U.S. High Speed Rail: What's Next? Analyzing Extensions and Expansions, and What Makes Sense
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- čas přidán 27. 07. 2024
- The clock is ticking, and we're still all wondering why the USA has no high speed rail. True that Acela in the northeast has at least a thin claim to being actual high-speed rail -- but what might ridership look like if the service operated like the services in leading countries do? And how would ridership dynamics change if we started expanding the network to places like Richmond, Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, and Atlanta?
Let me know down in the comments if you want to see this video's approach expanded to Montreal, Toronto, and Chicago, or other potential corridors across North America.
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Twitter: @nerd4cities
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Alon Levy's blog has excellent writing and analysis on high speed rail: pedestrianobservations.com/20...
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Other CityNerd Videos referenced:
- Induced Demand: • Induced Demand & Roadw...
- High Speed Rail playlist: • High Speed Rail
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Resources:
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropo...
- www.fra.dot.gov/necfuture/pdf...
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northea...
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity
- www.railpassengers.org/site/a...
- northatlanticrail.org/
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Image Credits:
- Philadelphia By Mefman00 - Own work, CC0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Korean HSR Video by Train_Video from Pixabay
- HSR window view Video by Alejandro Quintanar: www.pexels.com/video/train-tr...
- Acela thumbnail By Peter Van den Bossche from Mechelen, Belgium - Electric locomotive in Boston south station, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
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Music:
CityNerd background: Caipirinha in Hawaii by Carmen María and Edu Espinal (CZcams music library)
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Contact: nerd4cities@gmail.com - Věda a technologie
I actually am one of the transportation engineers who did the preliminary engineering for one of the segments on the DC to Richmond (DC2RVA) high speed rail corridor. I don't know what they're doing with it now since that was back in 2016ish. Cool video on the subject.
I worked on that project as well doing preliminary engineering within the Ashland Area.
@@gregrelyea2854 Small world! I was working on the South Richmond segment. Crazy how tight those deadlines were for such a slow moving project haha.
My last company was working on some environmental stuff back in 2021 along that route! Also a tight deadline and no word since. Last I heard they were hoping for construction to start in 2023 but we all know how that goes.
Very cool
The fourth track in Arlington-Alexandria should go into construction in 2023! also work on projects in the corridor
I would love to see a video on “interlining and transfer penalties”!
You are one of the few US channels that routinely pays attention to Mexico
Could you please do this for thr route from MXDF to Leon and the eventual extension to Guadalajara?
Since the line is already being constructed and the extension already planned, it would be interesting if you would suggest to do any part of the line different
It would be interesting to compare with the northeast corridor
The most dense and feasible alternative for passenger trains in Mexico: CDMX-Querétaro-Bajío with branches to Guadalajara or Aguascalientes. There's the potential demand, the terrain isn't too extreme, it could work.
Yeah, but I live in Cd. Hidalgo, Michoacán, so I want them to use the CDMX-Toluca-Morelia-GDL alignment :-) ME ME ME! IT'S ALL ABOUT MY NEEDS! :-D
@@n1gak both routes could work IMO, there is good potential demand in northern Michoacán / Southern Jalisco
My original idea for this video was actually "top ten potential high speed rail corridors in North America," of which I fully expected CDMX-Guadalajara to be in the top two. Turned out to be way too gnarly a topic, but yes I would love to do this!
@@n1gak I actually touched on both of those potential alignments in one of my videos
I'd love to see a similar analysis for the Midwest, or maybe just more generally for the most important corridors in the country. I find the corridor analysis to be more interesting than the city pair analysis, but I'm in the "rail fan who will take a train because he likes trains" camp so I'll watch any train video you make. Come to think of it, I'll probably watch whatever you decide to put out so maybe my advice isn't very useful from an analytical standpoint
As someone from Cleveland the Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati corridor would be cool.
@@ericpopcorn6607 As someone from Cincinnati the Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Cleveland corridor would be pretty cool
Midwest please! Everything from Pitt to KC, to St Louis, to Minneapolis.
I know everyone wants to talk about Chicago, which is 100% fair, but I'm also curious if a Pitt-Columbus-Indy-STL route makes practical sense. Was just reading this a couple days ago, and lots of people discussing in the comments about Indy and Columbus vs Toledo and Cleveland.
pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-rail-for-the-eastern-united-states/
Same.
Grew up in Chicago, live in Pittsburgh, love New York, I need to see this corridor!
An Acela extension would do so much for the region. Raleigh to Charlotte is already a pretty well-traveled corridor, at least for this area. The Piedmont/Carolinian completes 4 round trips daily and sees decent ridership despite 50+ year old equipment, poor advertising, and poor multimodal access to stations (Charlotte desparately needs to finish up the new Gateway Station). The NCDOT Rail Division is ridiculously underfunded but do a good job with what they are given. NC is really an underrated state for rail travel and has a rich history as such.
But I have to wonder what the chances are of electrification, track upgrades, and grade separations across 4 new states with mostly conservative governments. I was thinking originally that the infrastructure bill would have been the best chance for SEHSR. Maybe 2040? 2050? Seems like the stars would really have to align for such a project.
Great video!
This comment introduced me to your channel. I’ve been looking for a urbanism/transportation channel that focuses on NC/Raleigh.
Subscribed!
Great comment, thanks!
@@tysonmcjunkin708 Thank you!!
4 trains a day is pathetic when the Acela extension gets finished then you will see the real ridership
Shows how bad they are at marketing it, but the Richmond-Raleigh link along mostly state-owned passenger-only ROW is actively being developed and got a couple billion in federal funding. There's also been double-tracking along the Raleigh-Charlotte line.
None of that is set for true high speed rail, but just getting a regional system between Richmond and Raleigh with stops in between online is a win.
Linking Raleigh with Fayetteville and Sanford and Apex and Cary with a southern regional line (planning is active down to at least Sanford) would be a huge win if it let that region dodge highway widening, too.
New York has a much higher proportion of residents who don’t own a car than other American cities, right? How much extra demand does that create for rail trips on the shorter end? After all, if you don’t own a car, you can’t just get in and go. You could rent one, but that adds time and money costs that could easily outweigh the overhead of getting to a rail station.
Also, when traveling to NYC, high-speed rail eliminates the need to pay for toll bridges and to find and pay for parking.
For HSR... it kinda doesn't, there are busses and slower rail. So it kinda doesn't apply here, Like in Japan if you didn't have a JR Pass and wanted to go from Tokyo to Atami, You could take the Shinkansen, but it is very expensive, so instead people take the slow train or bus.
I would submit that for someone who doesn't own a car a bus trip and a car trip are roughly fungible with each other, the cost in time and money to take a bus trip is probably roughly equivalent to the amortized cost of owning a car for that trip. There was a video in the past about how people tend to say he overstimates the cost of driving because in their minds a car trip is effectively free except fuel and time, because you're already required to own a car to live.
One way i saw someone adjust his gravity model was to use the local transit ridership figures instead of raw pop because cities that solved the last mile problem are nicer to visit via rail than ones where you have to rent a car anyway so just take your own.
It has interesting results as smaller cities like Rochester will punch above their weight. It also showcases which cites need to get there act together on transit.
@@jasonreed7522 that is a neat idea
When you mentioned that the airport was placed between Raleigh and Durham, that reminded me of the great convenience of having high speed rail connections at airports like CDG or FRA. It was great to step off the plane, clear customs, and hop on my train without ever leaving the terminal building. We should connect our airports to HSR.
And FRA even is it's own HSR station beside the one in downtown Frankfurt - with most German cities having multiple stops and also a lot more in between. The 75 mile distance mentioned, where a train is faster than a train should be the maximum distance between two stops - even if there's only a mid-size town. Also a lot of the smaller airports might just be obsolete with a reasonable network of high speed rail.
I like how you started off trying to show how the extension would perform, and inadvertently showed why it hasn't happened yet. The piece that would go well as a next step for evaluating the ATL-GSP-CLT leg would be to compare that possible section against other existing sections in the world, and let us know how a 4.something performs in the real world. We know that NY-DC crushes, but does a 4.something generally come out successful?
This is a great comment, and I regret not giving some sort of comparison (I usually do in these kinds of videos!). Spain has ALL KINDS of sub-4something segments. France does too.
I definitely would like to see more videos applying these analyses to other corridors in NA. There are some people out there that say build high speed everywhere because it's always worth it, and others that say it's always an expensive boondoggle unless you're in a select few places on the globe. It's nice to have an easily digestible reality check.
I really wanted to do something more expansive for this video (I mention this near the end), but man it was a lot more work than I was expecting. Not the analysis, but figuring out how to explain and visualize it....which is a work in progress
Everywhere is not what people are asking for you are just stuck in the 19th century
@@CityNerd The more expansive network would probably not need the nice animations, just the RPI end result and the Google Satellite route overview with shoutouts to some interesting cities.
I'd love to see some more detailed analysis of how local public transit availability in a destination city will affect ridership. To reference CAHSR since I'm from California, there's basically no chance that I'd take CAHSR from SoCal to Fresno/Bakersfield over a car, because I'm going to be stuck renting a car or taking ever more expensive ubers once I get there - the local transit is just not viable.
My 2 cents, if I needed a car on the other side of my trip I would only take HSR if I could save >2 hours.
I'd like to imagine the increased population/business would bring in the necessary funds and public opinions to better fund transit options for the rail riders in these mid-sized cities. At least for Fresno/Bakersfield. Also: renting a car is a lot cheaper than people think if its for, say, a weekend. ~$30/day.
@@raygunn13 While renting a car is not super expensive, you still have to pay for gas on top of that, and have to worry about availability. I do the Las Vegas to Los Angeles trip often, and wish there was high speed rail for traveling to LA, since the transit is viable over there. Can't imagine very many people coming to Las Vegas and relying on our transit "system", which consists of a useless monorail and a bus system that's always late.
Yeah the last-mile problem will be a significant issue for many cities. The Brightline expansion at Orlando airport, scheduled for 2023, will leave many just renting a car at the airport. There is like a few very long bus routes to WDW, downtown, and the tourist hub of Intl. Drive
@@AssBlasster There is the eventual extension of brightline to disney and sunrail to the airport.
Lots of support for a Midwest version of this... use Chicago as the core station for the transfer calculations, and do the region, with Milwaukee, Minneapolis, STL, Indianapolis, Detroit and so on. Amtrak's 2035 planning had notes about increasing service levels and speed for most lines into Chicago, and it would be cool to see how the potential demand compares to the NEC levels you go into here.
It would match it service needs to be upgraded first.
Do this for the Midwest, the Midwest has very few city pairs that are amazing on their own but the Midwest has huge network potential
He finally has and discovered HSR around Chicago is only viable with Chicago being in the middle of around a three hour journey. Milwaukee to Indianapolis,
Quad Cities to Fort Wayne, Springfield to Grand Rapids. Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Detroit to Chicago are too far for multiple HSR trains daily... Amtrak intercity trains with a top speed of at most 110 MPH is best suited for the longer routes... Keep in mind if you are going to spend for very expensive HSR infrastructure along new right of ways any HSR train operator would desire to run multiple HSR trains daily, like every hour or 90 minutes starting from 8 am to 8 pm and reaching their destination by 11 pm...
Please CityNerd, PLEASE TALK ABOUT INTERLINING AND BRANCHES!! Your way of presenting and analyzing is just so damn satisfying - regardless of the topic. The fact that the topic is high-speed rail makes it even better!
Hopefully that final map you made will one day be reality, this country needs a high-speed rain line like that one.
thanks nerd. always looking forward to the weekly vid.
This is one of your nerdiest videos yet! And I've gotta say I love that.
But this does make me wonder, do full analyses also give weight to metro density and time needed to get to the station or airport on average? For sprawling cities like Atlanta I assume that's probably worse than denser areas along the traditional ACELA corridor which might add weight to driving (and maybe to flights for folks who live closer to the airport than the train station). Which sadly for me might lower that weight even further. I have to imagine lines out to the Midwest cities or Canada probably have higher weight than anything south of DC.
This definitely seems like a definitive limiting factor to this analysis, especially when you factor in mobility in a destination city as well.
For instance, I now live on the outskirts of Chicago, and my parents live on the even further outskirts of St. Louis. I would love to take the train down there, and while it's not such a huge problem for Chicago (I could take commuter rail to the main station downtown, but at the cost of at least an extra hour, plus transfer), once I get to St. Louis, I'm basically screwed, since there's not really a way to get from the train station to the outskirts, except by car.
Thus, even though the distance is only about 300 miles (almost ideal, based on the above model), a car still ends up being faster and easier, unfortunately. So weighting factors in terms of density and transit score would probably have a pretty significant effect on this model.
Yeah, I've thought of this and I'm not sure what to do with it. I've definitely had people comment that Dallas-Houston isn't really that strong a pair because the transit is had and sprawl is terrible. It's intuitive, but I need to see the data!
Build the rail first and the density will follow. It's already happening in Atlanta due to the investment in walkable/bikeable infrastructure. People way out in the suburbs will be left out, but that's their choice.
@@TommyJonesProductions Local Rail if you zone properly and have a housing demand sure. High Speed no.
One thing that Atlanta has going for it is heavy rail, which larger cities like Dallas and Houston don't. And people do actually use it, as it connects the main areas (downtown, airport, midtown, buckhead, etc.). There's lots of existing TODs, and lots more being built. There's a plan to build a huge multi-modal station in downtown (in what is currently a huge parking lot) right next to the hub station of the heavy rail network (Five Points). People will definitely be able to get to and from it by heavy rail, the streetcar, bus, or even just driving as its right by I-20 and I-75/I-85. It's also walking distance from a lot of sports stadiums, a nice bonus.
It is probably true that people in Gainesville/Athens aren't going to schlep to downtown just to take a train to Greenville SC. But there's plenty of demand in the more intown areas, and the metro is growing quite fast. Lots of urban renewal happening too, which for better or for worse brings tons of people into the city, especially wealthy people.
Atlanta also makes a lot of sense for developing a regional network across the South. It's centrally located, with natural connections to Charlotte and Greenville, as well as Chattanooga, Birmingham, and Montgomery. It also is directly on the way for people in Florida going to most of the country and vice versa.
The extension from DC-Richmond-Raleigh to begin the "Southeast Corridor" is an immediate must. It is realistic in distance and time, and is on a relatively straight routing.
In a perfect world, it would include an extension beyond to Charlotte and beyond immediately, but with projects like this I think it is much more important to successfully complete a portion that will create an immediate impact on service quality and public perception.
Great vid. Would really enjoy some more granular discussion of interlining, transfers, etc. like you mentioned. This is probably my favorite yt channel and you deserve every subscriber. Keep it up citynerd!
Another great example for your HSR vs driving and flying series: I was visiting Philly traveling from DC. I used my time on the train to do my taxes, which allowed me to spend a lot more of my time in Philly doing what I was there to do.
I love that example. I take the train a lot and I can't remember a time where I didn't get something productive done that allowed me more freedom of choice in what I was doing with the rest of my trip. Severely underrated.
@ 8:53 - It's interesting the "Route 128" station ranks so high. It is just a park-and-ride station, and not any particular destination unto itself. Moreover, it is located near where the original I-95 expressway was to continue northward and through the city of Boston, until it was blocked by public opposition. Ultimately, the DOT decided to simply re-sign the existing Route 128 as Interstate-95. Despite near total signage now as I-95, locals still call it Route 128, and apparently so does Amtrak!
I didn't even notice they didn't use the city name considering the chart is labeled "city pairs by X"
Yeah it's interesting that DC only has one station and Boston has 3
@@CityNerd Alexandria station and New Carrollton station are both reachable by DC Metro.
Doing San Diego to LA might be interesting for high speed rail because the proposed route is right about the 150 to 250 mark, and goes through the inland empire, which has implications for those traffic heavy places.
I would add Tijuana for fun
@@CityNerd certainly
i would recommend adjusting the distance factor to something nonzero. switching to 10 at 250 mi and 1 at 75 - 600 mi would do better at not eliminating connections for rail lovers or people with lower economic means. this would help justify the need for metro systems or night trains as well.
also would love to see the midwest alignments you mention at the end. that region has so much potential for rail connections. the fact that the 3 biggest cities in ohio arent even connected by amtrak is ridiculous.
The adjustment you suggest make doing this for smaller counties work. If you try do this for Northumbria (Northern England) then you realise some of the busiest routes apparently score 0.
I can look at this -- but what I've got now calibrates pretty well to ridership data from systems I've been able to look at. I do like the idea of having a framework that acknowledges a nonzero number of people will ride longer distances, though -- I mean people ride the freaking Coast Starlight and the Empire Builder, don't they??
@@CityNerd In a way, Amtrak's long distance trains are a "land cruise" stapled to a Greyhound bus. IE, coach seating is only going to be for the extreme cost conscious for the most part, especially for trips over, say, 12 hours, while those who book a sleeper are kind of getting a premium product for the views and the like. I am in favor of making the sleepers more luxurious and increasing the price to match, while keeping coach cheap.
@@CityNerd Shouldn't the 75 and 600 mile marks be 50%, considering that they have equal travel times with other modes?
One set of expansions I hope would work is extend the Wolverine through Cleveland to Pittsburg and in parallel extend the Keystone from Harrisburg to Pittsburg, creating 110mph trackage all the way from Chicago to Philly.
Why not 150 mph
@@qjtvaddict Oh that would be great, there are already existing tracks between Chicago and Detroit and Philly to Harrisburg at 110 mph so that's why I said 110 mph
Just want to say: I've really been hoping you'd make a video with this exact calculation for a while now, & I'm glad to see it happen.
I don't have anything insightful to add or any specific questions. Just pleased & grateful. Great work!
A similar video for the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor would be great!
Also, Parken stadium in Copenhagen might be a good urban stadium for you, but you seem to have grown out of it with your subscribers continuing to go up!
Yeah, Quebec to Detroit is definitely on the list!
I live in Fort Worth and work in Dallas. Transit sucks here. But your videos have made me suck it up and use it, because, well, it’s the only way to get better options.
I’d be interested to see what a line between Chicago and Kansas City with stops in Champaign, Springfield, St. Louis, and either Jefferson City or Columbia would look like. I know a Chicago to St. Louis route that goes through Champaign has been proposed.
Additionally a Chicago to Madison through Milwaukee might be interesting. Maybe even lumping in Minneapolis.
I feel like Chicago in general has a few lines with potential.
This is such an amazing video. Informative, backed by data, great visuals that explain the concepts. You have such a knack for this!
As someone who lives in Raleigh-Durham, splitting the difference would probably be the best, as would splitting the difference with Greensboro-Winston-Salem
I don’t think that’s realistic for several reasons. For one, a lot of the trip demand is from downtown Raleigh (NCSU, downtown, ITB neighborhoods) and Durham (Duke, NCCU, downtown business district.) Secondly, there’s already an existing NCRR corridor with pax rail transit between CLT-RAL, and RAL’s Union Station will link to the S-Line corridor north to RIC and DC. Funds for engineering were just allocated today by USDOT for turning RAL-RIC into a higher speed rail corridor. And, I suspect it’s likely the Garner-Hillsborough segment of NCRR will get double tracked in whole or part to support commuter rail through the Triangle core.
GSO-CLT is already double tracked (and passenger services do well there despite high freight volumes.) Double-tracking the GSO-Hillsborough section would be the last to-do item.
If you wanted to run tracks to RDU, you’d need substantial new ROW, unless you tried to route on I-540… and then you’d miss the trip generation from Cary, and be at a destination with poor transit to Durham and Raleigh.
It would also be beneficial to have it connected to the airport directly, so people could move from one to the other.
How about a video that shows most walkable neighborhoods that weren't built around old streetcar / rail hubs.
This is one of my favorite videos of yours so far. I’d love to see more analysis! Maybe a small series if possible, although I know you have a lot of ideas to cover.
I love the content. I would love to see a top ten list for cities that have pursued an ambitious zoning reform policy
I love this kind of quantitative, idea-driven analysis video!! Great job with it, and I hope you continue doing a lot more like it in the future.
This was super fun to watch and definitely peaked my interest. I wonder what these numbers would look like not only for the east/west coast but for all US cities that have a population over 1million and distance between 75-600 miles
If the new lines are built they will all do well the current way Amtrak runs needs to be thrown out fully go all out
wow that was a super cool video like just so fun to watch. most fun ive had in ages omg thank u so much!!!
I'd love to see a video about interlining (as an extension off this video). Might biased because I'm from Buffalo, but I think a NYC - BUF - TOR High Speed Rail route would be absolutely legendary. I want to see the viability and breakdown of that like you've done in these videos.
Thanks for another great video, CityNerd!
+1 for a 'worldwide urbanist stadiums' video. (Indeed, any topics looking at sport / places outside the US is always a welcome bonus!). Cheers
YES to more content like this, on extensions to eg Toronto and Montreal and onwards. You rock, and nobody else covers this as well as you do, thank you!
Thanks for the extended part about the calculation at the beginning. Great video as always!
Great video as always, @CityNerd - thank you!
My pleasure!
Cool vid! The topic of branches seems really interesting, would very much like to see that too!
Please continue with another video, I am specifically interested in Allentown and Montreal, there used to be a line connecting them. I think the Allentown metro is the largest population area without rail access. Many to most flights to Montreal go through Toronto. I think there would be a big appetite for "high" speed rail to Montreal, as they would be connected to many of the east coast's biggest cities, especially if they can build and improve a separate corridor to Boston through Burlington VT. West train to Toronto, South train to NYC, East train to Boston.
would definitely love to see more videos like this for other corridors, especially for Chicago-NYC, California, Texas, and maybe even Florida
I can’t think of a better example for this analysis than Windsor/Quebec City in Canada. 700 some-odd miles, with the potential for inter-lining with the Boston/NY corridor.
And of course this would also suggest a Detroit/Chicago inter-lining
Very cool analysis. Always excited to see you post new videos about high speed rail and trains in general. Would love to see the same analysis on the Midwest and southern Ontario
I'm quite curious how the numbers from this corridor compare to European corridors. People often cite Europe's increased density as the reason why their rail so so much better but I suspect in reality, the numbers in the northeast are similar if not better to many of the successful routes in Europe.
I wonder this too. Not even just for the northeast region but the midwest region... Ohio actually has higher population density than Spain, so I wonder how a Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati line compares to the popular Madrid-Zaragoza-Barcelona line, for example.
Europe also invests heavily in its rail systems, unlike the US. Density, distance, speed, whatever, none of it matters when you've got a government who couldn't give half a shit about supporting it.
GREAT VIDEO!!!!! INTERESTING TO SEE A CITY NERD BLOOPER VIDEO! So sorry for the cap lock was on.
Noooo my Wednesdays rely on knowing what stadium we fit into now... I am lost and distraught without this info!
Really enjoyed this one~ Seeing it broken down by segment wise was very illuminating.
Would love to see some content on the ridership potential of other possible high speed rail routes in NA.
I wished all these high speed rail project traveled near or under an airport. I believe you get more rider and cheaper air ticket!
Thank you for covering this with easy to understand graphs. This concept applies to every corridor on Amtrak, even the long distance trains, that create overlapping city pairs.
May you have many exciting journeys, bright discoveries and any road will lead you to dreams and cherished goals!
I think it would be awesome if Boston's North-South Rail Link was connected. Then an Acela expansion to Portsmouth, NH and Portland, ME. Just to make the Northeast corridor more comprehensive
Loved your appearance in the most recent Channel 5 Merch Drop video!
I want to see more like this. Including interline to places like Montreal, as well as other corridors in other areas. It’s super interesting 🤓
Great concept! Atlanta to New York would be awesome. Your models make a lot of sense and I’d be interested in more vids on hypothetical extensions.
I truly admire your number crunching abilities and especially still making it all totally accessible, interesting and compelling.⭐️
Of course I would love to see what the numbers would be if Montreal and Toronto branches were added (Montrealer here). I wonder if Montreal to New York would still be feasible via (no pun intended) Toronto because going through Vermont or the Adirondacks wouldn’t have big numbers… And the Adirondack “regular” (i.e. very slow) train is still suspended!
The other theory was to extend Boston north to Montreal. But that’s highly theoretical!
Disclosure: I’m one of those train nerds and lefties you mentioned… 😉🌹
Thanks for doing it this way. The Atlanta-Charlotte branch become even more useful when adding in Nashville. Not much else in the South would help.
Great video!!
Great video! I'd love to see you analyze some other corridors
Canadian nerd signin in! I'd love to see the extension mensioned at the end, especially with canada officially having plans to make a high frequency rail system from quebec city to toronto! Great video i love your attention to detail and you awareness toward the limitation of you analysis
loved this video! funny that you mentioned the richmond-new haven connection specifically, since i know for a fact that this line wOuld have some degree of ridership. i live/go to school in new haven and my ex (who i’d met at school) was from richmond. if he wanted to do a weekend trip home, he’d take the acela to washington and have his mom pick him up from union station, dc and drive back to richmond. i’m sure he would have rather ridden the train all the way through!
ps: would love to see an eventual pt. 2 to this video like you’d mentioned!
Would enjoy seeing a similar video with connecting Chicago to NY through either Indy and Columbus or Toledo and clevelend
This is a great channel. Glad I found it. I would love to see a video where you analyze the possibilities of creating new high speed rail corridors from an economic development perspective.
Honestly would love to see this same analysis but with the potential CAHSR route and the new HSR between LA and Vegas
Yes, great idea to include LV with a CA analysis. Can't wait to see this!
I know it will never happen, but I'm curious about what it would take to link *all* major cities in the USA with high speed rail.
I'm exactly the type of nerd who would rather spend 24 hours on a train (from my upper Midwest city to visit family in California) than 6 hours door to door flying steerage. Not because I'm a train nerd, but because I have the space in my life for slower travel and want to actually see landscape when I look out the window.
Fundamentally what it would take is building out the key and profitable corridors and eventually merging these networks into a nation wide network. If you want to do it quickly you would need to have the profitable corridors make up for the "dead weight" ones on their networks. And if you want to do it slowly you would only build profitable routes.
But realistically the more you build the network, and just as importantly the more local transit within the cities you build, the more total ridership/demand will grow which would improve profits on all lines and it should have an accelerating effect.
Alternatively just federal government "Interstate project 2.0" it but that's unlikely as the main reason the interstate was built was for national defense and being able to drive from NYC to LA in under 60days in off road capable vehicles. (And expedition around 1900 the president Eisenhower was apart of, and then 2 world wars happened and he was president for the cold war, its understandable why he wanted it built)
@@jasonreed7522 Oh, I know it's not going to happen ... but I can dream.
@@lizcademy4809 we all dream of HSR, but sadly a national network just wont be viable for such a long time. We can only focus on step 1 which is small ideal cases like the Acella corridor and branches from it.
I’m from Richmond and I can attest to a lot of traffic between RVA and WAS. A 2 hour trip takes 3.5 hours but Amtrak takes 2.5 hours and the ticket costs 2x the cost of gas (maybe not recently as much) so it’s hard to justify. This whole video was very insightful on why they might not extend HSR down to Richmond but I can still dream.
Video idea: I can’t find straight numbers online for this but maybe you know where to find it with your accounting background. How does the economies of scale allow train to compete on pure (non-subsidized) cost/person/mile? Like if I took cost of vehicle ownership plus gas plus road construction and maintenance costs and divided it by drivership versus train fixed and marginal costs divided by ridership, how many people would it take for trains to be less costly per person per mile? Perhaps a European example could shed light on this? I’m not concerned with ticket or tax revenue.
best video yet, great work
Thanks!
I would definitely be interested in seeing this for different corridors and with the extra branches
Seeing the interlines and branches out to Montreal, Toronto, and Chicago sounds super cool and I'd love to see that in a video
This was a good and hopeful video about high speed trains.
I loved this. I feel like the math showed viewers how simple such a calculation is. And the (planetary) gravitational force visual was great. As we’re all the RPIs
There are plenty of other factors to consider before choosing HS rail or the other options for your journey. Length of stay, luggage being carried, travelling as a family or alone, wanting to take a pair of dogs and maybe even the season/weather conditions. Great video as usual. Thanks Ray.
It would be interesting if you did a small scale Analysis of regional routes like the Downeaster or Vermonter
100% we want to see videos covering branches with transfer penalties and overall scores of all interlocking segments!
I've always had this idea, that if the class 1 railroads did what the Milwaukee Road did in the Pacfic Northwest, it was electrified and had both freight and passenger service. However electrification doesn't have to be overhead wire, it could be third rail. There are British electric multiple units that have the capabilities of either source, also reaching speeds of 100 miles per hour. The biggest headache of why we can't do this is because of our current infrastructure.
So glad i found this channel
I caught a train from Düsseldorf via Köln, Frankfurt and Mannheim to Karlsruhe. Some of those might function as “city pairs”, but the sum is greater than the sum of parts.
The question that comes to mind is how much of a real advantage is high speed rail over current Amtrak speed rail when you start adding so many stops. The cumulative waiting at multiple stations and speedup/speeddown times appear to not be accounted for in your model. On the other hand, not sure if your model accounts enough for transportation time to and from airports.
My intuition is that DC-NYC is the greatest value along this corridor despite the smaller population gravity of DC because of the amount of government-corporate business interaction, but the demand may be quite a bit higher for an express train between city centers that is truly high speed.
If you look at existing HSR systems a lot of them do have a bunch of stops relatively close to each other. For example, even the express service on the Tokaido Shinkansen stops at Shinagawa station, less than 7 kilometers (~4.5 mi) from the terminus at Tokyo station, so I don't think a stop in Newark is at all unreasonable. It's a huge metro area that gets to avoid a trip into Manhattan. Wilmington I dunno, but e.g. the TGV Atlantique stops in Vendôme of all places, for whatever reason.
The "speed" assumption in the triangle accounts for accel/decel/dwell time for HSR. Of course that would vary based on how the system is designed, whether they're express services, etc. It's all pretty generalized. On your other point, my "model" does slightly underestimate NY and DC and slightly overestimates Baltimore and Providence, for reasons like what you are saying here I believe. Also, cultural/tourism attractions. That's all legitimate, but I haven't figured out a good way to capture it that isn't subjective and black-boxy. Great comment.
@@CityNerd
Because we are not talking about daily commutes within a metro, the metro population seems to miss the mark for gravity.
GDP for the metro area (which is already somewhat correlated to population and accounts for business and tourist dollars) seems like a better gravity metric than population.
Note that DC's GDP is about 20% more than Philly's, which is more in alignment with its criticality to the travel corridor. It also increases the criticality of Boston appropriately.
@@renhanxue Asia (and Europe) are more accepting (and captive) markets than the US. My intuition is that to make HSR viable in the US, the initial routes and stations should focus on express routes to compete most effectively with air travel. It does not preclude adding "milk runs" as demand increases.
I respect and admire the dedication to data crunching and using it as a reasonable way to ground these topics in reality. Instead of merely drawing on a map saying "rail goes here cause it makes sense" and uploading. I was originally expecting this to look at it in a branching fashion, (starting with the NEC and adding in different directions to it such as towards Pittsburgh, Ohio, Albany, the southeast etc.) I think this could show a reasonable phased expansion. and would love to see a follow-up video on that.
Love your channel. I just moved from Phoenix to Tucson and would love to see some discussion about these cities.
Great analysis! Former Midwesterner here now living in Australia. Would be curious to see your analysis for a CHI-NYC hsr link as well as a SYD-MEL link in Aus. Cheers
I'd absolutely be interested in a video about interlining if you were willing to put the effort in! Thanks for the content
This is a cool style of video. I like the graphical analysis that you were able to put together and was wondering if you would consider including a link in the video description to that graphic you show over the course of the video with the total RPI values for each leg along the corridor.
I need more of everything this is. Def top 3 videos
10:55 - What I think is the fun part is the high-speed *boat* across the Long Island Sound water.
Wednesdays are my fave now cuz I get to watch your videos!!!
Meanwhile, in Denver, everything is too far away for high-speed rail. Which is a bummer.
Wow, this was awesome. I hope you do/share the analysis for including a line to chicago! I'm so curious to hear about transfer penalties and interlining :)
Love the videos on this channel. You're always talking about transporting people. I'd love to get your take on the transportation of goods. How about top urban ports or sustainable freight infrastructure.
Would 100% be interested in your interlining extension that you mentioned at the end of the video 👍
I would be properly thrilled to see a video on HSR that runs from Chicago and/or Toronto to the Eastern Seaboard
I’d love to see the additional lines you had considered!
Ones I’d suggest adding: Being out in the west, I often think of the Front Range corridor in Colorado and connecting all the way down into El Paso, TX and going up to Montana since I’ve lived and traveled up and down that whole area for the past 13 years or so.
For one thing, the amount of national parks and public lands open up a unique opportunity to get people outdoors without a car.
Good video! Quick note about the NC corridor-trains between Raleigh and Charlotte run on the state-owned NCRR corridor. It dips south after leaving Greensboro when you're heading to Charlotte, so unfortunately Winston-Salem would be difficult to serve without making a significant detour on a corridor that lacks the alignment and grade separation of the NCRR. In all likelihood any future rail service to WS would be a spur from Greensboro.
Yes, a video on this topic in the Midwest would be awesome. I'm especially curious to see how Ohio's cities fit in. I imagine I'm not the only one curious about this.
Was going to comment the exact same thing. The populations for cities other than Chicago aren’t huge but the distances are short-ish. A Midwest network anchored in Chicago should work really well, at least based on the gravity model
Thanks - love the topic and nerding out on the math, even if my route extension is massively underperforming compared to the NE corridor. I am totally enjoying adding another minute to my goal of achieving 15 minutes of fame in my lifetime. Thanks again!
You did mention that the list wasn't going to be representative, but I do want to mention that their is no passenger rail service at this time for Winston-Salem and Norfolk Southern, who owns the tracks to the city, have been hostile of the idea of using their tracks for any new passenger rail service. At this time, Amtrak operates a bus from High Point to Winston-Salem as an alternative.
No problem just build Amtrak tracks and stop using Norfolk southern tracks
That “Highway vs Air vs High Speed Rail” graph is a great phuqin graph
Would love to see a video explaining High Speed rail to Toronto via Upstate NY (Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo).
Could add to that Montreal-NYC , 600km.
(Although state borders might be a problem for finance..)