stop whining about costs to dig holes and start engineering Autonomous Operatorless TBM’s that leave behind an adaptively oriented re-formed engineered rock lining.

we have the technology to make machines that use the rock they drill through as their energy and leave a perfect lining ready for technology deployments track etc.

Those like Robert Pulliam and advocates of SKY trains forget the lessons learned by Jane Jacobs and other Urbanists about how Urban Infrastructure that creates borders or walls is the cause of much Urban blight as raised HWY’s and Raised Rail as well as High Tension Power Tower corridors create vast separations and divides between neighbourhoods.

The only viable approach the only one that will solve Fossil fuel use globally is a Mag Lev adaptive Podular based inner urban to intra urban to international trunks type system.

a system that will in some ways perhaps Never be finished..

but one that fundamentally addresses the Final Human Right that we Humans must account for, the right to free Global Travel without barrier… to afford the possible meeting of two persons on the planet to meet no matter where no matter when so long both parties want to meet.

it is crucial we bring to the physical world the promise and hope that the Internet gave to us that we could meet and work with anyone in the entire world, and that one day the next Einstien from the Slums of Jakarta could meet with the next Da’vincia of the Slums of Rio…

not only should the system be free for all users but it should be designed to ensure we do not have to be slaves to the consumerist lifestyle that fossil fuel extraction has brought us.

this is about a global revolution..

we can’t begin to take well enough…

we have to aim for ideals…

BTW, your analysis FAIL – no numbers, no comparisons to the alternatives.

What a bunch Bullshit.

No it doesn’t. Glaeser assumes half the riders come from poaching air passengers and half from poaching road users.

And assumes that the total equals the total current air passengers.

50:50 air/road is not that unreasonable … numbers on the first year of the Madrid/Barcelona have them close enough that its a reasonable rough approximation … but only half of the air traffic captured by rail is clearly shooting low. 70% is closer to current experience for a rail route of under 2 hours, which on a 50:50 split between original air/road transport would give “poached” passengers of 140% of current air traffic.

And of course 20% new traffic from the availability of a distinctive new transport would be conservative, so more reasonable is 40:40:20 air/road/new. That would give total passengers of 175% of current air traffic. Taking his 1.5m number, that would be 2.625m … still low to cover Express HSR capital costs, but over 1m higher.

Taking capture by a three hour rail route at 40%, and the same 40:40:20 split, that would be 1.5m for the Emerging HSR line. At an annualized capital cost of ~$80m-$90m, a net operating benefit of $60 per passenger would be break even on direct benefits, and all congestion benefits and environmental benefits would be gravy.

HSR systems around the world have this radical innovation that involves SOME trains not stopping at EVERY station.

garyg

So what? The non-stop trains could not gain any benefit from additional passengers travelling to or from intermediate stations, …

However, Glaeser’s numbers show that each operation provides a positive incremental benefit, so the Express trains do not REQUIRE any benefit from additional passengers travelling to or from intermediate stations …

… and the trains that did stop would incur the cost of a slower average speed.

Which is why they will not tend to attract THE SAME passengers as the Express services, but will attract ADDITIONAL passengers … those with trips too and/or from the all-stops stations.

The more stops, the higher the cost in lost time.

Which is why the all-stations trains tend to attract those who need to get on and/or get off at the non-Express stations.

Understand, yet? Different types of services have different benefits to different potential passengers, and that is how rail operators, over a century ago, when faced with your objection as an actual problem, solved the problem.

Unless stopping produced a greater benefit from additional passengers than it cost in longer travel times, it would be a net cost.

Except on Glaeser’s numbers there is a net operating benefit per rider. So serve the riders that would be turned away by the locals slower speed with Express services, that gets that market share, serve the riders that will not take the train if it is only available at the Express stations with the local services, and that gets that market share … more passengers, more net operating benefit.

I apologize for explaining this in pedantic detail, but the basic point was already obvious when I first made it, and you were unable to grasp it.

It really is a simply point … if there is a marginal benefit per rider, as Glaeser claims there would be, than more riders is more coverage of capital costs.

No it doesn’t. Glaeser assumes half the riders come from poaching air passengers and half from poaching road users.

No. And your point is…?

Glaeser didn’t double the number as it only showed seats in one direction.

Assuming that by “the number” you mean the annual number of air passengers between Dallas and Houston reported by the DOT, you’re wrong. The DOT number refers to all passengers in both directions.

I read it on a CAHSR blog post on this topic. Maybe it is off. Google says 391 flights a week between the two cities. Most of the flights are 737′s with around 150 seats. That puts you at about 3,000,000 seats. You can put in a load factor if you like.

So you’re just uncritically repeating numbers and claims you read in a blog comment. Very bad idea. The DOT publishes air route traffic information. It reports that the annual number of air passengers between Dallas and Houston is just over 1.5 million. Glaeser provided a link to this data in his piece. Did you miss it? Maybe you just didn’t read the piece at all.

Your Aviation Today quote contains no source for its “90 percent of market share” claim, and 90% of the combined air-rail traffic between Houston and Dallas would still be less than 1.5 million passengers. The point of Glaeser’s analysis is that the cost-benefit analysis isn’t even a close call. Even at 3 million passengers, twice the total amount of air traffic, the costs of an HSR service would exceed the benefits by around 3-to-1. It would be an economic disaster, just like the HSR between London and Paris.

Glaeser uniquely counts passenger growth as a negative. After all,Glaeser reasons, if HSR attracts marginal passengers who would otherwise stay home, that’s a negative from a CO2 standpoint.

When the Libertarians have to resort to Pol Pot style Anarcho-Syndicalist arguments to make their case–you know they are in trouble.

Your suspicion of a few intermediate stops is ridiculous.

Paris-Lyon is now basically 100% train. Paris London is now over 70% train whereas before Eurostar it was 73% air. Madrid Barcelona is rapidly switching to rail only.
From Aviation Today: “The European Experience
High-speed rail has historically captured the major share of combined air/rail traffic along routes where train journeys are under three hours. But this changed with the rollout of new high-speed routes in 2007, according to French National Railroads (SNCF) CEO Guillaume Pepy: “With air travel becoming more complicated and increasing airport congestion, high-speed rail now wins 50 percent of the traffic where rail journeys are 4.5 hours or less,” he said. On the Paris-Perpignan route (five hours by train), TGV has 51 percent of the air/rail market, on Paris-Toulon (four hours) 68 percent. On routes with two hours or less train travel time, rail traditionally wins 90 percent of market share.”

Houston to Dallas would easily be within 2 hours in a HSR system. They are 239 miles apart by interstate.

First, I’m still waiting for the source for your “4.4 million seats flying yearly between Dallas and Houston” claim. Of course, it’s not the number of seats that matters, but the number of passengers, so your number would be irrelevant even if it’s correct.

HSR in France and Spain and now the Eurostar between Paris and London have taken that much of the travel market.

How much of the travel market? 90%? Nonsense.

Eurostar and other European HSR routes would have even lower levels of ridership than they do if tickets weren’t heavily subsidized. The Channel Tunnel has been an economic disaster. A 2006 British government report estimated that its costs exceed its benefits by $16 billion. In American terms, adjusting for population difference, that’s a loss of about $80 billion.

The whole point of a train compared to airline travel is that it has intermediate stops and creates more travel originations and destinations than a single plane ever could. For high speed you don’t want many stops, but Waco and College Station would be logical, well spaced, and very well used.

I’d love to see your cost-benefit analysis for this. It doesn’t seem remotely plausible to me.

So what? The non-stop trains could not gain any benefit from additional passengers travelling to or from intermediate stations, and the trains that did stop would incur the cost of a slower average speed. The more stops, the higher the cost in lost time. Unless stopping produced a greater benefit from additional passengers than it cost in longer travel times, it would be a net cost.

HSR systems around the world have this radical innovation that involves SOME trains not stopping at EVERY station.

It turns out that passengers self-select … those who value the benefit of quicker trips between the main centers due to the service having limited stops (the technical name escapes me for the moment) buy tickets for the trains with limited stops, while those who are traveling to or from the stations that would be left off the “services with limited stops” buy tickets for the trains that stop at all the stations (again, the technical name escape me).

As you will have worked out from following Glaeser’s analysis, the bulk of the capital cost is the cost of building the corridor. Sharing it with these two (or sometimes more) types of services effectively means that services sharing multiple transport markets share the same capital infrastructure.

I believe this innovation was originally implemented for rail sometime in the 1800′s.

Did you read Glaeser’s posts? Because you are completely confused about his analysis. He is not judging HSR solely as a kind of environmental remediation. In fact, his estimate of the environmental benefit of a Dallas-Houston HSR line ($4.24 million per year) is only a small fraction of his estimate of total benefit after operating costs ($124 million per year). The value of that total benefit is still far less than the cost of constructing and maintaining the infrastructure ($648 million per year).

Under Glaeser’s formula, the most environmentally damaging thing we could do is buy a snow plow. Why? because the ideal situation is for the airports and the roads to be as impassable as possible. That way CO2 output goes to zero.

Glaeser’s economic model would result in the transportation system of Bhutan to be optimal. Almost no CO2 output whatsoever.

Glaeser’s arguments are slightly more high tone than Randal O’Toole’s arguments, but possibly more disingenuous.

Making stops would reduce the time advantage compared to flying or driving and the shift the cost-benefit ratio even further against HSR.

There are 4.4 million seats flying yearly between Dallas and Houston. HSR would likely capture 90% of that in time.

And where did you get that number from? The Department of Transportation data, cited by Glaeser, reports a total of 1.567 million passengers flying between Dallas and Houston per year.

At the same time, if Glaeser is correct in believing that a city-pair with well over 3m air trips will only generate 1.5m rail trips for Express HSR, he is misrepresenting the current three tier HSR policy … indeed, it seems that despite of his reputation, he has not bothered to become acquainted with the HSR policy he is addressing.

No state with aspirations of getting funding will present a 240 mile Express HSR corridor with a maximum ridership potential of 1.5m … rather, it would be developed as an Emerging HSR (110mph) or Regional HSR (125mph) corridor. While this could well halve potential ridership, it would slash capital costs by anywhere from 2/3 to 9/10 of the cost of an Express HSR corridor.