15 thoughts on “High-Speed Rail”

  1. I agree an LA-Vegas run should make sense. Not sure the numbers agree.

    About 200 miles from the top of the pass to Vegas – good high-speed rail should do that in a little over an hour. Getting to the top of the pass will, perforce, be done more slowly. If you put your terminal in Victorville, you can avoid the climb, but once you drive to Victorville, why not drive the rest of the way?

    Flights from LAX to LAS average around 1:15. Add at least 45 minutes for check-in and security, plus another 15 minutes to fight your way out upon arrival, so 2hrs, 15min, more or less. It would be a close thing, so unless there is a great time convenience in the location of the rail terminals, coupled with less security, I don’t think it will work.

    Wish it would, though.

    1. On the Vegas end, the train could tie in with the monorail/people mover. The key in LA would be to tunnel through the mountains to allow a fast trip to Palmdale from Union Station, which would also create a new expandable airport for SoCal. It would be expensive, though, no doubt.

        1. Yes, but that included stations and a lot of disruptions to local businesses during construction. The model would be the Swiss project that tunneled twenty-one miles under the Alps for $3.5B. I’m not sure what the distance is between La Canada and Acton, but that would probably be the shortest route. I’m sure it’s less than twenty miles. From Union Station, the line (perhaps not high speed at that section) could go up the Glendale Freeway.

    2. An LA/Vegas run would never work because as soon as the project gets completed California politicians, in a bid for further tax revenue, would approve casino gambling in downtown LA.

      1. They already have gambling in L.A. (one of the biggest poker rooms, never been there.) Actually, they have poker rooms throughout the state and are working to keep the Indian casinos in check.

        Las Vegas is different. While they have gone corporate (losing much of their charm) they still offer something L.A. never could: a focus on entertainment. …and a much nicer attitude than Atlantic City but that is seeping into Vegas.

    3. I do the SoCal-to-LAS flight all the time (starting a bit further south than LAX). From the time I get to the terminal in SoCal until the time I’m driving out of the rental car center south of McCarran seldom exceeds two hours. Same thing on the way back. SWA’s schedule averages one departure every 1.5 hrs. The timelines from LAX are at least this good if not better. I’m having a really hard time seeing how a bullet train leaving from Victorville could beat this, even with the tunnel that Rand talks about.

      Tying into the monorail at the Vegas end doesn’t seem like a big improvement to me. The hotels on the Strip are accessible from the rental car center in less than 15 minutes. Or maybe Vegas could connect the people mover to McCarran (although they probably have the same iron taxi lobby that everybody else has, though).

      I’m just not seeing how this train works any better than the abomination that the voters approved in 2008.

  2. I’ve always wondered if a car ferry on rails wouldn’t work? The cars would have to be stacked I’d imagine meaning more expensive terminals.

    In Seattle they put several hundred cars on a ferry. That would make for a very long train. Alternatively, smart roads!

    Well, you can brain storm all day and not come up with one good idea. Perhaps the brainiacs that keep coming up with ways to spend the taxpayers money should learn that lesson?

    Failure can lead to success; if you use your own money.

    2. Um, do you mean

      D. Clejan, Combination Railway and Passenger Automobile Transportation Systems, U.S. Patent 3,285,194

      V. Milenkovic and G. L. Neidhart, Railway Trucks, U.S. Patent 3,707,125,

      V. Milenkovic, Combination Railway and Automobile Transportation System and Parts Thereof, U.S. Patent 3,584,584,

      V. Milenkovic, Railway Trains for Combination Railway and Passengeer Automobile Transportation, and Cars Therefor, U.S. Patent 3,557,512.

      The above patents were assigned to General American Transportation Corporation (GATX) of Chicago, Illinois, a company that was advancing the RRollway concept of a wide-gauge, purpose-built, 150 MPH car ferry. All of these patents are easily accessible on Google Patents.

      Deodat Clejan was the inventor of one of the “piggyback” systems for transporting truck trailers on special railroad flat cars, and RRollway was the logical extension of an intermodal automobile/rail system. Since this was a clean-sheet-of-paper design, the Milenkovic and Neidhart “Railway Trucks” patent describes a flangeless horizontal-roller guidance system that allows high-speed operation without the maintenance expense of constant regrinding of wheels and rails for conventional high-speed trains.

      Clejan died in a mid-air collision of a general-aviation aircraft he was piloting, and V. Milenkovic took over as the person behind the GATX auto-ferry concept as disclosed in the last two patents. The special wide-gauge rail line concept died with Clejan, and those patents are attempts to work the concept with standard-gauge railroads.

      The original concept was to permit people to ride in the privacy of their own cars, allowing them to leave their cars if they choose to get snacks or sit in a common area. The idea was more along the lines of a super toll-road, with intermediate stops allowing cars to drive on an off the train, frequent schedules, and high-speed operation. The competition to this thing was a concept from Battelle or some such place called “The Century Expressway” of a kind of super Interstate Highway allowing safe operation at 100 MPH.

      The East Coast Auto Train, where you have to arrive a couple hours early that someone parks your car in a freight-type autocarrier and you occupy a conventional coach seat or a sleeping car room for a once-daily trip, that service is a mere shadow of the RRollway concept.

  3. The Channel Tunnel works by putting road vehicles (up to and including 18-wheelers) on trains. BTW, it uses standard-gauge track; it has to, because the trains run all the way into London on tracks shared by other traffic.

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