Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 477 Editor's Choice: 49
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Train v. Plane
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[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well it depends . . . my time costs a lot, north of $X00 per hour. Would I rather work for 3 hours on a train and pay say €50-100 more, absolutely.
In reality, European air-fares are not competitive with the Tarin except for the book 3-weeks ahead, back of the plane variety (and I never save money on Ryanair and slEasyJet.) What Eurostar are truly stupid about is trying to use yield management the way the airlines do -- the whole point should be to show how unlike the airlines they are. Instead when you want to book London-Paris and a client is not paying, you have to engage in the fare game -- which somethimes means a 1st class ticket is less than a regular, but you cannot change without a penalty.
The French TGV runs on dedicated track, which is a big issue -- it enables it to run at 200 mph plus, and the ICE will do the same, as will the Spanish equivalent. Trains in the UK are truly horrifying though, slow, crowded, expensive and dirty.
I am pretty certain that if the US had bought the French system, instead of getting conned into buying a modified Swedish slow tilt train, and dedicated some track, the Eastern Corridor would be 90% rail traffic by now. What astonishes me is the amount of money cities spend on airports, when those cities have a lot of short haul destinations. Rail has one huge advantage for cities -- it makes the downtown live and revives the business districts downtown. Because airports are at the periphery, they drive the suburban office park and the edge city. Look at what is slowly happening around Union Station in DC -- if cities pushed for high speed rail they would benefit from the enhanced downtown tourism and business (though I will admit the area around Gare du Nord is a bit of a dump.)
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Kevin C -- I think you are missing the point
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[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sure European businessmen do not fly London-Istambul or take the train say Paris-Rome. But they do take the Train for a lot of city pairs with an inter-city distance of 200-500 miles and at least in principle train beats plane for up to 800 miles at TGV speeds -- the record for a TGV is 357 mph, but on steel wheels 200-250 is probably the working max.
A lot of US airline traffic is between city pairs that are 200-500 miles apart. Look at the North America Eastern Corridor -- Portland Maine to Washington is 560 miles, just short of 3 hours on a High Speed train. Chicago/Mineapolis is 410 miles -- 2 hours. San Diego/San Francisco 510 miles or 2 1/2 hours. Boston to Washington, DC is about 450 miles, If you subtracted all the reasonably close city pairs that could have high speed rail from air traffic, there would be a huge reduction in congestion over the whole US. Dedicated TGV track costs about $15 million per mile, which is not expensive compared to airports and highway. Indeed, how many billion would have been saved by reducing security costs for airports by that many passengers?
So why not build some high speed dedicated line on a few key corridors -- Portland/Boston/New York/Philadephia/Washington DC/Richmond/Raleigh/Charleston/Atlanta/Tapa/Miami - try another Jacksonville/Talahasee/New Orleans/Houston/San Antonio and another Houston/Dallas and yet another San Diego to Seatle on the West coast and then Cleveland/Chicago/Madison/Mineapolis. OK few people would go New York-Miami, but they would go between pairs along the corridor, and frankly Iove really good sleeper trains (with showers and good dining cars.) Frankly a serious high speed project could have the same effect as it has had in France, driving economic decentralisation away from Paris and the cultural and economic revival of cities that were nearly moribund as late as the 70s.
If you build the high speed dedicated track, I think the traffic will come -- but you will not get it without the track.
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But the US is being Half-Hearted and self-sabotaging
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[Read more letters about this article: Here]All the high speed options being looked at by the Feds are the cheapass 110 mph type, such as the South East corridor which will make Washington DC Charlotte a 6 hour 10 minute ride when it could be less than 4 hours which is seriously competitive with air travel.
This all seems to be build one line (Acela NY-DC on the worst available system), then argue that this proves High-Speed Rail does not work. The public needs to push for the best working system, which like it or not is the French by far.