American railways

High-speed railroading


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-High speed rail has to run on seperate tracks new built tracks, everything else is a joke, sure not high speed rail. Theres no way to run high speed rail on old tracks. Only some dumped down US definition would allow to call some slightly renewed old track as high speed.
-The statistic about costs per 100km is uter nonsense because the average travel distances are so much longer in the US.

Joe Marlowe

fleetian wrote:
Jul 23rd 2010 10:49 GMT

"PS why should freight trains take preference over passenger rail service on a federally owned and maintained/subsidized track network. If the freights find the passenger/freight coordination too onerous, THEY can build a parallel system."


Uh, no.

The Class I railroads are all privately owned businesses. They own their track.

As for subsidies, no, that's wrong too.

The lack of government subsidies for the rail industry, as compared to the trucking and airline industries, has long been a sore point.

Freight trains do not take precedence over passenger rail services on federally owned track, because there is no such federally owned system. In the US there never has been. If you want now to build a federal system, that would be the second "parallel system".

While the railroads are, of course, governed by law, most of the rules that govern interchange service in the US are the rules and standards of the Association of American Railroads.

The AAR is a private body owned by the Class I railroads. The major car builders and component suppliers are also members of the AAR.

It is the AAR committees that develop track standards, equipment standards, safety procedures and rules, and so on. The AAR is also a certification body, and it owns a test and research facility, TTCI, at Pueblo Colorado, where all railroad equipment is tested before it is approved for interchange service. The AAR works very well with the STSB.

Generally speaking, the AAR runs on consensus for most decisions, and the members generally set aside their egos and co-operate constructively to solve industry problems.

If the Houses of Congress worked 1/10 as cooperatively and as well as the AAR, America would have a lot better government than it has.

Cpt. Robespierre

As other commenters have no doubt observed, this statement is just incorrect:
"Acela, like virtually all trains run by publicly owned Amtrak, has to use tracks belonging to freight railways, whose trains trundle along at 50mph; passenger trains must stick below 80mph."

Acela runs on Amtrak tracks or commuter rail tracks, never freight lines.


@Editor: Thanks for this article. I completely missed seeing the effect of deregulation on the railsystem and still thought its condition was to better than in the '70s.


nice to see two good examples of the power of liberalizing economic sectors(rail and air travel), in an era where socialist bleating for massive, sector crippling regulation seems so loud.


Finally, want to make me go for 800 miles on railroad? Give me a sleep berth and ship me for 10 hours at 80 miles an hour overnight. I will even pay more than for the airplane because I won't have to pay for the hotel!


RamblingClayton wrote:

"Any rail system must work together with local transit in a holistic manner to deliver the people/cargo to the final destination. It's not hard to do, but requires a lot of thought and cooperation." RamblingClayton is absolutely correct!

I have long argued that there be interconnectivity or multi-modalism as it were. The U.S. is just beginning to realize this. Airports are beginning to realize the benefits of bringing transit to their front doors. Baltimore, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle are perfect examples. Phoenix will soon have an automated people mover system connect Sky Harbor airport to the Valley Metrorail light rail line. Currently, bus shuttles are used to relay passengers between the two.

Through a multi-modal approach, connectivity is possible from say a high-speed rail line, for instance, to an airport for long-distance air travel. High-speed rail can't come soon enough to the U.S. And, it appears as though the first true U.S. high-speed rail line to be built will be between Tampa and Orlando in Florida. I also believe that once the first U.S. high-speed rail system is built and begins operation, other U.S. systems will follow. It's imperative the first get built.


I think most people advocating for coast-to-coast 200 MPH high speed rail don't really realize how hard it is to maintain a few thousands kilometres of high-speed track. At these sorts of speed, even a minor flaw can send the train flying through the air. And think about how people would react if a flood in Kansas would cancel their pre-purchased plans for California vacation.

Trains make an awful lot of sense in high-density areas or as commuter suppliments. Go Train in Toronto or Metra in Chicago? Big successes. Northeast trains? Successes as well, but not across the border, since actually going through customs on a train is worse than going through airport security. Long-haul trains with seats? Meh.

As far as ecology goes, then, well, there are loads of emissions involved in building and maintaining high speed rail infrastructure. Yes, airports do take a lot of space and they do take quite a bit of effort to maintain - but the fact that major US airports are busy also means that they are highly efficient. And, as far as long hanging fruit goes, it makes more sense to make sure people don't drive to the airport (by improving transit systems) than to maintain infrastructure required for the high speed transit. Want outright fuel savings? Fine, let's go for smaller and slower jets and more fuel-efficient engines. It is literally an order of magnitude easier than milk something from high speed rail.

People don't seem to fully realize what happens in US airports. Yes, we can complain about 3 hours commute time. The point is that a lot of people in O'Hara don't commute to O'Hara; they can instead be from, say Des Moines who just take a connection at O'Hara. And, no, for them flying from Des Moines to Chicago and commuting to a train there makes even less sense. On top of this, don't forget that if people would actually commute from suburbs to central station by car it would make things a lot worse than urbanites commuting to the airports in the suburbs. What quite a few US cities really need in place of high-speed rail is direct rail links from downtown to the airport.

High-speed rail got a really big boost because of the success of Shinkansen in the 80es, the Japanese high-speed train connecting Tokyo with Osaka. What people tend to forget in the analysis is what made Shinkansen successful:

1. It connected two of the Japanese biggest cities, with the route going through most densely populated area
2. A vast railroad infrastructure that was arriving at the node station was already in place
3. Airports didn't really have room to expand and were already running at near full capacity

The joy of shinkansen was that I could literally take an electric train from my local station in Kyoto to Osaka, change in Osaka to shinkansen, arrive at Tokyo, change to subway, and commute wherever I needed to. Can I do something similar on a route (let's take two big cities) between Houston and Los Angeles?

Maybe, with exception of Northeast and California, none of this holds in US. It makes sense to make high speed rail between Chicago and New York (maybe) and in California (maybe), but anything transnational is a pie in the sky.

Unfortunately, the true answer to US railroad woes lies in "Let's build up local transit systems and make urban areas (think East Side Chicago) livable again, so that people will actually use them". However, unfortunately, high speed trains actually look a lot better in campaign posters, and a thousand small changes never looks sexy.


The technical arguments for railroads are compelling, but none can
cap the comment by those immortal philosophers, Flanders and Swann,
" If God had intended man to fly, he would never have given us
the railways"



What a thorough article. Nice work.
In my experience (in Europe, Japan/Korea, Missouri), it's not the trains' speed, but the connection to other mass transit in the destination city that makes the difference. Germany has this mastered. A high speed connection between St. Louis and K.C. will do nothing but get you stranded more quickly.


This article mentions the increasing disrepair of the highway system. This is largely due to the wear caused by large trucks. If long-haul freight was restricted to rail, large highways would need resurfacing about once per century, instead of continuously as at present.


This article presents some interesting and very real challenges the rail freight industry might face as America welcomes more passenger trains. But I sincerely hope that readers will not construe this as a reason why we should not expand passenger rail lines, especially when the subtitle reads "High-speed passenger trains could ruin [America's system of rail freight]." America is woefully behind in passenger rail services and needs to see dramatic improvement to merely live up to standards in Europe and Japan. There are many compelling reasons why we need to improve our rail system in America, but the most important one is that passenger rail is much more environmentally friendly than driving or flying. Turning America from a car-centered country to a rail-centered country would amount to enormous savings in energy and reduction of pollution. Though the road ahead may be complicated by the needs of rail freight, it does not mean we should not do everything we can to promote the expansion of high-speed and passenger trains in America.

Joe Marlowe

After all, that, forgot a fairly fundamental point about capacity utilization and speed.

A limiting factor on how many trains per day you can run down a rail line is how close together you can put successive trains.

Ultimately this spacing depends on how much distance is required to stop a train, and how long it takes for somebody to realize that the train needs to slow down or stop. It needs to be done slowly and gently. It is not desirable to grind flats on the wheels.

Heavy freight trains take a long time and a lot of distance to get up to speed, and a long distance and a lot of time to stop. That distance varies as the square of speed.

The faster the trains go, the fewer you can run.

Joe Marlowe

E K Kadiddlehopper wrote:
Jul 23rd 2010 9:37 GMT


"A true high speed line with 300 MPH speeds between Boston, New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Diego would cover the distance in about 15 hours, including slowing and stopping."

[[ Figure out the cost of the line, divide by the number of passengers per day. There's your problem. Nobody else runs a 200+ m.p.h. train across 500 miles of corn and 1500 miles of semi-arid desert.]]

"- The packed trains mentioned above HAD to provide a profit!"

[[No, not necessarily at all.

How many "packed" trains were they running? 10 per hour? Or 2 per day?

The train consist, itself, would have covered its incremental costs. But the incremental cost of running a single railroad consist - particularly on an electrified railroad - is very, very small compared to the sunk cost of building the road.

The way you pay off that sunk cost is by running big, heavy revenue generating trains over it at the highest frequency possible.

For a railroad to pay, the general rule of thumb is that the line should carry 5m tons per year. Busy lines carry 100m tons. In an awesome demonstration of capacity, the UP hauls 300m+ tons of traffic over Sherman Hill each year. If you know anything about railroading, that is a jaw-dropping tonnage.]]


"Railroads wanted ONLY the highest profits possible!"

[[Railroads make money moving freight. They lose money moving passengers. They are not charities, nor do we expect them to be any more than any other business.

The biggest problem with passenger trains is that even if packed-to-bursting they require a "slot" on some block of track. The host railroads get the same (very small) fee for trackage rights whether the train is empty of full.

Since passenger trains move at a very different speed from most freight trains, a whole bunch of big, revenue generating freights have to move onto sidings, and stop, so that a single, money losing, passenger train can go by. And if the passenger train is late, and misses the allocated time, then that really causes a mess.

It is not fair or reasonable to expect the freight roads to host, with grace and equanimity, a service that not only doesn't pay them genuine economic rent, but, in addition, impedes their normal bread-and-butter revenue generating work. It is financially parasitic.

Paradoxically, though, the guys who run the freight roads are the ones who most wish to revive passenger service.

This is an industry that is surrounded by its own history and culture. These guys walk amidst the ghosts of their ancestors. They revere their predecessors. They eat, live, breathe, and die railroading. If you cut them, they bleed railroading. They know better than anybody else all about "their fathers' magic carpet made of steel."

Why do you think they keep those old steam locomotives for passenger excursion trains? It's their passion. Their life.

Don't tell them about "vision".
They have more "vision" than you can imagine.
They're not negative minded.
Look what they did in the freight business when they were set free by the Staggers Act.

They would re-start passenger service in an instant if they thought they could possibly make it work.

Oh, they don't lack for vision.
Not at all.

But they also have knowledge, experience, and judgment.]]

Joe Marlowe

E K Kadiddlehopper wrote:
Jul 23rd 2010 9:37 GMT

"There are some strange concepts revealed in many of the comments.
- If we are going to speak of "high speed rail," then we need to think in terms of 200 MPH to 300+ MPH speeds."

[[Those are government run systems, the investment in those systems has been built up over many, many years. The countries have significantly higher population densities, and lower private automobile usage.]]

"Why are we thinking ... of only 100 MPH to 120 MPH? Check your USA train history! ...".

[[ Because the cost varies, roughly, as the cube of speed. Most parts of America have relatively low demand density. The passenger system needs to be re-built, almost from scratch. Amtrak owns very little track. The freight roads already occupy the best alignments. Amtrak is going to need the co-operation of those freight roads for a long time yet.

The great demand for passenger service is relatively short-haul between major centers, located close together. That is where railroads make sense. Up to 300 miles, even 500 miles, the difference in time between a 120 m.p.h. train and a 285km/h train (285 km/h = 190 m.p.h.) just isn't worth the cost right now.]]

"Aren't we the laughing stock of the world?"
[[In passenger trains, yes. In freight trains, absolutely not.]]

"Why can't we have a universal standard developed for our railways, such as high-speed, heavy-duty, precision, continuous-weld-rail, that can accommodate high speed passenger as well as high speed freight?"

"What is the problem with speeding up freight?"

[[North American rail standards are already very high.

Most freight doesn't need to go fast: coal is about 40% of car loadings, 1/4 of revenues. Why move coal cars at 100 m.p.h.? Ores? Potash? Grains?

Most new cars are AAR Plate F, rated for 110 tons of lading. The max. gross weight on rail (GWR)is 286,000 lbs., max length is 90', max ht 17'. Max width is 128", less swing-out. There are also 125 ton cars rated for 325,000 lbs GWR.

There are maybe 3 - 5 derailments a day in North America.

Big freights may have 110-120 cars, 7500 ft length, 12,000 tons weight.

Do you really want a mile and a half of cars the size of a small barn, weighing 140 tons, or ore cars at 125 tons, hurtling down a track at 100+ m.p.h.?

I don't.

It's dangerous. It's unnecessary.

It would require the rebuilding of many, many bridges. Big, expensive bridges. It would require the realignment (i.e., straightening) of thousands of miles of track.

Freight Locomotives tend to have gearing to suit a maximum speed of 63 m.p.h. That is usually fast enough. In terms of energy efficiency, at 60 m.p.h. freight cars are roughly 9 times as efficient per ton-mile as highway trailers. Making those trains move faster simply decreases that efficiency.

Union Pacific used to be (still is?) the largest private purchaser of diesel fuel in the world, at just under 2B gallons per year. Does that really need to increase? Just to move coal faster? What's the point?

Track wear varies with weight, and it varies, again, as the cube of speed. Union Pacific replaces, on average, 3 miles of track, every day of the year. What is the point of making it 9 or 10 miles per day? Just so coal can move faster?

The North American freight system is one of the true jewels in America's industrial base. It is very sophisticated. It is the envy of the railroad world. The guys who run it really know what they are doing, and they are doing an outstanding job overall.

I would not tamper with that success.]]


The Economist seems to be good at pointing out the problems, flaws. How about providing some advice to help make America's railroad network work more efficiently and more safely. After all, railroading originated in the U.K., so there ought to be plenty of experience to draw upon. Consultative, constructive discussion between countries should be of tremendous value and benefit to both. If the issue of high-speed on freight railways is so contentious in the U.S., and such is not the case on railways in the U.K., then for goodness sake, please share with your American railway counterparts some of the wisdom that enabled the U.K. to be the railway leader it is. If not willing to do so, then it seems silly to go to all the trouble of doing such involved investigative research in order to create an article that is otherwise of little value to anyone, really. If the U.S. can get its railway act together, then surely all industrialized nations of the world - and perhaps even the non-industrialized ones - can stand to gain. I'm thinking along the lines of more traffic - passenger and freight - moving on the rails, less in the skies and over the highways, and that translates into a lower carbon footprint and a better quality of life for all. If that isn't worth pursuing, then honestly, I don't know what is.


I think that alot of the qualms expressed by passenger rail skeptics could be addressed by designing region rail systems first. A Boston to DC high speen rail corrido makes a lot of sense interms of scale investment in infrastructure, etc. Eastern Airlines would hate it, but too bad, fuel costs and airport congeston have brought regional air shuttles to capacity anyway. One advantage Calif has over the East Coast is that the Pacific coast is in only 3 states of which Calif is more than half. In contrast, a Boston to DC upgrade would take buy-in from eight states!

As for subsidization of passenger rail, I don't consider that to be a deal breaker. Most mass trasit modes already have subsidies (cars- federal and state highways, airplanes - airports and air traffic controllers, ferry, boat lines, the Coast Guard and the US Arm Corps of Engineers. Subsidizing rail make good sense to me if it buys a reliable, ecological-friendly transit mode that helps the economy and releaves stress on other transit modes.


Fianlly, let's not forget the tremendous fuel and time expenditure of airplanes. I love to fly too, but I read somewhere that a cross country flight burned $4000 of fuel in 2003. The same flight in 2008 had a fuel cost of $14,000. It certainly isn't cheaper and with a 200 mph train between Boston and DC it would not be faster if you factor in the hour into Logan airport, the 90 minutes advance time of arrival for domestic flights and the 30-60 min from Dulles to the middle of DC. Remember rail goes from city center to city center, while airlines require a transit from the airport to the destination city, which is sometimes in another state!.

Joe Marlowe

MelasChasm wrote:
Jul 23rd 2010 4:24 GMT

"If high speed passenger rail is such a great idea, then why does the government need to provide billions of dollars in subsidies?"

"If a few billion in subsidies would create a great high speed passenger system, then why are the rail roads opposed to the idea?"

"I live near an example of what this new high speed passenger rail system will look like. ... . Despite millions in government subsidies, a big majority of people would rather fly .... An even bigger majority of people would rather drive ... . During recent years, the number of passengers has declined significantly. With the new lower passenger count the government subsidy per person is more than twice what a passenger pays for their ticket."


The full answers to these points are also too long for this forum.

First, you have not counted the public subsidies for either highways or airlines.

Apart from the explicit subsidies, both of these forms of transportation create or contribute significantly to very significant negative externalities. Those externalities include fairly obvious things such as the cost of death and injury in traffic accidents, damage to the atmosphere, the military costs associated with doing business in certain parts of the world, and even include such things as greatly increased medical care costs for respiratory ailments in urban centers.

Passenger trains, by contrast, tend to have much smaller negative externalities, and, in terms of reducing pollution, noise, congestion, and accident injuries actually yield fairly significant positive externalities.

Second, the freight roads don't want the trouble because they are freight roads. Their needs are very different. (More on this in the next posting).

Third, I don't know where you are, but overall you are wrong on ridership.

Overall Amtrak ridership has been booming.
It has been booming despite poor frequency of service.
It has been booming despite poor on-time performance.
It has been booming despite old, worn out equipment.

There is clearly very substantial unmet demand for passenger rail services in the United States.

Fourth, I think that you will find that if there were equivalent frequency of service and roughly comparable on-time performance a very significant majority of people would much rather take the train than go to the airport - even if the train takes somewhat longer.

Going to the airport is a hassle; aircraft are noisy and uncomfortable; and taking the plane is expensive. Airline flying is something to be endured, rather than enjoyed.

Among the reasons that Europeans use the train so much more is that they have reliable, frequent service. Every 15, 20, or 30 minutes there is another train. In France, Germany and Switzerland you can set your watch by them.

Of course they take the train: It's fast and easy.


The trouble is we need, need, need expanded high speed rail. The cost of fuel is making some air travel too expensive. Additionally, both air and car travel suffer from congestion and generate pollution and CO2. Train travel can be cost effective especially in regional travel. As important as rail freight is we should be able to get them to accomodate passenger rail whether they like it or not. After all, our access to interstate highways is not at the mercy of whether or not the truckers feel like sharing the road. The solution in the future is to build a parallel set of tracks. It is NOT reasonable of the freight rail industry to drag its heels until that occurs. This is some that benefits ALL Americans, not just leaders of one industry.


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