Friday, July 9, 2010

High Speed Rail in America

I’ve been off meeting with my Bilderberg Group for a couple weeks. I’m back now. We finally decided where LeBron should play. At least now we know Miami won’t win the NBA title next year because you can’t have too many over paid prima donnas in one building. Their egos will collide.


Now for the main subject:

The French have a bunch of trains called TGV. Train Goes Vast or something like that in French. There are several things that make the TGV worth looking at for America. They’ve designed the power pickup to run on different voltages and either AC or DC. Heavy.

Oh, did I mention it’s electric? Electric trains. We had those when I was a kid. Anyway, the point is they don’t pollute so much. France has nuclear power plants that are much cleaner than coal.

The newest TGV track allows speeds up to 200 mph. That means people in France can go places without wasting a lot of time waiting for luggage that went to LA with all their guns. That allows them more time to waste watching soccer games.

The TGV runs very often. If you need to go someplace you just get down to the nearest station and catch the next train (if it stops). The availability rate is over 90 percent. That means only one out of ten is out of sorts at any given time. Not stopped on the tracks, just in the shop for a tuneup. The running reliability is even better. They rarely have service stoppage. They also have diesels spotted along the route for towing if it’s ever needed.

Here’s something a lot of us don’t realize: one key to people moving is that everyone has different purposes and time requirements. Some people want to leave early and get someplace for an appointment. Others are in no hurry and leaving any old time works just fine. Most people don’t want to mess around trying to figure out what time they have to be at the station. For example the NYC subways just come by one right after another. If you miss one you catch the next one.

If your system runs a rare mission, like three times a week, you have to build an elaborate reservation system that assigns seats and loses luggage. If you run 48 times a day you can ignore that nonsense. An example of poor service is the Washington State Ferry System. Capacity is way below demand because we can’t figure out how to buy new boats. Thus arriving at the dock “on time” does you no good – you won’t get on that boat anyway. Now they’ve installed a reservation system. No idea how that works, but the result is people sit on the dock for hours waiting for the next boat. Don’t promise to meet anyone on the other side at a specific time.

There are a few other lessons for America’s high speed rail planning. What France is finding is many passengers on their trains are French. It’s a bother but they seem to be coping. In America we hopefully won’t have to share the trains with too many French.

One of the big cost savers is that the train runs high speed out in the rural unwashed boonies and then takes slower existing tracks into the city. That means you don’t have to spend the National Budget building high speed tracks in the suburbs. They can run at 200 mph through the cow pastures and then slow down to deliver the shrieking passengers into Newcastle. They’re shrieking because somebody forgot to build fences to keep the cows off the tracks.

Trains going 200 mph with steel wheels on steel track take 2 miles or more to stop. Places where cars or pedestrians could get on the tracks have to be controlled. Americans are pretty stupid (OK maybe not all of us, just Republicans). People drive around the crossing barricades. The point is high speed train planning has to include ways to prevent the “I don’t care about no stinkin’ law” people from getting on the tracks. That automatically disqualifies California from ever having high speed rail.

Our President, Hopey, has announced that we need to immediately begin a program to install high speed broadband internet everywhere. See, it’s a theme. Everything has to be “high speed” these days. Remember how you used to get in line at the Foodarama behind people writing checks? You’d be behind a shopper with 50 items in the “8 items or less” line who waits until the clerk tells her the total price before she begins to dig her checkbook out of the carryon luggage she uses for a purse. Then during the check writing process we discover she failed third grade arithmetic. And the pen the clerk helpfully lends her won’t work. More and more of us use cards and it’s a lot quicker (high speed). Carryon luggage purse lady can’t remember her PIN so it wouldn’t help. And I lost track of what I was saying.

Oh, yeah: high speed is the key these days. You need to buy a car that can go 120 mph even though no state allows you to drive that fast (willingly). You need to get a phone with the highest “G” number in order to enjoy all the benefits of the “high speed” network they promised to install before your next birthday. And certainly your next computer has to be capable of high speed HD TeeVee and the latest high speed gaming. Does anyone know a real human being that actually plays these kill everything games online? Neither do I.

We were talking about high speed travel. Going on trips under 200 miles is easier on the train. As the trains go faster the mileage goes up. Now it’s easier to take the train for a trip of 400 miles. Basically it’s the amount of time we can go without strapping on the old feed bag. Have lunch in Memphis and dinner in New Orleans.

We’re looking at several routes here in America that could benefit from these high speed city to city links. People in Houston might want to zip over to Dallas for the rodeo. They’d probably stay home or drive rather than fly. That’s what the French are finding on their routes. Airline travel where TGV trains run has dropped as much as 25%. Many other people are going places they never went before just because it’s so easy.

We have a speedy Talgo train here that goes between Vancouver BC and Portland, OR. The main speed limitation is that it shares the tracks with freight trains. The track itself limits the speed. Door to door train ride from Seattle to Portland is already faster than flying. If they could speed up to 200 mph we’d all be shopping in sales tax free Portland. Umm, maybe Christine should consider that.

OK, what’s the plan for America? We don’t have one. The all powerful high potentates have decreed that we will move forward with high speed rail in several key locations around the country. Examples would be LA to San Fran (California is disqualified), Denver to Cheyenne, Cleveland to Miami… OK, I don’t know but then I’m not on the team making this stuff up.

I’m pretty sure whatever they come up with will work like our Ferry System. They’ll have tracks, overhead wires, and fancy logos with stars and stripes to help us remember which taxpayers are paying for it. I bet they won’t run often enough to attract riders and bring down per-passenger costs. They’ll defer buying adequate trainsets claiming “budget constraints” which will prevent them from reaching the efficiencies that could return the investment.

Maybe by 2100 when the whole country is one big city.

Al