HSR (High Speed Rail) Information Grab

[camarozrs]

My work isn't all that demanding, and I get curious about things so I click around and do research to break up the monotony of my day. I usually cover pretty airy topics, but today it was a little more down to earth

Comments

[jaxom92]

I am totally aboard (pun intended) high speed rail... and I'm a conservative - at least fiscally. There's a growing conservative support for mass transit due to current economic realities and the growing discourse around sustainability. It makes economic sense to fund transit projects that compete with the automobile and, in the case of high speed rail, short-haul flights.

With the former, if you get a critical mass of people riding transit, private development along the transit lines becomes economically viable, creating investment and jobs and so-forth. This private development aspect is what conservatives can cling onto to support mass transit, particularly rail because it's stable enough (buses can easily change routes) to give the development business some investment security.

For high speed rail, the increase costs of air travel (time, fuel, security) is a huge boon to potential development. However, true competition means the need for true highs speed rail. Most of Washington's proposed projects bring the average speed closer to 100 mph. That's still not fast enough to draw people from a SEA to PDX (Portland) flight. Unfortunately, sharing the right of way with freight (BNSF, UP) means high speed approaching 200 mph, roughly how fast we need to be for good competition, requires a dedicated ROW, which is incredibly expensive in the dense urban environment, and even in the older suburbs.

I'm personally a fan of maglev technology, but it's cost prohibitive at the moment for the same reason true HSR is - the ROW and capital expenditure cost at the front of the project. I'm of the opinion that if we're gonna invest in a dedicated ROW we should consider maglev. If you want to do something, go all the way, and maglev is the supreme HSR technology.

[camarozrs]

MAGLEV is probably the way to go. I think it preserves that we move away from fossil fuels, and the technology still has some room to improve.

I was a little disappointed to see that our "high speed rail" would only increase the speeds by 20 mph. I know our topography presents some challenges; at the same time the Swiss have no problem. I believe the terrain is pretty flat once you get past Nisqually/Lacey. That would be an epic tressle or a pretty big dig to achieve a satisfactory grade.

There are a lot of benefits to true HSR, and I wish this was being pursued a little more actively. I'm trying to come up with a vague theory on the best way to move people most effectively. Not to joke, but maybe someone will figure out how to teleport people, and then none of it will matter.