I'm going to point to this column (and your others regarding Amtrak) when I'm challenged about my opposition to big progressive government plans. The lack of accountability and outright waste, graft and embedded self-interest that infects Amtrak (and the MTA, LIRR, etc) is a huge impediment to progressive politics. It isn't enough that money is spent; it must be spent wisely and managed well.
I've long thought that if progressive energy were not directed toward the next great program (Green New Deal, etc), but on making the trains run on time, ensuring the streets in SF, Chi, Baltimore, Detroit, etc... are clean and safe and making social services in those areas efficient and well-targeted, then larger federal programs would be easier to sell. Heck, as a conservative I might even change my mind about some of those proposals. But the dysfunction seen in those cities and in Amtrak bring me back to the opposition.
Chicago has its well-documented issues, but I will say that the CTA is a well-functioning transit agency in my experience. (By American standards--I'm not saying that a ride on the El will make you wonder whether you landed in Tokyo.)
But as a progressive, I 100% agree with this. My hope is that Kathryn Garcia's near success in NYC serves as encouragement for politicians who want to take up a similar mantle in other blue cities.
My wife, daughter, & I visited your city around Memorial Day. It was our first pandemic trip. Sad that some of our favorite restaurants had closed but the CTA was clean and efficient. So was the train that took us to see the White Sox. (Not sure if that was a CTA vehicle or a “regular” train.)
One is (was?) called Caza Mezcal near the Millennium Park and the other was Two Restaurant in Back of the Yards (or what I think is Back of the Yards-I’m no Chicago expert!)
Oh yeah - TWO was great! I lived probably 5 blocks south in the West Loop. That's a bummer. I moved to the burbs. Didn't realise they closed. Restaurant wise - we've been hit hard. Last count we had 25-30% of our locations close <sad face emoji>.
Your reply just makes me sad that conservative politicians, who you'd expect would be pushing for the things in this post - spending gov't money more efficiently - just want to shut it all down. They have no interest in improving efficiency, just killing programs. And Dems have to just push for more money in order to counteract those cuts. It's really unfortunate!
And here is news, gun control doesn't really reduce gun crimes [unless the army goes door to door searching people's closets collecting guns like Fallujah], the drug war doesn't really reduce drug use. It is a lot easier to pass a law that says it does something than to actually do something.
90% of Amtrak is terrible, makes no sense, and should be shut down immediately. But the NEC deserves and can support a high speed rail network. But it's a pork distributor not a rail company.
Amtrack long-distance (ie outside the NEC, barring a few commuter/regional services that it operates) is a tourist attraction, not a transportation system.
It's a good tourist attraction, and would be a better one if it was openly operated as such. It might also then be a profitable tourist attraction (probably by working with the freight rail operators rather than fighting them, running slower, and going to one or two trains a week rather than a daily train - and raising the quality of the trains so they're more of a land cruise).
But they should split off the operations of the tourist attraction from the transportation, and have them run by entirely different people with entirely different operating procedures.
If the federal government wants to subsidise long-distance trains to run daily through every two-bit town in the middle of nowhere in the Great Plains and the Rockies (on the basis that it's still cheaper than paying for an airport that gets one flight a day), then it should do so openly, rather than using the NEC's surplus to pay for it.
Indeed Australia basically already did this with their long-distance sleeper trains. Turned them over to a private company that outfitted very luxurious coaches and charges very high prices for them.
Mmm, sort of: Via runs twice-weekly trains (aka _The Canadian_) between Vancouver and Toronto, along with its NEC-equivalent between Windsor and Quebec City, and other regional service. It's got the same sort of bad scheduling and appalling on-time performance that Amtrak's long-distance sleepers do.
In particular, _The Canadian_ runs through the Rockies and Coast mountains in the middle of the night, so you don't get to see much. If you want the full-blown scenic experience, complete with fine dining etc, you need to take the Rocky Mountaineer or the Royal Canadian Pacific, which start at several thousand dollars apiece and rapidly work their way up from there. They're both privately operated and only do the mountains, not the long haul across the prairies.
(Incidentally, Rocky Mountaineer actually runs a train in Utah & Colorado, as well.)
A tourist attraction that requires a hidden 300% subsidy (or more!) is insane. No one would pay the actual cost of the service because the service is pretty terrible and not a great value even with the absurd subsidies. And spending money on these "tourist attractions (ha!)" while you ignore the actual needs of commuters in the NEC while the world literally burns is...I don't have the words.
Yeah, this is why I suggest running a third as many trains at two or three times the price. That would probably make enough money to pay for a set of nice upgrades, both in terms of the trains themselves, and to things like the food and service quality (ie having proper chefs and kitchen cars and the like).
And ... if the government wants to pay for cheaper trains to run more frequently, then it can pay openly.
While this is true, politicians won't let it happen. There are parts of the Amtrak network that function pretty well and should stay or be developed.
As an example, I live near Portland, OR, and the Eugene-Portland-Seattle-Vancouver line (Amtrak Cascades) is reasonably popular, runs pretty well on time, has some higher-speed portions, and is on par with driving between the cities, especially given that Seattle and Portland have local transit connections to their stations. As a result, I've used Amtrak a good number of times when heading up to Seattle for work or, in a couple of cases, to catch up with my family when work conflicts prevented me from driving up there with them for other obligations.
So, while I agree that there's little reason to support much in terms of cross-country rail aside from running a skeleton schedule to connect disparate, higher-volume routes, the USA is a large country and could easily be seen as having the potential for multiple NEC-like routes. The one in our area is a good example.
In fact, almost every large-ish city along this line has transit connections. Portland, Seattle, Vancouver (BC), Eugene, Tacoma, Renton (WA), Albany (OR - near OSU).
If there were more Amtrak lines like this one, it’d be pretty sweet and very serviceable.
I took that rail line once because I was going on vacation to Vancouver, direct flight prices were insane, and it was hundreds of dollars cheaper to fly to SEA and take Amtrak. The train was packed. Had built-in Wi-Fi that only worked on one side of the border for some reason.
Yeah, the WiFi on it isn’t great but, even in Europe, it’s pretty hit-or-miss. Aside from that, the food and drink are on par with Deutsche Bahn trains and the trains actually take you where you want to go. I’ve ridden it from Portland to Seattle several times and once to Eugene and back (with two bikes). It’s not fancy but it works, it’s not expensive, and people generally ride it.
I agree liberals should function on efficiency. But in a functional political system, improving efficiency and reducing costs is were the conservative coalition devotes its efforts. Instead in the US the Conservative coalition fights the deployment of public good and if those efforts fail they just try to maximize the grift.
The best example is the perscription drug benefit in the aughts. Conservatives didn't like it but when the realize it was going to happen they ensured an alternative passed that was *more* expensive. Their alternative increased the grift for private sector benefactors
Agree with the first paragraph but not the second. It's not grift for a high-risk, high-reward industry like pharma to oppose government price controls, which is functionally what we'd have for a lot of drugs if Medicare was allowed to dictate the price of prescription drugs.
Part D has problems but it was an attempt to let the price of drugs be set by market negotiations between Part D insurance plans and manufacturers. That's not grift even if it also isn't a well designed or functioning market.
But it was asking too much to expect actually smart, well-designed market policies from the ideologues who were then running the Republican party.
It was about 40 years ago, but I did a large paper in college (Public Policy degree) the conclusion of which was that passenger rail lines have only ever existed because of government subsidies, so if we want them we have to work with rent-seekers. It also means that the process will inevitably be political with Congressman So-and-so wanting a stop in his district, etc. What I'm getting at is that the private sector won't do better because, left to their own devices, they wouldn't enter the market
Yea only way it works privetly is if they developed it like a a mall/ Casino that you have walk by every day to the train I guess slot machines in every Bart station
John I'm sorry to tell you this (as its horribly unfashionable these days) but I think you may be a closet Moderate. Don't be scared you are not alone.
So your issue isn't with progressive ideas but how they are run in America? This seems to admit that progressive ideas work other places, just not here in America. Maybe you could get on board changing the system to make us more like Europe or Japan/S. Kora? I think most progressives would be on board getting rid of the regressive, anti-democratic systems that create and egg on this dysfunction. Maybe a system that values cities in the political process instead of reducing their power?
I don't think the only solution to make Amtrak better is to reform the entire political process to remove 'regressive, anti-democratic systems.'
You are basically making his point for him. He says progressives should focus less on activism and more on implementation of progressive programs already in place to convince others. You respond that we should create "a system that values cities in the political process." The filibuster is not why California can't build a train system.
A system that forces rural infrastructure projects to take priority over urban ones to build a successful coalition to pass legislation is absolutely why CA can't build a (good) train system. Cost per mile analysis never take into account that to get Vermont on board means you have to redo I-89 more often then I-87 and it means projects that have no benefit to rural areas (read: trains) always end up on the back burner and get underfunded.
CA has tried to build a good train system, spent billions of their *own money*, and have failed miserably. Nobody outside of California made that failure happen. California is the richest state in the union and richer than nearly all other countries. California had a united Democratic legislature and executive for the entire high-speed rail project.
Wow, so since they spent their *own money* did that mean they didn’t have to follow DOT regulations and hiring regulations set up by the federal government that are incredibly important to why projects go way over budget or is that not how our government works? I can’t remember.
1. This is a completely different argument from what you were making upthread.
2. Executive branch regulation changes are not subject to filibuster or traditional sources of anti-democratic influence.
3. Civil service protections are not traditionally considered regressive or anti-democratic.
4. Based on your other threads where you believed Florida is churning out dead moms and babies on a model-T assembly line, you're not good enough at arguing on the Internet to make this interesting enough to justify any more effort.
But the point being discussed here is, even when the urban projects have the money, they often underperform and underdeliver at high cost. Just complaining about how others want to take your money and how unfair it is, doesn't address that issue.
I like government solutions that work, even if they don't align with my personal view of the ideal. We aren't Europe or Japan or South Korea, so pointing to those cultures as our model isn't persuasive to me. If progressive solutions can work here, say in CA or the cities I mentioned, that would be evidence for me to change my mind.
Republican politicians are well aware that effective progressive legislation can sway a significant number of voters. Accordingly, they take great pains to sabotage effective progressive legislation.
This is true. But conservatives have *no* power in California. The truth is progressives haven't prioritized efficiency in infrastructure process.
Thankfully this can be fixed. But the first step is recognizing we have autonomy and the existence of the US Senate isn't the primary driver of every public policy failure in the US.
So, as an example, CA has a maternal mortality rate 6 times lower than Florida, a life expectancy 1.5 years longer than FL, and an infant mortality rate 5 times lower, would that mean you are in favor of Florida emulating CA's healthcare infrastructure mostly pertaining to govt regulation and investment?
Great article on how California got it’s infant mortality rate down. Data sharing and spreading best practices quickly. Very little to do with infrastructure and government investment in the classic sense. Other states should absolutely emulate this.
Again, my point was not to say government is inherently good or bad. John said he might change his view if the programs worked. I showed him clear data that showed that CA's programs were better than FL in a variety of extremely important areas and John refused to change his opinions. I just wanted to confirm my hunch that John was not truthful when he said he may change his views based on evidence that programs worked.
I've read or been involved in dozens and dozens of threads on this blog with John From Fl. He's as capable of changing his mind based on evidence as any person I've seen on this forum. Making him out to be an inflexible partisan hack or troll is unfair. I think you present fine arguments, but not fine enough to change an open-minded person's views (see JD's response below, which seem about right to me).
My position is that the better birth outcomes in CA come from better implementation of best practices, not increased government infrastructure spending per se. I suspect John would agree with implementing the successful policies you reference in this instance, which are cheap, effective, and not reliant on much, if any, new government spending (note that the hospitals pay a pretty small fee to be part of the data sharing network).
California has its own issues around housing, homelessness, taxes, infrastructure and poverty. Work on those and Florida can work on its issues. Luckily we can choose which place to live.
No one said CA didn’t have issues, I’m asking if CA’s success in public health and healthcare, which is evident in data has made you change your mind on this issue and if you want your home state to adopt these policies.
I personally would not want the United States government to be more like Italy's. I would just like to take the specific pieces that Italy does better than us.
I don't think "progressive" really is a factor here. It's progressive to want alternate forms or transportation to compete with cars and planes. Fine. Beyond that, this is more of an organizational issue.
Remember that Amtrak wasn't created purposefully. It was the result of a Nixon-era bailout of private, passenger-rail systems in the USA. Basically, they nationalized passenger rail in the USA and gave it the name "Amtrak", putting it under the DOT. Heck, the official name of Amtrak is the "National Passenger Rail Corporation". So, we have what is essentially a mini-Dept of Homeland Security here - a conglomeration of old organizations that were haphazardly stitched together and, thus, don't really operate well together.
What I'd like to see here is a reworking of the ownership. Any reason we couldn't just charter a new rail company for the NEC? Instead of working within Amtrak, work outside of it and poach the talent? Not sure.
I’ve asked you to ignore me in the past Ken. If I could block you I would. I really don’t want to continue to have to ask you to leave me alone. I don’t respect you, you don’t respect me. Move on.
So I ask you to leave me alone and you comment anyway? How on fucking earth are you this much of an asshole? You ruin every single comment thread for the majority of us. God damn it, go fuck yourself.
Bigger picture observation- the US spends or wastes an extraordinary amount of money on a lot of stuff (healthcare, infrastructure, defense spending, college education, etc.) precisely because it's so wealthy. When they're writing the obituary for the American empire in the 25th century, they're going to note that being the richest country in the world is actually kind of a curse! That money just sloshes around and fills every space where it's not really blocked, like water overcoming an obstacle. We're wealthier but also everything's more expensive here, so it kind of evens out.
Alon has observed that one of the reasons US subways are so expensive is that we build larger, grander stations than necessary. Lots of people have noted that college education has become more expensive because colleges now offer way more amenities than a generation ago, and also have an extra layer of bureaucratic administrators. Our wealth is funneled into these kind of expenses. This is totally true for defense spending as well- perhaps the most important issue of all, as we come up on the next great conflict.
In general I don't see anything short of an economic collapse driving down how much we spend on trains, or bridges, or colleges, or aircraft carriers, or anything else. There's just no concentrated will to do so. Scott Alexander wrote Considerations On Cost Disease years ago, and I think it's one of the most underrated causes of American decline. It infects almost every level of society, and I don't see even a mild cure in sight, short of the next Great Depression https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/
I only disagree on the timeline, I'd say it's been 20 years from death for 50 years now. I think that's because people are good at noticing new trends and awful at predicting the future of those trends.
(I'm in the "we've got 50 years before this racket is out of gas" camp)
I just assumed they meant that by then historians would have enough distance to be honest about, and have a clear vision of, the mess of interlocking causes.
Very true, but it feels like that's mostly a mix of disagreeing over the relative importance of the same causes (with agreement about a lot of the underlying facts, but disagreeing about how and whether to force them to fit a satisfying narrative arc that generally doesn't exist for most historical events), and just not having some of the facts we'd like to know. Historians of current America will have a *lot* more data and artifacts to work from, and much better data analysis tools to work with.
I do agree with you on principle about having more data/artifacts in the future, but I work in tech and would note that this isn't "for free." We need to engage in "digital preservation" to guarantee that future historians can read digital records created today.
Basically we need to preserve the programs that read records created today, and that need grows as our systems get more and more complicated. My preferred analogy is analog vs digital TV broadcasts. With a weak analog broadcast, you'd get "snow" or a fuzzy video signal. With a weak digital broadcast, it either works or it doesn't.
This is a really crucial point IMO. And it’s the kind of issue that bringing in a foreign CEO can’t really fix because Amtrak doesn’t really control it’s destiny and isn’t the biggest or most important player in rail.
I live in Vietnam and admittedly it is a developing country without a deep bench of talent in many areas but what is notable is how often infrastructure projects are very willing to invite in foreign expertise. This area over here was developed by a Taiwanese firm. This big building was done by a Singaporean/Australian joint venture.
Directly relevant: Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and both building their first metro system. Hanoi has brought in Chinese infrastructure specialists to run things. Ho Chi Minh City has brought in Japanese infrastructure specialists to run things. It is hard to imagine America ever being willing to do that.
I should note that it is hardly a panacea. Both projects are years behind schedule and billions over budget, despite their heavy reliance on foreign experts.
In some part isn't that likely to be a function of the sizes of each and perhaps distances? I imagine tiny Luxembourg brings in "international" firms all the time from France, Germany and the rest of Europe. But less often from Japan, which is much farther away.
None of that is to dispute your observation, which is an interesting one and might really be a part of American culture relative to other countries
I'm not sure why you seem to think Vietnam is a small country. It is substantially bigger than any EU country. It is 15% bigger than Germany by population.
It's not small, but it's smaller than the US by a factor of more than 3 in population and much more than that in GDP, which is probably the relevant number for sizing the pool of local talent vs international talent for a big infrastructure project.
I just gave Lux as the example of very small counties to show what happens at the extreme of the size range, i.e. when you're really small you probably only rely on outside talent. So the smaller you are the more you're like Lux, the bigger you are the more you operate like the US of China. Vietnam isn't small, but it's not as big as China and the US which are almost big enough to operate as self-contained economies if they chose to.
But yeah, I don't know if what I'm laying out is the reason for the US's parochialism or if it's only cultural willingness as you suggested. Maybe it's some combination.
The pessimism in the comments is startling. Seems like very few of us (including the author) think that anything approaching these reforms will ever happen. The USA continues to be a contradiction: it is a global empire with the constitution of an agrarian republic.
If Andy Byford didn't have Cuomo in charge, he might have been able to do a lot at NYC MTA. I doubt Byford himself would be the right person for Amtrak (being an urban rail guy rather than an intercity rail guy), but someone like him would at least have Buttigieg and Biden to answer to, not Cuomo. At least, for the next couple years.
I don't think Chicago or Washington is going to outbid London for him, especially after he got burned last time he tried to do something in the US. Chicago and Washington probably don't have *quite* as dysfunctional a governance system as New York, but the history of personalities in Chicago mayors, and the importance of Congress in DC, aren't exactly reassuring. (Maybe Lori Lightfoot is a big enough departure from the Daley/Emanuel examples that there's less of a worry there now?)
CTA has a much more logical governance structure than MTA. It's smaller (7 v. 21) and the majority of board seats are subject to mayoral appointment, with the others from the governor. The board then appoints the president. Compare that to the MTA where the Governor controls the main board appointments and you have a weird affiliate structure between MTA and NYCTA.
I would question whether Lightfoot is that much of a departure from Emanuel/Daley #2--I think that impression is a product more of a well-cultivated media persona than her actual record--but I would also question whether Emanuel/Daley #2 are really classic "machine" mayors in the mold of Daley #1. (Which is to say, I think Lightfoot, Emanuel, and Daley #2 all have pursued a somewhat similar socially progressive, white collar business-friendly--some might say "neoliberal"--agenda that is generally pro-transit.) Emanuel had a pretty good (not great) approach to transit, and I would say Lightfoot has been similar so far.
The current head of CTA is a Black Chicago native with a career in the US transit bureaucracy. I wouldn't be opposed to having a European to run the show, although I think there is something to be said for having a person at the top who can get the politics rights. That's especially true at a unionized agency like CTA where most of the employees are Black--a white British guy coming in to "shake things up" isn't likely to receive a warm welcome.
I was just basing my thoughts on the memory of Daley #2 bulldozing an airport in the middle of the night, and Emanuel being the kind of guy that lost half his vocabulary when he lost his middle finger, both of which sound like they could be as bad as Cuomo at undercutting the transit head and doing something else irrelevant. I have no idea whether Lightfoot is that sort of person.
Yep, they definitely have their issues! A huge trove of recently leaked e-mails have shown that Lightfoot is a bit short-tempered herself.
Fortunately, none of those antics have been directed at CTA, at least as visibly as Cuomo with the MTA. I think that's in part due to the fact that people see the Mayor as accountable for the transit system, regardless of how the agency's actually governed. So there's very little political upside for a Mayor anywhere to make the trains (literally) not run on time.* Whereas Cuomo, I imagine, has some political incentive to come across as "moderate" to voters outside NYC by picking fights with Bill DeBlasio and his wasteful spending on the dirty, bloated, subway system.
*The major caveat here is that non-white communities (especially in Chicago, but obviously elsewhere as well) have gotten a raw deal and the transit access in these areas is noticeably worse. To her credit, Lightfoot has prioritized infrastructure investments in these areas to a greater degree than her predecessors, although I will wait to see how she follows through on these promises.
I can see why he wouldn't want to do it, but OTOH getting pushed out in New York didn't harm his reputation at all, in fact it burnished it. Imagine what his reputation will be like if he gets fired twice!
Chicago CTA is actually perfectly fine and much more functional and lower-drama than MTA. I think it's a good sign when a transit system has high ridership but isn't a political football, regular topic of debate, etc.
He's running London's mass transit now, which is the second-biggest mass transit system in the English-speaking world (after New York). Can't see how he gets attracted back to the US.
"That’s about $40 million per kilometer of distance. In Spain they’ve built high-speed rail for an average of $21 million per km, and in France it’s $30 million. "
That's very nice for Spain and France, but I think it has been established pretty soundly that for whatever reasons here in the US similar big infrastructure projects are prohibitively expensive. In all the discussion about California's disastrous high speed rail project, the incurious stenographers of the media almost never show any interest in understanding why the French can spiderweb their country with high speed rail and Americans can't run a line between LA and San Jose through mostly empty countryside.
Until we have a thorough and honest national discussion of why that is so, we really ought to forget about similarly ambitious infrastructure projects in this country.
The researchers mentioned in the article HAVE had that discussion and keep having it. And it comes down to a bunch of different issues. We spend a lot of money on rail contractors but virtually none on rail planners. This means we do a terrible job at the outset identifying potential issues and resolving them before construction begins. And after construction begins, we have no one with experience dealing with issues as they crop up. The reason you'd bring in an Italian leader for the project is specifically because they have experience in all these facets, and while the resulting cost may yet still be much higher than Italy, it'd start the process of reducing those costs.
"Until we have a thorough and honest national discussion of why that is so, we really ought to forget about similarly ambitious infrastructure projects in this country."
I think the urban left has a sneaking suspicion, and would rather leave rocks unturned.
Boston to Washington in 3:30 is only a bit less delusional than drawing lines on a map from Kansas City to Denver.
The rural stretches of the NEC, especially South of NYC, are already pretty fast. Speeds could be increased by upgrading the catenaries and straightening a couple turns. These stretches now have an average speed of about 125. There are about 150 miles of “rural” track between NYC and DC. Upgrading this to an average speed of 180mph would knock 23 minutes off the time.
The route through New England hugs the coast and slows down for all the Midsized towns— New London, New Haven, Providence. To upgrade speeds, you’d probably want to build a new line further inland and simply bypass these towns. That would be politically difficult. You might save 24 minutes by bypassing greater New London with a 180mph line. Bypassing Providence would save 6 minutes more.
All of the above changes, plus reducing NYC dwell times, would still leave DC-Boston over 5 hours and 30 minutes.
To go lower, you would have to eliminate the slow stretches in Baltimore, Philly and Wilmington and offer through trains. This would mean increasing the radius of curves in urban areas, which would mean tearing down hundreds of developed blocks or tunneling. You might save 15 additional minutes if you built tunnels under each of these cities, or a Wilimingtin bypass. That leaves the time at 5:15. The stretch coming out of DC isn’t that worth improving because the train needs several miles to accelerate. To go under 5:15, you have to radically improve the situation in NYC, and that would break the bank.
I often expect that Levy is making some inflated claims, particularly about how expensive certain takings would be (I suppose "deflated" claims in those cases), but it would be helpful if someone could point to what exactly is wrong with them.
1) The blog post is really handy wavy about NYC, which is the core problem
2) the article posits Wilmington-DC times of 42 minutes or an average of 143 mph. It seems to think a Baltimore tunnel would do this. Problem is, the slow stretch through Baltimore is 20 miles and the tunnel would only be a few miles long. There would still be a lot of mid speed track after thsn tunnel was built. Philly also has a 15 mile slow stretch. The derailment a decade ago occurred when a train took a 50mph curve several miles from the station at over 100. You’d have to build a 10-15 mile tunnel or bypas Philly to keep the itinerary the post suggests.
That one was good. I love “The correct way forward for affordable improvement of the Northeast Corridor is to look for ways in which expensive infrastructure can be avoided.”
It’s certainly true that superelevation can be increased when there are no freight trains
Looking at the google map of Philly and not just the speed profile, it does seem like there’s a lot of good, fast track and if they just fixed that one curve, trains could accelerate shortly after the station and wiz into Jersey.
Baltimore is more difficult. There are tough curves South of the station plus the 30mph tunnel Alon mentions. Fixing Baltimore would mean a big tunnel or tearing down lots of houses
Oh I can do that having had a few exchanges with him. All his cost calculations for high speed rail are predicated on costs per kilometer of track laid. None of it includes the ancillary costs of things like overpasses and underpasses that must be built if you don't want to cleave the US into transport islands. Basically he does not consider this a significant problem which it is. HSR rail people like to ignore this problem by asserting that is the road people's problem to deal with and not theirs. It isn't. HSR in the US will require more of these structures than just about any country in the world.
The other delusional idea is that HSR terminals should even be located in central urban locations. This is ludicrous. It is the most expensive place to put them, doesn't allow for the additional infrastructure required to make it a suitable alternative to driving and ultimately limits their ridership.
The point about overpasses and underpasses seems fair enough.
But what are you imagining as the alternative to central urban HSR terminals? Surely that's the places where it's *cheapest* to put additional infrastructure, since there's usually an already existing transit terminal there? And since trains need to slow down at the approach to the station anyway, can't you almost always use already existing tracks and an already existing station for that final approach?
Short answer is they didn’t. Rome to Milan is 297 miles and takes 3.25 hours, average of 91mph. Furthermore, the big cities are in termini. NYC is in the middle of the NEC, it will impose a huge time penalty, and there isn’t the through passenger demand to bypass it. Much easier to bypass Florence, though I don’t think the Italians did.
Anyways an important thing to remember about Italy is a lot of its HSR is actually rather old, the first stretch of Rome-Florence was opened before the TGV-Sud Est.
As to NYC imposing a big time penalty this is clearly not the true. Large city through stations exist (most prominently Shin-Osaka and Nagoya).
This is really useful detail but I keep wondering about a more basic question: how important is speed? Let's say you could use some chunk of the $30B to have the trip take the same amount of time but make it far more pleasurable and/or productive, with smooth riding, office-like accommodations with high speed, reliable WIFI, great meals, and other amenities.
Or is it that fast trains are just a testosterone thing and people who get to go on those super cool super fast TGV type trains think we're less manly because ours go slower, even if end to end times aren't all that different?
Are we really sad because we don't have the Concorde anymore?
Speaking for myself, when it comes to mass transit of any kind I always will take shorter travel times and reliable, consistent service over sweet amenities.
Speed is really important for several reasons. The biggest one is that is not immediately obvious is that a train that can do the run in under 4 hours can get 20% more runs per day than a train that takes 5 hours, so that instead of running 10 trains a day you can run 12 trains a day, without spending more on rolling stock or crew. Even riders that don't care too much about the time savings on their fraction of the trip can benefit from the greater options about when to catch the train.
And unlike planes, trains really have incremental costs for incremental speed increases. To make planes go 10% faster, you have to break the sound barrier, which creates all sorts of new physical problems because you've got a constant shock wave hitting the exterior; but to make trains go 10% faster, you just have to straighten out sufficiently many tight turns, or create some passing tracks or whatever, but not deal with fundamentally new physics.
I'm not sure I buy this. I doubt the distribution of passenger demand over the course of the day would allow that many more trains: how many people will be going on the putative 3 a.m. departure? And while I'm not arguing for faster planes, the one big difference in maximizing speed is that planes are point to point. Trains, on the other hand, tend to make lots of stops along the way. And as others here have pointed out, that really reduces average speed, even if you can occasionally hit higher maximum speeds by doing the kind of things to the tracks that you suggest.
I still think you would get a much bigger bang for the buck by making train travel more pleasant than by spending tons of dollars to get marginal increases in average speed.
The effect I'm talking about is extremely relevant for intra-city transit, where a subway train or bus usually doesn't take more than an hour or two end to end, and there are something like 14 hours of daily service.
For intercity trains, where an individual run takes 4 or 5 hours, there's definitely less to be directly gained from this. But depending on the precise numbers, you can sometimes get a good deal. If you run an hourly train in each direction departing starting at 8 am and arriving by midnight, then with a 4 hour trip time, you can do this with 8 total trains (four departing Washington at 8, 9, 10, 11 and four departing Boston at those times, and then you get trains at 12, 1, 2, and 3; then 4, 5, 6, and 7, with the last train pulling it by 11 pm). With a 5 hour trip time, your departures would have to be at 8, 9:15, 10:30, and 11:45; then 1, 2:15, 3:30, and 4:45; and then you can only get on more departure at 6 pm if you want the trains to pull in before midnight. Or you could have them still go at 8, 9, 10, 11, but then have no noon departure, and then get 1, 2, 3, 4 and no 5 pm departure, and then have two more departures at 6 and 7, but you still lose two of your trips.
On the Northeast Corridor, you probably also want some trains to depart New York by 8 am, so a trip can depart late in the day as long as it reaches New York by midnight to start there in the morning. But once you're doing this, you're effectively just working with a 16 hour day instead of a 24 hour day, so the issue of the 3 am departure doesn't matter - it's just a question of whether your train runs every hour or every 1:15 during the service day, or whether you have some gaps.
The point about trains having intermediate stops is very relevant for both intra-city transit and inter-city rail, and is taken into account in all of the scheduling discussions here. Maybe some railfans that crayon high speed rail from Los Angeles to New York are ignoring the fact that no one is riding that 10 hour trip end to end (even with the magic 300 mph tunnels through the Rockies), but Alon Levy is including all the intermediate stops when he claims he can get Northeast Corridor below 4 hours.
It may well be true that in some cases, beautification is cheaper than speed increases. But the overall point is just that speed increases benefit passengers *twice* - once in the time of their trip, and once more in the frequency of their train - while beautification only benefits them *once*.
Small nitpick but 180 mph isn't really the gold standard for new lines anymore. Around the world 320 km/h (199mph) is pretty common for new build now. China runs at 350 km/h (217 mph) on some new lines I believe.
Average speed is never as high as maximum speed. The average speed on the fastest Beijing to Shanghai train is 190mph. Average speed from Paris to Boudreaux is 144mph.
Furthermore, making the fastest sections 10-15% faster doesn’t put a huge dent in the time. Upgrading 300 miles from 180mph to 220mph would save 18 additional minutes and leave the journey time just under 5 hours.
I guess I'm wondering if the governance structure of Amtrak is set up in a way that causes dysfunction, bad incentives, etc. This piece seems to suggest that the structure isn't the issue but we just keep on picking the wrong guys, which is possible but gets my skeptical spidey sense tingling.
As a Californian I naturally think about our HSR project anytime rail comes up - and this reminds me of how much I kept thinking about it listening to the power transmission episode of The Weeds the other day. A good idea, hampered by a patchwork of local permission, landowner, regulation, & local grudges.
I don't know. I generally think environmental regulation eg, is a good idea- but we've got to figure out a way to speed up big projects or we'll environmental regulation ourselves into full on climate change.
Goodness ... so much of this is just disconnected from reality.
D.C. to Boston in 3:30?? How? Like seriously? That's 430 miles + two major class A metros. It took Deutsche Bahn twenty-five years, 10B euro, and a tremendous amount of controversy to shave two hours off the Munich to Berlin route; finally getting it get down to four hours ... and that's just 390 miles and far less inter-city congestion.
The typical response here is ... "well, Germany doesn't know what they're doing either". And my response is ... "well, that's not how benchmarking works". You don't go from worst to first without building differentiated capabilities. You can't just wave a magic wand.
How MY thinks it works: write a moonshot target, important DC suits get excited about moonshot target, we all settle for some small improvements.
How it really works: write an impossible target, important DC suits get excited about impossible target, Amtrak people are handed impossible target by suits who will give up after 4 years, Amtrak people know target is impossible and wait until suits go away.
2. How were the Italians able to accomplish this and why can't that be replicated? When I think Italy, I don't immediately think of a country that can do things other countries can't (apologies to any Italians in the comments).
A number of controversies: (1) just the cost and delays, (2) they needed to build ~ 500 bridges - so it was a disruptive construction process, (3) there is like this persistent subsidy battle between air vs. train and then (4) another YIMBY battle that the smaller regions were bypassed in favor of shorter end-to-end transit times. Bottom-line no one is ever happy.
On Italy ... no idea. I've only worked in the US and Germany. But it wouldn't surprise me if there's an apples to oranges cost transfer thing going on that biases the benchmarks.
> "There’s around 40 minutes of time saving on New York-New Haven coming from better operations on that segment alone, which Amtrak can try proposing but which the primary culprit for today is not Amtrak."
This proposal saves 40 minutes (!) not by spending money or bypassing stations, but by... somehow convincing existing agencies to just not suck at their jobs. For free.
Based on just that comment, you're at 4:10 at least if you stick to things achievable with money.
I've read it. It just handwaves this statement ... "The infrastructure required for this line to be operational is obtrusive..." I would alternatively phrase it as a non-starter. Matt would do better to frame 3:30 as the theoretical, unconstrained, best case scenario and then walk back probabilities from there. As David Abbott points out below - getting below 5 hours would be an accomplishment with serious ridership tradeoffs.
As in so many areas, the United States approach to passenger rail suffers from the "not invented here" syndrome. American society's resistance to adopting foreign best practices may quite literally be the death of us. Perhaps this is an overhang from our past-WWII imperial glory.
Thank you for a great article. We live in suburban DC and before Covid had begun taking Amtrak to Boston to visit friends and family there and on Cape Cod. A whole lot easier and safer, even if riding the bus to CC to and from Boston adds a couple three hours to the trip there. (To and from Boston is about the same time as driving.) We also use Autotrain to go to FL. So it's fair to say we love and use Amtrak. But Compared to French and German trains, it's laughable. A TGV from DC to Boston would be a huge improvement, but so would simply fixing the roadbed so that the ride isn't as bouncy as a amusement park ride. Bring on them furriners!
To be fair, Amtrak is just the vehicle for Federal investment in the Gateway project, which is nationally essential because of the consequences of losing the existing, decrepit Hudson River tunnels. So they never really had $30 billion for a high-speed NEC in the first place.
Because the footings would be in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, and the approaches would be above-ground. It would destroy vast amounts of real estate value in one of the densest and most valuable places in the world. It would also not be cheaper, because of same.
Yes nothing other than a tunnel is practical here. Amtrak already built a tunnel box for what would be the eastern portal of this tunnel in Manhattan as part of the Hudson Yards development project anyway.
I'm going to point to this column (and your others regarding Amtrak) when I'm challenged about my opposition to big progressive government plans. The lack of accountability and outright waste, graft and embedded self-interest that infects Amtrak (and the MTA, LIRR, etc) is a huge impediment to progressive politics. It isn't enough that money is spent; it must be spent wisely and managed well.
I've long thought that if progressive energy were not directed toward the next great program (Green New Deal, etc), but on making the trains run on time, ensuring the streets in SF, Chi, Baltimore, Detroit, etc... are clean and safe and making social services in those areas efficient and well-targeted, then larger federal programs would be easier to sell. Heck, as a conservative I might even change my mind about some of those proposals. But the dysfunction seen in those cities and in Amtrak bring me back to the opposition.
Chicago has its well-documented issues, but I will say that the CTA is a well-functioning transit agency in my experience. (By American standards--I'm not saying that a ride on the El will make you wonder whether you landed in Tokyo.)
But as a progressive, I 100% agree with this. My hope is that Kathryn Garcia's near success in NYC serves as encouragement for politicians who want to take up a similar mantle in other blue cities.
My wife, daughter, & I visited your city around Memorial Day. It was our first pandemic trip. Sad that some of our favorite restaurants had closed but the CTA was clean and efficient. So was the train that took us to see the White Sox. (Not sure if that was a CTA vehicle or a “regular” train.)
Yep, the red line! (And go Sox)
Which favorite places closed?
One is (was?) called Caza Mezcal near the Millennium Park and the other was Two Restaurant in Back of the Yards (or what I think is Back of the Yards-I’m no Chicago expert!)
Oh yeah - TWO was great! I lived probably 5 blocks south in the West Loop. That's a bummer. I moved to the burbs. Didn't realise they closed. Restaurant wise - we've been hit hard. Last count we had 25-30% of our locations close <sad face emoji>.
Your reply just makes me sad that conservative politicians, who you'd expect would be pushing for the things in this post - spending gov't money more efficiently - just want to shut it all down. They have no interest in improving efficiency, just killing programs. And Dems have to just push for more money in order to counteract those cuts. It's really unfortunate!
Like conservatives cheered when the high speed rail failed do to corruption. I think they where kinda happy they could own the libs.
I think folks should be more upset at the corruption than the cheering.
And the Democrats where not pissed off saying things are going to be different. they basically looked embarrassed and gave up on building it.
And here is news, gun control doesn't really reduce gun crimes [unless the army goes door to door searching people's closets collecting guns like Fallujah], the drug war doesn't really reduce drug use. It is a lot easier to pass a law that says it does something than to actually do something.
90% of Amtrak is terrible, makes no sense, and should be shut down immediately. But the NEC deserves and can support a high speed rail network. But it's a pork distributor not a rail company.
Amtrack long-distance (ie outside the NEC, barring a few commuter/regional services that it operates) is a tourist attraction, not a transportation system.
It's a good tourist attraction, and would be a better one if it was openly operated as such. It might also then be a profitable tourist attraction (probably by working with the freight rail operators rather than fighting them, running slower, and going to one or two trains a week rather than a daily train - and raising the quality of the trains so they're more of a land cruise).
But they should split off the operations of the tourist attraction from the transportation, and have them run by entirely different people with entirely different operating procedures.
If the federal government wants to subsidise long-distance trains to run daily through every two-bit town in the middle of nowhere in the Great Plains and the Rockies (on the basis that it's still cheaper than paying for an airport that gets one flight a day), then it should do so openly, rather than using the NEC's surplus to pay for it.
Indeed Australia basically already did this with their long-distance sleeper trains. Turned them over to a private company that outfitted very luxurious coaches and charges very high prices for them.
Canada does this too, I think.
Mmm, sort of: Via runs twice-weekly trains (aka _The Canadian_) between Vancouver and Toronto, along with its NEC-equivalent between Windsor and Quebec City, and other regional service. It's got the same sort of bad scheduling and appalling on-time performance that Amtrak's long-distance sleepers do.
In particular, _The Canadian_ runs through the Rockies and Coast mountains in the middle of the night, so you don't get to see much. If you want the full-blown scenic experience, complete with fine dining etc, you need to take the Rocky Mountaineer or the Royal Canadian Pacific, which start at several thousand dollars apiece and rapidly work their way up from there. They're both privately operated and only do the mountains, not the long haul across the prairies.
(Incidentally, Rocky Mountaineer actually runs a train in Utah & Colorado, as well.)
A tourist attraction that requires a hidden 300% subsidy (or more!) is insane. No one would pay the actual cost of the service because the service is pretty terrible and not a great value even with the absurd subsidies. And spending money on these "tourist attractions (ha!)" while you ignore the actual needs of commuters in the NEC while the world literally burns is...I don't have the words.
Yeah, this is why I suggest running a third as many trains at two or three times the price. That would probably make enough money to pay for a set of nice upgrades, both in terms of the trains themselves, and to things like the food and service quality (ie having proper chefs and kitchen cars and the like).
And ... if the government wants to pay for cheaper trains to run more frequently, then it can pay openly.
This is more or less the Rocky Mountaineer's business model.
While this is true, politicians won't let it happen. There are parts of the Amtrak network that function pretty well and should stay or be developed.
As an example, I live near Portland, OR, and the Eugene-Portland-Seattle-Vancouver line (Amtrak Cascades) is reasonably popular, runs pretty well on time, has some higher-speed portions, and is on par with driving between the cities, especially given that Seattle and Portland have local transit connections to their stations. As a result, I've used Amtrak a good number of times when heading up to Seattle for work or, in a couple of cases, to catch up with my family when work conflicts prevented me from driving up there with them for other obligations.
So, while I agree that there's little reason to support much in terms of cross-country rail aside from running a skeleton schedule to connect disparate, higher-volume routes, the USA is a large country and could easily be seen as having the potential for multiple NEC-like routes. The one in our area is a good example.
In fact, almost every large-ish city along this line has transit connections. Portland, Seattle, Vancouver (BC), Eugene, Tacoma, Renton (WA), Albany (OR - near OSU).
If there were more Amtrak lines like this one, it’d be pretty sweet and very serviceable.
I took that rail line once because I was going on vacation to Vancouver, direct flight prices were insane, and it was hundreds of dollars cheaper to fly to SEA and take Amtrak. The train was packed. Had built-in Wi-Fi that only worked on one side of the border for some reason.
Yeah, the WiFi on it isn’t great but, even in Europe, it’s pretty hit-or-miss. Aside from that, the food and drink are on par with Deutsche Bahn trains and the trains actually take you where you want to go. I’ve ridden it from Portland to Seattle several times and once to Eugene and back (with two bikes). It’s not fancy but it works, it’s not expensive, and people generally ride it.
Cascades is one of my "regional" exceptions. It provides a useful public service at a reasonable price.
If more of the Amtrak subsidy was spent there, it could be an even better public service that more people would use.
San Diego to Los Angeles is another. Maybe even Coast Starlight.
It is pathetic that they can't run a useful Chicago-Detroit or Chicago-Cleveland service.
I agree liberals should function on efficiency. But in a functional political system, improving efficiency and reducing costs is were the conservative coalition devotes its efforts. Instead in the US the Conservative coalition fights the deployment of public good and if those efforts fail they just try to maximize the grift.
The best example is the perscription drug benefit in the aughts. Conservatives didn't like it but when the realize it was going to happen they ensured an alternative passed that was *more* expensive. Their alternative increased the grift for private sector benefactors
Agree with the first paragraph but not the second. It's not grift for a high-risk, high-reward industry like pharma to oppose government price controls, which is functionally what we'd have for a lot of drugs if Medicare was allowed to dictate the price of prescription drugs.
Part D has problems but it was an attempt to let the price of drugs be set by market negotiations between Part D insurance plans and manufacturers. That's not grift even if it also isn't a well designed or functioning market.
But it was asking too much to expect actually smart, well-designed market policies from the ideologues who were then running the Republican party.
It was about 40 years ago, but I did a large paper in college (Public Policy degree) the conclusion of which was that passenger rail lines have only ever existed because of government subsidies, so if we want them we have to work with rent-seekers. It also means that the process will inevitably be political with Congressman So-and-so wanting a stop in his district, etc. What I'm getting at is that the private sector won't do better because, left to their own devices, they wouldn't enter the market
Yea only way it works privetly is if they developed it like a a mall/ Casino that you have walk by every day to the train I guess slot machines in every Bart station
This sounds feasible
How is America more corrupt that Italy they like invented the mob. How are our unions worse than France!
John I'm sorry to tell you this (as its horribly unfashionable these days) but I think you may be a closet Moderate. Don't be scared you are not alone.
So your issue isn't with progressive ideas but how they are run in America? This seems to admit that progressive ideas work other places, just not here in America. Maybe you could get on board changing the system to make us more like Europe or Japan/S. Kora? I think most progressives would be on board getting rid of the regressive, anti-democratic systems that create and egg on this dysfunction. Maybe a system that values cities in the political process instead of reducing their power?
I don't think the only solution to make Amtrak better is to reform the entire political process to remove 'regressive, anti-democratic systems.'
You are basically making his point for him. He says progressives should focus less on activism and more on implementation of progressive programs already in place to convince others. You respond that we should create "a system that values cities in the political process." The filibuster is not why California can't build a train system.
A system that forces rural infrastructure projects to take priority over urban ones to build a successful coalition to pass legislation is absolutely why CA can't build a (good) train system. Cost per mile analysis never take into account that to get Vermont on board means you have to redo I-89 more often then I-87 and it means projects that have no benefit to rural areas (read: trains) always end up on the back burner and get underfunded.
CA has tried to build a good train system, spent billions of their *own money*, and have failed miserably. Nobody outside of California made that failure happen. California is the richest state in the union and richer than nearly all other countries. California had a united Democratic legislature and executive for the entire high-speed rail project.
Wow, so since they spent their *own money* did that mean they didn’t have to follow DOT regulations and hiring regulations set up by the federal government that are incredibly important to why projects go way over budget or is that not how our government works? I can’t remember.
The failure of HSR in CA is mostly a product of state policies.
1. The state of California didn't prioritize connecting the two major cities.
2. California CEQA makes it very easy for private citizens to stop development projects they don't like.
The US Constitution is badly flawed. It does overweight rural issues. But that isn't the primary driver of why US can't build infrastructure properly.
1. This is a completely different argument from what you were making upthread.
2. Executive branch regulation changes are not subject to filibuster or traditional sources of anti-democratic influence.
3. Civil service protections are not traditionally considered regressive or anti-democratic.
4. Based on your other threads where you believed Florida is churning out dead moms and babies on a model-T assembly line, you're not good enough at arguing on the Internet to make this interesting enough to justify any more effort.
But the point being discussed here is, even when the urban projects have the money, they often underperform and underdeliver at high cost. Just complaining about how others want to take your money and how unfair it is, doesn't address that issue.
I like government solutions that work, even if they don't align with my personal view of the ideal. We aren't Europe or Japan or South Korea, so pointing to those cultures as our model isn't persuasive to me. If progressive solutions can work here, say in CA or the cities I mentioned, that would be evidence for me to change my mind.
Republican politicians are well aware that effective progressive legislation can sway a significant number of voters. Accordingly, they take great pains to sabotage effective progressive legislation.
This is true. But conservatives have *no* power in California. The truth is progressives haven't prioritized efficiency in infrastructure process.
Thankfully this can be fixed. But the first step is recognizing we have autonomy and the existence of the US Senate isn't the primary driver of every public policy failure in the US.
Sometimes true. But hard to see that in CA, Chicago, Detroit.
So, as an example, CA has a maternal mortality rate 6 times lower than Florida, a life expectancy 1.5 years longer than FL, and an infant mortality rate 5 times lower, would that mean you are in favor of Florida emulating CA's healthcare infrastructure mostly pertaining to govt regulation and investment?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/california-infant-mortality-premature-babies_n_5b6b650de4b0bdd062062348
Great article on how California got it’s infant mortality rate down. Data sharing and spreading best practices quickly. Very little to do with infrastructure and government investment in the classic sense. Other states should absolutely emulate this.
Again, my point was not to say government is inherently good or bad. John said he might change his view if the programs worked. I showed him clear data that showed that CA's programs were better than FL in a variety of extremely important areas and John refused to change his opinions. I just wanted to confirm my hunch that John was not truthful when he said he may change his views based on evidence that programs worked.
I've read or been involved in dozens and dozens of threads on this blog with John From Fl. He's as capable of changing his mind based on evidence as any person I've seen on this forum. Making him out to be an inflexible partisan hack or troll is unfair. I think you present fine arguments, but not fine enough to change an open-minded person's views (see JD's response below, which seem about right to me).
My position is that the better birth outcomes in CA come from better implementation of best practices, not increased government infrastructure spending per se. I suspect John would agree with implementing the successful policies you reference in this instance, which are cheap, effective, and not reliant on much, if any, new government spending (note that the hospitals pay a pretty small fee to be part of the data sharing network).
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm
California: 4
Florida: 6
Better, but 50% better, not 5 times.
Similar with maternal rates:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/maternal-mortality/MMR-2018-State-Data-508.pdf
California 11.7
Florida 15.8
My numbers come from this source. Since the CDC comes with a warning that their information is unreliable. I tend not use them: https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/health-of-women-and-children/measure/overall_hwc_2020/state/ALL
California has its own issues around housing, homelessness, taxes, infrastructure and poverty. Work on those and Florida can work on its issues. Luckily we can choose which place to live.
No one said CA didn’t have issues, I’m asking if CA’s success in public health and healthcare, which is evident in data has made you change your mind on this issue and if you want your home state to adopt these policies.
Every mix of policies has costs and benefits. I prefer Florida’s mix to California’s.
I would be open to changes though I’m not familiar with the differences between CA healthcare regulations vis a vis Florida or any other state.
I personally would not want the United States government to be more like Italy's. I would just like to take the specific pieces that Italy does better than us.
I don't think "progressive" really is a factor here. It's progressive to want alternate forms or transportation to compete with cars and planes. Fine. Beyond that, this is more of an organizational issue.
Remember that Amtrak wasn't created purposefully. It was the result of a Nixon-era bailout of private, passenger-rail systems in the USA. Basically, they nationalized passenger rail in the USA and gave it the name "Amtrak", putting it under the DOT. Heck, the official name of Amtrak is the "National Passenger Rail Corporation". So, we have what is essentially a mini-Dept of Homeland Security here - a conglomeration of old organizations that were haphazardly stitched together and, thus, don't really operate well together.
What I'd like to see here is a reworking of the ownership. Any reason we couldn't just charter a new rail company for the NEC? Instead of working within Amtrak, work outside of it and poach the talent? Not sure.
“…regressive, anti-democratic systems…”
What are those?
I’ve asked you to ignore me in the past Ken. If I could block you I would. I really don’t want to continue to have to ask you to leave me alone. I don’t respect you, you don’t respect me. Move on.
“I’ve asked you to ignore me in the past Ken”
Surely I missed that.
So I ask you to leave me alone and you comment anyway? How on fucking earth are you this much of an asshole? You ruin every single comment thread for the majority of us. God damn it, go fuck yourself.
I sincerely apologize and hope never to acknowledge one of your comments again.
Have a nice day.
Bigger picture observation- the US spends or wastes an extraordinary amount of money on a lot of stuff (healthcare, infrastructure, defense spending, college education, etc.) precisely because it's so wealthy. When they're writing the obituary for the American empire in the 25th century, they're going to note that being the richest country in the world is actually kind of a curse! That money just sloshes around and fills every space where it's not really blocked, like water overcoming an obstacle. We're wealthier but also everything's more expensive here, so it kind of evens out.
Alon has observed that one of the reasons US subways are so expensive is that we build larger, grander stations than necessary. Lots of people have noted that college education has become more expensive because colleges now offer way more amenities than a generation ago, and also have an extra layer of bureaucratic administrators. Our wealth is funneled into these kind of expenses. This is totally true for defense spending as well- perhaps the most important issue of all, as we come up on the next great conflict.
Sometimes you hear that the US has the weakest social welfare net of any developed country. But actually we spend absolutely enormous sums on social welfare- lots of people don't know, for instance, that we spend as much on healthcare for the elderly as we do our famously huge defense budget! It's just that everything is more expensive here..... https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-04/57170-budget-infographic.pdf?fbclid=IwAR16kADtDpY2sw-AZZ5sBbZo_fLEDJlkqaaufPdM8XqPK4U1z6E4ozDXTvo
In general I don't see anything short of an economic collapse driving down how much we spend on trains, or bridges, or colleges, or aircraft carriers, or anything else. There's just no concentrated will to do so. Scott Alexander wrote Considerations On Cost Disease years ago, and I think it's one of the most underrated causes of American decline. It infects almost every level of society, and I don't see even a mild cure in sight, short of the next Great Depression https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/
> obituary for the American empire in the 25th century
I've never seen "[death] of the American empire" appear in a sentence so optimistic as to put the timeline at 300 years from now.
When this comes up between my friends and me, every year or so these days, the only question is if it's in a 20-year timeframe or a 50-year timeframe.
The American empire has been 20 years from death for 100 years now
I only disagree on the timeline, I'd say it's been 20 years from death for 50 years now. I think that's because people are good at noticing new trends and awful at predicting the future of those trends.
(I'm in the "we've got 50 years before this racket is out of gas" camp)
I just assumed they meant that by then historians would have enough distance to be honest about, and have a clear vision of, the mess of interlocking causes.
People still argue about Rome tho
Very true, but it feels like that's mostly a mix of disagreeing over the relative importance of the same causes (with agreement about a lot of the underlying facts, but disagreeing about how and whether to force them to fit a satisfying narrative arc that generally doesn't exist for most historical events), and just not having some of the facts we'd like to know. Historians of current America will have a *lot* more data and artifacts to work from, and much better data analysis tools to work with.
I do agree with you on principle about having more data/artifacts in the future, but I work in tech and would note that this isn't "for free." We need to engage in "digital preservation" to guarantee that future historians can read digital records created today.
Basically we need to preserve the programs that read records created today, and that need grows as our systems get more and more complicated. My preferred analogy is analog vs digital TV broadcasts. With a weak analog broadcast, you'd get "snow" or a fuzzy video signal. With a weak digital broadcast, it either works or it doesn't.
This is a really crucial point IMO. And it’s the kind of issue that bringing in a foreign CEO can’t really fix because Amtrak doesn’t really control it’s destiny and isn’t the biggest or most important player in rail.
I live in Vietnam and admittedly it is a developing country without a deep bench of talent in many areas but what is notable is how often infrastructure projects are very willing to invite in foreign expertise. This area over here was developed by a Taiwanese firm. This big building was done by a Singaporean/Australian joint venture.
Directly relevant: Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and both building their first metro system. Hanoi has brought in Chinese infrastructure specialists to run things. Ho Chi Minh City has brought in Japanese infrastructure specialists to run things. It is hard to imagine America ever being willing to do that.
I should note that it is hardly a panacea. Both projects are years behind schedule and billions over budget, despite their heavy reliance on foreign experts.
There's some amount of this - the French rail operator SNCF has a contract to operate Boston and Washington's rail systems: https://www.sncf.com/en/sncf-international/keolis-contracts-renewed-boston-washington and the Spanish rail operator Renfe got the contract for Texas high speed rail: https://thecorner.eu/financial-markets/renfe-begins-its-activity-in-the-us-with-a-contract-of-6000-m/84358/
I'm pretty sure that the Japanese rail system has been contracted with for several high speed projects in the US as well.
French SNCF was going to do CA high-speed rail, but gave up since the California High Speed Rail Authority wouldn't take the sane/cheap I-5 route: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2012/07/12/bullet-train-bombshell-cahsr-spurned-cost-cutting-offer-from-the-french/
In some part isn't that likely to be a function of the sizes of each and perhaps distances? I imagine tiny Luxembourg brings in "international" firms all the time from France, Germany and the rest of Europe. But less often from Japan, which is much farther away.
None of that is to dispute your observation, which is an interesting one and might really be a part of American culture relative to other countries
I'm not sure why you seem to think Vietnam is a small country. It is substantially bigger than any EU country. It is 15% bigger than Germany by population.
It's not small, but it's smaller than the US by a factor of more than 3 in population and much more than that in GDP, which is probably the relevant number for sizing the pool of local talent vs international talent for a big infrastructure project.
I just gave Lux as the example of very small counties to show what happens at the extreme of the size range, i.e. when you're really small you probably only rely on outside talent. So the smaller you are the more you're like Lux, the bigger you are the more you operate like the US of China. Vietnam isn't small, but it's not as big as China and the US which are almost big enough to operate as self-contained economies if they chose to.
But yeah, I don't know if what I'm laying out is the reason for the US's parochialism or if it's only cultural willingness as you suggested. Maybe it's some combination.
The pessimism in the comments is startling. Seems like very few of us (including the author) think that anything approaching these reforms will ever happen. The USA continues to be a contradiction: it is a global empire with the constitution of an agrarian republic.
“…the constitution of an agrarian republic.”
That may be the secret of our success.
It could have been. But then we decided to rule the world.
I don’t understand: Are you saying the US is not successful?
Pessimism is the new realism.
Two takeaways:
1. Literally nobody involved in Amtrak gives a shit about outcomes.
2. Maybe Kamala or Pete Buttigieg can single-handedly reform Amtrak so they will institutionally, top-to-bottom, start caring about outcomes.
Well.... good luck?
If Andy Byford didn't have Cuomo in charge, he might have been able to do a lot at NYC MTA. I doubt Byford himself would be the right person for Amtrak (being an urban rail guy rather than an intercity rail guy), but someone like him would at least have Buttigieg and Biden to answer to, not Cuomo. At least, for the next couple years.
What's the second-biggest mass transit system in the US? Maybe they should hire Byford.
I don't think Chicago or Washington is going to outbid London for him, especially after he got burned last time he tried to do something in the US. Chicago and Washington probably don't have *quite* as dysfunctional a governance system as New York, but the history of personalities in Chicago mayors, and the importance of Congress in DC, aren't exactly reassuring. (Maybe Lori Lightfoot is a big enough departure from the Daley/Emanuel examples that there's less of a worry there now?)
CTA has a much more logical governance structure than MTA. It's smaller (7 v. 21) and the majority of board seats are subject to mayoral appointment, with the others from the governor. The board then appoints the president. Compare that to the MTA where the Governor controls the main board appointments and you have a weird affiliate structure between MTA and NYCTA.
I would question whether Lightfoot is that much of a departure from Emanuel/Daley #2--I think that impression is a product more of a well-cultivated media persona than her actual record--but I would also question whether Emanuel/Daley #2 are really classic "machine" mayors in the mold of Daley #1. (Which is to say, I think Lightfoot, Emanuel, and Daley #2 all have pursued a somewhat similar socially progressive, white collar business-friendly--some might say "neoliberal"--agenda that is generally pro-transit.) Emanuel had a pretty good (not great) approach to transit, and I would say Lightfoot has been similar so far.
The current head of CTA is a Black Chicago native with a career in the US transit bureaucracy. I wouldn't be opposed to having a European to run the show, although I think there is something to be said for having a person at the top who can get the politics rights. That's especially true at a unionized agency like CTA where most of the employees are Black--a white British guy coming in to "shake things up" isn't likely to receive a warm welcome.
Thanks for the better detail!
I was just basing my thoughts on the memory of Daley #2 bulldozing an airport in the middle of the night, and Emanuel being the kind of guy that lost half his vocabulary when he lost his middle finger, both of which sound like they could be as bad as Cuomo at undercutting the transit head and doing something else irrelevant. I have no idea whether Lightfoot is that sort of person.
Yep, they definitely have their issues! A huge trove of recently leaked e-mails have shown that Lightfoot is a bit short-tempered herself.
Fortunately, none of those antics have been directed at CTA, at least as visibly as Cuomo with the MTA. I think that's in part due to the fact that people see the Mayor as accountable for the transit system, regardless of how the agency's actually governed. So there's very little political upside for a Mayor anywhere to make the trains (literally) not run on time.* Whereas Cuomo, I imagine, has some political incentive to come across as "moderate" to voters outside NYC by picking fights with Bill DeBlasio and his wasteful spending on the dirty, bloated, subway system.
*The major caveat here is that non-white communities (especially in Chicago, but obviously elsewhere as well) have gotten a raw deal and the transit access in these areas is noticeably worse. To her credit, Lightfoot has prioritized infrastructure investments in these areas to a greater degree than her predecessors, although I will wait to see how she follows through on these promises.
I can see why he wouldn't want to do it, but OTOH getting pushed out in New York didn't harm his reputation at all, in fact it burnished it. Imagine what his reputation will be like if he gets fired twice!
Chicago CTA is actually perfectly fine and much more functional and lower-drama than MTA. I think it's a good sign when a transit system has high ridership but isn't a political football, regular topic of debate, etc.
He's running London's mass transit now, which is the second-biggest mass transit system in the English-speaking world (after New York). Can't see how he gets attracted back to the US.
Money. Which nobody will offer him, so London it is.
> Bipartisan Immigration Framework
Perhaps an interesting Freudian slip since Matt wants to bring in a foreigner to do this job. :)
Jobs Americans Can't Do
"That’s about $40 million per kilometer of distance. In Spain they’ve built high-speed rail for an average of $21 million per km, and in France it’s $30 million. "
That's very nice for Spain and France, but I think it has been established pretty soundly that for whatever reasons here in the US similar big infrastructure projects are prohibitively expensive. In all the discussion about California's disastrous high speed rail project, the incurious stenographers of the media almost never show any interest in understanding why the French can spiderweb their country with high speed rail and Americans can't run a line between LA and San Jose through mostly empty countryside.
Until we have a thorough and honest national discussion of why that is so, we really ought to forget about similarly ambitious infrastructure projects in this country.
Matt knows that and that is what he's asking for.
The researchers mentioned in the article HAVE had that discussion and keep having it. And it comes down to a bunch of different issues. We spend a lot of money on rail contractors but virtually none on rail planners. This means we do a terrible job at the outset identifying potential issues and resolving them before construction begins. And after construction begins, we have no one with experience dealing with issues as they crop up. The reason you'd bring in an Italian leader for the project is specifically because they have experience in all these facets, and while the resulting cost may yet still be much higher than Italy, it'd start the process of reducing those costs.
"Until we have a thorough and honest national discussion of why that is so, we really ought to forget about similarly ambitious infrastructure projects in this country."
I think the urban left has a sneaking suspicion, and would rather leave rocks unturned.
Boston to Washington in 3:30 is only a bit less delusional than drawing lines on a map from Kansas City to Denver.
The rural stretches of the NEC, especially South of NYC, are already pretty fast. Speeds could be increased by upgrading the catenaries and straightening a couple turns. These stretches now have an average speed of about 125. There are about 150 miles of “rural” track between NYC and DC. Upgrading this to an average speed of 180mph would knock 23 minutes off the time.
The route through New England hugs the coast and slows down for all the Midsized towns— New London, New Haven, Providence. To upgrade speeds, you’d probably want to build a new line further inland and simply bypass these towns. That would be politically difficult. You might save 24 minutes by bypassing greater New London with a 180mph line. Bypassing Providence would save 6 minutes more.
All of the above changes, plus reducing NYC dwell times, would still leave DC-Boston over 5 hours and 30 minutes.
To go lower, you would have to eliminate the slow stretches in Baltimore, Philly and Wilmington and offer through trains. This would mean increasing the radius of curves in urban areas, which would mean tearing down hundreds of developed blocks or tunneling. You might save 15 additional minutes if you built tunnels under each of these cities, or a Wilimingtin bypass. That leaves the time at 5:15. The stretch coming out of DC isn’t that worth improving because the train needs several miles to accelerate. To go under 5:15, you have to radically improve the situation in NYC, and that would break the bank.
http://www.realtransit.org/nec7.php
I, and I expect Matt, have been relying on claims by Alon Levy - which parts of this plan are delusional?
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/04/29/some-notes-about-northeast-corridor-high-speed-rail/
I often expect that Levy is making some inflated claims, particularly about how expensive certain takings would be (I suppose "deflated" claims in those cases), but it would be helpful if someone could point to what exactly is wrong with them.
1) The blog post is really handy wavy about NYC, which is the core problem
2) the article posits Wilmington-DC times of 42 minutes or an average of 143 mph. It seems to think a Baltimore tunnel would do this. Problem is, the slow stretch through Baltimore is 20 miles and the tunnel would only be a few miles long. There would still be a lot of mid speed track after thsn tunnel was built. Philly also has a 15 mile slow stretch. The derailment a decade ago occurred when a train took a 50mph curve several miles from the station at over 100. You’d have to build a 10-15 mile tunnel or bypas Philly to keep the itinerary the post suggests.
As it happens Alon did a specific post on the frankford junction curve:
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2016/07/30/northeast-corridor-95-cheaper-frankford-junction/
But signalling would ideally never let that kind of derailment happen.
That one was good. I love “The correct way forward for affordable improvement of the Northeast Corridor is to look for ways in which expensive infrastructure can be avoided.”
It’s certainly true that superelevation can be increased when there are no freight trains
Looking at the google map of Philly and not just the speed profile, it does seem like there’s a lot of good, fast track and if they just fixed that one curve, trains could accelerate shortly after the station and wiz into Jersey.
Baltimore is more difficult. There are tough curves South of the station plus the 30mph tunnel Alon mentions. Fixing Baltimore would mean a big tunnel or tearing down lots of houses
Oh I can do that having had a few exchanges with him. All his cost calculations for high speed rail are predicated on costs per kilometer of track laid. None of it includes the ancillary costs of things like overpasses and underpasses that must be built if you don't want to cleave the US into transport islands. Basically he does not consider this a significant problem which it is. HSR rail people like to ignore this problem by asserting that is the road people's problem to deal with and not theirs. It isn't. HSR in the US will require more of these structures than just about any country in the world.
The other delusional idea is that HSR terminals should even be located in central urban locations. This is ludicrous. It is the most expensive place to put them, doesn't allow for the additional infrastructure required to make it a suitable alternative to driving and ultimately limits their ridership.
The point about overpasses and underpasses seems fair enough.
But what are you imagining as the alternative to central urban HSR terminals? Surely that's the places where it's *cheapest* to put additional infrastructure, since there's usually an already existing transit terminal there? And since trains need to slow down at the approach to the station anyway, can't you almost always use already existing tracks and an already existing station for that final approach?
How were the Italians able to get around this? Did they avoid all the towns between Rome and Milan (for example)?
Short answer is they didn’t. Rome to Milan is 297 miles and takes 3.25 hours, average of 91mph. Furthermore, the big cities are in termini. NYC is in the middle of the NEC, it will impose a huge time penalty, and there isn’t the through passenger demand to bypass it. Much easier to bypass Florence, though I don’t think the Italians did.
Florence and Bologna are not bypassed.
Anyways an important thing to remember about Italy is a lot of its HSR is actually rather old, the first stretch of Rome-Florence was opened before the TGV-Sud Est.
As to NYC imposing a big time penalty this is clearly not the true. Large city through stations exist (most prominently Shin-Osaka and Nagoya).
If you're actually interested in what HSR on the NEC should look like Alon Levy, has written a ton about it. Here for example are his speed calculations https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/04/29/some-notes-about-northeast-corridor-high-speed-rail/
Haven taken the high-speed rail to Florence, I can assure you they did not bypass it.
This is really useful detail but I keep wondering about a more basic question: how important is speed? Let's say you could use some chunk of the $30B to have the trip take the same amount of time but make it far more pleasurable and/or productive, with smooth riding, office-like accommodations with high speed, reliable WIFI, great meals, and other amenities.
Or is it that fast trains are just a testosterone thing and people who get to go on those super cool super fast TGV type trains think we're less manly because ours go slower, even if end to end times aren't all that different?
Are we really sad because we don't have the Concorde anymore?
Speaking for myself, when it comes to mass transit of any kind I always will take shorter travel times and reliable, consistent service over sweet amenities.
Until you are randomly slapped: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-07/metro-investigates-assault-on-train-riders-who-were-randomly-slapped
Speed is really important for several reasons. The biggest one is that is not immediately obvious is that a train that can do the run in under 4 hours can get 20% more runs per day than a train that takes 5 hours, so that instead of running 10 trains a day you can run 12 trains a day, without spending more on rolling stock or crew. Even riders that don't care too much about the time savings on their fraction of the trip can benefit from the greater options about when to catch the train.
And unlike planes, trains really have incremental costs for incremental speed increases. To make planes go 10% faster, you have to break the sound barrier, which creates all sorts of new physical problems because you've got a constant shock wave hitting the exterior; but to make trains go 10% faster, you just have to straighten out sufficiently many tight turns, or create some passing tracks or whatever, but not deal with fundamentally new physics.
I'm not sure I buy this. I doubt the distribution of passenger demand over the course of the day would allow that many more trains: how many people will be going on the putative 3 a.m. departure? And while I'm not arguing for faster planes, the one big difference in maximizing speed is that planes are point to point. Trains, on the other hand, tend to make lots of stops along the way. And as others here have pointed out, that really reduces average speed, even if you can occasionally hit higher maximum speeds by doing the kind of things to the tracks that you suggest.
I still think you would get a much bigger bang for the buck by making train travel more pleasant than by spending tons of dollars to get marginal increases in average speed.
The effect I'm talking about is extremely relevant for intra-city transit, where a subway train or bus usually doesn't take more than an hour or two end to end, and there are something like 14 hours of daily service.
For intercity trains, where an individual run takes 4 or 5 hours, there's definitely less to be directly gained from this. But depending on the precise numbers, you can sometimes get a good deal. If you run an hourly train in each direction departing starting at 8 am and arriving by midnight, then with a 4 hour trip time, you can do this with 8 total trains (four departing Washington at 8, 9, 10, 11 and four departing Boston at those times, and then you get trains at 12, 1, 2, and 3; then 4, 5, 6, and 7, with the last train pulling it by 11 pm). With a 5 hour trip time, your departures would have to be at 8, 9:15, 10:30, and 11:45; then 1, 2:15, 3:30, and 4:45; and then you can only get on more departure at 6 pm if you want the trains to pull in before midnight. Or you could have them still go at 8, 9, 10, 11, but then have no noon departure, and then get 1, 2, 3, 4 and no 5 pm departure, and then have two more departures at 6 and 7, but you still lose two of your trips.
On the Northeast Corridor, you probably also want some trains to depart New York by 8 am, so a trip can depart late in the day as long as it reaches New York by midnight to start there in the morning. But once you're doing this, you're effectively just working with a 16 hour day instead of a 24 hour day, so the issue of the 3 am departure doesn't matter - it's just a question of whether your train runs every hour or every 1:15 during the service day, or whether you have some gaps.
The point about trains having intermediate stops is very relevant for both intra-city transit and inter-city rail, and is taken into account in all of the scheduling discussions here. Maybe some railfans that crayon high speed rail from Los Angeles to New York are ignoring the fact that no one is riding that 10 hour trip end to end (even with the magic 300 mph tunnels through the Rockies), but Alon Levy is including all the intermediate stops when he claims he can get Northeast Corridor below 4 hours.
It may well be true that in some cases, beautification is cheaper than speed increases. But the overall point is just that speed increases benefit passengers *twice* - once in the time of their trip, and once more in the frequency of their train - while beautification only benefits them *once*.
Small nitpick but 180 mph isn't really the gold standard for new lines anymore. Around the world 320 km/h (199mph) is pretty common for new build now. China runs at 350 km/h (217 mph) on some new lines I believe.
Average speed is never as high as maximum speed. The average speed on the fastest Beijing to Shanghai train is 190mph. Average speed from Paris to Boudreaux is 144mph.
Furthermore, making the fastest sections 10-15% faster doesn’t put a huge dent in the time. Upgrading 300 miles from 180mph to 220mph would save 18 additional minutes and leave the journey time just under 5 hours.
Sure, but if you're building all new bypass sections at great expense on a new alignment they might as well be built for a higher speed.
Higher speed trackage = higher maintenance. Not worth it unless you use it.
I guess I'm wondering if the governance structure of Amtrak is set up in a way that causes dysfunction, bad incentives, etc. This piece seems to suggest that the structure isn't the issue but we just keep on picking the wrong guys, which is possible but gets my skeptical spidey sense tingling.
New Yorker who lives in DC bullish about Amtrak! News at 11!
Whether you are a conservative or liberal, you should want things to work
Three cheers for effective management!
As a Californian I naturally think about our HSR project anytime rail comes up - and this reminds me of how much I kept thinking about it listening to the power transmission episode of The Weeds the other day. A good idea, hampered by a patchwork of local permission, landowner, regulation, & local grudges.
I don't know. I generally think environmental regulation eg, is a good idea- but we've got to figure out a way to speed up big projects or we'll environmental regulation ourselves into full on climate change.
Goodness ... so much of this is just disconnected from reality.
D.C. to Boston in 3:30?? How? Like seriously? That's 430 miles + two major class A metros. It took Deutsche Bahn twenty-five years, 10B euro, and a tremendous amount of controversy to shave two hours off the Munich to Berlin route; finally getting it get down to four hours ... and that's just 390 miles and far less inter-city congestion.
The typical response here is ... "well, Germany doesn't know what they're doing either". And my response is ... "well, that's not how benchmarking works". You don't go from worst to first without building differentiated capabilities. You can't just wave a magic wand.
https://www.dw.com/en/from-berlin-to-munich-in-just-four-hours/a-41719678
How MY thinks it works: write a moonshot target, important DC suits get excited about moonshot target, we all settle for some small improvements.
How it really works: write an impossible target, important DC suits get excited about impossible target, Amtrak people are handed impossible target by suits who will give up after 4 years, Amtrak people know target is impossible and wait until suits go away.
1. What was the controversy about?
2. How were the Italians able to accomplish this and why can't that be replicated? When I think Italy, I don't immediately think of a country that can do things other countries can't (apologies to any Italians in the comments).
A number of controversies: (1) just the cost and delays, (2) they needed to build ~ 500 bridges - so it was a disruptive construction process, (3) there is like this persistent subsidy battle between air vs. train and then (4) another YIMBY battle that the smaller regions were bypassed in favor of shorter end-to-end transit times. Bottom-line no one is ever happy.
On Italy ... no idea. I've only worked in the US and Germany. But it wouldn't surprise me if there's an apples to oranges cost transfer thing going on that biases the benchmarks.
Here's the specific plan: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/04/29/some-notes-about-northeast-corridor-high-speed-rail/
> "There’s around 40 minutes of time saving on New York-New Haven coming from better operations on that segment alone, which Amtrak can try proposing but which the primary culprit for today is not Amtrak."
This proposal saves 40 minutes (!) not by spending money or bypassing stations, but by... somehow convincing existing agencies to just not suck at their jobs. For free.
Based on just that comment, you're at 4:10 at least if you stick to things achievable with money.
I've read it. It just handwaves this statement ... "The infrastructure required for this line to be operational is obtrusive..." I would alternatively phrase it as a non-starter. Matt would do better to frame 3:30 as the theoretical, unconstrained, best case scenario and then walk back probabilities from there. As David Abbott points out below - getting below 5 hours would be an accomplishment with serious ridership tradeoffs.
As in so many areas, the United States approach to passenger rail suffers from the "not invented here" syndrome. American society's resistance to adopting foreign best practices may quite literally be the death of us. Perhaps this is an overhang from our past-WWII imperial glory.
Thank you for a great article. We live in suburban DC and before Covid had begun taking Amtrak to Boston to visit friends and family there and on Cape Cod. A whole lot easier and safer, even if riding the bus to CC to and from Boston adds a couple three hours to the trip there. (To and from Boston is about the same time as driving.) We also use Autotrain to go to FL. So it's fair to say we love and use Amtrak. But Compared to French and German trains, it's laughable. A TGV from DC to Boston would be a huge improvement, but so would simply fixing the roadbed so that the ride isn't as bouncy as a amusement park ride. Bring on them furriners!
To be fair, Amtrak is just the vehicle for Federal investment in the Gateway project, which is nationally essential because of the consequences of losing the existing, decrepit Hudson River tunnels. So they never really had $30 billion for a high-speed NEC in the first place.
Why is a tunnel under the river considered better than a bridge over it, the more common way to cross a river?
Because the footings would be in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, and the approaches would be above-ground. It would destroy vast amounts of real estate value in one of the densest and most valuable places in the world. It would also not be cheaper, because of same.
Yes nothing other than a tunnel is practical here. Amtrak already built a tunnel box for what would be the eastern portal of this tunnel in Manhattan as part of the Hudson Yards development project anyway.
Because the trains travel under the Hudson River to go under all of the people and buildings in Manhattan and connect to the underground Penn Station.