Posted by Seth on April 21, 2009 under News | 
The dream of high-speed rail transit in the USA has been unrealized for years. Even with the Acela service in the north-east there just isn’t anything comparable to a true high-speed service available. And that is truly unfortunate as there are regions that could benefit from such service. It almost certainly would not work nation-wide – the United States is just too large – but there are areas where it could make sense. It looks like the US government is going to tease us a bit more on this front with the latest version of the economic stimulus bill that has been proposed. It includes $5 billion for infrastructure development and maybe $8 billion more of additional rail developments.
So why am I calling it a tease? Well…
First up, there are ten different routes/regions being defined:
- A California line from the San Francisco Bay Area south to San Diego via Sacramento and Los Angeles.
- A corridor linking Eugene and Portland, Ore., with Tacoma, Seattle and Vancouver.
- A South Central network linking Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Austin, San Antonio and Little Rock.
- A Gulf Coast line from Houston to Atlanta via New Orleans, Mobile and Birmingham.
- A Midwest network based at Chicago with high-speed lines to Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Louisville.
- Florida Corridor service linking Orlando, Tampa and Miami.
- A Southeast Corridor from Washington D.C. to Richmond, Raleigh, Charlotte, Columbia, Atlanta, Macon, Savannah and Jacksonville.
- A Pennsylvania line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh via Harrisburg.
- New York State high-speed rail connecting New York City to Albany and Buffalo.
- A New England project linking Boston, Montreal, Portland, Springfield, New Haven and Albany.
Of these ten, only a couple rally seem viable to me. I think that the California line, the Chicago hub and maybe the New England and South Florida lines could work. The others are pipe dreams at best. But if you want to actually get funding for a project in the US government you have to include spending in states where it will not actually work, just to secure the money for the places that actually have a chance to succeed. That’s why Amtrak is still operating in forty-something states.
And, for reasons that are beyond comprehension to me, the most likely viable corridor for success is missing. There is nothing listed there for the Boston – New York City – Washington, DC corridor. Sure, there is already Acela on that route, but that can hardly be considered high-speed rail. It operates on shared track with the rest of the train traffic in the region meaning that it runs at the slow speeds in areas where commuter rail is operating. That is an impossible solution for true high-speed rail. If they are thinking that Acela is successful enough that we don’t need to improve it then the rest of the projects are doomed to failure as the benchmark is being set way too low.
Finally, the money involved in the proposals – $13 billion – really isn’t enough to make anything happen. Yeah, it is a big number. There are a whole lot of zeros involved. But capital infrastructure projects are ridiculously expensive, especially for something like high speed rail. The most recent major project to be near completion is the Beijing – Shanghai line in China. It is ~1,400 kilometers (~870 miles) of track and the capital cost is about the same as what has been proposed in the United States for a vastly greater scoped project. The island nation of Taiwan invested more in their high-speed network to cover an area smaller than Maryland and Delaware combined. Just acquiring right-of-ways to build track is going to be obscenely expensive in the USA.
I love the idea of investing in infrastructure, especially in mass transit infrastructure. But if we’re going to do it we should actually invest enough money to accomplish something and focus the efforts in a place where it can succeed. But the United States government doesn’t do that sort of thing, so I guess we’re stuck with what we’ve got.
Posted by Seth on January 31, 2009 under Uncategorized |
And I’m not talking about the light chop that our plane has been experiencing for the first two hours of the flight down to Trinidad. Don’t get me wrong – things could have been worse and at the end of the day I’ll be in the Caribbean. But this trip feels a bit like rolling over a rumble strip in a car with no shocks at this point.
I left packing until the last minute this morning and that wasn’t particularly fun. I am good at packing and have a system pretty well established, but getting ready to go in 20 minutes isn’t my forté and I paid the price. I made it all the way to the bagel shop before realizing that I forgot my passport at home. I had just enough time to run back and grab it without missing my train, but it was close.
Then, once I was on the train, I realized that I forgot to pack my books. I actually went out to a great book store in NYC – Idlewild, you should go there – to get a book for the trip. They are a travel book store on 19th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues with an interesting twist. They arrange their books by region but have fiction, non-fiction and guides all mixed together. So in the Trinidad & Tobago section they had some novel written by a native Trinidadian (and a Nobel winner for Literature) amongst everything else. I found one of his books that looked pretty good and picked it up for the trip. And it is sitting on the chair in the living room at home now because I forgot it.
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| Looking down on Newark airport and the fleet of ERJs, plus the El Al jumbo |
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| Ahhh….New Jersey |
The train trip to the airport was actually pretty good. The train was on time and the conductor didn’t bother to collect my ticket so I got a freebie out of the deal. And I picked up another book at the airport book store at the recommendation of a friend (thanks, Mike) that has been pretty good through the first 100 pages so it isn’t a complete loss.
I’ve also managed to empty the catering cart in first class of their rum supply (apparently they only stock 3) though the flight attendant had no troubles dipping in to the coach supply. For those who know me as a vodka drinker I still am, but when going to the Caribbean I feel compelled to play along and go with the local stuff, and that means rum. The “steak” that I ordered for dinner turned out to be a pork loin of some sort, which was an interesting surprise, but it wasn’t too bad and the shellfish appetizer was delicious, so no complaints from me on that front.
And the flight really has been pretty bumpy. We’ve had about 10 minutes of smooth air in the first two hours. Things seem to have finally smoothed out now and I’m hoping that they remain this way for the rest of the flight. After all, I wouldn’t want to spill the little bit of rum they still have available on the plane.
We’re due in to Port of Spain in about two hours and then I have my quick hop up to Tobago to see what the smaller island has to offer. My seatmate has had great things to say so far (though she, too, disbelieves that I’m doing all this for 36 hours on the islands) and a couple decent recommendations. She was also rather impressed that I managed to fly to the islands for $265 round trip in first class both ways. Life is good as a frequent flier.
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| Sunset, somewhere over the Atlantic |
I’m through immigration and customs now in under 10 minutes, despite the fear that the flight attendants instilled in me. I’m checked in for my onward flight to Tobago and will now enjoy the free wireless in the airport for the next hour until my flight departs. I’m truly looking forward to the next couple days.
Posted by Seth on January 9, 2009 under TSA |
I’m just now getting back connected after my jetlag study trip (more on that to come over the weekend) and finally catching up on a few things. It seems that there have been some developments in the “security” space this past week that deserve a bit of attention.
First up is a story out of NYC where a photographer was arrested at Penn Station for taking photographs and refusing to delete them when an Amtrak officer illegally requested that they do so. I’m not in a position to evaluate whether the guy was trespassing or not, as there are some rules about being on the platforms, I believe, but either way the suggestion that the photographer must delete the photos or that someone taking photos today rather than just looking at the photos that have been taken over the rail beds during the past 90+ years that the tracks have been there must be a terrorist is outright ridiculous. I’ve been harassed taking photos at one of the Federal buildings downstairs though wholly within my rights. It certainly is frustrating that guards and officers continue to enforce rules that don’t actually exist and cite “security” as the basis when they are not providing anything of the sort.
The other story comes out of our good friends at the TSA, the department of the federal government most devoted to destroying any actual rights Americans have. Lacking any real threats or other reason to do anything useful, the TSA has decided that their version of “security” needs to be brought to general aviation. Apparently the TSA is convinced that the operators of these small private planes will need to check passengers against no-fly lists that don’t actually have the names of know terrorists on them, restrict what can be brought on the planes in a war against a state of matter that has no publically documented basis in science and generally try to put private operators out of business. The TSA won’t actually provide any of the screening required. They will require the private operators to pay someone else to perform that screening. So they’re creating more useless jobs and adding ridiculous costs that provide no value. But at least they are consistent in their efforts to continue to justify their existence in the absence of any legitimate need for them.
Posted by Seth on January 2, 2009 under Uncategorized |
A couple quick stories this evening from the UK, where they seem to be having some serious trouble this week keeping trains operating smoothly.
First off, a train traveling between East Croydon and Caterham had to skip the last six stops of its run when a satellite link went down. Apparently the GPS signal is critical to the operation of the trains because it indicates to the train where to stop at short platforms and controls the opening of the doors. Someone apparently thought that was a better plan than a little sign on the side of the tracks indicating where the train is supposed to stop, like they’ve been using for years.
A spokesman for Southern said: “A lot of our trains have GPS which recognises where the train is and allows it to open the doors at the station, depending on the length of the train and the length of the platform.”
He added: “Doors can be opened manually in an emergency but we would not recommend it at other times.”
So the doors cannot be opened manually except in case of an emergency. Apparently they’ve got HAL9000 running the trains now.
The other story is actually rather sad. A small propeller plane crashed just outside of Stafford, England on the side of the rail line there, taking out the overhead power lines and stranding thousands of passengers as the lines between London and Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow, among others. The pilot and passenger on the plane were also killed in the accident. Bad news all around.
Posted by Seth on December 30, 2008 under Uncategorized |
The Japanese have long been regarded as having one of, if not the, most efficient, functional and downright speedy national train grid in operation. So what do you do as the operator of this national network of high-speed trains when you’re looking for an encore? Go faster!
The Central Japan Railway Company has stated that they intend to proceed with their previously announced plans to build an even faster train network over then next 16 years, starting with the Tokyo – Nagoya route. The new train is expected to operate at ~500 km/h (~310 mph), cutting the trip time between the two cities to about 45 minutes.
The build-out is currently budgeted for about 5.1 trillion yen (~$56 Bn), which is pretty expensive, especially when the global economy seems to be in a rather precarious state. But the chairman of the company is having none of the doomsday gloom:
"We can’t expect conditions to be unchanged all the time," chairman Yoshiyuki Kasai told a news conference. "There are some days of good wind and some days of bad wind."
He also noted that they expect the debt service costs to decrease since interest rates are dropping like a rock these days.
I was very much looking forward to a ride on the existing bullet trains when I was planning our trip to Japan for earlier this year that never materialized. Now I’ll have something even better (or at least faster) to look forward to once I get another trip to Japan scheduled.
Posted by Seth on November 18, 2008 under Uncategorized |
One hundred twenty five years ago today, November 18, 1883, the United States finally decided to adopt a single source for telling time – Railroad Time. Wired has a fantastic article about it, with some great bits of history mixed in to the overall development of a coordinated time schedule.
Railroad timetables used about a hundred different standards. A single railroad that traveled east to west would use multiple noons: The Union Pacific, for example, had six different settings in what are today the Central and Mountain zones. The Union Station that served multiple railroads in a big city might have five or six different clocks, one for each railroad in the station, each running on is own time.
It took a full 35 years for the United States government to catch up with the industry and declare an official Standard Time for the country. In the interim the country simply followed the lead of the dominant industry of the time, the railroads.
Posted by Seth on September 15, 2008 under Trip Reports |
Apparently bus travel is the new hotness in travel in the North East Corridor. There are about 5 new companies operating in the Boston – Washington, DC area. Some of them are just new brands on old names, like BoltBus and MegaBus instead of Greyhound and Champion, and some would seem to be newcomers to the space. And these are decidedly NOT the typical Chinatown bus setups. Yes, they leave from a random street corner somewhere in the cities they serve, but they also have real websites where they sell tickets and publish schedules. Some of them (at least Bolt and Mega) have on-board WiFi and plugs at the seats. I’m on the bus now and plugged in and posting away, as well as getting some work done.
On the down side, it is still a bus. Only about 30% of the seats are full on the mid-day Monday New York-Philly run, but I can imagine it being rather uncomfortable if it got more crowded. And I did just get to listen to J.K. (the woman across the aisle) talk to about 4 different people at top volume about getting her time sheet in and her expenses paid. I suppose that happens all the time on the train, too, but it was still pretty annoying. And there is always the potential for traffic problems, but we’ve managed to avoid them thus far.
And we managed to pace an inbound flight on final approach into Newark as we headed down the NJ Turnpike, affording me this fun shot from basically right outside the window:
Overall, I’m satisfied thus far, especially since it is rather less expensive than the train options and is a non-stop trip, at least to Philly, but I don’t know that it would be a great option on a crowded ride. I’ll potentially find out next week when I make the final leg of my ridiculous 2x to Hawaii in 10 days trip back from the Philly airport and try MegaBus out (I’m on BoltBus today).
Turns out that the WiFi isn’t very good, which is too bad. I just dropped offline (from the bus to the internet, not locally) though it was working OK about 10 minutes ago. And now I’m sortof back, though it is slower than the free WiFi at a Continental Presidents Club, which is saying a lot.
Update (~5pm): After spending about an hour in traffic thanks to a fire somewhere on or near the Ben Franklin Bridge into Philly I’m not as convinced of the value of the bus. If it really was a train fire as was indicated online then I might’ve been just as delayed on the train, but this is getting to be pretty painful, even with the Internet (which has been pretty good during the hour delay).
Posted by Seth on September 12, 2008 under Uncategorized |
The traffic in Istanbul sucks. There is no two ways about it. The city is on the water, with the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus major impediments to travel there, funneling all traffic through a couple of bridges that are woefully undersized to handle the loads. They are apparently planning on adding an additional bridge on the Bosphorus, but that is still a ways out, as it has only just been approved by the government and the final site hasn’t yet been selected yet. A taksi from the airport to downtown is easily a 45 minute endeavor, at a rate of something around YTL30, which isn’t horrible, but also certainly isn’t cheap by any stretch. The roads are just ridiculously crowded. Not quite as bad as Delhi or Saigon, but close.
Fortunately, they have a pretty solid mass transit system in place. And we rode a lot of it. We didn’t take a bus in Istanbul, but there are plenty of them and it seems there is pretty reliable route coverage and frequencies. Similarly, the ferries cover the water crossings way better than a car possibly could; as busy as the waterways are they are still way better than the bridges. There is even an aerial cable car that operates just below the Hilton Hotel near Taksim Square, crossing over a park for those who don’t want to walk or drive around to the other side. Those are the pieces we didn’t get to try, but there are plenty that we did.
There is a Metro system – actually a few light rail systems that connect at transfer points – that cover the city, from the airport in the West to the Sultanhamet to the Beygolu area across the Golden Horn. There’s another tram system that runs on the Asian side as well, with easy ferry connections. With trains running about every 10 minutes and air conditioned, modern cars the light rail was truly phenomenal. From the airport to the Sultanhamet area was about a 45 minute trip, the same as a taksi, and the cost was two tokens – YTL 2.80 – per person. The one thing that is a bit annoying is that transfer between the various lines requires a new token and fare to be paid, but that’s a minor inconvenience considering how convenient the trams are to the vast majority of the areas that most folks want to visit.
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| The engine that drives the funicular. |
There are also a couple funiculars (inclined trains) that run in the Beygolu area. One of them is almost brand new (~10 years old) and the other is actually the third oldest mass transit system in the world (behind London and a now defunct Brooklyn route), over 130 years old. We tried to ride on both one day and managed to find the new one pretty easily, but the older one was elusive. As we departed Istanbul for Cappadocia we actually still hadn’t found it. As we had a 7 hour connection on our return through Istanbul, however, we had a second chance to find the old one and ride a piece of history.
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| The tunnel for the older funicular route. |
The older funicular was more fun, with the tunnel looking its age and the tram car somewhat newer, but not a ton. And we managed to take the Metro in from the airport, ride the funicular up to the Tunel Square area, have a very long and relaxing brunch and repeat the trip in reverse in about 5 hours. Plus the old funicular has a different fare, YTL 0.90, so we had to buy a different token and that meant another fun souvenir for me. I’ve now ridden on at least the three oldest, so I need to find out what the rest of the old ones are and start planning some new trips.
They also seem to have a “tap-and-go” system where you can put money on a card/pass of some sort rather than buying individual tokens. I certainly don’t speak enough Turkish to try to figure out how that works, but it seems like an easier option if you don’t want to mess with tokens during a visit, though I have no idea if there is a charge for the card and/or a discount for using it.
I’m a big fan of mass transit in general, and even more so when it goes to/from the airport. This wasn’t as easy as the Metro in Washington, DC or BART in San Francisco, but it was pretty darn close, and it was way cheaper and mostly easier than a taksi in from the airport. It will definitely be my transit choice next time I’m in Istanbul.
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| The view inside the car of the newer funicular. |
The platform for the newer run. |
Posted by Seth on August 18, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Yup. That’s the line I just heard from one of the attendants in the cabin on the Amtrak Acela train from Washington, DC to New York City.
I’m a huge fan of the train on this route, particularly in the afternoons which is generally when I’m heading north. As La Guardia starts to back up with weather, ATC or other delays the afternoon flights start to get delayed, even for the Shuttle service from Delta and US Air, which are arguable the most profitable flights in the USA. My experience has been almost universally positive on the Amtrak ride. Sure, there was one trip where our train broke down and we had to transfer to another train across a bridge plate, but that is a fun story and I still made it where I was going at a reasonable time.
Today, however, it seems that the 4pm Acela Express train out of Washington broke down in Trenton. I don’t know the details, but we pulled in to Trenton on the 5pm train out of DC and picked up the passengers off the 4pm train. And wow were they a grumpy bunch. I don’t blame them, as the hour delay is certainly annoying. Plus they apparently weren’t really given any information about what happened or when our train was going to be passing through to pick them up.
So when the passengers all came across the platform and onto our train the attendant made the appropriate announcement that they were all in the first class compartment and that they needed a first class ticket. That evoked a less than pleasant response from one of the passengers about being an hour delayed. And that brought about the line that is the title of this post. I certainly chuckled a bit when he said it, and he has a point. Doesn’t mean that it was the best customer service moment in history, but it was definitely entertaining and true.
As for why I prefer the train over the planes on the afternoon north-bound flights, I managed to catch the 5pm train having left the office at 4:10 and stopping at another office on the way to say hi to another acquaintance. I had about 15 minutes to spare on making the train and I took the Metro in DC from the office in DuPont circle to Union Station. Given a similar departure time I would’ve taken the 5:30pm Delta Shuttle from Washington National airport. My train arrives at 7:45pm at Penn Station in NYC, while the Shuttle is scheduled to land at La Guardia at 6:44pm. But on a day that had clear skies and no weather issues at all throughout the NE Corridor the Shuttle flight was delayed, landing at 7:13pm, arriving 1:43 after departure on a flight that takes, at most, about 45 minutes. My train might be a couple minutes late thanks to the extra stop at Trenton, but I’ll still make it home within ~15 minutes of when I would have had I flown. And the train is way more consistent in its ability to arrive around when it is supposed to. Sure, the one train today was late, but there aren’t systemic delays that are affecting all trains, unlike the air traffic system in the NYC area.
Lower stress, bigger seats, a more reliable schedule, a much tamer ridiculous security theater and lower fares. All in exchange for about 15 extra minutes on the total travel time. And I still get my Continental OnePass miles for the trip or Amtrak Guest Rewards Points. What’s not to like about the train?
Posted by Seth on June 30, 2008 under Uncategorized |
I’ve been to Philadelphia a couple times for work, and I even spent the night once for pleasure, but I never really got out to see the city. This past weekend I set out to address that issue, planning a get-away with my other half to celebrate our anniversary. Part of the fun for me was that the trip was a complete surprise for her. I gave her almost no details, other than a departure time on Friday and some vague guidelines on events (including a MLB game on Saturday, but not which one). Heading down to Philadelphia on Amtrak was incredibly easy. I’ve often suggested that the train is better than flying for the North-East Corridor, and after this weekend’s trips I am more steadfast in that opinion.
So we got on the train, popped a split of Proseco and had some cheese and crackers and enjoyed the ride into town. We booked in to the Hilton Garden Inn ($55 on Priceline versus a list price of $159 on Hilton.com, and they gave me my HH Diamond benefits anyway, though I don’t think they were supposed to). Actually, the HGI was the highlight of the trip. We got a nice room upgrade, free drinks and free breakfast and everyone was incredibly nice. I actually filled out a comment card lauding some of them; it was that good.
That night we headed to Buddakan for dinner, an experience that we’d both been looking forward to for some time. And boy were we disappointed. The scene was what we expected – “hip & cool” – but the food was most certainly not up to par. The menu came loaded with options like “Zen-gria” and “dip sum” donuts. We were surprised to not find Moons over my Hammy™ on the menu (nod to the wife for that gem). We ordered five appetizers for our dinner. At most restaurants the apps are better than the entrees, with the chef willing to take a bit more risk on getting creative. And this was supposed to be a haven of new flavors, so we thought we made a good choice. Shrimp & Scallop Spring Rolls, King Crab Tempura, Tuna Carpaccio “Pizza,” Lobster Fried Rice and Hot Eel Dice were the choices. And here’s how they fared:
- Shrimp & Scallop Spring Rolls – Probably the best of the five, with decent chunks of the shellfish and a light wrapper. But that was it. No other flavors mixed in the stuffing. The dipping sauces were pretty good.
- King Crab Tempura – Overly soggy and lacking in flavor. We were spoiled by having the king crab app at Morimoto earlier in the week, but I was still expecting some crab flavor to seep through. I was denied.
- Tuna Carpaccio “Pizza” – I was hesitant to order it because it had “pizza” in the name. I should’ve trusted my gut. Without the sauce it was sliced tuna and avocado on a toasted pita. And neither the tuna nor the avocado were all that great. The sauce was a soy/wasabi blend, so that added some flavor to it and made it passable, but really just barely.
- Lobster Fried Rice – I’m still trying to figure out where the saffron got lost in the kitchen; it certainly never made it to our fried rice. The lobster chunks were overcooked and lacking that tenderness that correctly cooked lobster effuses.
- Hot Eel Dice – This is the only app without a description on the menu. We asked for one and it definitely didn’t match what was served. The “dice” is actually a couple pieces of hot eel sushi with a bit of avocado layered in. And unlike normal eel sushi it was lacking the tangy sauce that is normally served, meaning that this plate also was missing out on flavor. And it was full pieces. lending no credibility to the word “dice” in the name.
The dessert was OK (we had the chocolate/banana thing), but still not great and certainly not living up to the high expectations that we had. Maybe our expectations were too high, but it just wasn’t a great meal. Sad, but true.
Back to the hotel that night and then up and out the next morning to take in some of the historical sights downtown. That translates to the liberty bell and the old state house. We spent the typical 30 minutes going through the liberty bell pavilion, reading the signs and basking in the history. And I still have absolutely no idea why the Liberty Bell is relevant in American history. It pre-dates the revolution by 20-odd years. It was not used as a signal for anything in particular because it broke pretty soon after it went into service. Best as I can tell it actually did nothing, other than to become an icon for various civil rights groups throughout the past 200 years. It didn’t figure in the drive for independence nor in the revolutionary (or other) wars. I guess it is all that is left of Philly’s claim to revolutionary history so they keep pumping it up, but I cannot figure out what its relevance is. The other building was the old state house. We toured the grounds but did not wait in line to go inside. Maybe that part of the tour was better, but the grounds were nothing special, save for about a dozen Argenbright security guards posing for photos with the tourists. Oh, and a statue of Washington.
I’ll admit that we didn’t make it to the art museum nor to the Franklin Center, both of which I’ve heard good things about. But still, I was left wondering what all the fuss is about in Philadelphia. At least we saw this guy in the train station which was entertaining:
I’ll probably give Philly another try at some point, like in September when I have another 6am flight out, but until then I’ll be looking at other options, and will continue to try to figure out why the Liberty Bell has garnered the reputation it has as relevant.
