As the Crow Flies
Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor
I just got back from the American Public Transportation Association’s (APTA) annual meeting yesterday and found in my email a link to the Brookings Institute’s report on air travel, “Expect Delays: An Analysis of Air Travel Trends in the United States.†So what does this have to do with public transportation? A lot more than you might think at first glance.
One thing I hear a lot around the ‘ole transit water cooler is whether the United States can compare itself to Europe in terms of public transportation. The United States is much larger in comparison to a European nation. And, because of this (and for other reasons I am sure), the make-up of our metropolitan areas is different as the Brookings’ report points out, “contrary to many European countries with less land area and a clear metropolitan capital, the United States has multiple metropolitan centers throughout the country.â€
I’ve discussed this before here that the United States is comparable to Europe, but only in a regional sense. Here is where the Brookings’ report becomes much more interesting. According to the report, “nearly 99 percent of all U.S. air passengers arrive or depart from one of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, with the vast majority of travel concentrated in 26 metropolitan-wide hubs.†And, “half of the country’s flights are routes of less than 500 miles, and the busiest corridors are between the metropolitan air travel centers.â€
Airplanes produce the most pollution during takeoffs and landings, so multiple short-distance flights are not necessarily the best choice for the environment in these metropolitan areas. Of course, we’ve painted ourselves into a corner here with only air or auto as our means of traversing these distances for the most part since as a nation we’ve let our rail infrastructure fall by the wayside as the report points out, “this underinvestment left the country, especially at distances between 200 and 500 miles, with little modal choice and competition.â€
Interesting. So rail is a preferable choice for distances between 200-400 miles? Definitely. Let’s take a look at my handy “Vision for High-Speed Rail in America†map next to my desk:
- San Diego to Los Angeles = 121 miles
- Los Angeles to San Francisco = 381 miles
- Chicago to Minneapolis = 410 miles (with Milwaukee and Madison in between)
- Chicago to St. Louis = 295 miles
- Chicago to Detroit = 303 miles
- Dallas to Austin = 199 miles
- Austin to Houston = 193 miles
- Houston to Dallas = 240 miles
- Orlando to Miami = 234 miles
- Washington, D.C. to Boston = 438 miles (with Philly and NYC in between)
So what does the Brookings’ report say about a high-speed rail investment? “It should concentrate a large share of resources in one corridor with broad political support that also consistently tests as a high-ridership corridor.†Sounds like my map wasn’t lying. We can have successful high-speed rail in the United States, which will in turn help the airline industry become greener both environmentally and economically.
Of course, there is always a but at the end of these things, “However, the full benefits of high-speed rail investments will only truly be realized when they work in tandem with airports to offer smooth and efficient travel on both modes.â€
Having frequently used the Amtrak Hiawatha Line stop at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell airport, I can attest to the advantages of this. This is all about setting up a network, and not just a rail network. It has to be an integrated network taking into consideration ports, rail (both freight and commuter), airports and highways to improve travel across all modes.
That’s the mistake made with the interstate highway system. It’s great for autos, but it sucks for everything else.
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Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
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October 9th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
The problem with Inter City High Speed rail (ICHSR) between major U.S. cities is that there is no express intra city transit to and from the existing (or planned) ICHSR stations.
It makes no sense to construct ICHSR unless there is a corresponding Intra City High Speed Transit (ICHST) network that will get the riders to and from their destinations quickly.
In San Francisco, the average speed of intra city transit is only 8-1/2 MPH and it would take abouut 45 minutes to get from my home to the planned ICHSR station downtown. Then hypothetically after I get to Los Angeles and leave the proposed ICHSR station, it would take me another hour on LAMTA’s slow transit to get to my hotel. Then to get to and from my business venue, I would have to again rely on LAMTA.
Speed and efficient use of time is one of the primary objectives in any form of personal transportation. In addition to ICHSR, we need to complement it with ICHST also.
October 13th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
One of the problems with trying to compare airlines and intercity rail is that intercity rail can have effective intermediate stops, and still have express trains that make the journey very quickly by not stopping at many of them.
Take a really good look at the scheduling of the Japanese Shinkansen to really understand. The approximate pattern is that a local or regional train will leave an end point terminal, and then maybe 3 minutes behind it an express train will leave. The bulk of the actual network track is 2 main line tracks, but in the stations there are multiple tracks. In an intermediate station, the local will stop, but the regional or express trains will pass through on the main line.
What this means is that:
1. You shouldn’t necessarily look at just city pairs, but places that have a series of intermediate stops that would work well too. You wouldn’t want to build in interstate highway that runs for 150 miles with zero exits in beween.
2. The high speed rail system can, if properly built, dispatched and signaled, can serve a number of suburban needs well by getting people closer to their ultimate destination. This helps reduce the need to go all the way downtown to get a train – because the downtown station is only the main station, it isn’t (and shouldn’t be) the only station.
If you look at the increases in passengers on Amtrak Cascades between Portland and Seattle (and despite the economic downturn the ridership trend is definitely upward, in some years as much as 25% or more), you will see that the trains actually stop in MORE places than the previous equipment did, yet cover the distance in less time. If we could ever get to the point where more than several trains a day were running on that route, there could be both local, regional and expresses to help provide for the need of those actually going father away from the city center.