed branch out to silicon valley, it was budgeted to run $120,000,000 per mile of track. Part of the cost is that you cannot have any at-grade crossings, every road crossing has to be an over/underpass.

That's still fairly reasonable compared to interstate construction costs in a city. For ~30 Billion you could build a DC to NY line that runs through Baltimore and Philadelphia. "The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the U.S.[2] Although the project was estimated in 1985 at $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006[update]),[3] over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in…

PS: It was probably not worth the cost:

Perhaps slightly off topic, but I have to disagree - your postscript only looks at one aspect of the CA/T, there were other effects as well. For starters, the old elevated artery was way past it's useful life, and a replacement was absolutely needed. Once you realize that the elevated artery needed replacement, your options start to narrow very quickly: replacing the old elevated artery with a new elevated artery would have been more disruptive than the tunnel construction, and building a new highway in a separate location was feasible since there was no where else to put it. Digging an expensive tunnel was the least bad of a bunch of bad options, but frankly the city was paying for a bunch of stupid decisions that were made in the 1950's.

As for the positive effects of the Big Dig, it reconnected Boston with the water front, it freed up recreational land, it had a positive effect on Boston's air quality, and it significantly improved automobile traffic flow by separating out local traffic (which runs on the surface) from thru traffic (which runs in the tunnel) where before they all moved on the elevated highway which worsened congestion. Before the CA/T opened, this route:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=woburn%20to%20braintree%20ma

would take a minimum of 90 minutes; double that estimate if you were traveling during peak hour. Triple it if there was an accident in the area. Right now, it's a 20 minute drive in non-peak hours, and well under an hour during peak times. Not bad.

That said, it would have been nice to have had more expanded transit to go along with the Big Dig. The Silver Line and the Old Colony lines (which were required as mitigation for the Big Dig) was a good start, but we could have done better.

(ftr, I worked on the Big Dig as a consultant from 1998-2001. I've also worked on several dozen domestic passenger rail programs, include T-Rex, BART Silicon Valley Extension, and the Acela mentioned in this discussion)

Re: How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track?

#30

Post by _ouxp »

Auf Deutsch: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,699086,00.html

Spiegel Online should really give a link to the original German articles from corresponding international edition articles. Had to go back through @Spiegel_alles to find it on twitter.

I'm spoiled by Wikipedia.

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