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I'm currently thinking that in-road charging/power and autonomous "driving" will go hand-in-hand which also addresses the speed thing which in turn theoretically helps with traffic management. But I also suspect that's a ways off other than for trials and testing. There will be a lot more autonomous vehicles on the road long before the infrastructure can be upgraded to support in-road power/charging.
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The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...
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One of the articles said the Swedish track only produces one volt at the road surface when the road is covered with wet salty water. I would think that a bunch of what is essentially salt brine down inside the track would cause serious electrical issues. I suppose smarter people than me have figured it out.
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I think today's approach will be augmented by further improvements in basic efficiency. Cars that weigh less and are shaped more like a fish than a cinder block, for starters.
If you could squeeze 10 miles per kWh out of a battery, 1000 mile range would be in reach.
The physics of drag, inertia and friction are constants regardless of the power source.
Personally, I expect a boom in rail and inland river freight in the next Century. That's low hanging fruit.
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I agree that here in the US, there needs to be actual investment in high speed rail going forward and not just between the metropolitan complexes on the east coast. For a number of reasons, including some we can't discuss here, it's been difficult to fund even a beginning for that.
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The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...
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Here in California there's a project to build high speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I doubt if it will ever be completed. There are multiple airlines flying between those two cities and the fares are pretty cheap. Additional flights between alternate cities close to those two (such as Santa Ana outside Los Angeles to SF) And I doubt if the high speed rail will ever achieve the kind of transit times that have been promised. The routes that will likely be settled upon will not allow full speed operation. There's all kind of "not in my backyard" opposition to the route.Originally Posted by Jim Becker
Some people may use it - if it's ever completed - but I really doubt if the ridership will ever pay for the project.
Mike
[A more reasonable project would be LA to Las Vegas. The route would be through mostly undeveloped land and I can see people taking a train between those two cities. Las Vegas would welcome such a route and do anything to help.]
Last edited by Mike Henderson; 12-05-2020 at 7:10 PM.
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
[OP]
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There is also a lot of speculation going on where people are buying land in the right of way for the planned route.There's all kind of "not in my backyard" opposition to the route.
My employer before retirement was deeply involved in some of the planning. My father used to always say it wasn't a transportation system it was an empire being built by bureaucrats. One of my supervisors insisted it was one of the ways the government puts more money into circulation.
For more info on the state of affairs > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Califo...igh-Speed_Rail
If it is more convenient than getting to and from airports it may change how folks travel. If people can get from the airport to a train station it might change travel to & from the smaller cities in between the larger cities. There are flight from Longview/Kelso, but it isn't a convenient airport for most travelers. It is imaginable airports like Bakersfield, Fresno, Modesto and others are also not of great convenience.
People will eventually accept that the world is changing and we will have to change along with it.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
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The train system may well provide service to those smaller cities but there are not enough people going to and from them to make the system profitable. If that high speed rail system is to be profitable, it has to attract a lot of travelers going between LA and SF. That's where the volume is and that's what the airlines serve.
Mike
Last edited by Mike Henderson; 12-05-2020 at 10:48 PM.
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
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I believe that the San Francisco airport is still the only one with a subway station inside the airport.
Bil lD
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LA is scheduled to have a subway connection to LAX but I don't know when. It's an obvious thing to do.
Mike
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
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I believe the Richmond California BART station is the only railroad station that also has a subway station. They purposely made the BART tracks to Russian/India gauge so regular railcars can not go there.
Bil lD
Contributor
It's a stub-line that branches from the main BART line between San Bruno and Millbrae. Depending on the time of day the trains the run out to the airport and back between the San Bruno & Millbrae stops. At other times trains from San Francisco run thru San Bruno to either SFO or Millbrae, at those times getting to/from Millbrae and SFO requires a transfer in San Bruno.
There's also a shuttle / light rail / people mover thing in Oakland you can transfer to get to Oakland Airport (OAK). (Last time I did it it was just a shuttle bus, but that was probably 40 years ago.)
I'm not sure about Richmond, but that'd be Amtrak up there. There might be a transfer station somewhere in Oakland, the tracks are close for a stretch along there, but again I'm not sure the transfer point was actually made.
There is a shared CalTrain / BART station in Millbrae. From there CalTrain would normally be used to get down the peninsula to San Jose, but could also be used to get up to the other side of San Francisco. CalTrain connects, actually shares a station IIRC, with Amtrak in San Jose. Eventually, they say, BART will also reach that station. (It's finally reached San Jose, way out at the outskirts now, but they have plans.)
Yes, BART (and Washington DC's Metro) use a non-standard track gauge. In hindsight it was a stupid decision. (Sadly one of many BART management has made.) But unlike other of their mistakes it at least had some reasonable points in it's favor too.
I'm sure our East Coast members could offer examples of poor decisions made by their transit authorities over the years, but here in California we certainly haven't mastered the problem and have plenty to complain about, at least in hindsight. LA's Metro, (billions now?), repurchased and rebuild the line my Mom rode, with her Mom, to go shopping in LA when she was in grade school. Ignoring the multi-millions it cost, it amused her greatly to ride the new version to take my sisters shopping in LA, as she'd with her mom done decades before.
[OP]
Contributor
Oakland has an overhead rail to the BART station. It is right outside the terminal.
It is a cable system > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colise...l_Airport_line
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Moderator
In SE PA, SEPTA (regional rail) has an airport line which services all terminals at PHL. The last time I flew, I used it when returning home as I chose not to pay for parking for that particular emergency trip to Florida. I can theoretically get to within about 6 miles of our home which is 50 miles from the airport via the Interstate. The airport line also connects folks to AMTRAK so if they fly in or out of Philadelphia, they have convenient access to NYC or farther south if they choose.
I actually hope that line between San Francisco and LA, etc., does get built out...while the short hops on airlines fill the need right now, a high speed train would likely be more efficient, more flexible and better environmentally for both air and noise. It would likely also take some of the traffic off the Interstate highways between these areas. Extending it south to San Diego and north toward Sacramento would be icing on the cake, IMHO.
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The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...
[OP]
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It would likely also take some of the traffic off the Interstate highways between these areas. Extending it south to San Diego and north toward Sacramento would be icing on the cake, IMHO.
From Sacramento it would be great if they could extend it all the way to Portland and Seattle. The Amtrack train on that route was standing room only a few years ago when my daughter and grandkids boarded here to head home to Richmond, CA.
One of my coworkers would always say how he wouldn't mind paying some extra taxes for high speed rail if it got cars off of the road so he wouldn't have to sit in traffic.
While searching to find if an old story, Losing Track by Judith Goldsmith was still online this was found > https://www.7x7.com/secret-san-franc...781842084.html < The original was in a now defunct newspaper called the East Bay Express. In my opinion the Judith Goldsmith article was much better and didn't mess up how the naming of the Key System came about:
jtkOn the cap of each of Smith's ferryboat captains was a gold key; a key symbol also appeared over the ferryboat docks. The key's tines stood for the ferryboat slots at the wharf at the end of Yerba Buena Avenue; the body of the key stood for the line from the wharf along Yerba Buena Avenue into the city; and the curlicues on its handle stood for the routes to Berkeley, Claremont, Piedmont, and Oakland. This key symbol and the "Key System" nickname stuck.
Last edited by Jim Koepke; 12-06-2020 at 11:29 AM. Reason: added link and qoute from Judith Goldsmith article
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Contributor
Sadly, that seems to be a minority opinion. At least when I've tried to make that argument to anti-transit folks, it's fallen on deaf ears. (I mean almost every rider on BART, CalTrain, or the other options is one less car stuck with you in gridlock on the freeways. Why isn't that a good thing for everyone?)
Since we're off topic, my Mom took a little extra pleasure from the movie Rodger Rabbit because part of the background story was building freeways to take out the trolley she'd grown up with!
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