China Clones the Siemens Velaro Train for Express High Speed Rail

[FayeforCure]

Decade of Superfast Bullet Trains

The true ideology of conservatism is incrementalism not bold forward thinking!!

Lets see the difference:

Fast or Superfast?
How rules and money limit speed.

Not all of the projects currently proposed are what many people think of as bullet trains. Turns out that while those 150-plus-mph rockets are insanely fast on the tracks, they’re slow to get off the ground. The first obstacle is regulatory: Federal rules demand environmental assessments, which require years of study and fieldwork by consultants, biologists, engineers, and planners. The second snag is cost:

Superfast (or “express high-speed rail”) systems need new, exclusive lines, which are extremely expensive.

That explains “emerging high-speed rail” projects, incremental improvements â€" new stations, bridges, and rolling stock â€" to existing infrastructure. These, like the Amtrak Acela Express in the Northeast, won’t have a dedicated right-of-way but will share tracks with freight and passenger trains and top out at around 110 mph.

The Bullet Decade
Can we have fast trains in 10 years? Yes we can.

Taiwan built its entire infrastructure in just the past 10 years â€" despite a population density greater than that of the northeastern US. All it takes is planning: According to the island nation’s head of infrastructure construction, by threading the 60-foot-wide corridor carefully through the landscape, the builders had to knock down only about 1,000 homes over 214 miles.

Finally, China plans to pour a staggering $300 billion into dedicated high-speed-rail corridors by 2020. Almost all of the first 60 trains will be manufactured in China under a technology-transfer agreement with bullet builder Siemens. In essence, Beijing intends to slash its costs by cloning the Siemens Velaro train, which could provide a model for a cheaper high-speed rollout in the US.

Speed Trials
San Francisco to L.A. in 2 hours, 40 minutes. Or else.

California’s bullet train system will need a steady flow of riders â€" lots of riders â€" to pay off. But studies show that when transportation times between major hubs exceed three hours, many travelers opt for planes. To address this dilemma, California’s high-speed-rail planners specify that trains must travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles in no more than two hours, 40 minutes, a feat that requires sustained intervals at 220 mph. The problem: Standard bullet trains don’t go that fast â€" yet.

The state is gambling that technology will improve before it completes the planning process and starts laying track. Luckily, the tech doesn’t need to improve much: France’s new TGV already hits 200 mph, and Spain’s Alta Velocidad Española carries passengers at around 217 mph. Of course, the deadline also puts planners in a bind: Every route change that adds miles means the train needs to go that much faster. So be it. The target is necessary to ensure a fast ride and plentiful ridership.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_fasttrack/all/1

[FayeforCure]

America's fragmented approach to rail has already produced a nightmare:

On paper, the steel ribbon between Boston and DC is high-speed heaven: four large cities in close proximity, excellent transit connections, and overwhelmed airports. (The region already has the popular Amtrak Acela Express.)

But on the ground, it’s stakeholder hell: eight commuter railroads with five owners, seven freight lines, and nine states â€" each with its own priorities and vision. And nobody seems to be coordinating the effort.

Sometimes Central planning can improve efficiency!!

Contrast that nightmare to Florida's ease:

Florida has a checkered history with high-speed rail; its own voters nixed a bullet train in 2004.

But now that there’s federal money on offer, the state has dusted off its plans and stands a good chance of becoming one of the first to start construction.

The advantage: a 90-mile-long median along Interstate 4 that is government-owned and ready for trains. Plus, millions of Mouseketeers to ride the rails each year.

Planning nightmare vs ready to go!!

[FayeforCure]

For interconnectivity:

A GRAND Plan that requires a $3 Trillion Investment,........less than what we've poured into Iraq ( with an American paid universal healthcare system) and Afghanistan:

$3.195 trillion -TRILLION - for urban RAIL transit  
by NBBooks

$3.195 trillion -TRILLION - for urban RAIL transit

Wed Mar 18, 2009 at 03:18:40 PM PST

We are at the end of an era â€" the end of cheap oil, the end of suburban sprawl, the collapse of the world’s "shadow banking system", the end of Wall Street’s arrogation of our nation’s financial system, the end of treating our natural environment as a "free" externality that corporations and consumers can ravage at will.

In this time, as we transition from one era to another, billions is the mark of a mere politician. A true statesman -- someone who understands what we need to bring our country into the new era dawning -- will be talking about how many trillions we need. That’s why I was not happy with the stimulus package proposed and won by President Obama. Fortunately, the President has noted that it was only the first stimulus, implying there may be more to come. What we need to do now is begin defining the terms of the debate as to what is needed, and how much it is going to cost.

Below I outline one -- just one -- such national program we need. To build adequate urban rail transit systems in the 39 largest U.S. cities, where nearly half of all Americans live, is going to require $3.195 trillion.


To build adequate urban rail transit systems in the 39 largest U.S. cities, where nearly half of all Americans live, is going to require $3.195 trillion. That is just construction costs â€" it does not include the cost of new rolling stock and maintenance rail vehicles. It is a project that can create 7.5 million jobs a year, for ten years. And it is a project that we most assuredly will not even initiate so long as we are content with politics and business as usual.


New York City Transit BMT Brighton Line, at West 8th Street, photo by David-Paul Gerber, 7/13/2008, www.nycsubway.org

Building 50,757 kilometers of new rail transit lines, at a cost of $3.195 trillion. is based on building urban rail mass transit systems to the same service density found in New York City, in the next 38 largest urban areas. I began by assuming a desideratum of having a rail transit line no more than 2.5 miles from any point in an urban area. That is, if you took a square of urban area five miles on each side, we want to have a rail transit line running directly across the middle of that square. Slice that 25 square mile area into one mile strips, and you get one mile of rail transit line for every five square miles of urban area, or a density of 0.2 mile of rail transit line for every square mile. Converting square miles to square kilometers, and miles to kilometers, what we are looking for is a density of 0.124 mi of rail transit line for every square kilometer of urban area.

Let me note here that these are numbers aggregated on the national level, and there will, without doubt, have to be major adjustments made for each urban area, to take account of specific factors of geography, population density, and existing transportation service densities. This is only an attempt to discover the size of national effort required, not a detailed plan for guiding planning and implementation. No small part of my intent is to demonstrate how inadequate the recent $750 billion stimulus package is, when measured against actual infrastructure needs.

I needed to convert to metric because I wanted to be able to compare U.S. cities with cities in Europe and elsewhere, and for the more basic reason that the statistics available for urban rail transit systems, at both Wikipedia’s List of Urban Rail Systems by Length and at the amazing www.urbanrail.net provides statistics in kilometers.

The statistics for land area for major cities in the U.S. is found in this table from the U.S. Census Bureau: United States and Puerto Rico -- Metropolitan Area, GCT-PH1. Population, Housing Units, Area, and Density: 2000.

Also, the primary Wikipedia entry for each city provides the population and land area, including for cities around the world. My theory was that in order to achieve the same proportional levels of transit rail ridership you find in the great European cities, you need to provide similar densities of transit service and infrastructure.

I was surprised to find that my desired density is met by New York City, which has 368 kilometers of rail transit line for a land area of 1,141.64 square kilometers, or a density of exactly 0.1245 kilometers of  rail transit line per square kilometer. Perhaps I have stumbled upon a statistical artifact of some competent city planning authority for New York from a by-gone era? Someone with some knowledge of the history of New York urban rail transit might be able to provide an answer.

Finding that New York City meets the desired rail transit density is also a confirmation of the validity of the desideratum because New York City is unique among American cities in the high percentage of its population that uses its urban rail transit system. Over 80 of the passenger route miles in New York City are carried by the rail transit system. New York City has, by far, the highest rate of public transportation use of any American city, with 54.2% of workers commuting to work by this means in 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2006, Table S0802.  New York is the only city in the United States where over half of all households do not own a car (Manhattan's non-ownership is even higher - around 75%; nationally, the rate is 8%).

The geographical availability of rail transit is a major determinant in whether or not commuters will use a system. In the Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 9, No. 5, 2006, Robert Cervero of the University of California, Berkeley found that

Surveys of rail-commuting in metropolitan Washington, D.C. found that nearly 50 percent of those working in offices within 1,000 feet of downtown Metrorail stations rail-commuted. In the case of offices that were comparable distances from the more suburban Crystal City and Silver Spring stations, the shares were 16 percent to 19
percent (JHK and Associates 1987). Place of residence was a particularly important
explainer of whether office workers patronized transit. In the case of the Silver
Spring Metro Center, a 150,000-square-foot office tower 200 feet from the Metrorail
portal, 52 percent of workers who lived in Washington, D.C. rail-commuted;
among those living in surrounding Montgomery County, Metrorail was used by
just 10 percent (JHK and Associates 1989).

Surveys of those working in offices near rail stations in the San Francisco Bay Area
in the early 1990s found that around 1 of 10 individuals got to work by transit
(Cervero 1994b). Suburban station-area workers were 2½ times more likely to get
to work by rail than other Bay Area commuters. As in metropolitan Washington,
living near transit made a difference. On average, 19.3 percent of those who lived
in a city served by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) trains and who worked near a
BART station commuted by rail compared to 12.8 percent of those who worked
in a similar setting but did not live in a BART-served city.

This table, Annual Unlinked Passenger Trips and Passenger Miles for Urbanized Areas Over 1,000,000 Population, Fiscal Year 2004, from the American Public Transit Association, shows that the more dense a rail transit system is, the more it will be used. For example, passenger miles in Chicago are some 30 percent higher than Los Angeles, despite the larger population in L.A. Particularly telling is a comparison of Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC â€" each with relatively much more developed rail transit systems â€" with Miami, Dallas, and Houston.

The amount of rail kilometers of new line required for each city is based on land area, not total area, which includes water. For some cities, such as New York City or Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Virginia, the amount of total city area under water is very significant. For many of these, it appears to be because the municipal boundaries are extended into neighboring bodies of water. For example, the Milwaukee-Waukesha, Wisc., PMSA is listed as having a total area of 3,322.27, of which 1,862.38 square miles are water, or 56.1 percent, the highest percentage of the 29 cities. The Cleveland-Lorain-Elyria, Ohio PMSA has a total area of 5,347.31 square miles, of which 2,640.47 square miles are water, or 49.4 percent, the second highest percentage. The city with the third largest percentage of water area is Norfolk--Virginia Beach--Newport News, VA--NC MSA, which has a total area of 3,586.20 square miles, of which 1,237.71 are water, or 34.5%. The next largest water areas by percent are Chicago, IL PMSA at 24.6 percent; Tampa--St. Petersburg--Clearwater, FL MSA at 23.3 percent; New York City at 19.3 percent; Baltimore, Md. and the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA CMSA both at 16.0 percent; and Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA MSA at 15.9 percent. Boston, MA-NH PMSA is 14.7% water; Los Angeles--Long Beach, CA PMSA is 14.5 percent; Orlando, FL MSA is 13.0 percent; and Seattle--Bellevue--Everett, WA PMSA is 11.9 percent. All the rest are ten percent or less of water area.

The city with the smallest percentage of water area is Phoenix-Mesa, Arizona, which has  14,598.36 square miles of which only 25.63 are water, or 0.2 percent. The next two lowest are Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif. PMSA and Denver, Col., which both have 0.5 percent of their total area listed as water.

I may have lost you in that listing of water areas, but the overall national total can be greatly impacted by these considerations. In my initial calculations, I found estimated cost was bloated over $1 trillion by the unusually large land areas of Riverside, Calif., and Las Vegas, Nevada. There may be good reasons why these municipalities have incorporated so much land area, but it is doubtful that as much transit rail network needs to be built for these areas as the numbers indicate. I discarded the land areas numbers for these two cities found in the U.S. Census Bureau table, and substituted the land areas numbers given by Wikipedia for each urban area.  


U.S. Urban Rail Transit Requirements  Urban Area Population (million\s) Land Area (sq kms) Existing rail km Desired rail km
New York, NY PMSA 9.3 2,957 368 367
Los Angeles--Long Beach, CA PMSA 9.5 10,518 117.6 1,304
Chicago, IL PMSA 8.3 13,111 170.6 1,626
Dallas--Fort Worth, TX CMSA 5.2 23,579 72 2,924
Philadelphia, PA--NJ PMSA 5.1 9,985 61.6 1,238
Houston, TX PMSA 4.2 15,333 12 1,901
Miami--Fort Lauderdale, FL CMSA 3.9 8,162 36 1,012
Washington, DC--MD--VA--WV PMSA 4.9 16,859 171.0 2,091
Atlanta, GA MSA 4.1 15,861 77.0 1,967
Detroit, MI PMSA 4.4 10,093 4.8 1,251
Boston, MA--NH PMSA 3.4 5,236 708.0 649
San Francisco--Oakland--San Jose, CA CMSA 7.0 19,083 167.0 2,366
Phoenix--Mesa, AZ MSA 3.3 37,743 32.2 4,680
Riverside--San Bernardino, CA PMSA 3.3 12,562 none 1,578
Seattle--Bellevue--Everett, WA PMSA 2.4 11,457 24.5 1,421
Minneapolis--St. Paul, MN--WI MSA 3.0 15,703 19.2 1,947
San Diego, CA MSA 2.8 10,878 82.0 1,349
St. Louis, MO--IL MSA 2.6 16,555 74.0 2,053
Tampa--St. Petersburg--Clearwater, FL MSA 2.4 6,615 none 820
Baltimore, MD PMSA 2.6 6,757 24.5 838
Denver, CO PMSA 2.1 9,740 56.0 1,208
Pittsburgh, PA MSA 2.4 11,980 41.6 1,486
Portland--Vancouver, OR--WA PMSA 1.9 13,022 70.0 1,615
Cincinnati, OH--KY--IN PMSA 1.6 8,655 none 1,073
Cleveland--Lorain--Elyria, OH PMSA 2.3 7,011 54.0 869
Sacramento--Yolo, CA CMSA 1.8 13,194 61.0 1,636
Orlando, FL MSA 1.6 9,041 none 1,121
San Antonio, TX MSA 1.6 8,615 none 1,068
Kansas City, MO--KS MSA 1.8 14,002 none 1,736
Las Vegas, NV--AZ MSA 1.6 1,600 6.2 198
San Jose, CA PMSA 1.7 3,343 67.5 415
Columbus, OH MSA 1.5 8,136 none 1,009
Indianapolis, IN MSA 1.6 9,125 none 1,131
Norfolk--Virginia Beach--Newport News, VA--NC MSA 1.6 6,083 none 754
Charlotte--Gastonia--Rock Hill, NC--SC MSA 1.5 8,746 15.5 1,084
Providence--Fall River--Warwick, RI--MA MSA 1.2 2,956 none 367
Austin--San Marcos, TX MSA 1.2 10,940 none 1,357
Milwaukee--Waukesha, WI PMSA 1.5 3,781 none 469
Nashville, TN MSA 1.2 10,548 none 1,308


Again, keep in mind that this exercise is intended only to outline the scope of the national effort required.

According to these numbers, very little new transit rail needs to be built in cities like New York, Boston, or Chicago, but given that these urban areas already have workable urban densities, and are being choked daily by congestion caused by the currently preferred national mode of transportation -- automobiles -- it is more than likely that extensive additional construction is needed in these areas. For example, here is the result of a quick one-hour PowerPoint exercise in filling in the gaps in the rail transit system of Chicago. (The dotted lines are my flight of fancy.)


In fact, when we look at the number of miles based on population, we find that many urban areas which already have large urban rail transit systems could use much, much more. For example, the Chicago area’s 8.3 million people are served by 170.6 kilometers of urban rail transit. At 40 kilomoters per million people, the Chicago rail transit system should be doubled in size, to 331 kilometers.

For estimated cost per unit length of rail system, I emailed four transit agencies that have completed extensions the past few years, and received the desired information from the Los Angeles Metro, which had extended its Gold Line back by 9.6 kilometers in 2004. I used the cost and amounts of steel and concrete used to for the Gold Line extension, divided by the kilometers of the extension. The resulting figure was $62.5 million per kilometer, which includes a small amount of tunneling. Next, I multiplied those numbers by the amounts I found doing the spreadsheet of the various cities.

But is $62.5 million per kilometer a number that can be applied to different cities across the entire country? In his 2006 book, Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro, George Mason University history professor Zachary M. Schrag writes that the Washington DC Metro cost about $100 million a mile, adjusted for inflation. Dividing this by 1.6 to get cost per kilometer, we get $62.5 million per kilometer â€" exactly the same as the number calculated from the Los Angles metro number.

In this table, Light Rail Costs Approach $70 Million per Mile in 2000, Wendell Cox, an anti-public works consultant who is often cited by conservative wrong-wing media and institutions such as the Cato Institute, conveniently brings together cost information for nineteen light rail transit projects. (Note that "light rail" refers to on-ground, at-grade rail lines, often laid along existing streets; the DC Metro is considered a heavy rail system; I’m not sure what the Los Angeles Gold Line is considered).

The numbers from Cox’s table range from $28.67 million per mile for an 18.3 mile rail system in Norfolk, Virginia, to $208.33 million per mile for 7.2 mile "shorter route," in Seattle. Eleven of the nineteen projects are tightly clustered between $36.18 million per mile for San Diego and  $50.62 million per mile for a 14.6 mile system in Austin, Texas.

The Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (VDRPT) and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) are finally working on a 11.6-mile extension of Metrorail through the edge city of Tysons Corner to Reston, another edge city on the western side of Fairfax County. In a second phase of construction, this line will be extended the remaining twelve miles needed to reach the passenger terminals at Washington Dulles International Airport.  According to a January 2009 announcement by these two agencies, the new 23 miles of rail system will cost $1.63 billion, or $70.9 million per mile.

I was also looking for a bill of materials, especially for the amount of steel needed. Interestingly, reflecting the post-industrial devastation on the economy these past three decades, such information is extremely difficult to find. Information from the Los Angeles Gold Line extension indicates that 2,604 tons of steel are used per kilometer of rail line. I believe that the LA Gold Line extension involved some tunneling, so this steel amount is probably not accurate for rail lines built on ground at grade. However, if we want some general idea of the scope of such a national program, we are looking at a physical requirement of 133.1 million tons of steel. This is about two years of U.S. steel shipments, or probably about three years of U.S. steel production, assuming we become sane and produce it all here, providing good-paying jobs for ourselves, making, shaping, and distributing, big pieces of iron.  

In summary, there is no need to save the financial system if it is not able to provide financing for these types of massive national projects that will build a sustainable future for our children and their posterity. Every dime spent on saving Wall Street and money center banks that destroyed themselves through providing ample credit for gambling, rather than providing credit for these types of real investments, is a dime that is being wasted. Imagine what we could be doing if we took all that funding away from the banksters, and instead spent it on these types of programs. And, remember, this is a lesson that President Obama and his team has yet to learn: the President’s top economics adviser, Larry Summers, slashed 41% of transit funds from the stimulus bill before it was even submitted to Congress.



Note: This list of the 39 most populated urban areas does not include the following cities, which have one half to over one million people.

Akron, OH
Albany--Schenectady--Troy, NY
Albuquerque, NM MSA
Allentown--Bethlehem--Easton, PA
Bakersfield, CA
Baton Rouge, LA
Birmingham, AL
Buffalo--Niagara Falls, NY
Colorado Springs, CO
Dayton, OH
Des Moines, IA
El Paso, TX
Fresno, CA
Flint, MI
Grand Rapids--Muskegon--Holland, MI
Greensboro--Winston-Salem--High Point, NC
Greenville--Spartanburg--Anderson, SC
Harrisburg--Lebanon--Carlisle, PA
Hartford, CT
Jackson, MS
Jacksonville, FL
Knoxville, TN
Louisville, KY
Memphis, TN
Nashville, TN
New Orleans, LA
Newark, NJ (not included in New York?)
Oklahoma City, OK
Omaha, NE
Orange County, CA
Raleigh--Durham--Chapel Hill, NC
Richmond--Petersburg, VA
Rochester, NY
Salt Lake City--Ogden, UT
Scranton--Wilkes-Barre--Hazleton, PA
Spokane, WA
Stockton--Lodi, CA
Syracuse, NY
Toledo, OH
Tucson, AZ
Tulsa, OK
Wichita, KS
Youngstown--Warren, OH
Wilmington--Newark, DE-MD

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/18/710248/-$3.195-trillionTRILLIONfor-urban-RAIL-transit

[Captain Zissou]

I hate responding to Faye's topics, but here are my 2 cents. 

The way I see it, High Speed tracks are the raised expressways of our generation.  They provide for improved travel times and potentially increased efficiency, but they slice communities in half, thirds, quarters, whatever.
We won't have another $3.2 trillion dollars to throw at this for decades (we don't have $3.2 trillion for anything, despite what Obama says).  We do have sufficient money for upgrading our Amtrak system to at least make it a viable alternative to driving. 
Why not at least catch up with the rest of the world before we try and jump leaps and bounds ahead of China and Japan.

Faye's argument that a decentralized system is a disaster is true.... SO WHY BUILD THE MOUSE TRAIN???   

[buckethead]

A valid question indeed...

[tufsu1]

The way I see it, High Speed tracks are the raised expressways of our generation.  They provide for improved travel times and potentially increased efficiency, but they slice communities in half, thirds, quarters, whatever.

which is the main reason that building our HSR lines along existing expressways makes some sense....those communities have already been divided and the grade separations already exist.

What I find interesting about the one article is that they chose the Top 39 metro areas....why not 40 (nice round number and all)....and Jax fits neatly in around 40-42.