The
USA Today crystal ball
prognosticates on planes and automobiles.
Chronic delays... again. The year 2020 could end up feeling like 2000, when delays plagued aviation. Delays already are common at the three major New York airports and often cascade across the nation. Looking ahead, there are few advanced plans for new runways or major airports and little hope for quick implementation of the government's "next generation" air-traffic control system.
Add the ever-longer delays getting to the airport on the roads, clearing a security system more concerned with appearing fair than identifying risks, a boarding "process" in which passengers attempt to cram ever more of those envelope-pushing rolling bags into ever less storage space, and then hold everybody up offloading them, and a 110 mph train (requiring relatively little in the way of special rolling stock, track structure, and signalling) becomes competitive between more city pairs.
Airlines raced to replace unpopular turboprops with regional jets 10 years ago. But the regional jets never made the money some airlines expected, and their small storage bins and low headroom alienated many travelers. A new generation of advanced turboprop models —Bombardier's Q-400 series, for example — offer a quieter, smoother ride than their predecessors. And their ability to land on shorter runways gives airlines flexibility at congested airports.
I just returned from Atlanta, where the modal aircraft is a two engine jet, with nearly half of them being small Delta Connection puddle-jumpers headed for the likes of Savannah, Raleigh, and Lafayette, Louisiana. Now consider smaller, slower planes in which a crew of three or four carries a passenger load that wouldn't crowd a single Amcoach. The commuter airline business model is unsustainable. And in the time it takes a passenger to make the schlep from security to one of the distant terminals, a passenger train leaving from a suburban Atlanta station could be as far as Columbia, S.C. enroute Raleigh or Birmingham enroute New Orleans.
What we're driving tomorrow probably will look much like what we're driving today. "It's going to have four wheels, and it's going to have headlights, and it's going to drive down the road," says Matt Novak, editor of the websitePaleofuture.com, which looks at past predictions of the future.
More automobiles on the same roads, or lighter automobiles on roads being pounded to pieces by trucks that haven't been enticed onto the rails? That's going to generate additional riders on Commuter Rail, and one of these days the national rail system and the commuter operators ought to look at better connections and on reciprocal ticketing.
4 comments:
If airports can't get the land ownership & environmental approvals to build a 2-mile-long new runway in less than a decade or so...which seems to be about typical...imagine getting the land & approvals for a 200-mile long HSR corridor.
Much of the existing railroad infrastructure is capable of supporting faster passenger trains than those currently operating with relatively little work. At Cold Spring Shops, we view the hardest work as removing laws that unnecessarily limit train speeds.
Probably rational to relax the regulations on pax train speeds, from what I've read. Though I wonder how many lines have sufficient capacity to handle multiple pax trains per day, in addition to the existing freight traffic.
BTW, did you see the preliminary NTSB report on the Washington Metrorail accident this summer? Sounds like there is a possibility this problem could affect other block signaling systems as well.
I'll look for the NTSB finding.
As far as expanding capacity, the freight railroads have been taking advantage of the recession to prepare for the next traffic surge. The old Santa Fe via Amarillo will be doubled all the way from Kansas City to Los Angeles, with a third track on Cajon Pass.
In some of the logical passenger corridors, there is space on the existing rights of way. For example, put two dedicated passenger tracks on the New York to Buffalo section of the old New York Central, and put two dedicated freight tracks parallel to, but almost never connected with them. Alfred E. Smith would get it. The Illinois Central between Chicago and Champaign, which is one candidate for a speed-up, was two and three tracks until relatively recently. Those improvements make coping with environmental and NIMBY objections more straightforward.
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