White House website wrote:A Vision for High Speed Rail
"I'm happy to be here. I’m more happy than you can imagine," said the Vice President, a noted rail enthusiast, before introducing the President for the release of his strategic plan for high speed rail in America. Revolving around the $8 billion in the Recovery Act and the $1 billion per year for five years requested in the President’s budget to get these projects off the ground, the President painted the picture that will become a reality as a result of these investments:
What we're talking about is a vision for high-speed rail in America. Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes. (Laughter.) Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination. Imagine what a great project that would be to rebuild America.
Now, all of you know this is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It is now. It is happening right now. It's been happening for decades. The problem is it's been happening elsewhere, not here.
In France, high-speed rail has pulled regions from isolation, ignited growth, remade quiet towns into thriving tourist destinations. In Spain, a high-speed line between Madrid and Seville is so successful that more people travel between those cities by rail than by car and airplane combined. China, where service began just two years ago, may have more miles of high-speed rail service than any other country just five years from now. And Japan, the nation that unveiled the first high-speed rail system, is already at work building the next: a line that will connect Tokyo with Osaka at speeds of over 300 miles per hour. So it's being done; it's just not being done here.
There's no reason why we can't do this. This is America. There's no reason why the future of travel should lie somewhere else beyond our borders. Building a new system of high-speed rail in America will be faster, cheaper and easier than building more freeways or adding to an already overburdened aviation system –- and everybody stands to benefit.
The inclusion of high speed rail in the Recovery Act was one of many symbols of the new vision for America and its economy that guided the plan. As the Vice President explained in his introduction, joined by Transportation Secretary LaHood, in addition to putting Americans to work across the country it went towards several the Recovery Act’s key goals:
And we're making a down payment today, a down payment on the economy for tomorrow, the economy that's going to drive us in the 21st century in a way that the other -- the highway system drove us in the mid-20th century. And I'm happy to be here. I'm more happy than you can imagine -- (laughter) -- to talk about a commitment that, with the President's leadership, we're making to achieve the goal through the development of high-speed rail projects that will extend eventually all across this nation. And most of you know that not only means an awful lot to me, but I know a lot of you personally in this audience over the years, I know it means equally as much to you.
With high-speed rail system, we're going to be able to pull people off the road, lowering our dependence on foreign oil, lowering the bill for our gas in our gas tanks. We're going to loosen the congestion that also has great impact on productivity, I might add, the people sitting at stop lights right now in overcrowded streets and cities. We're also going to deal with the suffocation that's taking place in our major metropolitan areas as a consequence of that congestion. And we're going to significantly lessen the damage to our planet. This is a giant environmental down payment.
The report formalizes the identification of ten high-speed rail corridors as potential recipients of federal funding. Those lines are: California, Pacific Northwest, South Central, Gulf Coast, Chicago Hub Network, Florida, Southeast, Keystone, Empire and Northern New England. Also, opportunities exist for the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston to compete for funds to improve the nation’s only existing high-speed rail service:
[See website for image -ed]
Last edited by Surlethe on 2009-04-16 01:06pm, edited 1 time in total.
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama unveiled his administration's blueprint for a new national network of high-speed passenger rail lines Thursday, saying such an investment is necessary to reduce traffic congestion, cut dependence on foreign oil and improve the environment.
The president's plan identifies 10 potential high-speed intercity corridors for federal funding, including California, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and New England.
It also highlights potential improvements in the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor running from Washington to Boston, Massachusetts.
Each of the corridors identified by the president's report are between 100 and 600 miles long. The blueprint envisions some trains traveling at top speeds of over 150 mph.
Federal grants would also be directed toward separate individual rail projects that are deemed "ready to go," with preliminary engineering and environmental work already completed.
"My high-speed rail proposal will lead to innovations that change the way we travel in America. We must start developing clean, energy-efficient transportation that will define our regions for centuries to come," Obama said at an event near the White House.
The president cited the success of high-speed rail in European countries such as France and Spain as a positive example for the United States.
His plan would be funded in part through the recently passed $787 billion stimulus plan, which includes a total of $8 billion for improvements in rail service. Obama has also proposed a separate five-year, $5 billion investment in high-speed rail as part of the administration's suggested fiscal year 2010 budget.
"We're going to make travel in this country leaner and a whole lot cleaner," said Vice President Joe Biden, speaking before Obama.
The president spoke one day after the governors of eight Midwestern states sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood requesting stimulus funds for the construction of a regional network of faster passenger rail lines.
The city of Chicago, Illinois, would be the hub of the proposed Midwest Regional Rail System, which would stretch to Madison, Wisconsin, in the Northwest; St. Louis, Missouri, in the South; and Detroit, Michigan, in the East.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama pledged to support a national network of faster passenger trains. The administration has already dedicated $1.3 billion in federal funding for Amtrak.
The money for the rail service, which carried almost 29 million passengers last year, will go primarily to infrastructure repair and improvement.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
Clearly Obama is taking the Last Train to Marxville and will meet you at the station. He will be fueling it with confiscated guns and your tax dollars.
Seriously, though, this is good news. Rebuilding the high speed rail system is of vital importance to the country. Hopefully, this will get done.
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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Thursday highlighted his ambition for the development of high-speed passenger rail lines in at least 10 regions, expressing confidence in the future of train travel even as he acknowledged that the American rail network, compared to the rest of the world’s, remains a caboose.
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With clogged highways and overburdened airports, economic growth was suffering, Mr. Obama said from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, shortly before leaving for a weekend trip to Latin America.
“What we need, then, is a smart transportation system equal to the needs of the 21st century,” he said, “a system that reduces travel times and increases mobility, a system that reduces congestion and boosts productivity, a system that reduces destructive emissions and creates jobs.”
And he added, “There’s no reason why we can’t do this.”
Mr. Obama said the $8 billion included for high-speed rail projects in his stimulus package — to be spent over two years — and an additional $1 billion a year being budgeted over the next five years, would provide a “jump start” toward achieving that vision.
The stimulus money has yet to be allocated to specific projects, but Mr. Obama said that the Transportation Department had expedited this process and would begin awarding funds to “ready” projects by the end of summer.
The government has identified 10 corridors of 100 to 600 miles in length with greatest promise for high-speed development.
They are: a northern New England line; an Empire line running east to west in New York State; a Keystone corridor running laterally through Pennsylvania; a southeast network connecting the District of Columbia to Florida and the Gulf Coast; a Gulf Coast line extending from eastern Texas to western Alabama; a corridor in central and southern Florida; a Texas-to-Oklahoma line; a California corridor where voters have already approved a line that will allow travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two and a half hours; and a corridor in the Pacific Northwest.
Only one high-speed line is now operating, on the Northeast corridor between Washington and Boston, and it will be eligible to compete for funds to make improvements.
Mr. Obama’s remarks mixed ambition and modesty, reflecting the fact that American high-speed rail is in its infancy compared with far-flung systems of technological virtuosity like those in France and Japan as well as the network China is rapidly building.
"Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination," Mr. Obama said. "It is happening right now, it’s been happening for decades. The problem is, it’s been happening elsewhere, not here."
The president noted that his administration’s investments in improving roads, bridges and ports constituted “the most sweeping investment in our infrastructure since President Eisenhower began the interstate highway system in the 1950s.” Still, spending on rail travel in the United States remains a tiny portion of what Eisenhower spent or what Europeans or some Asians are spending.
The president defended his plan both against those who say it seeks to do too much and those who said it does too little.
“This plan is realistic,” he said, calling it a “first step that is quickly achievable.” Rail spending, he said, would not only provide jobs that “can’t be outsourced” but also help reduce the pollution from cars and planes while enhancing the ability to compete.
The National Association of Railroad Passengers welcomed the president’s remarks, saying it was “thrilled with this initiative.”
“It focuses the administration effort and commitment to high-speed rail and to passenger rail in general,” said David Johnson, a vice president of the association. He acknowledged that overall financing was “tiny” compared with European-style train systems but described it as an important start. The fierce competition for resources in a time of economic crisis has strapped the administration’s rail ambitions, though it has made no secret of its inclinations.
In making the announcement, the president was joined by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom Mr. Obama joshingly referred to as “America’s No. 1 train fan.”
In the Senate, Mr. Biden earned the nickname “Amtrak Joe” for his regular train use between Washington and his home in Delaware over decades and for his strong support for increased rail financing.
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
Gil Hamilton wrote:Clearly Obama is taking the Last Train to Marxville and will meet you at the station. He will be fueling it with confiscated guns and your tax dollars.
Seriously, though, this is good news. Rebuilding the high speed rail system is of vital importance to the country. Hopefully, this will get done.
"RE"building? That implies we had a high-speed rail system to begin with.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
It's nice that they will be using the land in California that's already been approved for high-speed rail rather than trying to start a competing project (I wouldn't put it past some people). If there's a viable alternative to living in the Silicon Valley and the Los Angeles area it would greatly reduce the demand for home prices in those places. People are already willing to commute for an hour-plus by car, I can't imagine they'd object to doing it by rail.
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This is good shit; I'd like to see a concurrent investment in the freight rail system, as well. Not high speed freight, but stuff like enlarging tunnels to take double-stack well cars or expanding freight yards to alleviate bottlenecks. I'm sure Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific, and BNSF have plenty of projects that could benefit from a public-private cooperative scheme (which is how the damn railroads got built in the first place, after all).
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
All that sounds good, and personally I think that in areas where it's appropriate any disused canals should be put back into use as well. However, I am not sure it's enough. One of the reasons internal flights are far more important in the USA than in my little country (the UK) is that the distances are so huge. Is rail going to be fast enough?
Maybe it's time to put some serious effort into maglev. Journey times might well be about the same as air travel for that, given that maglev trains wouldn't have to start from miles and miles outside town. Maybe the rail rights of way could be used, and so avoid spending any more money on land to put them on?
kinnison wrote:All that sounds good, and personally I think that in areas where it's appropriate any disused canals should be put back into use as well. However, I am not sure it's enough. One of the reasons internal flights are far more important in the USA than in my little country (the UK) is that the distances are so huge. Is rail going to be fast enough?
In the areas mentioned as the first 'corridors' there is a tremendous ammount of commuter air and auto travel, and these trains would help to vastly reduce traffic on roads and in the air.
Maybe it's time to put some serious effort into maglev. Journey times might well be about the same as air travel for that, given that maglev trains wouldn't have to start from miles and miles outside town. Maybe the rail rights of way could be used, and so avoid spending any more money on land to put them on?
Eventually, they can connect the rail corridors with high-speed maglev, but it really shouldn't be our 'first step' in highspeed rail.
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RedImperator wrote:This is good shit; I'd like to see a concurrent investment in the freight rail system, as well. Not high speed freight, but stuff like enlarging tunnels to take double-stack well cars
Hey genius, that's exactly what the freight railroads have been doing over here in the East for the last couple of years.
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About how far do you think the average high-speed rail system would go station-to-station? I travel north regularly (NYC and Michigan mainly), and we can make it in a day driving, but it's tiring and damaging (my mother often gets a swelled foot from holding the gas pedal down so long, and other than hour-long rest stops and gas/food, we're driving at all times).
With a high-speed rail system, we could take the train north instead, which is much easier, simpler (not much chance of getting lost on unfamiliar highways or getting stuck in construction) and would take much less time (300 mph compared to 70) than driving.
chitoryu12 wrote:About how far do you think the average high-speed rail system would go station-to-station? I travel north regularly (NYC and Michigan mainly), and we can make it in a day driving, but it's tiring and damaging (my mother often gets a swelled foot from holding the gas pedal down so long, and other than hour-long rest stops and gas/food, we're driving at all times).
HSR is best suited for journeys of 2 – 3 hours (150-600 km or about 100-400 miles), for which the train can beat both air and car in this range. When traveling less than about 650 km (400 mi), the process of checking in and going through security screening at airports, as well as the journey to the airport itself makes the total air journey time no faster than HSR. However, anecdotally, competition authorities in Europe treat HSR for city pairs as competitive with passenger air at 4-4.5 hours, allowing on a 1-hour flight at least 40 minutes at each point for travel to and from the airport, check-in–security–boarding, disembarcation–baggage retrieval and other waits.
So for short trips from neighborhood to neighborhood HSR isn't that ideal, but trains between cities are perfect.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
RedImperator wrote:This is good shit; I'd like to see a concurrent investment in the freight rail system, as well. Not high speed freight, but stuff like enlarging tunnels to take double-stack well cars
Hey genius, that's exactly what the freight railroads have been doing over here in the East for the last couple of years.
Hey asshole, I fucking know that. I also know the railroads don't have enough capital to do anywhere near all the work that needs to be done, especially the Class IIs and the shortlines. And at any rate, seeing as the airline and long-haul trucking industries have suckled trillions from the Federal teat over the last fifty years, throwing a billion or two at freight rail is only fair and a better ROI than adding yet another lane to I-95.
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
LA to SF HSR was approved last fall in CA, but the main obstacle is coming from annoying piece of shit fuckwad NIMBY yuppies who live in the SF Peninsula between San Jose and San Francisco (mainly the cities of Palo Alto, Atherton and Menlo Park) who are demanding a tunnel rather than enlarging the existing Caltrain right of way. Caltrain being the existing commuter rail train that goes between San Jose and San Francisco.
Cecelia5578 wrote:LA to SF HSR was approved last fall in CA, but the main obstacle is coming from annoying piece of shit fuckwad NIMBY yuppies who live in the SF Peninsula between San Jose and San Francisco (mainly the cities of Palo Alto, Atherton and Menlo Park) who are demanding a tunnel rather than enlarging the existing Caltrain right of way. Caltrain being the existing commuter rail train that goes between San Jose and San Francisco.
They want a tunnel under their ENTIRE CITY?
putting in a tunnel would be ridiculous when there's a perfectly good rail existing.
PRFYNAFBTFCP
Captain of the MFS Frigate of Pizazz +2 vs. Douchebags - Est vicis pro nonnullus suscito vir
"Are you an idiot? What demand do you think there is for aircraft carriers that aren't government?" - Captain Chewbacca
"I keep my eighteen wives in wonderfully appointed villas by bringing the underwear of god to the heathens. They will come to know God through well protected goodies." - Gandalf
"There is no such thing as being too righteous to understand." - Darth Wong
I was flipping through channels at work today while I was waiting for a computer to start imaging, and I hit CNBC and was shocked to see the interviewer basically promoting high-speed rail and repeatedly asking why the hell France gets to have 300+mph supertrains and our fastest train hits 150mph "for maybe 0.2 seconds".
Where's the FOX NEWS response? I'm expecting OBAMA: FUCK YOU, CAPITALISM in big red letters.
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Uraniun235 wrote:repeatedly asking why the hell France gets to have 300+mph supertrains and our fastest train hits 150mph "for maybe 0.2 seconds.
Because you moron, the northeastern corridor is 19th century trackage way of rights. All the surrounding area is heavily built up; and there's one particular section of the NEC where trains have to slow down to like 50~ or so MPH, because of a huge kink in the track line near Philly.
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"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
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Cecelia5578 wrote:LA to SF HSR was approved last fall in CA, but the main obstacle is coming from annoying piece of shit fuckwad NIMBY yuppies who live in the SF Peninsula between San Jose and San Francisco (mainly the cities of Palo Alto, Atherton and Menlo Park) who are demanding a tunnel rather than enlarging the existing Caltrain right of way. Caltrain being the existing commuter rail train that goes between San Jose and San Francisco.
They want a tunnel under their ENTIRE CITY?
putting in a tunnel would be ridiculous when there's a perfectly good rail existing.
The plan for California's HSR is that in the Peninsula (between San Jose and San Francisco) HSR is supposed to share Caltrain's existing right of way. What that involves is slightly widening things, so that two tracks in each direction for both Caltrain and HSR can exist. There is strong opposition to widening the current right of way and making above ground grade separations in the communities of Palo Alto, Atherton and Menlo Park-extremely affluent yuppiedom. Their demand is for a tunnel to be built under their sections, to be paid for by...the tooth fairy, I guess.
Cecelia5578 wrote:The plan for California's HSR is that in the Peninsula (between San Jose and San Francisco) HSR is supposed to share Caltrain's existing right of way. What that involves is slightly widening things, so that two tracks in each direction for both Caltrain and HSR can exist. There is strong opposition to widening the current right of way and making above ground grade separations in the communities of Palo Alto, Atherton and Menlo Park-extremely affluent yuppiedom. Their demand is for a tunnel to be built under their sections, to be paid for by...the tooth fairy, I guess.
They want to put a tunnel, under a city, IN THE BAY AREA!
Do none of them remember 1989? And while I doubt they remember it, I would think that institutional memory would remember 1908 as well.
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