High speed rail

The following article describes the Obama Administration’s funding for high speed rail:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBAMA_RAILSITE=OHWIL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
The last 2 paragraphs discuss the current US high speed rail operation:

The only rail service that qualifies under America's lower high-speed standard is Amtrak's 9-year-old Acela Express route connecting Boston to Washington, D.C.

The trains are built to reach speeds up to 150 mph, but only average about 80 mph because of curving tracks and slower-moving freight and passenger trains that share the route. On the densely traveled line from New York City to the nation's capital, the Acela arrives just about 20 minutes earlier than standard service, at more than twice the cost during peak travel times.

The current high speed rail line in the USA does not run on a dedicated track. It shares it’s track with other passenger and freight lines. The existing track right of way in many locations is “at grade” and require railroad crossings at streets and highways. Sharing the tracks with other trains and railroad crossings cause delays and slowdowns for the high speed trains. This leads to the situation described above where the high speed service does not provide a large enough improvement in travel time to justify the additional cost of the ticket.

Successful high speed rail projects in Europe and Asia all use dedicated right of ways that are separated from crossing by elevations or tunnels. This means that the high speed trains are not required to wait for slower passenger or freight trains and the high speed trains do not have to slow down for railroad crossings.

The cost to upgrade existing passenger rail to dedicated, grade separated right of ways is enormous. The $8 billion budgeted in the “Economic Stimulus Bill” would be consumed very rapidly (most likely on one short rail line) if high speed rail is to be built based on the successful models in other areas of the world.

Passenger rail in the USA is operated by Amtrak which was created by congress in 1971. Amtrak depends on subsidies from the congress to operate each year. The most current annual report from Amtrak reported a 2007 net loss of $1,120,900,000. A link to the annual report is provided here: http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/AmtrakAnnualReport_2007.pdf

Congress will play the defining roll in the development of any new high speed rail routes. The pressure to grab the money and spend it now will assure that any new high speed route will have the same deficiencies as the Acela Express route connecting Boston to Washington, D.C.