Slippery roads made us pull over and spend a night in non-Madison Wisconsin. Someone (loudly) set the lobby PA to a deeper college station or something (Big Thief, Michael Kiwnuka, etc.). Wasn't expecting that.
39 thoughts on “December 29, 2021: Indie Rock”
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Early Quit! Yay! *goes running out the school doors*
slooooow news day.
The interstate system was a mistake.
How far do you drive? I can't imagine what it would be like to travel a couple states away without it.
I drove from Stillwater to home today and it was miserable. I'd kill for high speed rail.
In case you invent a time machine, I can point you to the guy responsible for us not having high-speed rail…
Bobby Jindal?
In the corridor Cheaptoy was referring to, Public Enemy No. 1 is Scott Walker. WPR did a great podcast, Derailed, on how Walker thwarted his Republican predecessor’s HSR progress for purely self-serving political reasons.
Good ole bobby nixed federal funds that would have created a plain ole commuter train between Baton Rouge and New Orleans because he couldn't give Obama a win.
I gotta say, riding the AVE in Spain is one of the coolest technological things I've ever done. 300kph and you can't even tell you're moving.
I took a high speed train in China and yeah, it was awesome.
So many rides on the Shinkansen. One of the best ways to travel.
Is this the place where I point out the geographical, economic, and political barriers to HSR in most of the US?
Not with that attitude, you won't.
yeah.*
*not that I have any irons in that fire in it or anything
I would argue that the geographical issues aren't valid but that they are used to cover over the economic and political barriers.
This is also my position.
Geographical is the main problem -- except for the eastern seaboard, major population centers are too far apart to make economical sense in the US, unfortunately. Ultimately, though, the problem is that the US has developed the world's greatest RR freight delivery system. Let's see Europe, Japan, etc. run their HSR along with major freight transportation. That said, higher speed rail is something to strive for.*
*this is all my opinion and not that of my employer
But you just said "too far apart to make econimical sense" and Free said... oh nevermind.
The HSR connection between Paris & Amsterdam crosses two international borders and is about 20 miles longer (driving distance) than Chicago to St. Louis. Vienna to Munich is 64 miles further than the distance from Indianapolis to Chicago. It takes roughly the same amount of time to drive from Chicago to Nashville as it does to ride HSR from Seville to Barcelona, which is a distance 150 miles further. Milan to Zürich is within a mile of Indianapolis to Columbus. Minneapolis to Chicago is basically Turin to Rome.
I get that HSR is expensive to implement and probably consumes some form of subsidy, but I don’t think distance between major regional population centers is the reason why we haven’t built out the infrastructure here in the US. And with the emissions and infrastructure required by passenger air travel, the economic and environmental costs of regional flights get harder to justify.
Getting back to the freight arguement, those routes would require larger capacity in US to accommodate both passenger and freight traffic. Plus get over the love of automobiles.
I understand that obtaining right-of-way is a major consideration in the development of HSR. Freight RRs have a sort of first-mover ROW advantage thanks to federal land grants dating back to the 19th century, and I’m not sure it’s fair to position HSR as in direct competition for that infrastructure. If HSR was built along existing Interstate corridors, why would we need to increase the capacity of freight systems to further handle both types of traffic?
An example: After the last governor here rejected federal funding that would have established the Midwestern HSR network, an two lanes of traffic were added to I-90NB from Illinois line to the People’s Republic to accommodate traffic between here and Chicagoland. Meanwhile, that same governor also gave Foxconn $250+ million in state incentives that will expand I-94 from Milwaukee International to the Illinois line, and sought $300 million in federal funds for that project. At this point, if Foxconn ever delivers on a tenth of what it promised that governor, it will be a miracle. Either corridor would have just as well accommodated HSR along the same ROW already held by the Interstate.
The car thing is a socio-cultural quirk that is going to run into the hard realities of battery electric vehicles and climate change mitigation. I’d love to replace either current car (2008 Subaru Outback @ 145k; 2002 Buick LeSabre @ 80k) with a battery electric vehicle, but the main thing holding me up is that, unless I want to buy a luxury car, the market currently lacks an entry that provides adequate range for me to do a round trip between the People’s Republic and my hometown (340-ish miles) on a single charge. When that becomes practically possible and I need to replace a vehicle, I’d like to make the move to electric. I figure I’m not the only person waiting for mid-market BEVs with range that approach their current ICE-mobile. At that point, I’m still not getting from the People’s Republic to Minneapolis on a single charge. When I want to travel to the Cities, being able to catch HSR there and rent a BEV would be much nicer than spending 45 minutes at a charging station off I-94 somewhere.
I figure I’m not the only person waiting for mid-market BEVs with range that approach their current ICE-mobile
I'm in this boat, kinda. If we're still burning coal to make the electricity then all I'm doing is pushing my polluting onto some other community, not to mention that lithium mining is not particularly great for the environment.
I read an Economist piece recently about a shift from 400-volt to 800-volt EVs. The higher voltage would mean MUCH faster charging. Assuming the availability of charging stations, this would all but eliminate range anxiety.
Given the huge capital investment we've already made in interstate highways, the ongoing love affair with automobiles, the (relative) cheapness of land (and hence, the MUCH less dense configuration of cities in the US compared to Europe), the rise of remote working arrangements, and the huge effing costs of HSR (from the acquisition of dedicated right-of-way to the engineering costs to the construction costs), I'm not seeing a major shift away from autos to intercity rail in the next generation at least.
China could do it because they are a one-party, totalitarian state quite capable of ramming major capital projects through despite local objections. Peasants have no property rights. Europe could do it because they were willing to jam major subsidies down taxpayers throats. Routes up to 150 miles are more expensive than buses and don't deliver significant cost or environmental savings (even if they are way cooler). Routes longer than 500 miles are, I think, still slower and more expensive than air travel, albeit there are environmental advantages of rail over air. In the 200-500 mile range, HSR can be economically competitive, depending....
I get that people hate taking buses. I hate taking buses. I get it that HSR is cool. But I am not sure that it makes a whole lot of sense to force taxpayers to subsidize that form of travel, except to the extent that we are ALSO subsidizing auto travel on highways or air travel through dumb tax incentives or other policies.
Can we prevent catastrophic damage from climate change if we don't transition away from an automobile-centric society? The US used to have some of the world's best public transportation and small towns still had walkable downtowns early in the car era. We deliberately moved away from that but it wasn't because we suddenly had more space or that it was cheaper.
I get what you're saying but I also find the word choice interesting. Route choice of the interstates comes to mind as an example of the former.
Absolutely fair point on the (racist and classist) history of "urban renewals and siting of highways.
I don't see HSR displacing buses as much as short flights. An hour-long flight as it stands today has a huge amount of overhead in getting to an airport (since airports can't be in city centers), security, boarding, deplaning, and getting from the airport (since airports can't be in city centers.)
A HSR trip from Minneapolis to Chicago could be somewhere around 2.5 hours if you made it to the station 15-30 minutes before departure.
A flight from Minneapolis to Chicago is somewhere around 30 minutes to get to the airport, 1.5 hours arrival before departure, 1.5-hour flight, 30 minutes to deplane and get to ground transportation, and 30 minutes for ground transportation into town, for a grand total of 4.5 hours.
Save the airports primarily for long-haul routes and use HSR to make regional connections.
I just applied to a job.....
First time in a loooong time. Not really looking, but if the good doctor is moving to DC I should probably start looking for something.
I don't see how HSR really does much about the global warming issue, particularly given the geographic structure of our cities today. You still have to get people to and from stations.
Keep us posted on the gig (… obviously)
Sean signal!
There seems to be an edit to my comment about applying for a gig regarding HSR that I don't recall adding...... ... ...
I see that. WordPress doesn't log comment edits so I don't know who did it. I might be able to correlate an edit from the HTTP logs but most likely need someone to take credit for the mistake.
I have a few hunches...
That is weird. It is my edit, but not to the reply I thought I was editing....
Sorry, meat.
no worries, just wanted to make sure that everything under the hood was functioning properly.
I don't know, I'm a bit worried now
I will be sure to embed references to He Who Must Not Be Named whenever I edit your LTEs, Rhu.
HSR is a lot more carbon-friendly than flying. I think it's a good alternative to short flights, especially given the overhead you have with flying (security, etc.), and separately from environmental factors, it could also act as a check on airfares for regional flights.
People do have to get to and from stations, but that's also true for airports, and IMO that's mainly an argument in favor of better local public transit (which could serve HSR and airports) rather than an argument against HSR.
HSR is definitely not a cure-all. I don't think rail could ever be a time-efficient method of beating a NYC->LAX direct flight, and given the sparse population across the Rockies, I don't see Central -> Pacific HSR ever being a particularly worthwhile endeavor. But a network with Minneapolis, St. Paul, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Des Moines (or something like that) could facilitate a lot of business trips, especially into Chicago where they have pretty good transit in the core area. Relieving pressure on Chicago's airports (and airports in the other cities) also seems like a potential side benefit. Chicago's also near enough to Detroit and Indianapolis that it could reasonably facilitate some day trips into Chicago from those cities.
So I think it could be a good piece of the puzzle, but I also admit I don't have absolutely all the information.
There already was a plan in place for Chicago as a high speed hub. Parts of StL - Chicago is rated for 112mph, and Amtrak is already using higher HP locomotives (Siemens Charger) on the route, but no idea when they'll be okayed for over 70mph.
I agree that there is room in the 200-mile to 500-mile trip range for HSR to be part of the equation.
I am not convinced that the environmental benefits are anywhere as large as often claimed, as they usually only discuss marginal energy costs and ignore the very substantial environmental costs of construction. Granted, highways also have large carbon bills for construction and maintenance.
Anyhoo. HSR would be cool for certain, easy-to-build routes.