High-speed rail enthusiasts dream of national system

by CalWatchdog Staff | February 20, 2013 12:11 pm

Feb. 20, 2013

By John Seiler

High-speed rail enthusiasts don’t just want it for California. They want the whole country covered by high-speed rail tracks. An alert CalWatchDog.com reader tipped me off to this from the Plan Your City Web site[1]:

“You might have seen it on social media somewhere, but in case you haven’t heard of it, Berkeley-based artist and high-speed rail advocate Alfred Twu recently posted a map he created on the Guardian’s website[2] (the map was originally featured on the California Rail Map google group[3], where additional resources on high-speed rail are listed). It’s drawn a lot of attention, from graphic designers and cartographers to transportation activists to politicians alike.

“It’s not just any map. His US High-Speed Rail map is a powerful, graphically rich statement of where US transportation policy should be heading (and if Twu has his way, at 220 mph). This map comes to us after he published a rail map of California last year….

“Twu is no stranger to high-speed rail advocacy. He’s worked on getting California’s high speed rail approved in the 2008 elections. Yet the map might be his biggest impact yet on the debate surrounding high-speed rail in the US.”

Here’s the map:

[4]

By my reckoning, a Los Angeles-to-New York City trip on such a system would take 24 hours. That’s assuming it goes 220 mph the full way. If it stops to pick up passengers, it would be longer.

Here’s another map of a proposed high-speed rail system:

[5]

Oh, wait. That’s United Airlines’ route map. Other airlines have similar maps.

And instead of taking a day or more to get from L.A. to NYC, it takes only 5 hours and 23 minutes. And costs just $318, nonstop[6].

The high-speed rail enthusiasts, including Gov. Jerry Brown and President Obama, seem not to know that in 1903 Americans Orville and Wilbur Wright invented trains with wings[7]. Nowadays, the flying trains hold hundreds of people and fly in excess of 500 mph.

Safety

And they’re safe. The last fatal crash of a commercial airline was four years ago[8].

By contrast:

* A June 2011 train crash in Reno, Nev. killed six.

* Also in June 2011[9], “NORTH BERWICK, Maine — An Amtrak train traveling at 70 mph smashed into a tractor-trailer Monday in a fiery collision that killed the truck driver, injured a half-dozen others and sent flames more than three stories high, a witness and officials said.”

* In June 2012 in Oklahoma,[10] “Three crew members were killed when the Union Pacific trains slammed into each other Sunday morning just east of Goodwell, about 300 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.”

* In Aug. 2011 in Ellicott City, Md.[11], “Days before they were due back at college, two friends on a midnight stroll across a train trestle in Ellicott City died in a freak accident in which a passing freight train derailed, dumping thousands tons of coal down from the raised tracks.” The girls were 19.

* In Nov. 2012 in Midland, Tex., four people were killed when a train slammed into a parade of veterans[12].

These were low-speed trains. High-speed rail would be going much faster, and cause much more damage.

This is a technology that is unsafe at any speed. Flying still is the safest, and cheapest, way to travel. Always will be.

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2013/02/20/high-speed-rail-enthusiasts-dream-of-national-system/

---