High Speed Rail is THE way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions!
From a January 2006 report “High Speed Rail and Greenhouse Gas Emissions” by the Center for Clean Air Policy and the Center for Neighborhood Technology:
See that big bar there on the left hand side? That’s California!
(And if I read the report correctly, this was even calculated based on the assumption that diesel powered trains would be used - CAHSR actually calls for electric operation, which should result in even higher savings).
Come on, Arnold, we want to know why you won’t support it.
[via RAFT]
Posted in: Uncategorized | April 30, 2007 9:35 pm | Comments: (2)
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Amtrak is planning to roll out new Acela service this July, providing nonstop service between New York and Philadelphia and also between Washington and Philadelphia.
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Schwarzenegger moves to slash funding for the state’s $40-billion system, citing other transportation needs.
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Story argues that contrary to what Union Pacific says, double tracking is not required for start of commuter rail between Ventura and Santa Barbara.
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If there had been any remaining doubts among investors about the financial health of the US rail industry, they would have been dispelled last month when Berkshire Hathaway revealed that it had taken substantial shareholdings in three Class I railroads.
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December 9, 2007 confirmed as opening date for HSL Zuid service. Service will launch with interim equipment limited to speeds of 160kph, giving a trip time of 2h 12min from Amsterdam to Brussels. High speed trainsets should be ready in late 2008.
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Toronto Transit Commission has approved plans for approximately 122 km of new light rail route costing C$6bn that, along with the current tram network, would cover much of the city.
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The Consortium of Alstom, Iecsa, Emepa and Isolux emerged as the only candidate to build Argentina’s first high speed line when technical bids for the 710 km Buenos Aires - Córdoba project were opened on April 27.
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On March 6 Alstom submitted the first bid for its distributed power AGV high speed trainset to Italian private operator NTV. The offer covered 25 AGV sets of 11 cars, with a further 10 sets as an option.
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Alstom is offering to supply Duplex trainsets to Argentina. In a bid submitted on March 27 as part of a consortium, Alstom quoted for eight Duplex sets to operate the first phase of the proposed high speed line between Buenos Aires, Rosario and Córdoba.
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Last year Alstom prequalified, along with rival bidder Siemens, to supply a fleet of up to 120 sets for international services with an eye to the future opening of Europe’s cross-border passenger market, possibly using POS power cars.
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THREE CONTRACTS totalling 7·1bn riyals were signed on April 3 covering construction of 1 765 km of the North-South Railway in Saudi Arabia (RG 4.07 p184). Minister of Finance Dr Ibrahim Al-Assaf said the work would be completed in 42 months.
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Page publishing rail-related news and press releases (in German)
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News reports from the rail industry
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FRENCH Minister of Transport Dominique Perben approved the draft alignment for the Tours - Angoulême section of TGV Sud-Atlantique on April 17. Contracts to build the line are to be signed in 2008 with completion by 2016 (Bordeaux-Paris in 2 h 10 min)
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Capitol Corridor trains will continue to operate normally and will not be affected by the I-580 bridge collapse in Oakland.
Posted in: Uncategorized | 2:21 am | Comments: (0)
Since I often don’t have time to do a full blog post, I’ve decided to start posting small news items of interest and links to new/interesting sites through del.icio.us, using their daily blog posting feature. I will attempt to add meaningful notes to those links … So you will now see posts like this one appear in your feeds. Please let me know (through del.icio.us or email: mmarchon at trainblog.com) if you have any links/news items that may be of interest to TrainBlog readers. Thanks.
Posted in: Uncategorized | April 29, 2007 6:53 am | Comments: (2)
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Posting mostly about transit issues of all kinds, but of course also rail transit
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Transportation news and headlines collected by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (San Francisco Bay Area)
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Blogging about transportation issues in the Portland, Oregon area
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Occasional postings about European rail news
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“ONE MAN’S BATTLE TO COPE WITH THE DAILY SAGA OF TRYING TO CATCH A TRAIN IN NZ’S BIGGEST CITY. * Best Auckland Blog, Metro magazine”
This one might be dead - latest posting was in March of 2006
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Rail photography blog - no posting since August 2006
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Blog with mostly critical commentary about VTA - the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority
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Rail photography from the Pacific Northwest
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Spanish blog focusing on High Speed Rail news and issues.
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Blog of Rail Europe, a distributor of European rail travel products (tickets and passes, etc.)
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“A critique of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority’s management and operations.”
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A blog about Los Angeles public transit.
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Blogging about commuting in the Bay Area
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“An ongoing discussion led by the Midwest High Speed Rail Association on the work to create a modern, high-speed passenger rail network in the Midwest with a Chicago hub by improving and building upon existing Amtrak service. We also discuss national and
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Blog of a person who frequently commutes/travels on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor
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Announces itself as “News each weekday of American railroads. Our focus is on freight rail, but Amtrak and commuter rail are also essential ingredients. Nothing published on holidays.” - latest post is from November 2006 though.
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Ben blogs about transportation issues in general, but often also about trains. Has been fairly quiet recently
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Rail/transportation-related news headlines and articles collected by the LACMTA Library
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“Transit Miami is dedicated to the Transit and Urban Planning issues which plague the Greater Miami Region.”
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FRN is a blog about trains and the people crazy about them.
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“Commentary about Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority from the inside.”
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German language blog of a guy who is working or used to work for Bombardier Transportation in Switzerland.
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Dan Zukowski’s Transit Blog
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Blog of the National Association of Railroad Passengers
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Adron Hall’s transportation/transit blog has frequent commentary about Amtrak service in the Cascades Corridor and also more general transportation policy postings
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A blog promoting High Speed Rail for California
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Primarily about modeling
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Very new blog about trains. Has only been around for a couple days - will have to see if it’s for real or not.
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The Amtrak group/community on Livejournal
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Dan Zukowski’s Amtrak/US Passenger rail blog.
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Fairly new french language blog of Philippe Herisse, an engineer (not the train driving type)/manager with SNCF who is also writing for French rail magazines La Vie Du Rail and Rail Passion
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Sightings, photographs, and links for trains, especially in the Maritime area of Canada. Also some discussion on photography as it relates to trains.
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Has occasional rail-related postings
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A blog promoting Caltrain Metro East - a cheaper and better alternative to BART to San Jose
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“This blog is dedicated to trains and railroad of all types, from all over the WORLD! Both real trains and model trains will be featured. The blog will mainly content itself with the railroads of the USA and UK, but any railroad anywhere in the world will
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Joseph Vranich’s blog: “Amtrak is a colossal failure. I was one of the people who worked to create Amtrak in 1970-71. The railroad today bears little resemblance to what was promised. Federal subsidies to Amtrak now exceed $30.7 billion (and states have p
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French language blog about TGV Rhin-Rhone construction (not very active to date)
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“An irreverent look into the world of fixed guideway transit and TOD. Mostly commentary on the news of the day…which often will be ripped to shreds like the pavement under BRT.”
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“Wherever people gather online to discuss passenger trains, debate tends to degrade over time as emotion supplants fact. This blog is an attempt to promote informed discussion about U.S. passenger railroading by fact-checking anti-Amtrak claims and by pla
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Brazil has approved feasibility studies for a proposed US$9 billion (€6.6 billion) bullet train linking its two largest cities.
Posted in: Uncategorized | 2:20 am | Comments: (1)
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee passed Senate Bill #294, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2007, on Wednesday. The bill has been introduced by Senators Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Trent Lott (R-MS) and has 37 Co-Sponsors. The bill is now heading for the Senate Floor. A similar bill that was introduced in 2005 was approved by the full Senate with a vote of 93 to 6, but was not taken up by the House of Representatives.
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee passed S.294 on Wednesday. Anti-Amtrak amendments circulated by Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Sununu (R-NH) were withdrawn, respectively, on Tuesday and before the mark-up Wednesday. In a prepared statement, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said, “After several gloomy years, the future of America’s passenger railroad is bright. Our legislation will provide the necessary resources to bring Amtrak up to speed as a real alternative to taking a plane or driving a car.”
[via NARP and Sen. Lautenberg]
Posted in: Uncategorized | April 27, 2007 10:21 pm | Comments: (0)
Got an interesting phone call tonight. At first, I thought it was one of those annoying telemarketers, but then the person said he was calling from SRBI doing a survey on behalf of Amtrak. So when he asked if I had a moment, I said yes (I usually don’t participate in these things, but normally they never ask about things that I’m interested in). So he asked me a couple questions regarding a trip I did last November and then he said there was an extended survey regarding revised interior designs, etc., would I be interested to do that. I said sure (and I didn’t say that because they promised to pay $5 to do it). So he gave me the link to the website with the survey and I went ahead and did it. It turned out to be rather interesting.
The survey was about proposed revisions of Amtrak’s service classes - today, we basically have Coach, Economy Sleeper (Roomette) and Deluxe Sleeper (Bedroom). They had various outlines of new service classes to further subdivide the Roomette and Bedroom types - and then there were questions about relative pricing of each.
Anyway, here are the service categories that they asked about - now I’m not sure how serious they are about introducing this, but they are at least doing market research about it.
Proposed new service classes:
- Coach
- Basic Roomette
- Enhanced Roomette
- Basic Bedroom
- Enhanced Bedroom
- Luxury Bedroom
I’ve linked the classes above to pictures that they had on their site (those may not be available on that site for a very long time, so go and look at them now…) - those have photos and more descriptions about the various new service levels.
Posted in: Uncategorized | 10:05 pm | Comments: (3)
My apologies if this blog is becoming a bit HSR-centric these days, but it is a topic that really interests me, so please bear with me …
In the current issue of Passenger Train Journal, there is an article titled “High-Speed Fever” (by Kevin McKinney) and there were two items in that article that were of interest - basically, the article asks the question why we don’t have (true, European/Japanese-style) High-Speed Rail in North America. The article mentions the following two common responses that that question may elicit:
#1: “We just don’t have the population density here - cars or planes are the way to get around”
The answer to that:
Some areas of the United States actually have a higher population density than some countries that do have HSR. E.g. France has 111 people per square kilometer - that is similar to the state of Ohio. Spain has an extensive HSR network and is building even more and its density is almost exactly the same as California’s (I had already made the point about the similarity of California and Spain in an earlier post) - both are at 81 people per square kilometer.
#2: “But they don’t have any cars over there. Americans just love their cars too much.”
Well, just look at the following numbers:
Cars Per 1,000 Population
1. New Zealand: 619
2. Luxembourg: 574
3. Canada: 564
4. Iceland: 557
5. Italy: 547
6. Germany: 546
7. Switzerland: 521
8. Malta: 518
9. Austria: 500
10. France: 492
11. Belgium: 473
12. United States: 468
(etc.)
(That list supposedly is quoted from The Economist.)
So Germany and France actually have more cars per 1,000 people than the United States. So much for that argument.
Posted in: Uncategorized | April 25, 2007 10:44 pm | Comments: (8)
« High Speed Rail
Under Construction:
- United Kingdom: Section 2 of Channel Tunnel Rail Link/”High Speed One” to open on November 14, 2007
- Netherlands: HSL Zuid to open at the end of 2007
- Spain: various extensions of the existing HSR network, e.g. completion of the link between Madrid and Barcelona and the French border
- China
- Italy: the HSR network should eventually form a ‘T’ structure with one line from Turin through Milan towards Venice and the second line going from Milan south to Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples
- Switzerland: the new base tunnels below the Loetschberg and Gotthard passes will be capable of speeds up to 250 km/h and can therefore also be considered high-speed rail. Also, the maximum speed on the newly built Bern-Olten line will eventually be raised to 200 km/h.
- Sweden: the new Botniabanan line currently under construction will be capable of speeds up to 250 km/h
(to be continued)
Under Study/Projects:
- USA/California: the California High-Speed Rail Authority is planning a HSR system linking the Bay Area (San Francisco/San Jose) and Sacramento to Los Angeles and San Diego.
- USA/Florida: The Florida High Speed Rail Authority is studying a link between Tampa, Orlanda and Miami
- Canada: Province of Alberta is studying a HSR link between Calgary and Edmonton.
- Brazil is studying a HSR link between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo
- Mexico is planning a HSR link between Mexico City and Guadalajara
- Argentina is considering a high speed rail line from Buenos Aires to Rosario and Cordoba.
- Russia
(to be continued)
See also:
Posted in: Uncategorized | April 21, 2007 10:28 pm | Comments: (0)
« High Speed Rail
The following countries have active High Speed Rail systems or lines. For the purposes of this list, I will define “High Speed Rail” as conventional wheeled rail systems running on dedicated new-built lines at speeds in excess of 200kph:
- Belgium
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Japan
- South Korea
- Spain
- Taiwan
- United Kingdom
If you exclude the dedicated new-built lines requirement, then China, Portugal and the United States also have “High Speed Rail”.
Posted in: Uncategorized | 10:20 pm | Comments: (1)
On these pages here, I’m trying to compile a list of active high speed rail systems and also new systems/lines that are being studied/planned or are even under construction.
What is “High Speed Rail” anyway? Here is a definition, taken from the Wikipedia article about High Speed Rail:
High-speed rail is public transport by rail at speeds in excess of 200 km/h (125 mph). According to UIC, “high-speed train” is a train that runs at over 250 km/h on dedicated tracks, or over 200 km/h on upgraded conventional tracks.
If you have any additions/corrections, please let me know by leaving a comment below.
See also:
Posted in: Uncategorized | 10:20 pm | Comments: (3)
