Trains: Getting Slower All the Time
- Posted by: Zach Frechette
- on May 15, 2009 at 3:05 pm
It’s a well known fact that trains in the United States aren’t especially speedy (we documented this first hand a few issues ago). What’s less well known is that they’ve actually gotten slower in this country since they first became popular. A writer over at Slate spent some time thumbing through old train brochures, paying special attention to the timetables listed in the back. His discovery? In every instance he could find, trains are slower now than they were in the early 20th century.
A trip from New York to Montreal took about nine hours, whereas today it takes 12. A route from Chicago to Minneanapolis passed in four and half hours; today, more than eight. Conductors in 1934 would complain of trains grinding along at 85 mph, though speed routinely reached 100 mph or more. Today’s “high-speed” Acela averages 87 mph, despite an engine capable of more than 200 mph.
There are some logical explanations for this. The introduction of cars and planes played a big roll. So did increased freight traffic on rail lines. But as he notes,
Hovering over all of these causal factors is a widespread societal shift that occurred, one that saw the streamliners of the 1930s eclipsed by the glamour of the jet age, as well as the postwar automobile boom and the building of the Interstate Highway System. Passenger trains lost their priority to freight, and there simply wasn’t the same cultural imperative for speed and luxury on the trains.
But it doesn’t change that fact that countries like Japan, Germany, Spain, and China are all seeing tremendous success with high speed rail program. Here’s to hoping that Obama’s high-speed rail plan will put us back on top of our game.
Photo (cc) by Flickr user Cindy47452.
DISCUSSION: 8 Comments
Trains also make lots of stops which waste people’s time. There should be more direct/express trains with fewer cars per train but faster service. Avoiding unnecessary stops could even cancel out any efficiency losses from having shorter trains–it must take a lot more energy to stop and start a ten car train twenty times along its route than to just run one- or two-car trains between select destinations. At the extreme end of such a scheme is switching all the way to something like <a href=”http://cybertran.com”>group rapid transit</a>, where not only are vehicles smaller and have fewer intermediate stops but are also on-demand and automated, so the system can run 24/7 without wasting resources or having to pay drivers for night shifts.
Group rapid transit.
Just finished punching the clown.
GRT or PRT is a pipe dream.
“GRT or PRT is a pipe dream.”Just like human flight.Which do you think is cheaper, building ten thousand cars that hold one person each or building a thousand vehicles that can hold ten people each?Six lanes of freeway or one lane of grade-separated rail?Constructing and operating a GRT or PRT system is entirely within our reach both technologically and economically. The main reason it hasn’t been done yet on a large scale is complacency.Take conventional rail, which already exists. Make the cars smaller, independent and automated. Optimize routing for travel time. Build off-line stations. Congratulations, you’ve got a functional GRT system.
The speed decrease is most likely due to the decline in rail maintenance. The train you mention is capable of going 200mph, yet averages 87mph. Why? The minimal amount of money has gone into maintaining the rail system, so the safe maximum speeds on most stretches of track has decreased so very few engines can go as fast as they are capable of.
It’s a vicious cycle: the fewer people ride the train, the less money available to make riding the train desirable, the fewer people ride the train…
PRT is MY pipe dream. I’ve solved a great number of known problems with PRT, with huge cost reductions, and am applying for grants. I don’t fear an engineering failure at this point. I greatly fear a government bureaucratic failure.