I’m on the Acela from Union Station to BWI. Free wi-fi, but it’s too short a trip (twenty minutes) to justify getting out the laptop. I’m just going to look out the window and enjoy the fastest train ride I’ve been on since I was in Europe.
[update a few minutes later]
This is the slowest high-speed rail I’ve ever seen. Just north of DC the train came to a complete halt for a couple minutes. It then proceeded at a pace sufficiently leisurely that we were passed by the Orange Line to New Carrolton.
OK, I’m now officially screwed. They just announced that they have an engine problem and are backing up into DC.
Whoops. Now saying that they’ve fixed it. We’re finally accelerating. But we’ve lost several minutes. It’s already nine minutes past scheduled arrival time. I still may not make it.
[update a few minutes later]
On the bus to the airport. It will be tight.
[10:15 EDT update]
I made the flight, with checked luggage. Next stop, Dallas.
Shouldn’t the headline have an exclamation point?
and are backing up into DC.
Well, at what speed? Is it still officially a “high-speed rail” if it goes backward really fast?
If I remember correctly, the Intercity 125s in the UK could do 125 mph in either direction, though the driver might have to walk from the power car at the front of the train to the one at the rear.
I suspect all the HSTs use a similar design because you don’t want to have to turn it around when you reach the end of the line.
Have you removed the parking brake?
I just knew that new Sulu shouldn’t be driving the train. He was probably looking for some white castles.
Do you people have any idea of the Acela fare, especially for the short hop from DC to Baltimore?
You must be one of the “1 Percent” if you are riding the Acela. As a PSE from my state, I would be on a commuter or an Amtrak Regional, either travelling on business or on my own “reconfigured” (there are also many of us who are non-union, non-civil service) compensation. Or more likely a bus.
The MARC doesn’t run on weekends, and is the only alternative by rail. It’s $6, I think. The Acela is $36. Ten years ago, a taxi was $60. Acela is a relatively good deal…as long as it works.
The MARC doesn’t run on weekends, and is the only alternative by rail.
No, there are still the regular Amtrak trains, which are around $14-20 — but the departures may not have fit Rand’s schedule.
Since Rand was flying out of BWI and checking bags, I presume he was flying Southwest. By avoiding the baggage extortion fee, he saved enough to easily pay for the train. (If he was traveling all the way out to BWI and flying someone else, then he’s a glutton for punishment.)
No, I was flying American — I’m AAdvantage Gold with free checked bags. BWI was the lowest area airfare.
You can’t fly SWA into DFW (IIRC from a previous post, Rand’s layover on the trip), only into Dallas Love Field (also SWA’s headquarters). There’s this little thing called the Wright Amendment (named for former Fort Worth congressman Jim Wright) that prohibits any traffic into or out of Love Field from nonstop flights further than the states bordering Texas. It was originally done as a way to “help” the then-new DFW airport succeed, but now serves no useful purpose (if it ever did) and just limits competition.
Fortunately the Wright Amendment goes away in a couple more years.
I presume he was flying Southwest.
He could have changed airlines for the flight home, but Southwest doesn’t have a layover in DFW.
On the other hand, nothing wrong with Rand being in the top “1 percent” and paying for the faster rail and baggage fees. He would be contributing more to the economy and helping create jobs than the former OWS protestors did.
He could have changed airlines for the flight home, but Southwest doesn’t have a layover in DFW.
But they do have layovers at Love Field. DFW is not the only airport in Dallas. (In fact, technically, DFW isn’t in Dallas at all.)
Yes, although Rand was specific about DFW and now about American. I thought it was American, just like when someone tells me about a layover in Atlanta I suspect Delta. I think American still has SWA screwed with Love Field, where SWA is only allowed to fly one state away from Love Field.
Oh, I see now. His update says Dallas in this post. But his outgoing post said DFW. I went with the information in the outgoing post.
the “anytime” fare on the normal Amtrak between BWI and Union Station is $14 one way ($11 if you buy several days in advance). It only takes a few minutes longer than the Acela for a lot less money. Did that recently on a trip to DC (yes, flew SWA into BWI), as I didn’t want to be saddled with a rental car, and the Metro took me everywhere I needed to go in DC (hotel was one block from a Metro stop).
Public transportation is great if you can get it without bankrupting the citizenry :-/
This is what comes of having to share trackage with the freights. An Acela with its own ROW, signals, and no grade-level crossings could average 100 mph or better on that run…
i don’t think that much freight moves on amtrak’s bos-wash line.
Even between DC and NYC — a ride I made many, many times during the six years I lived in DC — the time difference between the Acela ‘high speed’ trains and the regular regional trains wasn’t all that great (IIRC, around 30 to 45 minutes). And, as per the comment above, the train was seldom cheaper (and often more expensive) than flying.
That said, I used Acela (vs. flying) pretty much exclusively going between DC and NYC for one simple reason: productivity. I could walk onto the train, take out my laptop, plug it into the real 120V outlet, and work for three hours straight. No security screening, no takeoff/landing restrictions on tray tables, electronics, or even staying in my seat.
Better yet, I could make the entire trip on ‘foot’ (never in a car or on a plane, at least). I would walk the three blocks from our house to the Cleveland Park metro station; take the Red Line to Union Station; take the Acela to NYC/Penn Station; get off the train and then walk to either my hotel or to my business appointment. I’d then turn around and reverse the sequence for the trip home.
All that said, I’m a profound skeptic of all US-based high-speed rail projects, because it’s pretty much impossible to make an economic/logistical case for them, especially vs. air+car travel. ..bruce..
That’s why Paul Krugman has been calling for a pretend alien invasion threat to scare people into investing in high speed rail. Not only is using a fake threat of alien invasion a dumb idea to do anything, I can’t imagine something more useless for defense than a passenger train. If the US were spending on high speed rail, an alien threat would immediately stop construction and reroute funds to something like nuclear missiles and space lasers. This is yet more evidence that Krugman is a moron.
Oh, and completely off topic, I’ve spent part of the day searching for a copy of the paper mentioned in all the news stories like this one.
The problem was considered intractible and ballistics software uses iterative interpolation, small step sizes, and reference projectiles. The new results are a closed form solution to the problem. The most I’ve found is a picture of him holding up his equation, which looks quite simple and reportedly matches the iterative methods. The equation would also of course apply to rocket flight through the atmosphere, with the addition of terms for thrust and variable mass.
Needless to say, I’m irritated that I can’t find his actual equations anywhere, despite the huge number of news stories about it.
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/u7551/teen_solves_newtons_300yearold_riddle_an/c4sxd91
Oh bless you! You must have some serious Googlefoo.
It will take a while for me to absorb it, but what a breakthrough. Our days of running around in an iterative loop (for something as simple as a .30-30) may be over!
I faced the starting equations about twenty years ago, and gave it up as intractible as everyone else did, but I do find it amusing that his impetus to solve the problem was prompted because he was told that it was intractable. It was the same thing that got me to spend a year or two delving into sword mechanics, a problem your gut says should be trivial but that has denied obvious solution. Then you write it on the back of a napkin.
So now we need to dig into his solution to see if the squre law for drag can be replaced by other functions (which you need to do near Mach 1), and then how to modify it for thrust. The inability to solve the equation he solved forced us all to use iterative solutions for rocket flight during the ascent stage. If this pans out, it will be easy and may lead to a few more inisghts.
Given the amount of effort that has been put into iterative trajectory optimization routines, I see the new result as interesting but not likely to change anything. It also doesn’t account for modulating lift, which is a very interesting knob to have at your disposal for lots of different problems.
Yes, and as is would also have a bit of trouble with a conventional bullet where lift can become a factor at long ranges. However, it does present an unanticipated solution that could perhaps be expanded into a more general form that included square law lift perpendicular to the square law drag, and maybe even an arbitrary thrust component. Hard to say without lots of people poking at it.
You were passed by an Metro Orange line train?
Good grief. I run faster than Metro trains. OK, I’m still pretty good at running. I ran with friends Saturday and Sunday afternoons. And had a beer afterwards….