Quote:
Originally Posted by JordanL
Becuase it's rail. Any politician is going to be heistant to pay hundreds of billions for infrastructure that most people don't even know exists, let alone register as a travel option when planning trips.
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True, a nationwide plan will cost hundreds of Billions.
But, for particular city pairs where higher speeds are desired, it'll cost around $10-15 million per mile to upgrade the track, and around $5-10 million per grade separation.
Take for example, Chicago to Milwaukee. That's a distance of approximately 85 miles. So, the brand new tracks will cost around $850 million. There's approximately 90 at grade highway intersections, to upgrade all would cost an addition $900 million. Most of the at grade intersections are in rural areas, so the expense building the grade separation will be much less than in more urban areas. Total including train sets would be around $1.8 billion.
That initially sounds like a lot of cash, but it's not considering how much is spent building commuter rail lines. The stations already exist on this line, the problem will be choosing which ones to pass by.
Amtrak presently runs 14 Hiawatha trains along this route every day, plus two Empire Builder trains a day. Presently it take an hour and a half, averaging around 60 mph, it could be completed in just more than one hour.
The tracks along this route are already in pretty good shape because the Hiawatha makes 5 stops and still averages 60 mph. So, it's probably not necessary to spend much money on new tracks. Half the route is already double tracked. But imagine how eliminating the at grade intersections, and using faster train sets would help speed this route up. Probably for less than one billion dollars.
Other city pairs could be upgraded cheaply too. You also will get more for your tax money investing on tracks with many passenger trains a day already running on them, like the Chicago to Milwaukee corridor. As you complete upgrading city pairs, one by one, you also speed up the longer distance cross country hotel trains piecemeal too. But one has to start somewhere.