May 17, 2009
Fast train travel: back to the 1930s
Train-buff friends have long regaled me with unflattering comparisons of the fast trains of the '30s with their present-day counterparts:
The aforementioned Montreal Limited, for example, circa 1942, would pull out of New York's Grand Central Station at 11:15 p.m., arriving at Montreal's (now defunct) Windsor Station at 8:25 a.m., a little more than nine hours later. To make that journey today, from New York's Penn Station on the Adirondack, requires a nearly 12-hour ride. The trip from Chicago to Minneapolis via the Olympian Hiawatha in the 1950s took about four and a half hours; today, via Amtrak's Empire Builder, the journey is more than eight hours. . .From Slate. Many thought-provoking links in the article, too.Obama's bold vision obscures a simple fact: 220 mph would be phenomenal, but we would also do well to simply get trains back up to the speeds they traveled at during the Harding administration.
Posted by David on May 17, 2009 2:24 PM
Typical of so much that is superficial in the statements of Mr. Obama, whether it is "quoting" Winston Churchill (when he really had just read a little piece, itself erroneous regarding Mr. Churchill, to statements about, not being sure if he had "visited 57 of out 59 states," so it is with high speed rail and Mr. Obama. The problem is much more complex than just putting a supertrain on some tracks. The technology for designing and building super engines and trains is well established. The real problems are several-fold: America is short on track mileage; America is short on the required special steel and welded tracks needed for high speed rail traffic in the 200 MPH range; there is no economic incentive for rail companies, already diminished in number, to make high cost/low profit passenger rail worthwhile; America has made mining iron to make steel difficult with anti-mining laws and regualtions and policies; America already has high speed highways constructed to convey people; Americans have come to depend on high speed motor vehicl travel.
Mr. Obama seems prone to lots of arm-waving with little regard (or capabilities to figure out) for those details that are the devil in arm-waving projects.
Posted by: Donald Wolberg on May 19, 2009 2:50 PM
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