Well, the example you give is just about perfect-- 150-200 miles and 2 hours. Would you take the train if it were 500-600 miles and 5-6 hours? Or would you fly?
If you have HSR for NYC-Chicago, 732 miles and it's 6 hours, well you have accomplished a miracle, but how are you going to construct a separate high speed line through the area of the country's most intense rail operations? And first and foremost, HSR service must be segregated from all other service. The problem of overtakes, of high speed trains catching up to and being delayed by low speed trains, is the critical factor. And in other 500 + corridors? Is there enough traffic to warrant the time consumed in constructing and maintaining HSR to bring the travel time down below 4 hours [studies, surveys show that 4 hours is about the max people want to be on a train]? Detroit to St. Louis? Minneapolis to Chicago? Omaha to Denver? I don't think there's the traffic that will be pulled off the airlines to justify the construction of HSR I think the better direction is to develop commuter rail operations around major cities, higher speed rail between major cities [110 mph], and some HSR to see if we can actually make it work, and by work, I mean actually fill the seats. Tell you where I would put HSR, but only before the revolution... LA to Las Vegas... hell, anywhere to Las Vegas, and have slots on the trains, and make the club car a real club car, with craps and blackjack. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Perelman" <[email protected]> To: "David Schanoes" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 9:53 PM Subject: [Marxism] railroads > In China, I gave 2 different talks about 150 -200 miles away from where I > was staying in Beijing and Shanghai. The trips took less than 2 hours; > very comfortable. I don't know how much they cost. My hosts took care of > that, but they were far more comfortable than a plane. ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
