Trains, Planes, Ferries and Bridges.

Prior post on high speed rail got me thinking about how to explain where HSR makes sense to build. First off, stop thinking of high speed rail like urban transit, like a trolleybus/streetcar, heavy rail metro, or even commuter rail. It goes much much faster--faster in a way most American's simply don't comprehend--no one has any experience traveling at HSR speeds--we travel at highways speeds (65-90 mph) and aircraft speeds (460-565 mph).  The relevant point is this: The faster you are going, the longer it takes to stop. (Landing aircraft seem to take mere seconds, which seems quick, until you realize the runway is a mile long...). So.

The faster the train goes, the longer it takes to stop, and the less frequently it stops. Take a rough ratio, say a HSR goes at 2/5 the speed of a jet aircraft. Shortest (scheduled) jet aircraft flight is about 60 minute*s. 2/5 of that is 24 minutes. So that's the absolute minimum distance between stops for HSR. And which assumes the endpoints are major metropolitan areas.

 The analogy:  As ferries connect places by water, planes connect places by air. Only in a few cases, where demand is both substantial and reliable, is it actually worth building a surface transportation connection, rather than simply using ever-larger 'ferries' to connect the two points. Before the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC, or the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, there were enormous fleets of boats ferrying people back and forth over the water. Today, we have enormous fleets of planes, ferrying people over the air. Demand must be truly enormous to justifying building a 'bridge' to connect two points. 

Prior to the pandemic, there were about 100 flights a day (35,365 annually) between LAX (Los Angeles) and SFO (San Francisco). It's the busiest air route in America. Which is why CAHSR made sense. (Stopovers at interim points much less so). 

Take a minute to find/scan the document "Where High-Speed Rail Works Best" by the regional plan association--it identifies all the city pairs where High Speed Rail makes sense. 

Here is a map you don't see often:

Most talk about HSR prattles on about population, but HSR journeys in India are scarce, despite it's billion plus population: This map gets to the heart of it: high speed travel (airplane and HSR) is proportional to wealth. Airplanes fly from 'pillar to pillar'. The higher the pillar, the more airplanes.

Look at the tall powers, and you can tick off American HSR initiatives:

1. CAHSR
2. Texas Central
3. Northeast Corridor
4. Brightline (Miami)
   

Map also explains why Chicago and Atlanta are second tier HSR cities: nothing both big and near. Chicago-Detroit and Atlanta-Charlotte are the best they can offer. Long bridges to not very tall pillars.

"But what about Miami?"

Miami seems weird--short pillar, not a lot of stops. You have to get into the nitty-gritty of the history to explain it. First off, the whole area was 'settled' by rail, specifically Henry Flagler's East Coast Railway, so there is already a long vertical rail corridor running through the urbanized area. Second, the area is very dense linear strip. Look at the density of the counties, and the average density isn't that great. But when you look at census blocks, you can see that the coastal side of each county is packed, and the inland side is empty (thanks to the Everglades). 

Misc. Observations:

1. Utah has already connected it's three 'towers' via a regional rail system (FrontRunner)--Colorado should probably do the same. 
2. Portland-Seattle-Vancouver probably works, if they can ever get speeds up. Coordination with Canada makes it complex--Amtrak barely crosses the  border, presently, doesn't really reach Vancouver per se. 
3. North Carolina's 'urban crescent' looks weirdly good for non-high speed train service-- Lot of smaller metros, none too far apart. They already have the Piedmont Amtrak train filling the niche, with 4 daily trains. Travel time still much slower than car, though.  

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Ignoring special cases: connecting flights to islands, and/or 'milk runs' from major hubs to affluent communities (Vale to Aspen, CO.)

'Where High-Speed Rail Works Best' by the Regional Plan Association

 Because everyone needs to read this:

www.rpa.org/uploads/pdfs/Where-HSR-Works-Best

Here is the essential list:

Top 50 City Pairs

Rank |  City |  Pair |  Score
1 New York-Washington 100.00
2 Philadelphia-Washington 98.24
3 Boston-New York 97.22
4 Baltimore-New York 96.83
5 Los Angeles-San Francisco 96.43
6 Boston-Philadelphia 96.05
7 Los Angeles-San Diego 94.92
8 Los Angeles-San Jose 94.19
9 Boston-Washington 92.79
10 Dallas-Houston 91.37
11 Chicago-Detroit 91.09
12 Baltimore-Boston 90.39
13 Chicago-Columbus 89.42
14 Chicago-Saint Louis 89.25
15 Los Angeles-Phoenix 89.03
16 Chicago-Cleveland 88.71
17 Charlotte-Washington 88.39
18 San Diego-San Francisco 88.32
19 Columbus-Washington 88.21
20 Cleveland-Washington 88.13
21 New York-Pittsburgh 88.03
22 Phoenix-San Diego 87.97
23 Las Vegas-Los Angeles 87.79
24 Detroit-New York 87.47
25 Chicago-Minneapolis 87.33
26 Detroit-Washington 87.27
27 Cleveland-New York 87.25
28 Philadelphia-Pittsburgh 87.23
29 Portland-Seattle 87.19
30 Pittsburgh-Washington 86.69
31 Los Angeles-Sacramento 86.58
32 New York-Providence 86.58
33 Raleigh-Washington 86.36
34 Detroit-Philadelphia 86.30
35 Chicago-Louisville 86.25
36 Hartford-Philadelphia 86.20
37 San Diego-San Jose 86.14
38 Hartford-Washington 86.13
39 Chicago-Cincinnati 86.02
40 Cleveland-Philadelphia 85.99
41 Charlotte-Philadelphia 85.60
42 Philadelphia-Raleigh 85.58
43 Buffalo-New York 85.58
44 New York-Virginia Beach 85.52
45 Austin-Dallas 85.47
46 Manchester-New York 85.41
47 Philadelphia-Providence 85.36
48 Bridgeport-Philadelphia 85.31
49 Columbus-Philadelphia 85.24
50 New York-Rochester 85.11

High Speed Rail, EU and the US

Today, another iteration of the argument. It goes like this:

"Amtrak sucks, why can't the US have high speed rail like Europe!" 

"Because the US is way larger!"

 Let's settle this once and for all - it is. 

https://mapfight.appspot.com/us-vs-eu/united-states-european-union-2017-size-comparison

 As the borders don't line up exactly, let's talk area. 

 KM^2

9,834,000 - US 

4,476,000 - EU

So the US is about 2.2x the size of the EU.
Let's forget about Alaska for a moment (1,717,856 KM^2)

Let's also omit the rounding error of Hawaii, so we can talk continental US, and compare continental polities.

10,430 - Hawaii

9,834,000-1,717,856-10,430=8,116,144

8,116,144/4,476,000=1.8.

So the US is about twice as large. 

This is also completely irrelevant. When people talk about the US being 'too large', they aren't really talking about size--what they mean to talk about is density, that the space per person in the US is much larger than in the EU. This is completely true. 

Year | Population | Area | Density

2019 | US - 328.2 | 8,116,144 | 40.43

2019 | EU - 446  | 4,476,000 | 99.64

So, on average, the EU is about twice as dense as the US.

Now that we've dispensed with the need to check Quora, let's talk about why this argument is irrelevant: average density.

Most of the EU (like most of the US) is empty. (Chloropleth maps of density are often deceptive). 

Europe dot density map 

US Census Blocks, <1 person/square mile:

Hence, making density comparisons over such nearly continental scales is meaningless.

 

Is it ok for SLC to be selfish?

 Is it ok for SLC to be selfish? To prefer projects which benefits it's citizens, in preference to in-commuters?

Certainly, there are out-commuters--Census on the Map suggests about 50k of them (vs 200k in-commuters). But they probably don't care--they are making a reverse-commuter, out-commuting on roadway facilities sized for going-home traffic, so experienced roadway congestion is likely minor.

Read an article today, nothing that the people in central city Chicago didn't benefit from freeways, that the freeways actually made walking commuters longer, and drastically reduced the number of long-distance trips residents took. The argument was made that the total welfare gain from freeways is probably overstated--it ascribes all sorts of benefits to freeways, but failed to account for their costs (disproportionately suffered by central city dwellers).

Secondly, conversed with a co-worker, in which I described freeways as 'walls', and as 'pollution and noise spewing black holes'. So for a SLC resident, for voters and the representatives they elect...should they care about suburban in-commuters, who are merely using the city streets as neighborhoods as highways? Clearly not, so it falls to the business community to make the case for access, for being accessible to places, for access to customers and employees as important to the economy of the city, and to lobby for it.

 The logical conclusion of the business community prioritizing in-commuters is something like Houston--a central city purely for in-commuters, and vacant after dark. The urban nadir. That model has been followed, its limits found. You can read the retrospective when city plans start talking about building 'night-time cities'. Creating entertainment venues downtown, working on street festivals, holding gallery strolls. Next phase being building a '24-hour city', with residents--people living and working within the city. Perhaps the next tier up is what is now being called the '30 minute city', where all the things you need are within a 30 minute trip (by bike and walk).

 Asking how far things in NYC, my brother replied "About half an hour away" (by subway). Places that weren't barely existed. We know that trip frequency decays exponentially with increase in distance (ie, if 20 minute trips are common, 10 minute trips are 4x as common, and 30 minute trips half as common).    

Omaha, Nebraska...now confronting the 'Urban Transportation Problem' of exponentially rising traffic congestion (as increasing urban size generates increasing average travel distances), and could feel it's comfortable existence as a 15-minute city collapsing--everything was no longer within an easy 15 minute drive. 

The 15-minute city is a good way to live. Urbanism is the realization that the good life can no longer be achieved by increasing automobility, and that other modes are required. Transit only works when it's Fast, Frequent, and Reliable (as Seattle's frequent network) has shown. 

Previously, I've speculated that SLC needs it's own transit authority. It has a lot of transit, but it's a whole lot of routes that are 'half-in' SLC--seeming to serve SLC, but recall that there are 4-more in-commuters than out-commuters, so the half-in/half-out routes actually serves SLC citizens less than the shear split of route/service mileage might suggest--they are making more 'internal' trips within SLC, and might prefer the service to be so distributed. 

SLC has got the the 'nightime' city down, but not quite the 24-hour city. To be a 24-hour city, SLC would need to better balance it's population and employment. Research by Dr. Reid Ewing suggests the empirically appropriate ratio to be 2 jobs for every 5 persons.  SLC's current population ~200k, and employment about 661k. Five-halves that would be 1.2m...so SLC would need to add a million people, which is rather unlikely, but however provides an interesting intuition into the rest of the Wasatch Front - there are 2 million people on it, and half of them work in Salt Lake City. And on the taxes on their place of employment SLC depends.