Winners of $8 billion for High-Speed Rail announced on Thursday

[Detroitnerd]

You can't get around that we have mixed traffic on both our highways and rail systems. The capacity for moving frieght on both is much lower than the capacity for moving cars.

Our system shares roads and rails. Even Amtrak's own rail in Michigan has frieght traffic.

Without moving frieght our region dies. This needs to be accomodated, particularly here where we are a manufacturing center and a major port into Canada.

Yes, that's what we want to do, DP: Take all freight off the railroads and kill off our manufacturing sector.

[ghettopalmetto]

You can't get around that we have mixed traffic on both our highways and rail systems. Not all highways are built to aashto standards and nor are they interstates. For example, Michigan Avenue in corktown is neither built to aashto standards nor is it an interstate, but it is a highway. We even have freeways like M-39 that are not built to interstate standards [[narrow lanes, short on/off ramps). This impacts capacity. The capacity for moving frieght on both is much lower than the capacity for moving cars.

Our system shares roads and rails. Even Amtrak's own rail in Michigan has frieght traffic.

Without moving frieght our region dies. This needs to be accomodated, particularly here where we are a manufacturing center and a major port into Canada.

I don't see a thing in this post that has anything to do with $8 billion for passenger rail upgrades.

What point are you trying to make???

[DetroitPlanner]

I don't see a thing in this post that has anything to do with $8 billion for passenger rail upgrades.

What point are you trying to make???

This is a response to your tangent then you call me on it?

Did you notice how I mention that we have a mixed system where freight operates on both highways and on rails, therefore you can't use a capacity number designed for peak conditions?

[ghettopalmetto]

This is a response to your tangent then you call me on it?

Did you notice how I mention that we have a mixed system where freight operates on both highways and on rails, therefore you can't use a capacity number designed for peak conditions?

It's not a tangent. Someone was decrying $8 billion for passenger rail as a waste, as it does not move as many people as freeways. I was attempting to illustrate that rail has far higher capacity, and even more so on a per-dollar basis.

I don't know how you define "capacity", but to me, it's an objective, theoretical number. There is no such thing as "capacity for peak conditions". What the heck does that mean? Does the geometry of a roadway change during peak conditions or something?

There's just "capacity". That's it. Nothing more. You're thinking of "actual throughput", which is something entirely different.

Relax. If you haven't caught on yet, the $8 billion for development of high speed rail is going to ease freight congestion as well.

[Detroitnerd]

What is it with some people? I think it does come a point when a poster’s objections are so petty, when their appeals to the demands of reality are so persistent, that you start to figure out that they really are just stonewalling. They aren’t interested in taking a fresh look at anything. They just want to keep pointing out little problems with people who’d like a fresh approach, never addressing that the system -- as it stands -- does not work well at all. What can you do with those people? You just have to figure they’re here to try to play devil’s advocate with the way things work elsewhere and to ignore the way they don’t work here.

[DetroitPlanner]

I don't know how you define "capacity", but to me, it's an objective, theoretical number. There is no such thing as "capacity for peak conditions". What the heck does that mean? Does the geometry of a roadway change during peak conditions or something?

As a matter of fact it does! Try driving parts of an interstate through mountains, these don't travel at 70 mph. Only fast moving traffic at LOS A can move at peak capacity. Traffic slows down when lanes are narrower. Many ramps, particularly the sort ones as found on the Southfield will caus traffic to back up as well because more time is needed to weave. Poorly timed lights will cause traffic to platoon and also reduce how much traffic you can move through a given roadway.

All of this also applies to train travel btw. You just can throw out maximum capacity numbers and expect the traffic to move at those numbers. It don't work that way, you're using the inputs for the modeling process, I am looking at the output.

[ghettopalmetto]

As a matter of fact it does! Try driving parts of an interstate through mountains, these don't travel at 70 mph. Only fast moving traffic at LOS A can move at peak capacity. Traffic slows down when lanes are narrower. Many ramps, particularly the sort ones as found on the Southfield will caus traffic to back up as well because more time is needed to weave. Poorly timed lights will cause traffic to platoon and also reduce how much traffic you can move through a given roadway.

All of this also applies to train travel btw. You just can throw out maximum capacity numbers and expect the traffic to move at those numbers. It don't work that way, you're using the inputs for the modeling process, I am looking at the output.

Capacity of a particular roadway is fixed. Roadways through mountains may have a lower throughput capacity than a flat, straight roadway. A roadway with a lower speed limit may have a lower capacity. A roadway with narrower lanes will have a lower capacity.

Level of Service is...[[drum roll)...not based on capacity but on the rate of traffic flow. If you're reaching lower Levels of Service, you're likely exceeding capacity, as at LoS "F".

I don't know why you think anyone ever said that all roadways have the same capacity. They don't. But a roadway built to INTERSTATE HIGHWAY STANDARDS has, in general, a capacity of 2000 vehicles per hour per lane.

Now go tell AASHTO they're wrong.

[DetroitPlanner]

Level of Service is...[[drum roll)...not based on capacity but on the rate of traffic flow. If you're reaching lower Levels of Service, you're likely exceeding capacity, as at LoS "F".

Thank you! So you agree that if capacity is fixed as you say and you get too many users, you are not going to get as many trips! Therefore, you can't just quote a capacity without looking at demand. What is the demand for HSR?

[ghettopalmetto]

Thank you! So you agree that if capacity is fixed as you say and you get too many users, you are not going to get as many trips! Therefore, you can't just quote a capacity without looking at demand. What is the demand for HSR?

Are you channeling Yogi Berra? "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

Capacity IS fixed for a particular roadway [[or railway), regardless of demand. THROUGHPUT is the variable.

And I'd say that by looking at the few rail corridors in our country that have decent infrastructure, higher speeds, and frequent service--those being the Northeast Corridor, California, the Keystone route between Harrisburg and Philadelphia, the Downeaster from Maine to Boston, the Hiawatha between Milwaukee and Chicago, and the Illinois routes--demand for high speed rail is going to be beyond what anyone anticipates.

[Hermod]

Just found this on the innertubes":

"The old saying about not looking a gift horse in the mouth should be challenged by Florida taxpayers, when it comes to today’s announcement of a $1.25 billion grant to start development of a high-speed rail line between Orlando and Tampa. If Florida accepts this money without figuring out how to pay for the rest of the project, there could be very serious consequences for hard-pressed taxpayers.

Unlike most of the other “high-speed� rail projects receiving federal grants, this one is not to upgrade an existing rail line for a top speed of 110 miles per hour [[mph) vs the current 79 mph trains. No, the Florida project is for brand new, truly high-speed rail on exclusive, new right of way, along the I-4 highway corridor. This is by far the most expensive form of high-speed rail. A 2009 GAO report that looked at recent high-speed rail projects in France, Spain, and Japan shows them averaging $51 million per mile [[excluding one very high-cost Japanese line). For the 84 miles of the Tampa-Orlando route, that totals $4.28 billion. So merely to build this project is going to require another $3 billion from somewhere. Florida is facing a several billion dollar budget deficit this year, so it’s hard to see where the extra money could come from.

It definitely won’t come from private investors, since these kinds of projects do not make a return on their investment. Indeed, a December 2009 report on high-speed rail from the Congressional Research Service [[CRS) helpfully points out that of all the dozens of high-speed rail projects build worldwide over the last several decades, only two are “estimated� to have paid for their capital cost out of farebox revenues. All the rest, in Japan, France, Spain, and elsewhere have been largely paid for by general taxpayers.

Then there’s the little matter of operating and maintenance costs. Both GAO and CRS note that whether such a line can cover those costs out of passenger revenues is highly dependent on ridership. The ideal situation is a corridor several hundred miles long anchored by two large, centralized metro areas. The federal fact sheet on the Florida line claims that both Tampa and Orlando are among the largest 20 metro areas; in fact, while Tampa ranks 17th, Orlando is 32nd in size—and both are very spread-out, low-density areas. This corridor does not make CRS’s list of the top 12 city-pairs for potential high-speed rail ridership. In fact, CRS estimates that the train in this corridor would likely reduce traffic on I-4 by less than 2 percent. That doesn’t bode well for high-speed rail ridership, especially since 84 miles is way too short for people to fly, so all potential riders must come from those who would otherwise drive.

Given all this, I estimate that Florida taxpayers will get stuck with an annual operating deficit that they will have to pay for, indefinitely.

Bottom line: this gift horse looks to me like a gift that will keep on taking."

[Detroitnerd]

Hermod: Why must we expect everything in life to turn a profit? Why would anybody expect schools to be profitable? Or hospitals? Or prisons? Or the Army perhaps? This is silly.

There are plenty of things in life that are not profitable. And they shouldn't be, if they are to do their job well.

Sure, laying down concrete by using money from the gas tax looks like a transportation system that "pays for itself." But what about the costs it creates and then passes on to others? Environmentally, it uses much more resources, produces more waste [[dead cars) and swallows a multiple of the amount of land that rail lines do. It sprays the landscape with carbon monoxide, shredded rubber, toxic leaks, all of which run off the pavement in a storm and pollute the ground. It kills more wildlife than trains. It creates uncrossable barriers in our cities and in the country.

Then there's the matter of trying to secure the energy necessary to run all these vehicles. More resource wars, more killing, more displacement of people around the world who had the poor luck to be born atop the most fertile sand in the world.

And what about the environments cars attract? They attract low-density development that then requires cities to assign traffic officers, build improved signaling systems. It cuts curbs and creates environments where children cannot walk safely, turning our parents into their children's chauffeurs. It creates an endless landscape of big-box stores, burger huts, taco stops, and endless seas of asphalt, because everybody has to build enough parking to ensure that they'll have space for everybody on the one most crowded day of the year. Contrast this with the environments that rail creates: Dense, walkable, inviting.

As they used to say, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." We're going to pay for it one way or another. We can pay by being tied to our cars for everything from a carefree road trip to when we need one stick of butter, in poverty of architecture, in profligate use of resources, in resource wars, in waste, pollution and sprawl. Or you can pay for a transportation system that, while more expensive, mitigates those things. You know: Like in Europe.

American people are sometimes so upset about paying for anything, they pay through the nose later. Like a person who, rather than properly reroofing, throws a tarp on their roof year after year and then complains about the expense of putting up a whole new second floor because of rot. There is a better way.

[casscorridor]

We need more rails, not less. The whole "Rails to Trails" thing really bugs me. Granted, the Dequinder Cut is amazing, and I wouldn't want to turn it back to freight. But other abandoned rail corridors in the city could be put back to use. If we did this, we would have to rethink the way we transport things. How sustainable is shipping everything by truck or by air? Rail is many times as efficient. This would not eliminate trucks or planes, it would just make rail just as important for shipping everything, not just massive items. A package, for instance, could be picked up by electric truck, dropped off at a processing center and put on a train, and then hauled quickly and efficiently across the country [[through complete makeover of our rail freight system) and then picked up by another electric truck and delivered at home. You can still pay more and have it flown there, but rail, in the long run, is a much more affordable and sustainable option.

The same is true for passanger rail. We would have to rethink the way we move ourselves around. Away from relying on the auto to do everything, and toward having many options. We should have the option of taking a bus or light-rail to a high-speed rail station and taking that to get to other cities, rather than flying or driving. Not everyone would use every level of transit, or every transit route, but they would shave their options improved!

[Novine]

"Given all this, I estimate that Florida taxpayers will get stuck with an annual operating deficit that they will have to pay for, indefinitely.

Bottom line: this gift horse looks to me like a gift that will keep on taking."

http://reason.org/blog/show/floridas...eed-rail-route

Not going to source the comments? I'm shocked that someone at Reason is opposed to this. If they had their way, the entire transportation network would be privatized.

[Retroit]

The only way a rail system can come even close to paying for itself is if the gas tax is raised high enough to discourage the use of road vehicles and encourage the use of rail vehicles. If the gas tax is not raised, these rail systems will be underused and over-subsidized.

[Detroitnerd]

The only way a rail system can come even close to paying for itself is if the gas tax is raised high enough to discourage the use of road vehicles and encourage the use of rail vehicles. If the gas tax is not raised, these rail systems will be underused and over-subsidized.

Not a bad idea, actually. If we tax vices we argue we'd like to see less of [[smoking, junk foods, booze) because of their effects on public health, why not the same with transportation? Of course, we'd have to really hold our politician's feet to the fire to keep them on-mission... They always love to do weird stuff like use stimulus money to expand Hall Road ...

[Hermod]

Not a bad idea, actually. If we tax vices we argue we'd like to see less of [[smoking, junk foods, booze) because of their effects on public health, why not the same with transportation? Of course, we'd have to really hold our politician's feet to the fire to keep them on-mission... They always love to do weird stuff like use stimulus money to expand Hall Road ...

As shopping goes, Hall Road is one of the "main streets" for metro shopping.

In the going from M53 to I-94 on Hall Road, you have one hell of a lot more commercial activity than you do going from the river to 8 mile up Woodward.

[ghettopalmetto]

As shopping goes, Hall Road is one of the "main streets" for metro shopping.

Makes you wonder how that happened, huh?

[Detroitnerd]

As shopping goes, Hall Road is one of the "main streets" for metro shopping.

In the going from M53 to I-94 on Hall Road, you have one hell of a lot more commercial activity than you do going from the river to 8 mile up Woodward.

As shopping goes, Hall Road represents the worst in wastefulness. Want to buy a newspaper on Hall Road? First of all, you probably live a few miles away, so you have to drive. Maybe you even have to hop on a freeway to get there. Then you must deal with all those lanes of traffic where you have to whizz up to 60 mph, dodge the hammer lane, do a quick boulevard turn, zip across another five lanes of traffic, zoom up into a huge parking lot. Hardly ideal.

Like it or not, aesthetics are changing in the United States. People increasingly want walkable, compact areas where they can shop on foot or with a little cart. Fewer people are interested in driving across a screaming autodrome to get the necessities of life. And, behind that trend, those fuel costs are poised to go up, oil is getting scarcer, and the next decade could bring fuel costs that leave Hall Road as deserted as Hamilton Avenue is now.

To use one-time federal stimulus money to expand Hall Road ranks among the crowning feats of stupidity perpetrated by our idiotic regional leaders.

[Hermod]

"Given all this, I estimate that Florida taxpayers will get stuck with an annual operating deficit that they will have to pay for, indefinitely.

Bottom line: this gift horse looks to me like a gift that will keep on taking."

http://reason.org/blog/show/floridas...eed-rail-route

Not going to source the comments? I'm shocked that someone at Reason is opposed to this. If they had their way, the entire transportation network would be privatized.

I picked it up third hand from Democratic Underground where they intimated it might have come from DailyKos. I didn't know it came from Reason or I would have sourced it as such.

Mea Culpa