[SnyderBock]

Originally Posted by Wizened Variations

IMO, we, as a nation, are taking the wrong tact in all this.

Simply put in place a plan to increase the average speed on all private and publically owned rail lines, 1 mph per year. More and longer sidings on private lines. Public private partnerships to increase speed either through or around citiesThe costs would start small, and, the benefits would be immediate.

With ten years every class 1 railroad would be running at least 20% more efficiently. Within 20 years, passenger trains could run on these lines with as fast an average speed as in 1950. Within 50 years, speeds would be averaging well over 65 mph system wide.

To put the passenger dynamics in scale, the fastest West Coast to Chicago trains during the stream line era averaged a bit under 50 mph. A coast to coast train averaging 65 mph would take 40 - 42 hours coast to coast. Imagine freight trains doing that. Imagine passenger trains running at the same speeds or faster (5 mph over average is fairly easy to do with proper sidings and multiple track main sections).

Such chanage would also be the most cost effective, as the beginning years of the change would be fairly low budget, and, bigger projects would be completed by the time average speeds needed to be increased significantly.

Of course, there would be an immense amount of politicking involved in what constitutes line X's base line speed, and, whether line X base speed should be bundled into a cluster of lower speed lines and averaged out. But, IMO that could be dealt with.

IMO we are dealing HSR in the US through hurt ego tainted glasses, and, need, instead, to just go about 'relentlessly'* improving average speed year after year.

*The great key word for Lexus advertising since it's inception.

This is fine and is part of the solution. But it's only half of the solution. The other half, is strategically building true, HSR lines, which do not share freight rail tracks.

If we could just get the Federal fuel tax raised to 25 cents per gallon and the highway/transit split adjusted to a 70/30 split (where it needs to be), then we could proceed with this full scale solution and stop with all the political compromised half-way solutions to our highways, HSR and metro transit systems.