Florida Scraps High-Speed Rail Plan

[Pangloss]

This follows similar recent rejections from Ohio and Wisconsin. The problem is that the plans call for states to pony up most of the money, and state budgets are hurting. The Florida plan would have put the state on the hook for another $3 billion, at a time when it's trying to eliminate $4.5 billion in spending to balance the budget.

 

Couple articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/us/17rail.html

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/7430061.html

 

IMO the time for this sort of thing is when we have a surplus to invest, and even then the benefit is questionable. I think there's a place for some HS rail in the US, and intra-city routes are the right idea (giving air travel some competition), but it'll have to wait until we can afford it.

[lemur]

This follows similar recent rejections from Ohio and Wisconsin. The problem is that the plans call for states to pony up most of the money, and state budgets are hurting. The Florida plan would have put the state on the hook for another $3 billion, at a time when it's trying to eliminate $4.5 billion in spending to balance the budget.

 

Couple articles:

http://www.nytimes.c.../us/17rail.html

http://www.chron.com...ll/7430061.html

 

IMO the time for this sort of thing is when we have a surplus to invest, and even then the benefit is questionable. I think there's a place for some HS rail in the US, and intra-city routes are the right idea (giving air travel some competition), but it'll have to wait until we can afford it.

 

The ironic thing is that such projects could be done with unemployed volunteers, assuming that is legal and/or ethical. The problem with HS rail is that it's a big investment in something that may or may not sell train tickets. They could just as easily promote busses and traditional trains if it weren't for technology-image issues. As long as ample fuel is available, I think air-travel is the most efficient transit method because it doesn't require much infrastructure-maintenance. It may be that in the future, very few highways and roads are maintained, economies are mostly local, and air-travel is used for most/all passenger traffic between economically-contained regions.

[Pangloss]

Volunteers? You mean like "if you want unemployment compensation you can go stand on the platform and take people's tickets"?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I don't think you can get volunteer professional engineers and volunteer raw materials.

 

Also, rail is the most efficient transit method, in terms of fuel costs and safety. It also has exceedingly high throughput if done well.

[CaptainPanic]

It's really a pity that you guys are cancelling the plan. Europe (which admittedly has always loved the train more, and is full of socialist tax-loving hippies (*) ) has had the high speed rail for a while now. It works.

 

It's quite cool to do the 510 km from Amsterdam to Paris in under 3 hours, comfortably sitting in the train, with a wifi connection and a place to buy drinks and food (which are free in 1st class). No airplane can beat that kind of time and comfort.

 

An airplane might do the distance in 1 hour, but if you include the travel to and from the airport, the check-in or boarding time, the time you might wait for luggage... then the train wins on time and comfort.

 

However, I understand the sentiment in the USA that it's a waste of money. The initial construction is very expensive, and the benefits are hard to measure. It's questionable whether the high speed rail will actually have a reasonable payback time. But in Europe business travelers love the train. It's so handy to have wifi connection while you travel. There is much more space, so it's much easier to work on the train than in an airport/airplane, for example because the tray-table will actually fit the laptop, and still have space for your drink. But such additional benefits for the economy are incredibly hard to measure... and are impossible to estimate beforehand.

 

(*) I'm joking...

Edited February 17, 2011 by CaptainPanic

[imatfaal]

Agree Captain - London to Paris is now a complete doddle (when the trains don't get stuck in the snow!) , the actual transit takes longer. But its central London to central Paris rather than god-foresaken holes like heathrow and de gaulle - and much as I love flying , the train is less stressful both mentally and physically.

[Pangloss]

Also, rail is the most efficient transit method, in terms of fuel costs and safety. It also has exceedingly high throughput if done well.

 

Sure, for tightly packed urban areas. Otherwise it's a nightmare of inefficiency.

 

I live less than ten minutes from my workplace in a suburban area -- one exit down the freeway from my destination. I drive less than 5,000 miles per year at a fuel efficiency of about 26 miles per gallon. Show me a rail plan that beats my time and fuel efficiency, door to door, and I'll use it.

 

That's the funny thing about the expressway system -- it is a model of efficiency, when lifestyle choices and time are taken into consideration. That's why it exists. Those who dread and lament and agonize over the freeway system do so mainly for ideological reasons.

 

Intra-city, though, is a different matter:

 

Agree Captain - London to Paris is now a complete doddle (when the trains don't get stuck in the snow!) , the actual transit takes longer. But its central London to central Paris rather than god-foresaken holes like heathrow and de gaulle - and much as I love flying , the train is less stressful both mentally and physically.

 

This is my hope for America as well -- intra-city transit currently handled by the increasingly inefficient air transportation system. It's bad and getting worse, and people know it. But it's a shared monopoly, much like cable TV in the '80s and '90s -- it's the only game in town. High speed rail connecting cities would be an absolute godsend.

 

Too bad we can't afford it. Maybe if we fix the budget we can do something about that. Or perhaps something like a public bond offering -- direct money-raising for the explicit purpose of intra-city high-speed rail.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Do you mean inter-city or intra-city? Because rail is exceedingly fuel-efficient for long-distance intercity travel, particularly with cargo:

 

http://www.progressiverailroading.com/news/article.asp?id=16740

 

Intra-city commuter rail, for travel between suburbs and such, is also fuel-efficient and high-capacity if done right, compared to road travel.

[lemur]

I don't think you can get volunteer professional engineers and volunteer raw materials.

 

Also, rail is the most efficient transit method, in terms of fuel costs and safety. It also has exceedingly high throughput if done well.

Why can't anyone volunteer any labor and/or materials, raw or cooked, that they want? Still, I was thinking more about the labor to build the rails, including clearing the path, etc.

 

Also, when everyone is talking about how efficient rails and expressways are, are you factoring in the infrastructure maintenance costs, energy, and materials?

 

Finally, regarding European rail transit, is it really that Europe is full of hippies or is it that the EU economy has established multiple trade relationships that allows it to rely on global trade to create a much larger leisure class than the US or other sub-global economies? I always have the feeling the Europeans like to claim to be simple hippies who love culture, but that they are surfing a long historical wave of colonial exploitation that made it possible for European intellectualism/culturalism to evolve throughout the colonial period. Granted, much of this cultural-orientation has spread globally but I have the idea, for example, that US consumers are saddled with more debt and burden to generate global GDP whereas European economic protectionism tends to shelter their markets from global profiteering. Nevertheless, I don't think EU investors are discouraged from investing globally so that they can be taxed to pay for top-quality infrastructure, culture, health-care, social services, etc. Would Europe be able to maintain these standards without global investments redistributed as public spending? Likewise, would the US be able to live up to global investment expectations without maintaining high levels of car ownership and other debt driven by and fueling consumer-business?

Edited February 17, 2011 by lemur

[Pangloss]

Do you mean inter-city or intra-city? Because rail is exceedingly fuel-efficient for long-distance intercity travel, particularly with cargo:

 

http://www.progressiverailroading.com/news/article.asp?id=16740

 

Pardon me, I meant inter-city (e.g. British Rail). I completely agree with this point. The airlines need some competition. Who wants to fly anymore?

 

 

Intra-city commuter rail, for travel between suburbs and such, is also fuel-efficient and high-capacity if done right, compared to road travel.

 

I not quite sure what "between suburbs" means, but if it's something along the lines of medium-distance transit in a large metropolitan region, like "let's go to the zoo this weekend, it's only an hour away, hooray!", I won't argue with that -- I'm sure that's quite possible. Rail-to-the-airport is pretty common in a lot of cities now, and is a nice way to deal with the "where the frack am I going to park the car for the next week" problem.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Pardon me, I meant inter-city (e.g. British Rail). I completely agree with this point. The airlines need some competition. Who wants to fly anymore?

Rail travel: It might take longer, but the seats are bigger and your junk won't be violated. Not a bad tradeoff.

[padren]

Volunteers? You mean like "if you want unemployment compensation you can go stand on the platform and take people's tickets"?

People take volunteer positions all the time while unemployed, without their unemployment compensation being a factor. It's a great way to network, stay busy, maintain skills, and if you're going to wear your shoes down hitting the pavement anyway, it sure looks a lot better on your resume than some XBox Live achievement unlocks as the months drag on.

 

Personally, I think something like "Hey, if you want to get out of the personal hell that is known as living off unemployment* we now have openings to fill..." would be better, but even so volunteers always get a chance to prove their value before any official job opening is offered, so volunteers naturally have a better chance of getting an opening. Overall though, volunteers require a lot more oversight, and aren't a very scalable solution.

 

*honestly living off of unemployment, not gaming the system with a mix of false dependents and under the table income.

 

Why can't anyone volunteer any labor and/or materials, raw or cooked, that they want? Still, I was thinking more about the labor to build the rails, including clearing the path, etc.

Volunteer labor and even material donation can be a real hassle. It's one thing to be short a volunteer at the soup kitchen, but when volunteers just decide it's not worth showing up on any given day, it becomes a project hold-up while people scramble to make sure enough people with the appropriate legal qualifications are on site to safely maintain operations. Materials can be in any range of quality, and the value saved by accepting donations can be entirely lost if quality problems are discovered after the materials have been committed to the project.

Once you get into projects that involve Very Large Numbers of people/labor, you have to be especially careful since unlikely problems become statistically likely. While all the red tape can be frustrating, it's often necessary to cover all the bases on such a scale. Quality control assured directly from a material's supplier is often an important part of that process. Otherwise, the donated concrete could collapse just like those apartments in Turkey did, when it turned out the contractor was cutting corners.

 

We tend to think of things as "wood is wood, rock is rock" but something as simple as mold getting into poorly stored particle board can cause problems.

[lemur]

Volunteer labor and even material donation can be a real hassle. It's one thing to be short a volunteer at the soup kitchen, but when volunteers just decide it's not worth showing up on any given day, it becomes a project hold-up while people scramble to make sure enough people with the appropriate legal qualifications are on site to safely maintain operations. Materials can be in any range of quality, and the value saved by accepting donations can be entirely lost if quality problems are discovered after the materials have been committed to the project.

Once you get into projects that involve Very Large Numbers of people/labor, you have to be especially careful since unlikely problems become statistically likely. While all the red tape can be frustrating, it's often necessary to cover all the bases on such a scale. Quality control assured directly from a material's supplier is often an important part of that process. Otherwise, the donated concrete could collapse just like those apartments in Turkey did, when it turned out the contractor was cutting corners.

 

We tend to think of things as "wood is wood, rock is rock" but something as simple as mold getting into poorly stored particle board can cause problems.

 

The volunteers would have to have enough oversight over all the parameters of the project to exclude interference factors like mold from undermining the overall success.

[Pangloss]

Makes sense, but I don't know if you could get the labor unions to go along. They might buy in for a little while if you throw them a bone (say, eliminate the need for an employee ballot before an employer is forced to recognize a union). But eventually they would fight for that "unpaid labor force" with gusto.

[ParanoiA]

However, I understand the sentiment in the USA that it's a waste of money. The initial construction is very expensive, and the benefits are hard to measure. It's questionable whether the high speed rail will actually have a reasonable payback time. But in Europe business travelers love the train. It's so handy to have wifi connection while you travel. There is much more space, so it's much easier to work on the train than in an airport/airplane, for example because the tray-table will actually fit the laptop, and still have space for your drink. But such additional benefits for the economy are incredibly hard to measure... and are impossible to estimate beforehand.

 

It is a waste, for the most part and it might be unique for us. Just last night I caught a little bit of Stossel talking about regulations holding back driver-less cars; that the techology already exists and doesn't require any civil infrastructure updates. Certainly such a thing requires massive testing to approve for the general public. I don't like the idea of sharing the road at 75 mph with someone's pet test project.

 

But, the benefits of such technology extends the benefits we recieve from the pavement we've already littered our country with. According to the pundit on his show, you can add 3 times the number of cars on our roads, and eliminate traffic jams, speed up commuting times, increase safety and reduce the need to build new roads - all by letting computers outperform us silly humans and do the driving for us. Add to that our renewed lust for electric cars and the inevitable push for leaner automobiles and it seems a smarter deal for us.

 

Well, those numbers have to be reconciled with reality and I know a sales pitch when I hear one. Still, it does make some sense.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

It is a waste, for the most part and it might be unique for us. Just last night I caught a little bit of Stossel talking about regulations holding back driver-less cars; that the techology already exists and doesn't require any civil infrastructure updates. Certainly such a thing requires massive testing to approve for the general public. I don't like the idea of sharing the road at 75 mph with someone's pet test project.

 

But, the benefits of such technology extends the benefits we recieve from the pavement we've already littered our country with. According to the pundit on his show, you can add 3 times the number of cars on our roads, and eliminate traffic jams, speed up commuting times, increase safety and reduce the need to build new roads - all by letting computers outperform us silly humans and do the driving for us. Add to that our renewed lust for electric cars and the inevitable push for leaner automobiles and it seems a smarter deal for us.

I've attended a lecture where a computer science professor demonstrated a simulation of his pet project -- automated computer-controlled traffic junctions. If your cars are computer-controlled, you don't need red lights, so long as the cars can communicate and negotiate an order for proceeding through the junction. This means there's cars executing left turns, right turns, and lane changes all through the intersection, weaving around other cars and dodging through the intersection, mostly without stopping.

 

It'd do wonders for traffic, but you'd crap your pants every time you enter an intersection.

[ParanoiA]

I've attended a lecture where a computer science professor demonstrated a simulation of his pet project -- automated computer-controlled traffic junctions. If your cars are computer-controlled, you don't need red lights, so long as the cars can communicate and negotiate an order for proceeding through the junction. This means there's cars executing left turns, right turns, and lane changes all through the intersection, weaving around other cars and dodging through the intersection, mostly without stopping.

 

It'd do wonders for traffic, but you'd crap your pants every time you enter an intersection.

 

Ha, no kidding. In fact, some of the stuff I've read on the subject previously suggested we'd turn the inside of the car into a kind of media cocoon. No reason to see out your windows and freak yourself out - let the windows become screens and watch a movie or maybe post on SFN.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

It looked exactly like the insane pictures you see of free-for-all intersections in India, except all of the cars were moving at 40mph and somehow not colliding.

 

If that can be pulled off in a large portion of cars, congestion will drop dramatically and rail would be less important. However, achieving the fuel-efficiency of rail is still difficult in cars, and cars can't match high-speed rail for long-distance travel.

 

I think part of the fuel-efficiency problem is that as car manufacturers developed more efficient engines, consumers also demanded more powerful engines. Modern cars are just as fuel-efficient as they were years ago, but several times more powerful. If we cut back on the demand for high horsepower SUVs, fuel efficiency would be significantly improved.

 

(Realistically, we should focus our effort on the cars getting 10-15mpg, not the cars that get 40mpg already. Going from 40mpg to 80mpg saves less fuel than going from 10mpg to 20.)

[lemur]

Makes sense, but I don't know if you could get the labor unions to go along. They might buy in for a little while if you throw them a bone (say, eliminate the need for an employee ballot before an employer is forced to recognize a union). But eventually they would fight for that "unpaid labor force" with gusto.

Yes, unions are the ultimate guardians of capitalism by ensuring that no unpaid productivity can take place. I don't know why they are viewed as distinct from other businesses, because they are basically just corporations that sell labor instead of other products or services. Because they are attributed a non-business status, people never expect them to be good corporate citizens the way businesses are. It is assumed that they are doing communities a service by fighting for worker rights, but if a business claimed to be doing communities a service by keeping the price of goods and services high, it would be scoffed at. Ultimately, what is the difference between labor and any other commodity?

[ParanoiA]

It looked exactly like the insane pictures you see of free-for-all intersections in India, except all of the cars were moving at 40mph and somehow not colliding.

 

If that can be pulled off in a large portion of cars, congestion will drop dramatically and rail would be less important. However, achieving the fuel-efficiency of rail is still difficult in cars, and cars can't match high-speed rail for long-distance travel.

 

 

Personally, I'd travel on rail before I'd use the airline for long distance travel, no question. But I don't see doing that too much either. Mainly because everywhere I might want to travel, domestically, I'm still going to want transportation when I get there. That's kind of what I was alluding to earlier about our situation perhaps being a bit more unique. We have so much land area that it seems to lend itself to individual pods of transportation over group-based pods.

 

Rail would need to cover so much area that it would ruin the efficiency and scale. Not to mention we'd basically be mirroring the entire road system, which is already built and in place. Otherwise you're asking people to take rail and then do lots and lots and lots of walking, or scramble to find some kind of temporary rental transportation. Probably good for some of us piggies over here, but that's not a solution, that's just sacrifice.

 

Even if rail is being offered as an alternative rather than a replacement, we still have a majority of land mass that is going to have cars, roads, powerful engines as you pointed out, crashes and all that.

 

So, it seems to me that focus on rail is to distract from the solution with the biggest impact for americans - automobiles. Rail's impact would seem fractional in comparison. Let's get the biggest leaks first, then tidy up the little ones.

 

Not to mention, with all of the cars internationally, it's just a matter of producing an innovative solution - the framework to inject them into societies is already there. No need to convince their governments to invest in massive new infrastructure.

 

I think part of the fuel-efficiency problem is that as car manufacturers developed more efficient engines, consumers also demanded more powerful engines. Modern cars are just as fuel-efficient as they were years ago, but several times more powerful. If we cut back on the demand for high horsepower SUVs, fuel efficiency would be significantly improved.

 

(Realistically, we should focus our effort on the cars getting 10-15mpg, not the cars that get 40mpg already. Going from 40mpg to 80mpg saves less fuel than going from 10mpg to 20.)

 

I like the observation. I wonder how computer-driven cars would affect the nature of this "power". If we're not driving, and we're probably not even looking out the window, then I'm not sure where horsepower lust would come from. Maybe that would solve that problem...?

Edited February 18, 2011 by ParanoiA

[lemur]

(Realistically, we should focus our effort on the cars getting 10-15mpg, not the cars that get 40mpg already. Going from 40mpg to 80mpg saves less fuel than going from 10mpg to 20.)

I think there are limits to fuel efficiency that come down to vehicle weight and the need to have enough traction to stop from a certain speed in a certain distance. Model T Fords got 25mpg with a relatively inefficient engine compared to modern cars but it weighed @1000lbs, had @5inch wide tires, and had a top speed of @40mph. By comparison, I think the Geo Metro weighs about the same as a Model T Ford but it is smaller, has wider tires, and is meant to cruise at highway speeds but it gets, I think, 40-50mpg. The problem with SUVs and other large vehicles is that they are expected to have power, speed, traction, safety, and size, which doesn't leave much room for efficiency improvements without compromising the other aspects. They should be called "gas-market inelastifiers" since they basically guarantee big gas sales, which can be quite profitable when prices rise.

 

A few years ago, I think the Model T Ford had its 100th birthday and at that time there was talk about Ford creating a modern version of a utilitarian vehicle that was relatively simple, cheap, easy to work on, and got good gas mileage. I don't know if anything came of that, though. Of course, if it would be anything like the modern Beetle, the resemblance with its predecessor would be mostly aesthetic, I think.

 

 

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I think there are limits to fuel efficiency that come down to vehicle weight and the need to have enough traction to stop from a certain speed in a certain distance. Model T Fords got 25mpg with a relatively inefficient engine compared to modern cars but it weighed @1000lbs, had @5inch wide tires, and had a top speed of @40mph. By comparison, I think the Geo Metro weighs about the same as a Model T Ford but it is smaller, has wider tires, and is meant to cruise at highway speeds but it gets, I think, 40-50mpg. The problem with SUVs and other large vehicles is that they are expected to have power, speed, traction, safety, and size, which doesn't leave much room for efficiency improvements without compromising the other aspects. They should be called "gas-market inelastifiers" since they basically guarantee big gas sales, which can be quite profitable when prices rise.

Well, I don't think weight is quite so important for traction so much as weight distribution. A lighter car is easier to stop but gets less friction from the road. It's just the size of SUVs that kills its efficiency by making it so heavy.

 

If everyone moved to Smart Cars and small sedans, fuel efficiency improvements would be much easier to realize.

 

Of course, there are also tradeoffs of efficiency vs. emissions, where certain changes that make an engine more efficient also make it emit more pollutants. It's a difficult field.

[lemur]

Well, I don't think weight is quite so important for traction so much as weight distribution. A lighter car is easier to stop but gets less friction from the road. It's just the size of SUVs that kills its efficiency by making it so heavy.

My point is that you can dramatically improve fuel-efficiency by reducing tire-width, but narrower tires have less traction in cornering and stopping, and I think traction is generally inversely proportionate with vehicle weight, except that I think you're right about weight-distribution aiding traction by pushing them harder against the road. Anyway, the point was that putting Model T Ford tires, spare tire tires, or otherwise narrower tires would help fuel efficiency but the trade-off would be traction and thus safety, unless the car would be designed for relatively slow travel.

[Pangloss]

I've attended a lecture where a computer science professor demonstrated a simulation of his pet project -- automated computer-controlled traffic junctions. If your cars are computer-controlled, you don't need red lights, so long as the cars can communicate and negotiate an order for proceeding through the junction. This means there's cars executing left turns, right turns, and lane changes all through the intersection, weaving around other cars and dodging through the intersection, mostly without stopping.

 

It'd do wonders for traffic, but you'd crap your pants every time you enter an intersection.

 

That's interesting. Reminds me a bit of the FAA's free-flight plan, albeit more extreme.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

My point is that you can dramatically improve fuel-efficiency by reducing tire-width, but narrower tires have less traction in cornering and stopping, and I think traction is generally inversely proportionate with vehicle weight, except that I think you're right about weight-distribution aiding traction by pushing them harder against the road. Anyway, the point was that putting Model T Ford tires, spare tire tires, or otherwise narrower tires would help fuel efficiency but the trade-off would be traction and thus safety, unless the car would be designed for relatively slow travel.

Traction is related to weight, yes, but a lighter car needs less traction, because it needs less force to stop.

 

Why do narrower tires have less traction?

 

That's interesting. Reminds me a bit of the FAA's free-flight plan, albeit more extreme.

Here's their paper:

 

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/Papers/bib2html/b2hd-AAMAS04.html

 

Check out the diagram on page 7, where they have two six-lane roads intersection and traffic flowing in all directions simultaneously.

 

There's been more research since then, with more fun diagrams:

 

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/Papers/bib2html/b2hd-JAIR08-dresner.html