Sunday Train: The Birmingham Hub | 9 comments (9 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Sunday Train: The Birmingham Hub (none / 0)

Herein lies the problem of transcontinental rail: How would I get from Colorado Springs to Atlanta with this plan? Would it help to propose some specific routes, in terms of station lists, to help understand the proposal? Lines on a map are a step towards a solution, but the hard thing about long-distance rail travel is that every time you have to change trains, you lose a LOT of time.

A route like

Denver
La Junta
Kansas City
Birmingham
Atlanta

with a change at each of these stations would be quite time-consuming (three days, probably), but a transcontinental route passing through both Denver and Atlanta is also unrealistic.

by asdf on Mon Nov 16th, 2009 at 11:53:39 PM EST

Re: Sunday Train: The Birmingham Hub (none / 1)

Here is an interesting map of Kansas railroads. I love this because it shows how you can build a system that gets everybody within 30 miles or so of a station. Also it shows how the public land survey system, invented by Thomas Jefferson, worked in practice. (See the counties? Nice organized squares...)

http://www.ndholmes.com/uploads/Railfan/kansas-railmap-2004.pdf

by asdf on Tue Nov 17th, 2009 at 12:03:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Sunday Train: The Birmingham Hub (none / 1)

I love this because it shows how you can build a system that gets everybody within 30 miles or so of a station.

The tricky part is not getting the majority of people within 30 miles of a potential station location at every wheat silo on a railway line - especially in the Midwest, where the towns and cities were originally built by and for rail ... its sorting out the finance in our upside down public finance system to run the passenger services to offer transport services at those stations.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Nov 17th, 2009 at 02:24:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Sunday Train: The Birmingham Hub (none / 0)

The short answer is, not many people would - on the slower trains, the median trip is around 6hrs, and on the faster trains less than that.

But the fact that a particular type of trip does not dominate does not mean it should be disregarded - after all, that is one of the problems with the Auto-Uber-Alles mentality.

Further, normally one would say, "and bear in mind that development of corridors is not synchronized, due to the bottom-up nature of the panning", but since both the Midwest and Colorado are further ahead than the Southeatsern states outside of VA and NC, that'd not be an issue for this trip.

There are three STRACNET corridors heading east from Colorado, counting the dogleg at Cheyenne, with St. Louis offering the most direct route to Atlanta. So I would say:

Colorado Springs / Denver & Denver / St. Louis would not have any long wait at Denver, since a Front Range HSR would have multiple daily trips as would the Denver/STL corridor.

And then in the Appalachian Hub:

St. Louis / Nashville / Chattanooga / Atlanta

The St. Louis connector is not shown above - it runs from that "bump" on the Nashville/Memphis STRACNET corridor to Cairo, IL, and then up STRACNET corridor along the Illinois/Missouri border to St. Louis.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Nov 17th, 2009 at 01:17:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Sunday Train: The Birmingham Hub | 9 comments (9 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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