Quote:
Originally Posted by camkazaam
I've been thinking a lot about high speed rail, especially since the president focused on them in the state of the union. My uncle splits his time between New Orleans and Germany. He says he can take a bullet train to Paris in 3 hours, Frankfurt in 2, Berlin in 5, Amsterdam in 5. These are great distances. The equivalent would be NOLA to Atlanta, Houston, and Nashville in about 2-4 hours.
New Orleans stands to gain a lot from high-speed rail, if it really happens. Most of the city's visitors come from nearby states. If people could hop on a train and get to New Orleans in a few hours, we might have significantly more visitors from Georgia, Florida, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
Just think about it. Wouldn't you be more likely to visit, say, Nashville, if you could take a 3 hour train ride, instead of a 7 hour drive? And if it was competitively priced? (unlike AmTrak). This could be a huge thing for the city, and it couldn't happen at a better time, with all the development happening near the Union Passenger Terminal. Mayor Landrieu should also really press the gas on getting some rail service running to Baton Rouge, and hell, why not try to connect our city to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Mobile, and Pensacola through some real rail?
What do you think? Is high speed rail really going to happen here? Or are we too "smart" to follow the Europeans?
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Without getting too overtly political on this forum, I am not convinced that there is an economically feasible way to do high speed rail in the spread out South or many other areas of the country besides the North East. Maybe if oil prices climbed a lot higher it might seem more reasonable. The reason why it is viable in places like China and Japan is because the cities being connected in those countries are all +5 million minimum.
I lived in europe for five months and travelled a bit while I was there. All my travels were by plane because the rail service was higher priced. And that's with the European tendency toward public transit instead of individual driving and heavy government help (much like Amtrak which, from what I've heard, runs in the red quite a lot).
Maybe its my bias (aerospace engineer) but I think air travel is about to see a major efficiency improvement in the next 10-20 years with the FAA overhauling flight routes and air traffic control systems from the 60s, newer fleets (787, new 737 & 747), and technology overhauls of existing fleets with higher efficiency engines, etc.
Locally though, I think New Orleans has the infrastructure already set up for a light rail line from the airport the the UPT. I think there could definitely be a large park and ride crowd around the Zephyr Stadium area (parking lots already there) to help make it a money making operation. Thoughts?