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Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

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Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#51

Post by legitster »

rafram wrote: post #29
legitster wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The area in question (Northeast) is about the only place in the US that matches the population density of the parts of Europe served by high-speed rail. It's not a question of wealth but of efficiency. Even if you took every single meter of high speed rail that France has built in the last 50 years, you would barely cover 2/3 of the distance of a single line between New York and LA.

New York to LA would be a terrible high-speed rail route. Just way too far. But the US has many city pairs - SF and LA, LA and Vegas, Denver and Salt Lake, Chicago and Detroit, Pittsburgh and Philly, and so on - where high-speed rail could easily replace most flights if it were built.

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil".

Some of those routes sound nice, but they don't usually have enough daily traffic between them to warrant the massive infrastructure costs. LA to Vegas would rival the distance of the longest European high speed lines, but with many fewer stops between and a fraction of the passengers between. Outside of connector flights, I don't even know how many people even regularly travel between Chicago and Detroit.

Part of the advantage places like Japan and Europe have over the US is not just that they are dense, but that their population skews to one massive metropolitan center. So it's easy to design a hub model where traffic patterns are easy - in and out of one area. You see this in the success of regional commuter rail networks in the US.

(SF and LA is a great candidate though, and it's failure a highlight of how hard it is to build in the US)

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#52

Post by dc396 »

mrpopo wrote: post #24
dc396 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, US rail is pathetic, at least for passenger travel. However, a quick search on Google Flights shows a one-way ticket from LA to DC costs $98.00 on Frontier via Atlanta (YMMV) so I don't think it's correct to say there isn't cheap, easy, high speed travel across the country.

It's also 700kg of CO2, one of the best ways to worsen climate change per dollar spent

Ignoring the point that climate sensitivity wasn't in the parent comment, AFAIK, airplanes generate 0.16 kg/km, whereas trains are around 0.1 kg/km and container ships are at 0.016 kg/km. However, passenger ships and gas cars are at 0.25, diesel cars at 0.28 kg/km and rockets are over 1.0 kg/km, so it appears planes are in the middle, not really "one of the best ways" to worsen climate change.

Sure, through a simple analysis of CO2 kg/km, trains are better for the climate for long distance travel, but they are vastly slower (average time from LA to DC is over 80 hours), which has knock-on effects, e.g., sleeping at home averages 0.25 - 0.32 kg/night, whereas staying at a hotel averages 10-40 kg/night, eating at home averages 2.3 kg/meal vs. 3-8 kg/meal, etc.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#53

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9
octaane wrote: post #2

Important context buried at the bottom: "Passenger rail analysts said that it isn’t unusual for rail operators to pad their schedules when introducing new trains, especially if they will run alongside older ones. For example, during a rollout, a railroad might schedule more generous dwell time at stops, they said." Also, the new schedule is only about 15 mins longer than the old one...this is a big nothingburger.

> the new schedule is only about 15 mins longer than the old one...this is a big nothingburger Then why the new cars? Are they cheaper to run? If so, the real price of a ticket (or losses [1]) should go down. [1] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

The new cars hold far more people, are faster, and they are supposed to be paired with comprehensive upgrades to the extremely aged infrastructure and tracks along that route.

Both the cars and the overhaul on the route were funded by the Biden admin (primarily with funds allocated by congress between 2021 and 2023) with the intent that modernisation to the route would gradually allow the cars to run at speed over the next few years. Now it's unclear what the status is of this infrastructure overhaul with the current administration suspending funds for the previous admin's projects.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#54

Post by saubeidl »

jcranmer wrote: post #49
saubeidl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is about the same size as the US. Here's a map of their HSR network: https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/railway.jpg Flights are nowhere near as efficient as rail, not to speak of the environmental issues. It's factors like this that show how the US is falling behind in international competition.

That's not a map of their HSR network, that's a map of their rail network. Openrailwaymap plots tracks by max speed, and you can see the map of China here: https://openrailwaymap.org/?style=maxspeed&lat=30.9587685707... --the tracks that are red-to-purple are the ones that are high speed.

I'm having a hard time reading that map - but this one also goes by speed and shows the extent of the HSR lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China#/medi...

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#55

Post by saubeidl »

ACCount37 wrote: post #40
legitster wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth pointing out that even at TGV speeds, a coast-to-coast train ride would take ~20 hours. It would have to be sooo much cheaper than an equivalent plane ticket to be worth it.

If we price the extra travel time at the level of US minimum wage, $7.25/hr, the extra ~15 hours of travel alone would add up to a price tag of $100. And if you don't have a bullet train, then the time-economy gets even worse. That sure seems like it explains a lot about the state of US passenger rail.

You could do a sleeper train one can work on. No loss of working time.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#56

Post by toast0 »

saubeidl wrote: post #38
toast0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have cheap easy high speed travel across the country. It's just not rail. In the US, rail is for freight. In the US, cross country distances are too large for terrestrial transport to be high speed. A flight network allows for much better speed, without needing to have continuous infrastructure. Rail in general requires pretty specific alignment and limits on turns and slope; high speed rail has even tighter to…

China is about the same size as the US. Here's a map of their HSR network: https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/railway.jpg Flights are nowhere near as efficient as rail, not to speak of the environmental issues. It's factors like this that show how the US is falling behind in international competition.

Yes, China is about the same size as the US, but a route from Beijing to Kashgar is 23k feet up and 21 k feet down. A route from Washington DC to Los Angeles is about the same distance, but has 77k feet up and 77k feet down. A lot more elevation to work through. Much of the east side of that map is relatively flat. And there are bottlenecks getting to the west side, as there would be in the US, but the US has a lot more relative population on the west side than in China.

I'm sure that rail wins over flights in terms of efficiency for passenger miles traveled. However, you often have to travel more miles to get to your destination. A direct flight can save a whole lot of time. Flights are much faster, although security theater adds a lot of time[1]; but for longer routes, or routes with many stops or connections for rail, the single segment operation of a flight starts to win.

Also, China has the advantage of authoritarianism which allows it to more easily get right of way that's well aligned for HSR. While it was once easy to get land for railroads, when there were active land grants, now you'd need to do a lot of work to get well aligned land to add a rail line; where they're still active, existing rail right of ways through developed areas are fine enough for slower service, but expanding the right of way to better align the tracks is a lot of work. In theory, you could eminent domain, but that process is long and expensive.

[1] In a world where you think it's possible to have government intervene to expand passenger rail in the US, it's equally possible to have government intervene to streamline the security theater in flights; or they might add the same security theater to passenger rail.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#57

Post by bombcar »

mrpopo wrote: post #22
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't want trains. Most places where people want trains have them (high density places).

Trains are just the most efficient way of moving people between cities. They benefit everyone, even people with cars. You have a business trip and need to go from A to B by yourself? Take a train, it frees your brain and the highway for people traveling in groups or with lots of luggage. Incidentally it also avoids moving 2 tonnes of material for no reason.

A passenger train in the USA weighs about 1000 tons, plus another 150 or so tons of locomotive, before we add the passengers (seating 80 per car and about 11 cars for 880 passengers).

That’s about a ton per passenger.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#58

Post by jimktrains2 »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #50
SoftTalker wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contact surface area of a steel wheel on a rail is about the size of a dime. That's what you have to work with to stop the train.

To drive the train. But to stop the train, surely the contact surface of the brakes with the wheels is more important?

Just like on a car, if your break pads are capable of completely stopping the wheel, but the wheel is not capable of creating enough braking force with the surface, then you slide. If you lubricate between the wheels and surface, which is essentially what leaves do on rails, no amount of at-wheel breaking power will stop you.

This is what antilock Brakes in cars prevent, they pulse the brakes to allow the tire to regain traction, preventing slippage and loss of control.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#59

Post by ACCount37 »

saubeidl wrote: post #55
ACCount37 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we price the extra travel time at the level of US minimum wage, $7.25/hr, the extra ~15 hours of travel alone would add up to a price tag of $100. And if you don't have a bullet train, then the time-economy gets even worse. That sure seems like it explains a lot about the state of US passenger rail.

You could do a sleeper train one can work on. No loss of working time.

Which makes the train considerably less passenger-dense, and thus makes the train tickets more expensive. In return for reduced value hours: hours that aren't as productive as real office hours, or as entertaining as real vacation hours.

I'm not sure if this would be enough to make coast to coast passenger trains more viable.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#60

Post by tialaramex »

eqvinox wrote: post #14
jasonpeacock wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New trains: padded schedule Old trains: padded schedule So really, all train schedules are padded - which makes sense, you need buffers to absorb variance in performance to have reliable schedules.

> Old trains: padded schedule No — Old trains: schedule based on experiences from having ran them for at least a year (i.e. all seasons) New trains' buffers are larger because you don't know e.g. how shit the brakes are when you have tons of leaves on your rails. (Yes this is an actual thing¹.) [¹ Ed.: in case anyone is incredulous at the leaves thing: https://www.groupe-sncf.com/en/group/behind-the-scenes/traff... ]

There's also some "infant mortality" stuff, the EMUs (Electric Multiple Units, which I suppose is roughly what this is?) in my country have not good failure rates in their first weeks and months but they get much better (typically best in class due to fewer moving parts than say a diesel) in mid-life.

Brake performance is a thing you can simulate and measure on a test track, which presumably happened at least months ago. However loss of adhesion, the reason braking stops working on contaminated railheads is also impacted by moisture, a bunch of dry leaves won't make anywhere close to the same problem as the same leaf material after a nice gentle drizzle, not really rain per se, not enough to actually wash the rails clean, but ensuring the leaves turn into a thin mush that makes braking next to impossible.

RAIB report 12/2023 about an incident near me talks about that, the driver maybe makes some dubious decisions, but ultimately he brakes, and it does nothing, so he brakes harder, still nothing, maximum braking, still nothing, select emergency braking (same effect but hey, it's there to be used right), still nothing - oh shit, we've passed the danger signal and I see another train, time to leave. He actually spent ages in hospital because he tripped trying to flee and was trapped in the wreckage, but on the other hand if he'd just sat there frozen he might well be dead 'cos his train did indeed smash into the other one so the side where the driver is sat smashed into another train at like 50+mph.

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