At first blush, Obama’s HSR network appears simple-minded, and I intend to take him to task for that in a future post. Lines are shown connecting cities across vast distances that everyone knows are too great for trains, and best served by air.
On second thought, however, it seems entirely reasonable that, at some point in the future, travel in the continental US will be entirely on the surface, and long distances will be covered by very high-speed trains.
Imagine, for a moment, that a train could travel at 200 mph. This certainly appears to be a goal that could be reached in the next 70 years, and at that speed San Francisco would be five hours from Seattle. This, I will boldly say, is not an unreasonable time to spend traveling that distance.
But what, you will ask, of the slower trains, the corridor trains at 125 mph, the stopping trains? Well, consider Germany rebuilding after WW II. They did not adopt a one-size-fits-all solution to implement, they built some high-speed corridors connecting a few cities, a network of rail connecting more cities, helped sponsor European trains crossing several borders, and built other lines primarily for the haulage of heavy freight tonnage.
If it took twenty hours to travel from Chicago to Los Angeles, we would survive. Whether we will survive the last great effort to keep the airliners flying is a different matter entirely.
Which of these is too vast a distance? The longest distance on there that I see is SF-LA, which will be in 2 1/2 hrs, because the California HSR will be going at a top speed of 220mph (we don’t have to imagine that). What we should be imagining is this theoretical 5000 mph train under the Atlantic. That would be quite a spectacular crash….
That’s a pretty realistic map of what might be possible in the near future. Some of the other maps associated with Obama’s rhetoric weren’t quite so restrained.
There are no other maps that I’ve seen associated with Obama’s rhetoric. They keep showing this one over and over.
Yup, this is the only one I’ve seen, too. And even this is presented as a “vision,” not a tangible plan (and certainly not a plan with a funding mechanism). But it does get the conversation going.
There were other maps, but probably not official ones, shown when the announcement was made. I remember being impressed with how insane it would be to imagine The Pioneer reincarnated as a high-speed train.
Yesterday, however, I searched high and low. Bad news- no definitive map. Good news- several regional organizations with good maps showing likely corridors. A search on whitehouse.org returns nothing for “high-speed rail”.
To be continued…
That’s a funny thing to say. A lot of these trains were famous for their speed at the time. For example, the Burlington Zephyr set a Chicago-Denver speed record in 1934, averaging 77 mph. The trip took 13 hours and 5 minutes. One could theoretically fly from ORD to DEN in 3 hours 35 minutes for $243 next Monday on United. Considering that both of those airports are a good hike outside the city center, I’ve got to think HSR traveling at double the speed of the Zephyr (roughly 150 mph) could be very competitive if done right.
For good measure, Google Maps says it’s 1001 mi and would take 14 hours 35 minutes to drive. There is roughly zero scenery along the way unless you count corn. I’ve got an aunt in Davenport so I’ve seen the corn already.
Here’s the official HSR vision on Whitehouse.gov:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/04/16/a-vision-for-high-speed-rail/