Monday Train Blogging: Highest Speed | 26 comments (26 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: America ain't leading this parade! (none / 0)

Yep, I'm familiar with this mess. But others might not, so a few points:

A big crime was to not invest into building dedicated high-speed track on at least part of the corridor. It's not just that the Acela can't reach its top speed on 95% of the distance, but the big US freight trains on the same route cause delays, and a rough track surface, and thus also wheel wear and a rough ride.
The root cause of the technical problems were US safety requirements for passive crashworthyness, which had to be met by making the body much stronger and hence heavier than the French original (the Acela is a TGV spinoff). But this was bureaucratic idiocy: at low speeds, the TGV's active crashworthyness (crash zones like in cars) make up for less strength, while at high speeds, passive crashworthyness doesn't save you, it might kill you: instead of walls beding in, you have to fear hitting the next seat or the compartment wall at a speed a highway vehicle would hit a pedestrian.
True high-speed lines have been proposed at many places in the USA, getting rather far in three places, but Republican politicians fought against it. First in Texas, killed by Dubya. Then in Florida, where a referendum wrote it into the state constitution, was killed by Jeb Bush (in a long campaign of breaking the law and putting forth lies, ending with a second referendum on withdrawing finance - people CAN be fooled). The project still alive is the Californian one, but Schwarzenegger already made noises about wanting to widen highways instead (which was shown to be the worse alternative even on economy in several studies, but who cares).

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Tue Nov 15th, 2005 at 11:02:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

BTW, the rail speed record in the USA doesn't belong to the Acela - it belongs to Budd railcar M-497, which the New York Central fitted with two jet engines in 1966:

The image shows it while achieving the 183.85 mph (295.9 km/h) record on 23 July that year, unbeaten to this day. (But, tuasfait, I believe all Shinkansens are nice when compared with this...)

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Tue Nov 15th, 2005 at 11:13:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Monday Train Blogging: Highest Speed | 26 comments (26 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)