[sustran] Re: UK High Speed Rail: Going very fast in the wrong direction

[Walter Hook]

thanks for sharing this.  getting a lot of questions about the US high speed
rail proposals/discussions and don't yet have a firm opinion on them.  one
or two corridors are a maybe, i would say, assuming a new gas tax or carbon
tax could pay for them, but this is far from likely.    be good to get a
discussion going on this in the US context as well.  I am starting to think
about combining intercity and commuter longer distance express bus services
with downtown bus lanes and HOV lanes, as a possible alternative to high
speed rail.  If there were HOV/bus lanes throughout NYC and down the NJ
Turnpike, its likely you could make it NY to DC on an express bus in a time
competitive to rail.  These private Chinatown based buses in New York are
charging $25 for NY to DC or Boston, or even less, you book on line, and
they have high speed internet, etc, compared to well over $100 for the rail
service.  In the US, once you get off the train, you are unlikely to be
anywhere near where you plan to go, particularly once you are outside of
NYC.



On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 12:50 PM, <bruun at seas.upenn.edu> wrote:

> Eric Britton:
>
> Thanks for posting this one.
>
> I wholeheartedly agree with John Whitelegg that the question of
> financing versus who will use HSR needs to be addressed, not just in
> the UK, but anywhere. We have the same issue right now in the
> Northeast Corridor of the US. Would it be fair to use general revenues
> to build an even faster system that only business travelers and the
> wealthy can afford to use? This is already the case with the moderate
> speed Acela Express having as it does per-unit-distance fares amongst
> the highest in the world. Indeed, with fares as high as they are and
> the limited capacity offered, there are few environmental benefits of
> taking cars off the road, either. Thus, I can't see why the general
> public should subsidize it any more than they should pay to build an
> airline and airports.
>
> Eric Bruun
>
>
>
> Quoting eric britton <eric.britton at ecoplan.org>:
>
> > I would like to invite your attention and your reactions to this
> > piece  that appears in today's World Streets.  Your participation
> > and views are invited for a follow-up piece , as you will see in the
> > last section of the article.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > UK High Speed Rail: Going very fast in the wrong direction
> > <
> http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/uk-high-speed-rail-going-very-fast-in-the-wrong-direction/
> >
> >
> >
> > In the field of transport, no matter how straight-forward the issues
> > may seem to be to the busy citizen, merchant, reporter or policy
> > maker, when it comes to making wise policy it really does take a
> > certain level of time and attention to come to grips with the
> > underlying issues and priorities that shape the outcomes. The big
> > problem encumbering the mobility issues of our new century is that
> > just about everything turns out upon study to be unobligingly
> > complex, interdependent, complicated and time lagged ? no matter how
> > simple it may appear to be on the surface. In the article that
> > follows, the principle author, John Whitelegg, has a go at a lot of
> > the too-easy thinking that is the main currency of the High Speed
> > Rail discussions in places like Britain and the US, where the only
> > experience with these technologies and operations has been that of a
> > time-lagged dream machine. Let?s embrace a bit of complexity here. .
> > . .
> >
> > -  - - > Full text here at
> >
> http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/uk-high-speed-rail-going-very-fast-in-the-wrong-direction/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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-- 

Walter Hook
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