There is an extremely glaring problem with this map: topography.
The route from LA to Seattle, with the branch additional bay-area line, has to deal with the following:
1. The tehachapi mountains, where the current rail line can handle up to 40 freight trains per day. This line is at capacity and cannot handle anything more. Worse even, it is mostly single track with steep grades and sharp curves. No regular passenger trains have run over it since the late 70's. In order to put a high-speed line here, it would cost billions, requiring many long tunnels through solid rock, along with large bridges and fills.
2: The Sacramento River Canyon, north of Redding. This is the only workable pass up to the Klamath River drainage, and quite frankly is extremely tough to pass. It has many tight curves, has had plenty of washouts and is a very steep grade past Dunsmuir. The I-5 alignment goes up and down and up, while taking up the only side of the canyon which can handle a right-of-way. There is no other option to get north, so this is pretty much right out.
3: The Siskiyou mountains, or the cascade mountains, to make it to Eugene. Both of them have rail lines, again with many sharp curves and steep grades. The Siskiyou line is absolutely brutal, which caused the Southern Pacific (the original owner, bought by the Union Pacific in 1996) to sell it off to RailTex. It handles 1 through train daily and is prone to washouts and landslides. The Cascade line is also single track, rough and at capacity. No other passes which can accomodate a line with moderate grades and few curves exist, requiring another expensive series of tunnels.
So, that one is pretty much a wash, as you can tell.
The route to San Diego from LA is already very good with high speeds (90MPH), but for whatever reason they want to route it through San Bernadino. This is absolutely stupid, as the route would follow I-15 and is already extremely rough with many changes in elevation and no consistent routing. There was a previous Santa Fe rail line through here that was promptly abandoned once they built the Surfliner route along the coast.
The route from LA to Denver is a pipe dream, sadly, due to:
1: Cima Hill, which runs through Mojave National Preserve. The only way across is along the existing Union Pacific alignment, which has several nasty curves.
2: The Wasatch Mountains. There is no good pass here outside Soldier Summit, which is rather brutal. Look it up to see what I mean.
3. The Rocky Mountains. You want to put a railroad through that? Go north through echo canyon and across the continental divide in Wyoming. That is the only HST viable route there, wide open for the taking.
The route from New Mexico to Denver is mostly owned by the state of New Mexico and Amtrak, but suffers from the beast that is Raton Pass. 3% grades, very tight curves and lots of general unpleasantness south of Trinidad. The lead up to it is nice, flat and high-speed, but the pass itself is nasty.
I could keep going, but I think the point has been made. Maps are all well and good, but what rules HST design is topography vs. budget. In order to do like the Japanese and punch a line down rough land, you have to spend gobs of cash and years of effort. With tight budgets and a booming national debt, it isn't really an option.
However, the Northeast Corridor is an excellent place, and several other routes across the midwest are also great candidates, should there be traffic to support them. Chicago-NYC would be a very good one, as the route has high demand and can follow water-level routes with gentle grades and few curves.
What makes HST succeed is either great land for it (France) or $$$ (Japan, China) or both in spades (Germany). I want to see it happen, but we have to restrict it to where it makes sense. Those routes are:
1: Chicago/Great-Lakes to NYC
2: LA to San Diego (the surfliner would be packed if the trip was on an HST)
3: Boston-NYC-DC-Richmond. Replace the Acela with something faster on a grade-separated alignment.
4: Texas to Kansas City - this is seriously one of the best places around for HST. Nice, flat, open and fast.
5: Eugene to Seattle. Only tough thing is crossing the Columbia river as the existing rail bridge is at capacity and has a 35mph slow order.
6: Florida. They just need to bite the bullet and do it.
It seems you assume that existing rail lines would be put to use for a high-speed train. I doubt that would be the case. Amtrak shares lines with freight but it's also limited to the speed of freight. I suspect the logistics of jostling trains to passing lines would eliminate the usefulness of a high-speed train.
Also, there's not a logistical or technical problem with punching through hills and mountains when needed. Definitely a financial problem, but if you're gonna spend trillions building this thing, what's an extra few million to bore holes in rock? ;-)
It isn't that I assume they'd use existing lines, it is just that most of the good mountain passes are already taken. Furthermore, the existing alignments show how difficult it is to cross those mountains in the first place. Hell, there are many places in the US where even the Interstate network couldn't find a better route - like along the Colorado River east of Grand Junction.
A lot of politicians and advocacy groups like to point to existing lines as a solution to crossing mountains and getting through cities. This is rather short-sighted as rail lines in the US are designed for slower moving heavy-tonnage and don't take advantage of the differences HSR alignments have.
When you want to run an HSR line, your requirements are quite different. Regular (read: freight) lines require easier grades and can take sharper curves due to their slower speeds and heavier tonnage. The busiest mountain passes typically have no more than 2-2.5% ruling grades, using curves to lessen the steepness. HSR can use much steeper grades (5%) but requires extremely gentle curves, which then demands a lot of expensive tunnel and bridge work.
When you want to take an HSR rail line across a series of mountains like the Tehachapi range, you run into a major problem. The change in elevation is extremely sudden and drainages are short, curvy and have steep walls. The end result is that you have to do many cuts, fills, bridges and tunnels to get up the grade. The expense is astronomical compared to a regular highway, yet most proposals don't actually take that into account.
However, the man who designed the map is at least a bit more realistic about the cost (several trillion). I do firmly believe that HSR is actually quite viable in the US in many places, it just isn't something we can draw on a map and say "here we go!"
We have to solve the problem of topography vs. budget. If we want a truly national network like shown in the map, we have to accept that the cost will be enormous - likely many times that of the interstate system (in today's dollars). If the people are willing to take that cost, then it should be built, but we should be careful what we propose to make sure it is truly viable.
Comments
There is an extremely glaring problem with this map: topography.
The route from LA to Seattle, with the branch additional bay-area line, has to deal with the following:
1. The tehachapi mountains, where the current rail line can handle up to 40 freight trains per day. This line is at capacity and cannot handle anything more. Worse even, it is mostly single track with steep grades and sharp curves. No regular passenger trains have run over it since the late 70's. In order to put a high-speed line here, it would cost billions, requiring many long tunnels through solid rock, along with large bridges and fills.
2: The Sacramento River Canyon, north of Redding. This is the only workable pass up to the Klamath River drainage, and quite frankly is extremely tough to pass. It has many tight curves, has had plenty of washouts and is a very steep grade past Dunsmuir. The I-5 alignment goes up and down and up, while taking up the only side of the canyon which can handle a right-of-way. There is no other option to get north, so this is pretty much right out.
3: The Siskiyou mountains, or the cascade mountains, to make it to Eugene. Both of them have rail lines, again with many sharp curves and steep grades. The Siskiyou line is absolutely brutal, which caused the Southern Pacific (the original owner, bought by the Union Pacific in 1996) to sell it off to RailTex. It handles 1 through train daily and is prone to washouts and landslides. The Cascade line is also single track, rough and at capacity. No other passes which can accomodate a line with moderate grades and few curves exist, requiring another expensive series of tunnels.
So, that one is pretty much a wash, as you can tell.
The route to San Diego from LA is already very good with high speeds (90MPH), but for whatever reason they want to route it through San Bernadino. This is absolutely stupid, as the route would follow I-15 and is already extremely rough with many changes in elevation and no consistent routing. There was a previous Santa Fe rail line through here that was promptly abandoned once they built the Surfliner route along the coast.
The route from LA to Denver is a pipe dream, sadly, due to:
1: Cima Hill, which runs through Mojave National Preserve. The only way across is along the existing Union Pacific alignment, which has several nasty curves.
2: The Wasatch Mountains. There is no good pass here outside Soldier Summit, which is rather brutal. Look it up to see what I mean.
3. The Rocky Mountains. You want to put a railroad through that? Go north through echo canyon and across the continental divide in Wyoming. That is the only HST viable route there, wide open for the taking.
The route from New Mexico to Denver is mostly owned by the state of New Mexico and Amtrak, but suffers from the beast that is Raton Pass. 3% grades, very tight curves and lots of general unpleasantness south of Trinidad. The lead up to it is nice, flat and high-speed, but the pass itself is nasty.
I could keep going, but I think the point has been made. Maps are all well and good, but what rules HST design is topography vs. budget. In order to do like the Japanese and punch a line down rough land, you have to spend gobs of cash and years of effort. With tight budgets and a booming national debt, it isn't really an option.
However, the Northeast Corridor is an excellent place, and several other routes across the midwest are also great candidates, should there be traffic to support them. Chicago-NYC would be a very good one, as the route has high demand and can follow water-level routes with gentle grades and few curves.
What makes HST succeed is either great land for it (France) or $$$ (Japan, China) or both in spades (Germany). I want to see it happen, but we have to restrict it to where it makes sense. Those routes are:
1: Chicago/Great-Lakes to NYC
2: LA to San Diego (the surfliner would be packed if the trip was on an HST)
3: Boston-NYC-DC-Richmond. Replace the Acela with something faster on a grade-separated alignment.
4: Texas to Kansas City - this is seriously one of the best places around for HST. Nice, flat, open and fast.
5: Eugene to Seattle. Only tough thing is crossing the Columbia river as the existing rail bridge is at capacity and has a 35mph slow order.
6: Florida. They just need to bite the bullet and do it.
It seems you assume that existing rail lines would be put to use for a high-speed train. I doubt that would be the case. Amtrak shares lines with freight but it's also limited to the speed of freight. I suspect the logistics of jostling trains to passing lines would eliminate the usefulness of a high-speed train.
Also, there's not a logistical or technical problem with punching through hills and mountains when needed. Definitely a financial problem, but if you're gonna spend trillions building this thing, what's an extra few million to bore holes in rock? ;-)
It isn't that I assume they'd use existing lines, it is just that most of the good mountain passes are already taken. Furthermore, the existing alignments show how difficult it is to cross those mountains in the first place. Hell, there are many places in the US where even the Interstate network couldn't find a better route - like along the Colorado River east of Grand Junction.
A lot of politicians and advocacy groups like to point to existing lines as a solution to crossing mountains and getting through cities. This is rather short-sighted as rail lines in the US are designed for slower moving heavy-tonnage and don't take advantage of the differences HSR alignments have.
When you want to run an HSR line, your requirements are quite different. Regular (read: freight) lines require easier grades and can take sharper curves due to their slower speeds and heavier tonnage. The busiest mountain passes typically have no more than 2-2.5% ruling grades, using curves to lessen the steepness. HSR can use much steeper grades (5%) but requires extremely gentle curves, which then demands a lot of expensive tunnel and bridge work.
When you want to take an HSR rail line across a series of mountains like the Tehachapi range, you run into a major problem. The change in elevation is extremely sudden and drainages are short, curvy and have steep walls. The end result is that you have to do many cuts, fills, bridges and tunnels to get up the grade. The expense is astronomical compared to a regular highway, yet most proposals don't actually take that into account.
However, the man who designed the map is at least a bit more realistic about the cost (several trillion). I do firmly believe that HSR is actually quite viable in the US in many places, it just isn't something we can draw on a map and say "here we go!"
We have to solve the problem of topography vs. budget. If we want a truly national network like shown in the map, we have to accept that the cost will be enormous - likely many times that of the interstate system (in today's dollars). If the people are willing to take that cost, then it should be built, but we should be careful what we propose to make sure it is truly viable.