Time for the Province and the Feds to Step Up

What a useless article. Nothing ever happens until it happens. Before California voters approved the $10 billion and Obama put $8 billion in the stimulus, high speed rail was going nowhere in the states as well.

It is time that the feds and the province step up and get on board with high speed rail between Vancouver and Seattle. It is clear with rising fuel prices, driving and flying are going to be more and more expensive. Without high speed rail, we will be left behind.

More of the same

With a 3rd majority, we can expect quite a lot of this..........

With the money allocated for RAV (and extension of University), S2S, Golden Ears, Gateway, Port Mann, not to mention 2010, the enite lower mainland could have been blanketed with LRT.

And now, here is the real story

High Speed Rail has been totally misreported in the press. The Eugene - Vancouver Corridor was never going to be a 'Bullet Train' TGV, ICE, 300 kph rail corridor, rather it was going to be a 200 kph or 125 mph rail corridor.

American law stipulates that passenger trains, except for the 'Corridor' Express Trains, can not travel faster than 79.5 mph. With 'tilt' trains, like TALGO, portions of the Vancouver - Eugene rail corridor, can be safely run at 100 mph and as fast as 125 mph in special cases. But American law changes very slowly and the anti-passenger rail lobby know this well and are fighting tooth and nail to prevent line speed increases.

Diesel and electric passenger trains have been traveling at 125 mph for over 40 years, quite safely on regular railways and it is speeds above 125 mph that require special trains, tracks and rights-of-ways.

The title of this piece should be "The myth of "Bullet Trains and the reality of 125 mph operation".

There is no reason why passenger trains could not travel at speeds of 60 to 80 mph through Vancouver, Burnaby and Delta/South Surrey and Whiterock and at 80 mph to 100 mph on portions of the line to Seattle and beyond. Political inertia is the main reason preventing this.

A second AMTRAK Train................

.............services as far as Fairhaven/Bellingham and the Canadian Boarder services want $1,500 for services for the second train to enter Canada.

who gets the money?

Odd. I thought the US was too busy walling itself in to actually want any form of improved transport links with what is, to them, nothing more than a 3rd rate country whose only purpose is to provide natural resources.

Besides, this is a Canadian government (municipal, provincial) that would rather spend $3 billion on one road and one bridge rather than the same amount on a comprehensive public transport solution for a huge section of its population. The only reason I can see for these politicians to push any form of fast rail is that somewhere, someone who helped them get into power is going to get very very rich off the taxpayer's back.

You're forgetting about...

You're forgetting about a 'little' Quebec company named Bombardier that has very deep connections to federal politics and Ottawa.

Federal money will not be spent on the west coast before high speed, or at least higher speed rail, links the golden triangle of Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto.

For a bigger picture...

...of high speed rail in Canada, check out Monte's article in the current edition of the Walrus.

How about a commuter train to Hope?

I lived in Bradford, Ontario for five years. It was the end of the line for the double-decker commuter train that ran from Bradford, to Newmarket then to Union Station. It was very popular. We in BC are about 50 years behind the rest of the world on transportation.

We have virtually no traffic roundabouts. A CRD planner went on record last week, saying that roundabouts reduce fuel consumption and frustration by allowing drivers to merge when it is safe, rather than waiting for a light to change. They save time and money, yet there are none on Vancouver Island. Are our traffic engineers dead, or just brain-dead? Roundabouts have been used in Europe for at least as long as I have been alive.

A commuter train up the Fraser Valley would relieve traffic on the Portmain Bridge and save millions of gallons of fuel per day. It would do wonders for house prices all the way up the valley. It should have been scheduled at least 30 years ago. There is very little construction required.

A high-speed train to the US would probably be held up for hours at the border, and it would not serve much purpose in solviing the daily traffic problems. It would be about as useful in that regard as the Winter Olympics. There's a thought!

Our government would benefit directly from improved rail service; the premier could drink as much as he likes and not get charged with DUI and the solicitor-general could avoid speeding tickets. Our over-zealous RCMP could practice their skills by beating passengers up with their truncheons and the hospital E.R.s would get the extra workload. Everyone would win.

Technically impossible?

Would love to know the facts that back up this position. Is the Vancouver - Seattle corridor really that challenging compared to some of the amazing railway engineering that goes on all the time in other parts of the world?

The biggest problem with the

The biggest problem with the present service to Seattle is the schedule. I'll be interested to read the rest of this series to get some of idea of why Canada seems to be holding up the expansion of the service.

The high speed train issue reminds me of the fast ferries. No one choosing to take the ferry to Nanaimo cared if they got there 10 minutes faster. If fairly modest improvements to the right of way can cut the Vancouver-Seattle trip to 2.5 hours I'd have thought that would be seen as a huge improvement.

As it is now, the train is inexpensive (especially compared to one person in their own car). The border crossing is quick and painless. And the scenery is amazing.

Introduce the train that connects through to Portland, expand the schedule and stop dreaming about high speed rail in a corridor where it probably makes very little sense.

West Coast Express

Diesel and electric passenger trains have been traveling at 125 mph for over 40 years, quite safely on regular railways and it is speeds above 125 mph that require special trains, tracks and rights-of-ways.

OKay, fine. So why does it take 75 minutes for the West Coast Express to get from Vancouver to Mission? And 45 minutes to get to Maple Ridge? What has happened to Translink's proposed long term study of the WCE, and why had neither Translink or any other agency ever prepared a set of cost estimates for the track improvements needed to reduce these travel times?

If we are going to talk about expanding rail service, why not talk about what it would take to get a similar heavy rail service onto the CNR lines south of the Fraser, to Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford and Chilliwack? For that to work satisfactorily, some people think a one billion dollar replacement for the railroad swing bridge at New Westminster would be indicated.

Frankly, I think Paulsen's article is a good dose of reality for all the "Vancouverism" dreamers, people who have been charmed by fake transit advocates into thinking that good quality rail based transportation can be had for so little money it's shocking. What's shocking is the persistence of this stubborn belief in the face of any kind of reasonable or factual impediments. When a Washington State official says they're not even considering HSR because of prohibitive costs, it's dismissed as hollow rhetoric, and the crowd goes back to hollering epithets about "freeway Falcon".

Freeways costs money and so do railroads. The dream, often pushed by "Vancouver's must-read blogs and must-talk politicians", and supported by irresponsible and deceitful academics, that tremendous rail based systems can be had for fractions of the cost of highway improvements persists because its consistent with Vancouver's escapist political ideology, which is simply attempting to do every thing on the cheap, and then rationalizing the inevitable lack of progress on any of the systems by ... (Heh, heh, ... are you ready for this?) ... blaming the parsimony of senior governments!

In a way it's kind of funny to watch these adolescent political theatrics, but unfortunately it is leading to a growing accumulation of real problems that cannot be solved without a full wall-to-wall amalgamation of the Metro region, and the imposition by the B.C. legislature of legally enforceable performance standards.

Where's the beef

Of all the transportation needs in the Lower Mainland, high-speed rail to Seattle and beyond is well down the list. No, let me rephrase that -- it shouldn't even be on the list.

Nowhere in any of the posts I've read, or in the original article, is there any discussion of what the traffic would be on this route and, most important, what you would likely have to pay for a ticket to ride. This looks like yet another potential multi-billion dollar boondoggle, paid for by us dupes the taxpayers, so a handful of people can zip off to Seattle and back courtesy of a huge subsidy.

My wife tried the Amtrak service to Seattle last year -- never again. To make a rail connection with Seattle attractive, it has to be twice as fast as the current service. And my guess is that means it would cost ten times as much to develop. That would put an economic fare schedule well above what anyone would pay to ride the train to Seattle.

I can see a high speed train between Calgary and Edmonton -- maybe -- simply because the line would be flat and straight and therefore relatively inexpensive. But even that would be a struggle, given the rather modest population centres it would connect.

And Rod Smelser -- great post.

Quote: OKay, fine. So why does it take 75 minutes for the West C

Sadly an apples and oranges comparison. Those bi-level WCE cars demand a different track geometry than those used by TALGO or other tilt train.

The high centre of gravity of the bi-level commuter cars would be tossing passengers about on curves, while tilt-trains, with a lower centre of gravity, tilt into curves with passengers safely ensconced inside.

Tilt-trains are able to curves faster, in complete safety.

We are almost 100 years behind the times in regards to railways, in BC.

WCE rolling stock can go 125kmh

Sadly an apples and oranges comparison. Those bi-level WCE cars demand a different track geometry than those used by TALGO or other tilt train.

If memory serves, the WCE rolling stock is capable of speeds of 125kmh. Curves would be a problem, but I believe that could be handled with elevations.

I repeat. Where is the report by some engineer stating what track improvements would do in terms of time savings and what those track improvements would cost?

AFAIK, the answer is that no one will authorize the production of any such report because any further investment in heavy rail is contrary to the "Vancouverism" philosophy (READ: dogma) of going light rail only.

Curiously, these trains in Ontario, while running many more hours and at least on the main Lakeshore run in both directions, are not achieving trip times and average speeds any better than the WCE.

Any rail passenger car can travel.......

200 kph (125 mph) provided that the trucks (bogies for you Brits) are designed for such speeds when track geometry can support it.

This is where 'tilt-trains' prove faster, instead of slowing for curves, that tilt into them. This means the seated or standing passenger doesn't notice the gravitational forces that would otherwise make curving at speed very uncomfortable.

The very high centre of gravity on bi-level WCE cars would prove dangerous at any great speeds, unless that the track curvature had the radius to support the speed. Smaller radii curves means either you have to slow down before curves or tilt through them.

We can, with present track infrastructure, offer 100 mph passenger trains to Seattle and beyond. We do not have the demand for TGV/ICE type of service.

Visionless talk shop

Sadly, I doubt we will ever see this happen. Vancouver can't even get the downtown street car going (other than the toy route that it now follows). How many years has that idea been bouncing around? It's obviously a great idea, and nothing has been done.

A high speed rail route is not technically impossible. It would, however, be so expensive to build a modern train line that it would require subsidies for ever. More complicated train lines have been built in Japan and more recently Korea, but the shorter distances in those countries make rail competitive with air connections.

Hell, we can't even build a bridge to Vancouver Island! (put rail and auto traffic on a link with wind turbines on top and tidal power generators underneath) This would be a route much more likely to pay for itself over 50 - 100 years with tolls, and would greatly advance our backwater transportation system. This has been called impossible as well, but longer links in more complicated geography have already been built multiple times around the world.

What is impossible around here is finding real leadership.

Do you wanna go faster?

says the carny, but faster ain't always better. Just ask the women in your life fellas.

I took Amtrak from Seattle to Sacramento last year. It took 24 hours approx. Good trip. Fast enough. Great scenery to be had when you're not confined to the I-5 and its endless sameness. It's the need for speed that's going to kill us all if we don't learn to temper our expectations.

We need more trains, fast, slow or otherwise.

Yeah, why?

Where is the demand? This is for a commuter train, right? Excuse my ignorance, but who exactly is fueling the need for this passenger service?

I love taking the train, but would my one, maybe two trips per year with my wife be part of that demand that this service is meeting? Toronto/Montreal yes, DC/NYC yes, even Edmonton/Calgary weak yes, Vancouver/Seattle/Portland? I don't get it.

I don't see this region having the population, business relationships and interest to support such a service.

Instead of arguing about potential speeds and government inaction, can someone take a step back and describe who would be taking this train, how often, and how it would be advantageous to these people over the existing highway options?

Hi Speed Rail

High speed rail would not be cost effective between Seattle and Vancouver. For example, in Japan, the Shinkansen system is only profitable between Tokyo and Osaka, an area with a population of 100,000,000. The other lines, and especially the Morioka-Aomori and Nagano lines are a huge liability to the system. That said, it is a great system and from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka is only about $200 return, which is a screaming deal when one considers the levels of service one receives in the JR Lines.

I would probably work between New York and Washington, though.

The issue of speed vs. service

The issue of train speed is a red herring in this debate. The real issue is improved service and creating that culture of rail travel referred to in the article. It's not like the current trip uses 19th Century steam train that inches along at 15km per hour.

Remember that in both Japan and Europe, they had intricate commuter rail networks in place prior to going high-speed.

The only thing preventing me from jumping on the train from Vancouver to Seattle on a regular basis (or Portland) is the lack of service, not the fact that it goes only 100 KM/ hour.

Incidentally, the Washington state official who dismisses high speed rail because the route is too "curvy" is obviously no engineer, nor has she travelled Japan's extensive, curvy, mountainous bullet train network. The issue is not curves, but more so the costs associated with overcoming geographic obstacles.

Abolutely not true

Hell, we can't even build a bridge to Vancouver Island! ... This has been called impossible as well, but longer links in more complicated geography have already been built multiple times around the world.

Nothing comparable has been done anywhere in the world. Period.

BC MOTH has estimated that a cost recovery toll would be close to $200 per vehicle, one way. The only way to finance such a structure would be to prohibit anyone from operating a ferry service so that people would have no choice of a lower cost option.

It is the Future

People really need a wake up call here. The world is moving quickly to high speed rail and we are way behind.

If we don't get moving, in 30 years, we could be one of the only cities of our size that does not have high speed rail. With flying and driving getting more expensive and miserable all the time, in a world of dwindling oil, rail will be the way to travel between cities. While it is expensive, it is less expensive than building and maintaining highways and airports that may not have much of a future.

As far as ticket prices go, they will be a bit more expensive because people will be willing to pay for better service. However, the operating cost per trip for high speed rail are lower than slow rail due to the fact that less staff time is required for a faster trip. As well, the expensive rolling stock can make more trips per day.

Spain has gone from having no high speed rail to one of the best systems in the world in twenty years. Their terrain is probably way more challenging than that from here to Seattle. All over Europe, billions are being spent to link cities the size of Vancouver and Seattle. And quite frankly, the billions being wasted on Gateway would be much better spent on high speed rail.

We really don't have a choice. If we are not connected to other cities by high speed rail, we will end up as a backwater that no one really will bother to come to either for business or for pleasure.

Last of all, it is really not responsible of this article to quote low level beaurocrats in this article. They are only following the current policy directions. High speed rail has really only picked up steam in the last couple of months, not nearly enough time for the creation of new policies to met the new reality. This is a political decision that obviously has not been made yet. If the BC and Canadian governments come to the table with the money to make the connections happen on the Canadian side, I'm sure the Americans will become a lot more serious.

Absolutely true

Tokyo Bay Aqua Line - Bridge and tunnel in one of the worlds most seismicly active areas.

Donghai Bridge - Monster bridge built in China on weak ground and in an area of intense wind conditions.

Confederation Bridge - Crosses a section of ocean with heavy ice flow.

Bandra-Worli Sea Link - Mumbai. Not so long but why don't we just hire these guys from India to build it.

Transportation infrastructure projects in Japan are built with a 200 year financing plan. It's amazing that the Coquihalla was paid for in 20 years! These projects last far beyond our lifetime, and that is how we need to look at ourselves. We may be here for a short time, and our attention spans are even shorter, but infrastructure projects last forever (Roman roads are now the highways of Europe).

""The world is moving quickly to high speed rail"

Reply to what 'rac' says above.

Correction: Most of the world already has arrived at high speed rail. Even China, along with Korea and Taiwan, now has its bullet train.

The real problem in North America is cultural. Urban planning has been based on our love of cars, big, sprawling homes and our libertarian insistence on going it our own, private way (see Kunstler's work on this for fun reading). Most suburbs are hardly accessible via public bus, much less train or high speed train. When I lived in Japan, I was completely blown away that I could get a train to just about any spot in the entire country. I suppose I had a similar feeling travelling through Europe. It showed me just how oil-reliant we are in North America.

The only reason this issue is even being broached in North America is because of the looming crisis of peak oil. The smarter elected officials are quietly aware of it and know damn well we can't continue moving people around via single occupancy vehicle (Kevin Falcon is not among these smarter officials, unfortunately). Vast public train networks and a revamping of our individual-centred urban planning paradigm is something that should have been broached when Hubbert first warned us about the peak oil curve in the 1950's/60's. Japan got it right, they built their bullet train in leading up to their 1964 Olympics. But then, Japan has a lot more 'wa' (group think) than we do, so no surprise there.

We are so fvcked with our addiction to oil, we aren't even at the point of being able to admit it, much less enter a 12-step program. Obama's rail gesture is a nice idea, it hints at the addiction to cars, but it's too little, too late, methinks. The rest I leave to the dystopian authors.

wayfarer

"Japan got it right, they built their bullet train in leading up to their 1964 Olympics."

The history of these projects goes back even further. The completion (basically a linking and hardening of local roads) of the Tokaido Highway, that linked Kyoto to Edo (Tokyo) in 1624 was one of their first super projects, and in todays cost would have been close to a Trillion dollars. This kind of project sparked the Japanese "Renaissance" which created the Japan of today. The benefits of that project go far beyond any measurable cost at that time. The route is, of course, in use today, by rail, highway, etc...

This is how we must think of infrastructure projects. Not that we must pay a $50 or $100 toll today, but what will the benefit be in the centuries to come. When I drive North Road from New West to Coquitlam I can't help but to think about the Sappers that built it 130 years ago.

Change Can Happen Fast

Things can change really fast. It doesn't take that long to retrofit an auto dependent suburb with rapid transit, tear down the crappy strip malls and put in high-density housing around the transit stations. Just look at what has happened in Burnaby. 20 years ago, it was just another suburb. Now, after two rapid transit lines, 25% of commutes are by transit, almost as high as Vancouver.

Check out downtown Richmond, which five years ago would have been considered a contradiction, is really starting to feel actually urban at a couple of intersections. This is all before the Canada Line is even running. In ten years, it should actually feel like a real city.

While it is sad that so much that has been built in the last 50 years is disposable, since it is, this is a great opportunity for massive change centred around high speed rail and rapid transit.

The other great feature of high speed rail is that it solves the problems with making long range electric cars by making it easier and faster for people to travel longer distances by train. That way, electric cars can be made smaller and cheaper because they don't need heavy, expensive battery packs, nor to they have to be used for high speed travel on freeways.

Bullet Train nonsense

There is a lot of misinformation about the Japanese Shinkansen or Bullet train.

The standard gauge used in Japan is what we would call narrow gauge 3'-6". Narrow gauge trains are not very stable at speeds over 60 to 80 mph, so Japanese planners decided to build a brand new standard gauge (4'-8.5") high speed railway, that could eventually travel at speeds of 300 kph. The first Bullet Trains traveled at 200 kph or 125 mph and did not attain such high commercial speeds several decades later.

In the late 60's, British rail operated the HST 125 diesel express trains which traveled at 200 kph (125 mph) along Brunel's former Broad gauge (7') GWR (God's Wonderful Railway) Western route.

The French were first able to collect electrical power from overhead pantograph's at speeds over 200 kph, in the late 1970's which laid the cornerstone of TGV train operation.

Today this is all old news 200 kph is almost standard today and 300 kph is attained on many high-speed lines.

In Canada and in the USA, trains are still regarded as a 'yesterdays' transit mode and little actual R & D takes place as all our high-speed train technology comes from Europe.

There is no reason for not having 4 or 5 daily returns from Vancouver to Eugene Oregon or Calgary or Edmonton for that matter. We have 'tilt' trains that could provide a faster service with little or no infrastructure upgrades and what is preventing this is corporate inertia and political ineptitude.

Interesting Comparsions

"Even China, along with Korea and Taiwan, now has its bullet train."

The distance from Beijing, China and Guangzhou is 1887 km. There are approximately 1,000,000,000 people on the corridor.

The distance from Seoul to Busan is just over 500 km. There are 45,000,000 people in the corridor.

From Taipei to Kaohsiung City, Taiwan is a distance of 290 km. There are approximately 20,000,000 people on the corridor.

From Vancouver to Montreal, traveling only in Canada, the distance is 4,800 km. There area approximately 25,000,000 people on the corridor, most of whom live between Windsor and Montreal.

fisher

This is another train to nowhere right now so lets concentrate on lrt for the lowermainland out to chilliwack or is selling cars more important ?

Wilfred Laurier

Your point is noted, however I don't believe I or anyone has thus far suggests high speed rail to replace the Via Rail line.

The Asian analogies I cited are more apt for local, short-run regional (Pacific Northwest, or Southern Ontario) comparisons. And as others have pointed out, we need to learn to walk before we can run. We need to get way more cars off lower mainland roads before we start dreaming about bullet trains to Portland. I don't see that happening under Gateway. Moreover, the so-called Hydrogen Highway is a green smokescreen set up by Campbell to give the appearance that he and Arnold are saving the West Coast from climate change.

Wilfred's Got It

And another comparison - none of those trains have to cross an international border.

This would require every passenger getting off at the border, with all their luggage in hand, and shuffling slowly across the border, subject to the discretion of those incredibly efficient border guards.

The bullet train don't seem so fast no more.

LRT and High Speed Rail are Connected

It is all connected. High speed rail promotes hub and spoke travel patterns which are easily served by other forms of rail transportation. These will both help to move us away from automobile centric forms of development

High speed rail tracks to Seattle could also serve to form part of a higher speed rail network around the region connecting major destinations. Again, SkyTrain or LRT could feed this network in a hub and spoke manner. Regional rail would help to concentrate development and create real city centres in other parts of the region.

A variety of rail transportation choices work together in providing people good options for travel and decrease their car use.

nevermore, says the falcon

Okay, it ain't Poe but it still rings true: Mr. Falcon is so behind the times with his gateway project, which will, I"m sure, continue the provincial legacy of stupid ideas--his own Falcongate, if you will--that there is no way the present government in Victoria will even consider pushing for high speed rail. Nor are they, or their buddies at Translink, considering the much more effective coverage a modern streetcar system has over our Sky (and subterranean skytrain) lines. They're going to push for a costly underground line to UBC when the entire region could have a streetcar system for the same cost. We've always thought ourselves on the cutting edge on the westcoast but we are anything but. In fact, with the focus on highways, we are headed backwards, into the Social Credit highway-building era, rather than looking forward to post-peak oil and what the heck we're going to need in ten to thirty years time.

Someone mentioned selling cars...

Yes, car drivers and dealers are an important constituency to the BC Liberals. One silver lining to the economic shake-up underway is the closure of car dealerships. The political clout of this group is going to tumble, but it wasn't soon enough to have an impact on this election cycle.

Perhaps with the implosion of GM etc, the car culture of North America is dying a slow death. In the meantime, car-loving suburbanites and their political representatives are in control of this province. The low-income transit users in the Lower Mainland sat out this election, and we're all going to pay for their apathy with car-dependent land development, worse air quality, and inadequate transit. Rail travel to Seattle does seem like a small issue.

A Rail of Two Cities

A high speed rail line is being built between Lyon and Torino is being built at a cost of $9.4 billion dollars. The line includes a 32 mile tunnel through the Alps.

The sizes of the two cities are comparable to that of Vancouver and Seattle, the distance is almost exactly the same and they are in different countries.

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/04/06/chart-comparing-new-hs-projects-around-the-world/