How to speed up US passenger rail, without bullet trains

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&gt; The Momentum framework calls on Amtrak and commuter rail agencies to […] shift their focus from increasing the geographic coverage and capacity of their rail services<p>&gt; When making changes to rail infrastructure or services, state and local railroad agencies often must negotiate with the freight railroad companies that own most of America’s track network. These companies [are] reluctant to allow more frequent passenger service that could reduce the amount of time their freight trains have access to track.<p>This article completely fails to mention the actual cause of our modern situation. Before focusing on increasing geographical coverage we would first need to focus on <i>not decreasing</i> geographic coverage. Check out the Abandoned &amp; Out-of-Service Rail map of North America and you can see the result of massive corporate consolidation where newly-combined railroads abandon parts of each constituent company&#x27;s former network to end up with the most track they can run for the least money. There is zero redundancy left: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;d&#x2F;viewer?mid=10akDabya8L6nWIJi-4Zor-QawkoJmmMK&amp;femb=1&amp;ll=25.413577918794967%2C-45.05929601607611&amp;z=2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;d&#x2F;viewer?mid=10akDabya8L6nWIJi-4...</a>

Someone made a good argument on Reddit when discussing Australia which is also has a slowish rail network.<p>It is a 3hr drive Sydney to Canberra and 4hr on train. Mainly because the train track was originally for freight so has more curves than needed for passenger.<p>They said rather than aim for a super fast train just improve the tracks we have and get the time down to 3hr to compete with the car.<p>This is a good point because then you get more revenues and usage (the trains are full right now but infrequent - maybe they can run them every 15 minutes)<p>Then you can go make the case for an even faster train for 2050.<p>The Japanese Shinkansen is something else. Doing my first decent trip on one this week and can&#x27;t wait!

This is a better solution. I think a lot of high speed rail enthusiasts think that if we build the passengers will come. Its really unproven, I think American cities are so different to most of the world high speed rail would be unpopular. Very few people want to go from downtown one city to another - most city centers aren&#x27;t that nice and when you get to your destination you&#x27;ll need a car anyway.

There are so many parameters that it is impossible to figure out. They should probably load all params into a virtual model and have an AI try out everything.<p>Besides the obvious investments making tickets more expensive a different example would be if you accelerate faster you need more rails maintenance.<p>You can also leave carts behind and pick them up at stops so that people who need it have all the time to get in and out. If you do that (like with many options) it gets marvelously complicated really fast.<p>Even if you try fit an intercity (that doesn&#x27;t stop everywhere) it will have to be at the right place at the right time to pass the other train(s)<p>You can also not make it fast and make the trip more enjoyable. You can just stop for 30 min or an hour at each station and have stores and museums at the station bring in more revenue than tickets.<p>If I had to guess the most successful trick for the US would be to have people bring their car on the train.

There is no secret lost knowledge that enabled a steam-powered train to go from New York to Chicago in 16 hours in the 1930s. We simply do not care to run fast passenger trains anymore since they have largely been replaced by domestic air travel. The current NYC to Chicago train takes 20 hours and is routinely several hours delayed... all we have to do is invest in infrastructure and rebuild our rail system, but that won&#x27;t happen unless it&#x27;s &quot;sexy&quot; and can compete with air travel, and the best way to do that is with HSR. So while our passenger rail system _could_ be a lot faster (without true HSR) if it was run well, I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s going to happen until we get the marketability&#x2F;&quot;sexiness&quot; of HSR.

&gt; An even more significant improvement would be electrified trains, which can accelerate roughly twice as fast as those with diesel power...<p>Can someone comment on why this is? My understanding is that the existing diesel trains use diesel generators to power electric motors.<p>My questions are: 1) Does &quot;electrified&quot; mean pulling power from a third rail? 2) Whatever it means, what makes &quot;electrified&quot; twice as fast as diesel-electric?

They mention it only offhand in one sentence, but my understanding of most of the slowness of the US rail network is that it&#x27;s mostly passenger trains having to let long freight trains pass that eats tons of time.<p>Nominally, passenger trains have priority and freight trains have to pull into a siding to let them pass, but freight companies made the freight trains longer than the available sidings and so it&#x27;s the passenger train that gives way in practice most of the time.<p>Doesn&#x27;t really matter how fast the train is, or how efficiently it&#x27;s boarded if it spends excessive amounts of time sitting still waiting for freight to pass.

America&#x27;s only current, prominent bullet train is CAHSR and the goal of that project is not to speed up passenger rail. The project has nothing whatsoever to do with making existing rail riders happier or incrementally increasing ridership. The avowed purpose of CAHSR is to enable California to grow and prosper without having to build more airports and more freeways. So it&#x27;s not really worth considering it as a choice between an expensive HSR on the one hand and slightly better Amtrak San Joaquin on the other. Only one of these projects would actually be suited to purpose.

I assumed that “just go faster” wasn’t an available option for Amtrak on existing rails but this article strongly suggests that it is.

Those suggestions would really help, and also, why don&#x27;t we just _build_ high speed rail?<p>This is a shining example of the downsides of the financialization of the US economy: the inability to build almost anything at scale.<p>Really great at owning, not so great at making.<p>If it were possible, I&#x27;m sure Andy Grove would be rolling over in his grave and uttering a ghostly &quot;I told you so...&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Andrew_Grove#Preference_for_a_%22job-centric%22_American_economy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Andrew_Grove#Preference_for_a_...</a>

Time travel is real- take a passenger train in the US in 2025 and you travel back in time to 1985- and no one has cleaned it properly since 1995.

A lot of people seem to be missing that the point of the report is more what we would call &quot;commuter rail&quot;, and trying to improve it in the direction of, say, Swiss railways. This is, as a matter of engineering, just very orthogonal to trying to TVG up longer distance Amtrak routes.<p>Everyone wants to talk about the latter, but really should do both!

Or, y&#x27;know, just build a bullet train.<p>USA. Biggest economy on earth. Most powerful nation. Third largest nation by population. Could maybe build one bullet train, like the 20 other nations that already have them in service, and the 13 other nations that have them in development.<p>Or just settle for mediocrity. Whatever.