Governors of three states have now decided that they don't need federal funding for high speed rail initiatives. They say that nobody will ride them. They say that they'll be slower than flying. They say that it simply won't be worth it.
But are they right? What would a direct comparison of a specific trip show us?
Well, if you've ever travelled much in Europe, you already know the answer to that question. But let's explore in detail what it takes to get from one major American city to another in the same state. We'll do it in three ways.
Pretend you're in downtown Dallas, TX and want to travel to downtown Houston. This trip is about 240 miles door to door.
First, we'll drive there.
We get into our car in a parking garage in Dallas. Let's assume traffic is relatively light for Dallas, so getting on to interstate 45 doesn't take us too long, let's say 20 minutes to exit the city. Anybody who's ever driven in Dallas knows that this is optimistic, but I'm an optimistic kind of guy. Now we drive down 45 for quite a while. If we average 70 mph on the highway, we can drive the 240 miles in about 3.5 hours. Then we have to negotiate traffic to get to downtown Houston. I'll allow 20 minutes for traffic here too. So all told, the trip takes on the order of 4 hours. If you have to stop to use the bathroom, your average speed goes down, so this is really the minimum amount of time it'll take you to get there.
So you have now spent 4 hours behind the wheel of a car. A four hour drive isn't the most horrible thing in the world. You can eat in the car, you can listen to music. But
you certainly have to focus on the driving. Doing work on your laptop is out of the question. Reading a book is out. Doing the daily crossword? Forget it. And a nap? No way.
Well, this is kind of a pain. So let's do what most people would do, and fly. We'll go from DFW in Dallas to Houston Intercontinental.
Again, we start out in downtown Dallas. It'll take you at least 30 minutes to get from downtown to DFW, assuming traffic is light. You're not going to check a bag, and you checked in online to save time, printing out your boarding pass. You arrive at DFW and park your car in the long-term lot. You then have to take the airport transportation to the terminal. Since you have your boarding pass, you can go directly to security. Then you get into the line for security. Let's allow for about 15 minutes from when you park to your arrival at the terminal.
Security, of course, takes a while. You're stuck in line behind a family of four, with one toddler and an infant. This adds about 10 minutes to your security "experience." After about 20 minutes total, you're finally through security, and can hoof it to the gate. You're cutting it close. You have about 10 minutes from the moment you get through security to get to the gate. The plane is boarding. Your seat number hasn't been called yet, so you have to wait about 10 minutes to get onto the plane. Finally, all of the passengers have boarded, and the door is closed. It takes about 10 minutes for the plane to taxi to the takeoff runway, and finally the plane is cleared for takeoff. Blasting into the air, you arrive at Houston Intercontinental (IAH) about 40 minutes later, just enough time for the flight attendants to bring you a beverage, for you to slurp it down quickly, and for them to collect your trash. You've had about 40 minutes to get some work done, or read a chapter or two of your book, or to get a quick cat nap, not including your beverage slurping time.
Once you arrive in Houston, you need ground transportation so that you can get downtown. You can take public transit, but that's not the best thing to do in Houston. So you rent a car. You've reserved the car in advance, so you simply head to the rental car bus, which takes you to the rental HQ at IAH. This place is huge. Allow about 25 minutes from when you arrive at the bus stop, and you finally have your car. But where is IAH? Well, it's pretty far north of downtown. You end up sitting on US 59 for about 30 minutes in light traffic, finally to arrive downtown.
So the final time it takes for you to get to downtown Houston from Dallas is roughly three hours. Only about 40 minutes of that was useful in any way, the 40 minutes you had on the plane. And you now have a rental car, parking in Dallas, and various other parking fees and so forth to pay for. Certainly, the drive is looking pretty nice at this point. Hey, at least you have your own car, and you didn't have to remove your belt, your shoes, your watch, and your dignity to get there. And really, driving only takes one more hour. Granted, it's a useless hour, but then again, so was quite a bit of the time you spent getting to and from the airplane.
Now, the third way of taking the trip is fictional. It is currently impossible. But let's say that we finally implemented a high speed rail connection from Dallas to Houston. The line is built with modern track, with concrete ties, that allows for the use of existing high-speed rail technology. In particular, let's assume that the rail line has adopted the Siemens train setup used on the InterCity Express routes in Germany. These trains can average about 200 mph on good, modern track that is devoid of curves. Luckily, the Texas geography allows for such a straight piece of track between Dallas and Houston, so we'll be able to stay at top speed for most of the trip.
So where do we start? Well, we're in downtown Dallas. So where is the train station in Dallas? That's right. Downtown. So we drive the short distance from our origin to the train station and park in the park-n'-ride lot there. This trip took five minutes, and you never had to get on a freeway. Our new high-speed rail line has a nice online system, so you've bought your ticket online and printed it out, just like you would with your boarding pass on the airplane. So now that we're at the train station, you look at the departures board and find your train's track number. You have about a five minute walk to the track, where you find the train already waiting. You walk on board and find a nice seat, putting your luggage away on the rack above your seat. The train usually runs on time, but for the sake of realism let's say there's a ten minute delay. So the train leaves ten minutes late.
Once you leave the station in Dallas, you go at low speed for a few miles until you reach the open track. Once you get there, the engineer opens up the locomotive. Soon you're traveling at 175 mph, which the train maintains until it reaches the outskirts of Houston. The train has to slow down a bit once you get there, but overall you end up averaging a speed of about 160 mph over the entire stretch. Traveling the 237 miles from Dallas to Houston took just over 1.5 hours. All of this time is yours to do what you want with it. You can sleep, read, work, talk to your fellow passengers, work the daily crossword or sudoku puzzle, or play a video game on your smart phone. You've been able to get a hot cup of coffee and a muffin from the snack cart that goes through the car. And once that coffee goes through you, you are able to use the clean restroom located in your train car, all the while traveling at 160 mph.
And where is the train station in Houston? That's right, it's downtown. You're a few blocks away from your destination, so you either walk or take a cab and reach your destination in 10 minutes. Overall, this trip has taken you less than two hours, 1.5 of which was useful time you can spend how you wish. And you never had to take off your shoes. Unless you wanted to, of course, just to get comfy.
I know which trip I'd prefer. How about you?