Another airline scare

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Pavan Dave

(...)it would be even neater if we (Americans) could standardize a lightrail track (if we haven't) and begin to start joining several major cities that are close like Dallas and Houston which are only about ~250 miles apart.

Light-rail is not inter-city capable. A trip of 250 miles would take at LEAST five hours on a light-rail train, which means equipping them with bathrooms and some provision for food. With the frequent stops typical of light rail, that trip is probably more like 7-8 hours.

The big advantage of rail in Europe is that western Europe is small. Americans have trouble realizing that, just like Europeans generally have trouble visualizing North American distances. I once drove from Dusseldorf, Germany, to London in about the same amount of time it takes to drive from Los Angeles to Sacramento. It's 2,700 miles from Seattle to Atlanta. It is less than 1,600 miles from London to Moscow. London is less than 2,600 air miles from Baghdad, Iraq. North America is big -- it's why trains are not preferred for long distances. Even the Eurostar train takes two hours to go from London to Brussels, a distance of 230 miles. If you could build a dedicated high-speed rail line from Seattle to Atlanta that didn't stop along the way, it would still take 20 hours to make the trip. Adding in the problems of crossing the Cascades and the Rockies, and the necessity to stop and add or discharge passengers, I can't see how a coast-to-coast trip could take less than 48 hours, even on a modern super-train. I can fly to Atlanta in six hours. For distances up to maybe 600 or 700 miles rail is competitive, but over that people are going to want to fly.

Light rail is only suited for intra-urban transport. If you want to go between cities or carry lots of people you want heavy rail on restricted tracks with no level crossings. Twenty years ago I did a 15-month consulting project for a transit agency. It's amazing how life experiences come in handy later on.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

We should only be spending money on maintaining the system, as every highway widening project I've seen has only cost the taxpayers much over original estimates, snarled traffic for years during construction, and yet we still end up with traffic jams as bad as before. How many years are we going to continue this inane cycle before we realize that we aren't ever getting the results we want?

Cite? When CalTrans widened the Santa Freeway through Orange County from six lanes to twelve and improved several interchanges, there is no doubt that congestion and average trip times were both reduced. The problem with road and highway projects is that they are usually done too late, and upgrade an underbuilt road to another underbuilt road. Tacking rail transit onto an urban area that grew up around a road grid is a fool's task. Urban rail only works well where the urban area grew up around that rail system, not the other way around. How would you do urban rail in a place like King County, Washington, or Denver, Colorado? Unlike Chicago or New York (both of which grew up around rail) people do not live in one spot and work in another. Areas like LA/Orange County in California have residences and work locations spread around a vast area -- it's hard to link the residential areas with inner-city factories and offices when they are spread fairly evenly.

Anyway, there is no magic bullet. No one transportation scheme is going to fit every urban area.

[Chris Herold]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

Light-rail is not inter-city capable. A trip of 250 miles would take at LEAST five hours on a light-rail train, which means equipping them with bathrooms and some provision for food. With the frequent stops typical of light rail, that trip is probably more like 7-8 hours.

The big advantage of rail in Europe is that western Europe is small. Americans have trouble realizing that, just like Europeans generally have trouble visualizing North American distances. I once drove from Dusseldorf, Germany, to London in about the same amount of time it takes to drive from Los Angeles to Sacramento. It's 2,700 miles from Seattle to Atlanta. It is less than 1,600 miles from London to Moscow. London is less than 2,600 air miles from Baghdad, Iraq. North America is big -- it's why trains are not preferred for long distances. Even the Eurostar train takes two hours to go from London to Brussels, a distance of 230 miles. If you could build a dedicated high-speed rail line from Seattle to Atlanta that didn't stop along the way, it would still take 20 hours to make the trip. Adding in the problems of crossing the Cascades and the Rockies, and the necessity to stop and add or discharge passengers, I can't see how a coast-to-coast trip could take less than 48 hours, even on a modern super-train. I can fly to Atlanta in six hours. For distances up to maybe 600 or 700 miles rail is competitive, but over that people are going to want to fly.

Light rail is only suited for intra-urban transport. If you want to go between cities or carry lots of people you want heavy rail on restricted tracks with no level crossings. Twenty years ago I did a 15-month consulting project for a transit agency. It's amazing how life experiences come in handy later on.

Due to those facts Europe doesn't use Light Rail systems for long distances. There are (at least in Germany) InterCities (faster than normal Lightrail and less stops) and ICEs (InterCityExpress) that drive about 330 km/h ~ 200 mph, I guess. They only stop like four to five times. Its a hub system and it works well. The thing is though Europe relied on the rail for ever while most west coast cities are designed for cars...

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

Cite? When CalTrans widened the Santa Freeway through Orange County from six lanes to twelve and improved several interchanges, there is no doubt that congestion and average trip times were both reduced. The problem with road and highway projects is that they are usually done too late, and upgrade an underbuilt road to another underbuilt road. Tacking rail transit onto an urban area that grew up around a road grid is a fool's task. Urban rail only works well where the urban area grew up around that rail system, not the other way around. How would you do urban rail in a place like King County, Washington, or Denver, Colorado? Unlike Chicago or New York (both of which grew up around rail) people do not live in one spot and work in another. Areas like LA/Orange County in California have residences and work locations spread around a vast area -- it's hard to link the residential areas with inner-city factories and offices when they are spread fairly evenly.

Anyway, there is no magic bullet. No one transportation scheme is going to fit every urban area.

I'm sorry for the confusion, as I probably should have clarified that I wasn't proposing a "magic bullet" solution, but rather a set of goals which would be very beneficial for places east of the Mississippi.

All the cities out here grew up around railroads, and by the time the 1950s came around the highways were snaked through cities, often meaning the demolition of tons of neighborhoods. And the population of many major cities out here hasn't changed much since the 1950s.

Out West, where they had the abundance of land, they don't have the same problem with highways as the East does, as such highways are a smart decision and actually work out there.

But here on the East Coast, simply adding a single lane onto existing highways would be a multi-billion dollar eminent domain nightmare, as many highways out here only acquired just enough space for two or three lanes in each direction, sometimes with no median save Jersey barriers, and they've been way over capacity for the past two decades or so.

And yet, for the most part we still have lots of rail lines around here, most of which coincide with areas of very high population density. Most cities of at least 30k or 40k people still have some kind of railroad going through them. Most are used for industrial freight service only, but there is a big movement out here to bring passenger commuter service back onto these rail lines. For this, a sizable chunk of the infrastructure is already in place; with the only "new" infrastructure being rebuilding many of the passing sidings and stations that were abandoned 40 years ago.

As such, if land is cheap and plentiful, and highways are working out West, then that's fine, and proposing rail travel would just be a waste of money. But as I previously posted, it would only be through studies of potential routes between 50 and 500 miles that would be targets of upgrading, as these are the areas where efficient rail can compete with highways and air travel; based upon these goals rail travel would primarily be focused on East coast expansion to the levels it used to be at 40 or 50 years ago.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

But here on the East Coast, simply adding a single lane onto existing highways would be a multi-billion dollar eminent domain nightmare, as many highways out here only acquired just enough space for two or three lanes in each direction, sometimes with no median save Jersey barriers, and they've been way over capacity for the past two decades or so.

Yep. I had always thought that CalTrans (the California Department of Transportation) did a pretty good job until taxpayers voted for the sales tax increase which resulted in the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway (I-5). That's when I found out that they had done eminent domain condemnation proceedings in the 1950s for all the land along the new freeway. To go from 6 lanes to 12, they simply evicted everyone who had been renting property that had been owned by the state for more than 30 years, tore down the structures and widened the freeway. Since everyone in those rental properties knew they were renting from CalTrans (or whichever was the responsible state agency) there were few lawsuits or other problems. That's planning ahead. I am now officially in awe of CalTrans.

[Qbranch]

Correct me if I'm wrong... but I think this is the FIRST thread I've ever seen on CD discussing choo choos... *puts on conductor's hat*

So now that I'm properly dressed, I believe it was the University of Illinois that did a research project to develop a automated rail-type transportation system that could fit in-between the north/south(or east/west)bound lanes of an interstate, since those areas already have an easy grade and gradual turns.

Also, West Virginia University has a nifty intra-city transportation system that is fully autonomous with no attendants called the PRT. If I remember right, it's something like 98% efficient for having the right cars in the right stations at the right time to meet transportation demand. True, it's a little on the elaborate and I'm sure expensive side, but it's cool, it's green (ehh... blue and gold, really...), and it's fully autonomous.

One last thing, for this post... I'll submit this to the awesome knoledge base that is CD: Why are so many public transportation companies unprofitable? After reading this thread it seems that this phenomena of bankruptcy isn't limited to any one kind of public transportation. Is there a fundamental flaw?

Thanks for your thoughts,

-q

[bman]

sucks to be anyone flying
luckilly, im flying down in a escalade

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Qbranch

One last thing, for this post... I'll submit this to the awesome knoledge base that is CD: Why are so many public transportation companies unprofitable? After reading this thread it seems that this phenomena of bankruptcy isn't limited to any one kind of public transportation. Is there a fundamental flaw?

Transporting people, even back before World War II, never really had high profit margins, especially in comparison to freight rail traffic.

Highways aren't really much better. Unless one has really high gas taxes and only toll routes, I doubt they would ever be profitable and highly efficient. You might get one, but not the other. (If someone is operating a toll highway to make a profit, they would rather have the entire highway sit in traffic jams, as everyone will still eventually get to their destination but they'll have a lot higher amount of cars per mile on the highway, and hence more revenue.)

And if the auto/oil companies were the ones who had to finance, build, and maintain the entire highway infrastructure like the railroads do with all their infrastructure, these industries wouldn't be profitable either.

And as we are seeing now, the end of cheap oil is slowly gnawing away at the air travel industry, and they are starting to declare bankruptcy left and right. I doubt you'll see many profits from them in twenty or thirty years, unless they focus on only business passengers or they find a cheap non-petroleum-based way to fuel aircraft.

Don't get me wrong, you can still make profits off transporting people. But most of these profits come from business class passengers, as opposed to the general public.

Whether we like it or not, the world is running out of oil. China and India are surging ahead economically, and will in twenty or thirty years will leave even America's consumption of oil in the dust. The best thing we can do now is find as many possible ways to wean ourselves from oil (hybrid/electric cars, more trains, more renewable energy power plants, etc.), before it becomes a lot of people all seeking the small amount left. That is how world wars start, and I really don't want to see the day when nations with hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons get desperate for oil.

(Thus it becomes easily understandable how Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts against Global Warming).

[IndySam]

Oh Arthur my son so many generalizations.

The railroad business does have to build and maintain their own infrastructure and the freight companies are very profitable. Passenger rail is not profitable in most places because consumers don't want to use it. Simple supply and demand.

The modern trend is for private companies to run toll roads, they do so more profitably and efficiently. If there product starts to suffer consumers will find another way and they loose money. On the East coast where everything is run by the old boy network things will never be efficient, doesn't matter if it's highways toll roads of passenger rail.

The couple of airlines that have gone belly up were for reasons other than oil prices. Most of airline profits do come from business passengers because we are the majority of the people who use it. BTW that's business passengers not business class. Airline's are having tough times because of oil prices but the smart ones have hedged their oil cost and are doing well. Airline traffic is growing and is predicted to grow for the next twenty years

The world is not running out of oil (not yet anyway.) Demand is going up and it is a problem we will have to deal with in our lifetimes. But high oil prices are making many sources of oil usable that were not worth going after before. High oil prices are really making it worth it for entrepreneurs to develop alternate energy sources. I think that some of the students from FIRST will be leading the way in these efforts.

And please remember that the Nobel prize is handed out to whomever puts down the United States the best no matter if they use the facts or not.

[Protronie]

Originally Posted by Qbranch

Correct me if I'm wrong... but I think this is the FIRST thread I've ever seen on CD discussing choo choos... *puts on conductor's hat*

One last thing, for this post... I'll submit this to the awesome knoledge base that is CD: Why are so many public transportation companies unprofitable? After reading this thread it seems that this phenomena of bankruptcy isn't limited to any one kind of public transportation. Is there a fundamental flaw?

Thanks for your thoughts,

-q

Public transportation i.e. city bus service get heavy federal funding.
As was said elsewhere freight class 1 railroads are doing excellent NS,UP,BNSF & even CP are posting record profits.
You must remember after WW2 most of Europe's railroads were rebuilt.
While the American passage service relied on the same track & equipment that had been beaten down in the war. The major reason for passager train service was to haul the US mail... which ended up going to the airlines as they emerged. American's would rather get in their car and go when they want, where they want. That also help kill the rail service.
Amtrash... umm Amtrak is often given priority over freight.
If you ever listen to the railroad radio band you would hear the dispatchers holding up freight to follow the Amtrak.
As for the airline... deregulation, high fuel cost, poor management, and greedy CEO's seem to have combined to put the air industry in the same position the railroads were in the 60's... pre Conrail/Amtrak.

As for the team's flying to Atlanta... I wish you luck getting there, at there, and getting back home.

btw... to the smaller teams thinking of caravaning, have you thought of getting together with other teams going and maybe chartering a bus or two?

-p