(12-22-2017 10:23 AM)VA49er Wrote:  

(12-21-2017 11:04 AM)GeorgeBorkFan Wrote:  

(12-21-2017 07:41 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Here is my question. The curve and bridge were areas where the train was supposed to slow to 30 mph. Exactly how does a "high speed train" have track section that requires 30 mph? WTF are they thinking. "High speed train" means you have dedicated track on which speeds of 120-150 mph are the norm. And you don't pull off to the side to let another train pass, because there are no other trains on your track. Oh yes, they were supposed to slow from 80 to 30. But 80 ain't "high speed" either.
The problem with American "high speed trains" is that they aren't high speed because the systems are run with a bureaucrat mentality that cuts corners. Get something built and call it a high speed train. The result is that comparing American high speed trains to other countries is like comparing hitchhiking to space travel.
American freight rail is run by competing private enterprises and is among the best in the world. Passenger rail is run by a quasi-government monopoly, and is awful.

I don't agree that it is due to a bureaucrat mentality. It is because true high speed train travel in this country is not feasible due to the infrastructure cost. Passenger trains, here, run either entirely, or partially, on lines shared or outright owned by the freight companies. That sharing saves infrastructure cost.
To build truly high speed trains, you'd need separate rail lines, and likely separate alignments/rights of way due to the different geometry required for high speed rail. Do you think we have the desire to spend that incredible amount of money, or to exert the political will to condemn tremendous amounts of private properties to cause this to happen?
Then throw into the mix how much use there is/will be and what revenues are derived from those buying tickets. It will never be enough.
Our passenger rail system sucks because the economics do not justify the spending to make it good or great.

I tend to agree. Folks often compare US trains to European trains while at the same time totally ignoring the enormous geographic size of the US. The size alone makes it more than likely prohibitively expensive.

We have places where it would work and places where it wouldn't. And I'm sorry but our bureaucrats have used the "We can't do that" excuse to justify half-assed efforts to put crappy rail systems in place. If our "high speed trains" were in Europe, nobody would ride them there, either.

A 200 mph train could do NYC to Chicago in 5 hours. Leave NYC at 8, meet for lunch in Chicago with the time change, be back in NYC by 8 that night. And be able to access the Internet, phone, and text, and work for the duration of the trip. Doing it by air takes about the same time including drive to/from airports in both cities, getting through security, not considering the inevitable weather and other delays, plus you can't work on an airplane like you can on a train, so a lot of the transit time is dead.

You're not going to fill up a train with people going from Elko, NV, to Grand Junction, CO. But that's not the target market.

You could certainly make it work in the Washington/Baltimore/Philly/NYC/Boston market. Do it really right there, let people find out what it's like, and you could build demand for it in other places.

I'm a big fan of truly high-speed trains. I rode that POS from Baltimore to NYC and back. Never again.