Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail
by serhei on Saturday July 01, 2017 @08:06PM
(#14679880)
Many of the existing freight rail corridors are twisty and not designed in a way that works for high-speed rail at all (unless you buy land anyways to straighten out the more extreme curves) [1]. They might work for conventional passenger rail if you could get the freight railroads to play nice and do better maintenance on the tracks.
[1]: typical example -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_Curve_(Pennsylvania)
[2]: For a detailed example of what's possible & what isn't with existing corridors, you can look at this independent engineer's study of how to upgrade a rail route through Northern California: http://zierke.com/shasta_route/
Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail
by akg_67 on Saturday July 01, 2017 @05:43PM
(#14679204)
Unfortunately majority of existing rail lines and nearby lands are owned by freight rail companies. So repurposing them for HSR or passenger transport is an uphill battle. The areas where freight rail lines are shared with passenger traffic, freight gets priority making passenger trains unreliable, excessive delays and unattractive.
Also, when people in the US say "high speed rail", they usually seem to mean 180mph. That does not qualify as high speed rail overseas.
Upgrading the current low speed system to medium speed 180mph rail would mean that taking the train would actually be faster than driving (and for short air routes, faster than airport+flying).
My guess is that many existing routes would then become financially viable.