Fair enough, LA has been doing some local work. They better be with the Olympics there in less than 4 years now. I am not aware of any work going on in the Bay Area, and have only seen what dire straights BART is in. Is there are project up there?
Many of the issues plaguing CAHSR are rooted in structural issues facing the entire state of CA.
So it’s not all specific to CAHSR, but it doesn’t make me feel great spending potentially in the high eleven figures range of federal money on the project when it could probably go further if it were spent elsewhere.
CA has some work to do in terms of construction costs. They have issues above and beyond inflation and even beyond the typical issues facing everyone in the US. They are chipping away at it (somewhat) but this is a multi-faceted issue and they have a long way to go. Too much political interference, too much submission to noisy NIMBYs and politically connected business interests (like Tejon Ranch); the legacy of Prop 13, CEQA reform, overall housing costs, massive overspending in the consultant/design/engineering phase, too few bidders (all of who are highly politically connected)… etc etc.
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To be fair, there’s some clusterf*ck with Brightline too.
The numerous at-grade crossings in highly populated areas have resulted in about 200 accidents since 2017, with about half of them resulting in fatalities.
Secondly, the trip from Miami to Orlando doesn’t save much time unless one is competing with rush hour. End to end the average speed is under 70, and if anyone’s ever driven from South Florida to Orlando you know that folks are driving much, much faster than that average on the turnpike. It’s a real stretch to call Brightline a HSR. CAHSR has a top speed that’s going to be 100MPH faster than Brightline’s.
Likewise, if HSR from Raleigh to DC doesn’t substantially save time over driving, I fear that it will not compel ridership. I could make a case for folks from Raleigh to go to DC by HSR to simply avoid having to deal with a car while in the city (parking e$$entially), but that’s a more difficult argument for those from DC that would come to Raleigh. They’d still most likely need access to a car on arrival. While I know that ride share exists and would help mitigate that issue, it’s an issue nonetheless.
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True, Brightline is not with out its issues, both in terms of safety and speed. But it is up and running, and expanding, and thus a much better example to point to for those of us who support high speed regional rail than CAHSR. In terms of speed, we are told CAHSR will go faster, but only time will tell. I hope its true because one can never get between Bakersfield and Merced quickly enough. Over promised, under delivered is never a good look for a project. CAHSR is so bad it is damaging every other HSR project simply by the stench of its rotting corpse.
I really hope the LA (sorta of) to Vegas Brightline powers forward and is ready for the Olympics. A success there will make CAHSR look like an outlier, and give rail folk a from scratch success story to point to.
Good points about the problems RAL-DC will face. I think if you can match, or come under drive times, it makes attractive. Beating drives times by a fair amount is even better. But if the times are about even, then headache, predictability, reliability and convenience do factor in more. For me when I visit most major cities, I see my car as a liability, where to park, how to navigate, etc. I’d rather leave the driving to locals, and hopefully good transit options - which for the tourist, DC does have. Bring on the train!!
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Brightline’s grade crossing collision problem is a big reason why Brightline Florida is not a viable model for the rest of the country.
Among railfans and transit geeks, generally a pretty liberal crowd, there is a pretty strong tendency to fall back on “personal responsibility” as the solution to this problem. “Stupid Florida Drivers” dooming themselves. There is even sometimes an almost sadistic pleasure at seeing trains plow through cars (and their drivers), as if it is fair payback for all the pedestrian and cyclists who have been killed when drivers run into them.
I have to disagree with all of the above.
Progressives claim to care about outcomes, and the outcome of Brightline Florida has been pretty good intercity rail service, but ALSO a pretty disturbingly large number of deaths(!!). This is not the time to fall back on the trope of “personal responsibility” - it’s the time to acknowledge the problem, fix it, and learn from it.
Brightline Florida Phase 1 was an experiment to figure out how cheaply they can bootstrap an intercity passenger service. The outcome of that experiment is “Not that cheaply…”
Anyway, the lesson as it applies to us is that the slower, more deliberate, and more expensive approach taken by NCDOT, which has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars on grade separations and crossing closures under its sealed corridor initiative, is the only way to go when it comes to increased frequency and speed.
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One could argue that a public/private partnership may be viable where the publicly funded part of the project is the corridor/grade separation, while the private part is the construction and operation of the rail itself.
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CAHSR will share CalTrain tracks within the Bay Area, and this project upgraded those.
It will be interesting to watch how the SNCF-led group does with the Alto TGV in Canada. Canada’s costs are lower than in the US but still much higher than overseas.
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Cool, thanks for this. I spent a fair amount of time in San Mateo back in the day, and the CalTrains seemed efficient, though I never used it - I was able to walk everywhere I needed to be. But to circle this back to Brightline, talk about a lot of crossings to deal with in the CalTrains corridor!!
This Sunday I happened to be checking out downtown Selma NC and their train station when the Amtrak train to Raleigh came through. It made me think about how close Selma is by train. Probably 10 minutes faster than getting to Durham from Raleigh? In places like Philly, DC, NYC, or even the Bay Area with Calltrain there would be 8 to 10 trains a day into the main city from a place like that.
Edit: I looked up the timetable and Selma to Raleigh is 47 minutes while Raleigh to Durham is 36 with a stop in Cary. Does the train have to go really slow between Selma and Raleigh? What’s up with that?
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It’s slightly longer: 29 railroad miles to Selma vs. 26 to Durham. The train goes pretty fast, though the grade crossings in Clayton and Garner slow it down. I think the bigger factor is that the timetable lists the departure time at Raleigh, so the “Selma” distance includes the long Raleigh station stop.
I think the plan is to keep running the Carolinian through Selma, but once the S-Line opens the commuter rail level frequencies will be headed through Wake Forest, not Clayton.
I’m sure you noticed that Selma is a working-class town; per capita incomes there are less than half the MSA average. Smithfield is a little more prosperous, but both are old mill towns. It looks pretty sad from the train, not nearly as lively as Wilson (but way better than Rocky Mount, ooof).
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At some point in time the max speed on the tracks from Raleigh to Selma was 59mph (instead of 79mph elsewhere) due to signal system limitations. Not sure if they ever got around to upgrading that. Same limitation applies to some of the S-line headed towards Hamlet and Columbia where the Silver Star / Floridian runs. Also not sure if that has been upgraded since then.
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A few points.
Yes, top speed on Raleigh-Selma was elevated to 79 mph about 20 years ago (although obviously they cannot run that fast the entire way). When the Carolinian began running in the early 1990s, top speed was actually 49 not 59 mph because of how the grade crossing signals were set. Today, the schedule between Raleigh and Selma is the way it is simply because of padding. A lot can happen to the southbound Carolinian and Floridian before they reach Selma, and the schedule is manipulated to increase the probability of an on-time arrival in Raleigh. To illustrate, the northbound Carolinian runs Raleigh-Selma in 33 minutes but the southbound runs Selma-Raleigh in 44 minutes. Same track, of course.
Cary-Sanford-Hamlet-Columbia is mostly 60 mph max because of track conditions (FRA Class III). There is a little 79 mph running just north of Hamlet. The entire route used to be faster, but improving this track is way down every priority list.
Brightline was as much about profit from real estate development as transportation. Doesn’t surprise me in retrospect that they didn’t take grade crossing accidents into consideration.
If SEHSR and the separate improvement initiative for Richmond-DC meet their objectives, the running time between Raleigh and DC will be four hours flat. I don’t think you can do downtown-to-downtown by car in 4:00 today unless you leave around midnight. There are summer weekends already when driving between Raleigh and DC takes five hours plus because of congestion on I-95 north of Richmond. On weekdays there is also the DC rush hour to deal with.
I heard NCDOT didn’t pony up a dime to the Amtrak Thruway routes in eastern NC. NCDOT wasn’t even in the planning loop.
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Isn’t it amazing that when people want to, they can tie rail to RE development, but when they don’t want to acknowledge the power of rail and how it can build cities, they dismiss it?
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4 hours to DC by train will be a game changer.
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IMO, 2 hours would be a game changer, but I think that’s too ambitious for where we are in this country when it comes to rail. 3 hours would be amazing.
There’s no reason why we can’t have the highest speeds between Raleigh’s northern burbs and Richmond’s southern ones. There’s very little between the two cities, and in order for it to be as fast as possible, it would have to resist adding stops between the two metros, and that could be a political nightmare to navigate because, rightfully so, both states are going to want to enable growth in stagnant and dying towns like Henderson & South Hill.
There’s about 100 miles between Wake Forest and Petersburg, VA. If we could achieve 200MPH top speed, there’s no reason why that couldn’t be achieved in an hour.
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The Seaboard Air Line was running Richmond-Raleigh in 2 hours 34 minutes in 1948. To be fair, that was a different station in Richmond and the current station in Richmond would add about 10 minutes to that. And to be completely fair, the Silver Meteor made only one stop (Petersburg) between Richmond and Raleigh whereas today there would be demand for several intermediate stops. But still, we could get Richmond-Raleigh in 3 hours flat simply by restoring track conditions from 75 years ago. That would be approximately 1/3 the expense of the SEHSR project that aims for 2 hours flat. Going faster than 2 hours would require electrification and even more straightening of the right of way, and the cost of the project goes up by another 3X. This is all about money. The engineering isn’t rocket science.
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The problem is that 3 hours just to Richmond doesn’t compel ridership when driving is quicker.
I was saying that 3 hours to DC would be game changing. 1.5 hours total from Raleigh to Richmond, and then 1.5 hours from Richmond to DC (with more stops) would be amazing. I know we aren’t going to get that.
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I’d be happy to just have it be reliable and comfortable. If I’m going for a leisure trip I’d happily take a little longer and not have to drive. But I have zero confidence I’m not gonna get stuck going to DC currently and have like 8 hours in some train car from the 80s
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I don’t disagree with your point. But travel between Raleigh and Richmond is not a major concern. The objective is travel between Raleigh and DC, Raleigh and Philly, or Raleigh and NY.
An unfortunate aspect of how SEHSR was formulated as a project is its tagline as Raleigh-Richmond. Spending any substantial amount of money just for travel between Raleigh and Richmond isn’t going to get much support. But if you can get Raleigh-DC down to 5 hours dependably, downtown-to-downtown, you will begin to attract people who take I-85/95. Not all of them, of course, but more than you attract now with 6 hours (which isn’t even dependable). If you can get it to 4 hours dependably, then it’s definitely competitive with driving.
All of this assumes that the other project to reduce running time Richmond-DC from the current 2 hrs 45 minutes (downtown-to-downtown) to 2 hours flat will also happen.
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When I lived in Richmond and had projects in DC, depending on the timing, I could do the 95 dash in an hour and a half. You just had to get the timing right, otherwise it could take way longer.
Rail taking longer than driving doesn’t provide much incentive (aside from not having to deal with finding/paying for parking).
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