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Old Posted Aug 20, 2020, 5:05 PM
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Location: Granbury, Texas
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 202_Cyclist View Post
Not Amtrak-related but this is interesting.

Atlanta to Charlotte
Passenger Rail Corridor Investment Plan
The Tier 1 DEIS has been published in the federal register as of September 20, 2019. The 45-day public and agency review and comment period occurred between September 20, 2019 and November 4, 2019 and is now closed.
Here is the link for the Executive Summary:
The chart on page 0-10 of the executive summary is probably the most important generally for all proposed HSR corridors in the USA. Let's see if I can effectively repost it with text here.
Corridor Alternatives
Criteria>Southern Crescent<I-85>Greenfield
Capital Costs($2012)>$2.0B-$2.3B<$13.3B-$15.4B>$6.2B-$8.4B
Top Operating Speed(mph)>79 to 110<125 to 180>125 to 220
End to End Travel Time(hrs:mins)>4:35 - 5:34<2:42 - 2:50>2:06 - 2:44
Projected Annual Ridership(2050)>0.94 M to 1.18 M<5.50 M to 5.62 M>5.38 M to 6.30 M

Breaking it down for the masses, (A) the cheapest solution is to do nothing and watch ridership maintain itself to present levels, (B) the next cheapest is to spend around $2 Billion on sharing Norfolk Southern tracks for a million per year ridership increase, (C) the next more expensive solution is to spend $6-8 Billion building an entirely new HSR line for 5 million per year ridership increase, and (D) the most expensive solution is spend $13-16 Billion to build new HSR corridor within the I-85 ROW for 6 million per year ridership increase.

To date Brightline has chosen to do mostly alternatives (B) and (D) in Florida, mostly (D) in California and Nevada, while Texas Central has chosen to do mostly (C) in Texas with a little bit of (B) approaching the terminating cities.

This route will not choose it's preferred solution for most of the route until the completion of its Tier 2 EIS process and issues a DEIS, and will not finalize the route until the completion of the FEIS.

To be fair, Texas Central's cost estimation for a (C) greenfield solution costs have risen far over $8 Billion, so do not place absolute faith into any of these cost estimations - although relative cost estimations between them are probably somewhat factual.

Another generality to be gathered from this executive summary are the train's maximum speeds between the choices presented;
90-110 mph sharing an existing freight railroad ROW, 125-180 mph within an existing Interstate Highway ROW, and up to 220 mph in a brand new greenfield ROW.
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