Higher speed rail means 1950s trains running with 1950s technology
Col. Bill Lind makes a good case for “higher speed rail” faster trains running on existing tracks. The only problem is that “higher speed rail” as envisioned by Col. Lind would not meet America’s transportation needs.
The first and most obvious problem with “higher speed rail” is that it would run on the same tracks as freight trains. Unfortunately most of those tracks are overcrowded right now. There are so many freight trains that there simply would not be room for the “higher speed trains.”
The last time I took a passenger train it had to sit on a siding waiting for other trains to pass. Col. Lind’s higher speed trains would spend most of their time on the siding waiting to move. There simply is not enough room on our existing rail system for higher speed trains. Most passengers would abandon such a system and stick to their cars.
The only way to make room for higher speed passenger rail would be to move large amounts of freight traffic off of the rails and onto trucks. That would waste energy and make highway congestion worse.
In large areas of the US including California and urbanized areas of the South, Northeast, Midwest and Texas the only way to implement effective passenger service would be to build new tracks. The reason for this is not speed but to provide the frequency of rail service needed to attract a large ridership. Part of the reason so many people ride high speed trains in China, France and the Northeast Corridor is that they are frequent. The only way to get that frequency is with dedicated passenger or high speed rail lines.
There is another even more pressing reason why we need European or Japanese style high speed rail corridors: safety. In the last month there have been two fatal accidents involving higher speed passenger trains at surface level crossings in the US (places where cars drive across the tracks). In of these in Nevada around 20 people died.
Here is what Higher Speed Rail will look
like.
If we create Col. Lind’s higher speed rail system we’ll see dozens of such accidents every year. There will be hundreds of fatalities and the resulting public anger at the deaths will undermine or destroy popular support for rail. To make matters worse, the higher speed trains will have to blow their whistles every time they approach a crossing. That will generate anger and opposition from residents near the tracks.
European style corridors where trains run under or over the roads would eliminate this danger. They would also eliminate the need for trains to blow their horns or disturb neighbors. With grade-separated corridors and electric trains, most neighbors wouldn’t realize they had a high speed train in the neighborhood until they went to the station.
A final problem for higher speed trains is that many of our railroad lines do not go where people want to go. There are now large and growing communities such as Mesquite, Nevada, Evergreen, Colorado, and St. George, Utah, that are 30 or forty miles or longer from rail lines. Nor do most rail lines go to airports, the passengers on Col. Lind’s higher speed trains would have to rent a car or take a bus to the airport. That would take away the train's ability to compete with other forms of transportation. To be effective a higher speed or high speed rail system would have to serve airports and many new communities.
Col. Lind is wrong - there is no way to establish large scale passenger rail service in the US without embarking on a massive effort to build new rail lines. If we do that we should invest our money on state of the art modern rail technology not efforts to recreate what we had in the 1950s. As for the costs, well, Lind is wrong there too, any nation that can find the money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should be able to find the money for high speed rail.
One final thought here there are many places in the US including less populated areas of the West where higher speed trains as Lind envisions them might work. They would be feeder lines to high speed rail lines not the backbone of the system. Col Lind is to be commended for his rail advocacy but criticized for the short sightedness of his vision.
