Gridlock, originally uploaded by Куртис Перри

Everyone is linking to this Newsday article, High-speed rail solution for chronic sky troubles, which of course I agree with:

Roads and airports have direct sources of financing – namely, taxes on gasoline and ticket purchases. If high-speed rail is going to become a reality, it will need a similarly robust stream of income. That’s why policymakers should establish a trust fund that would finance construction and maintenance. We could pay for this investment in a number of ways: carbon-offset purchases; a 4.3-cent diesel gas tax on the railroad industry that would raise about $200 million a year; ticket surcharges; and/or matching contributions from states served by the new rail lines.
A major investment in high-speed rail could dramatically decrease congestion at airports and on highways as well. A single railroad track, just 6 feet across, would provide the same capacity as expanding the Long Island Expressway by six lanes. Amtrak’s high-speed Acela Express trains have already captured a significant portion of travelers between New York and Washington, competing with shuttle flights for passengers.
As for energy savings, even the most conservative studies give trains an advantage of 4 to 1 over cars and airplanes. According to studies done in Japan, high-speed trains produce one-tenth the carbon-dioxide emissions of airplanes.

Apropos the Transportation Bandwidth diagram I recreated previously, the biggest hurdle to national rail isn’t just money; the proper right of way to construct intercity high speed rail is a daunting problem. Amtrak’s Acela Express, which is experiencing record ridership this year is fast, but not Europe-fast due to the legacy right of way which doesn’t allow top speeds. Additionally, any service outside the Northeast Corridor is relegated to sharing the tracks with freight service, slowing passenger service considerably. Even the proposed California High Speed Rail service is fast, but not that fast due to alignment issues in the right of way.
It seems there are five main issues with national rail:

1. Appropriation of significant initial and yearly funding
2. Identify 5-7 key short-to-medium length journeys
3. Identify population centers with surrounding centers with travel distances of 2-3 hours (350-700 miles apart)
4. Identify right of ways and terrain favorable to high speed rail
5. Create a network of lines which can leverage the network affect of millions of travelers

Off the bat, rail is horribly underfunded in this country, with spending on roads 40 times more than rail; $40 for roads and a paltry $1 billion for passenger service (Amrtak). Investing in this infrastructure needs to be at par with roads, which has for the last 50 years gotten the lions share all of the funding in the US.
Finding these locations is similar to the short-haul “Air Taxi” DayJet undertook which was described in James Fallows’ article, Taxis in the Sky. Besides which locations this system will serve, actually creating an interconnected network of high speed service is imperative for the success – which Bruce Holmes of DayJet expresses:

All in all, we have signed over 1,500 members, more than 550 of which are active travelers, and nearly 200 are frequent flyers.
However, a proof of concept is only the first step to profitability. The next step is equally important — growing the “Network” to a density that generates operating margin. As we shared with you, our projections have always indicated a network of 30-50 “line” aircraft serving 20-30 fully developed DayPort markets was needed to reach critical scale.

If DayJet can sign up 1,500 members then finding riders for high speed rail – in the face of $4/gallon gas – should be easy. But finding, buying and building the next generation of intercity passenger rail will take not only riders and investment in the infrastructure but also considerable political capital.
See also:

• Transportation Bandwidth Diagram
• On the Question of Zoning and Land Use Policies in US Cities
• MAGLEV Dreams Busted by London’s 2012 Dreams
• Survey of Department of Transportation Logos

I’m not sure where I first found this diagram before, but I found it again via Frumin and decided to reformat it for my own use. This diagram comes from Urban Transit: Operations, Planning and Economics (see update below) by Vukan R. Vuchic a Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania.
Areas Required for Transporting 15,000 Persons per hour by Different Modes (Vuchic 1981):

After the jump are the individual stills and I also complied all of thje information into one PDF: Areas Required for Transporting 15,000 Persons per hour by Different Modes (Vuchic 1981).
Update 28 May 2008
Dr. Vuchic writes in that the figure represented is actually from Urban Public Transportation Systems and Technology (Prentice-Hall 1981) but is available in Urban Transit Systems and Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2007) which is a new edition of the work. Dr. Vuchic also notes that Urban Transit Operations, Planning and Economics (John Wiley & Sons, 2005) and his third book of my Transit Trilogy Transportation for Livable Cities (CUPR, Rutgers University, 1999) are two other good sources for transportation policy and economic study.

Continue reading “Transportation Bandwidth” →

Sydney Pollack, originally uploaded by NYCArthur

Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73.
The cause was cancer, said the publicist Leslee Dart, who spoke for his family.

Read his NY Times Obituary. Funny story: Herself and I were meeting friends at the UN and became extras for The Interpreter.

Circles., originally uploaded by mes_tiza

SEPTA Market East Station, originally uploaded by jimc167

Navies of landlocked countries:

A landlocked navy is a naval force operated by a country which does not have a coastline. While such countries are obviously unable to develop a sea-going blue-water navy, they may still deploy armed forces on major lakes or rivers.

Link via Super Colossal.