Quote:
Originally Posted by Makid
[B]
Sen. Adams said the trains need to run faster.
“Trains in Europe? I doubt if there’s any that go under 150 miles per hour. Frontrunner is 79. We don’t even compete with third world countries with the speed,” he said.
Sen. Anderegg said Utah needs to emulate Europe and Asia when it comes to rail service.
|
I agree trains need to run faster, but not by comparing top speed, like he is saying. I doubt many commuter rail trains even in Europe go much faster than FrontRunner. (Granted there are some places where a bona-fide electrified double-tracked FrontRunner would certainly be
capable of running at 100+ mph, but this shouldn't be a priority.)
Average speed is where it matters. FrontRunner goes from Salt Lake City to Provo, 44 miles, in just over an hour, so the average speed of FrontRunner is about 40 mph. Top speeds can raise the average speed, but not necessarily by all that much. Reducing delays is key. Double-tracking the entire route - not just strategically, but completely - is necessary to reduce these delays. Other things include straightening out kinks in the alignment, such as in the Jordan River Narrows where the train goes around a rock quarry at 45mph... this should be realigned so that the tracks go straight, allowing trains to blast through that area at full speed.
Quote:
“Ridership will never go where it needs to go in the state for commuter ridership without those things: frequency, reliability, dependability,” he said.
|
This I agree with. These are much more important traits than top speed.
Overall, very exciting. After several years of letting things sit, I'm glad that the state government is finally talking about maybe stepping up funding a little bit. The goals are good, I hope they come through.
***
As far as a state-wide rail network goes, I can really only see two routes happening. SLC to Moab would be pretty easy to get going quickly, since there is already Amtrak's California Zephyr running on most of that route, so PTC is already in place on (most of) that route. Some new track will probably need to be laid to get the tracks the last mile or two down to the Colorado River, and if the state wants to make things awesome, they would also kick in several millions more $$ to get a rail bridge built across that river so that the station is slightly closer to downtown. Lots of wetlands in that area, so nothing is going to be cheap and uncontroversial, but perhaps the environmentalists would be more lenient if the development is for a train station.
As far as the train goes, if normal US passenger equipment is used, I calculated (
based on the CZ schedule) that it would be about a 5 hour trip to Moab. This seems too long to be an attractive alternative, since a car ride takes only
3.75 hours.
A lot of the problem is that the existing tracks are very twisty, since they run along the bottoms of two very narrow canyons. The scenery is spectacular and is particularly famous among railfans, so I don't see a lot of ways the tracks can be straightened/improved without huge costs and controversy. So here is my alternative:
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/fou...ion/951625613/
Basically, Wisconsin bought two high-speed trainsets to use for their Chicago-Milwaukee passenger service, but the Republican Governor refused to accept them because he was anti-rail, effectively killing that project. These factory-new trainsets have been sitting at Amtrak's maintenance facility for years, waiting for buyers. UDOT could potentially get a very, very good deal on them, saving millions of $$.
Talgo tainsets are a
wesome because they use a 'passive tilt' technology to swing the cars outwards on corners. This allows them to go ~10 mph faster on twisty rail lines than regular passenger trains. 10 mph may not seem like much, but since the current rail route is about 40 mph, it would speed things up by 25%. This would place the total travel time from 5 hours down to about 4, plus or minus a few minutes, making it essentially the same travel time as the car (but of course with a dining car and drinks and whatever).
If travel times really were ~4 hours, you could run a round-trip per day in each direction and have one train crew based in SLC and the other in Moab, each working ~ 8 hour shifts. That would be a fantastic initial service offering, and would lay a good foundation for service expansions in the future as more trains could be purchased.
****
The other route would be SLC to Cedar City. The railroads never reached St George, so there are currently no tracks there. There is a railhead in Cedar City, though, and even though it is in pretty rough shape it could easily be put back in service. A through-service bus could run the remaining distance to St. George until someday, in the far future, a passenger rail line could be built in the median of I-15 to St George.
The major issue for this route is Union Pacific Railroad, which owns all the tracks to Cedar City. There are currently no passenger trains on this route, so it is not yet under PTC control. It also is a very congested freight route, so UDOT would probably have to pay for a few sidings/double track sections in order to increase capacity on the line.
Both of these routes would likely be very popular with out-of-state tourists going to the National Parks, and would go a long way to making Utah a more visitor-friendly state. I think if a very small tax were placed on hotels near Arches and Zion national park, to be used to fund a Statewide Passenger Rail Initiative, we could get these trains rolling within the few years.