Re: When considering the alternatives You should do needs based planning.
Author: BOB2
Date: 12-11-2020 - 19:50
Erik H. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> LES Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Seatac (currently spilling over onto Paine) and
> VIA are bursting at the seems and need
> > their precious space for international travel.
>
> Except very, very little of Sea-Tac's capacity is
> used for flights to/from Vancouver, Portland and
> Eugene. And even of those flights, the vast
> majority of them are flown using sub-100 seat
> turboprop aircraft, whereas most HSR systems in
> the world replaced airline shuttles using mainline
> (130-200 seat) aircraft - or in the case of Japan,
> domestic configured 747s with over 500 seats per
> aircraft. If Sea-Tac is really out of room, it
> could easily be accommodated by forcing Alaska to
> fly fewer, but larger, aircraft instead of its
> Horizon Q400s.
>
> > Widening I-5 is becoming more and more onerous.
> Just look at what it has taken to get a
> > single 100 year old bridge (CRC) replaced
>
> Except HSR will have absolutely zero impact there,
> since HSR and I-5 serve two very different
> purposes. So even with HSR, I-5 is still going to
> be clogged and congested, because HSR won't serve
> >99% of the trips that I-5 supports. HSR replaces
> short-distance air travel, NOT freeways.
> (Otherwise, why is Germany still building and
> expanding its Autobahns?)
>
> > with land restrictions and the Northwest's
> propensity for regular flooding I don't see
> > them adding much more in lane capacity to I-5
>
> Those factors also work heavily against HSR. Any
> HSR route, which must be relatively
> straight/flat/level, will have tremendous
> environmental impacts on protected wetlands and
> coastlands, tidal flats, rivers, and not to
> mention the 100 or so miles of metropolis between
> Tumwater and Marysville and the tens of thousands
> of homes that would have to be destroyed while
> within a housing crisis. The proponents of HSR
> think that we can just build homes in Centralia
> and Kelso to replace the lost stock, but isn't
> that just creating urban sprawl and destroying
> even more protected land and farmland?
>
> The biggest bang for the buck is going to be more
> local transit to get local trips out of the car.
> That means more bus service - busways/bus lanes,
> larger (articulated buses) and more frequent.
> Once we've accomplished that, then move to light
> rail and commuter/regional rail for the longer
> trips - WHILE MAINTAINING a high level and quality
> of bus service.
> n
> Building HSR is only going to convince people that
> local trips are going to be by car, and I-5 is
> still going to have to be widened to accommodate
> those trips to work and to the grocery store that
> HSR will never serve.
All good points, the title "ultra high speed" is mistake number one.... Assuming this should be the "answer" and then failing to do a "needs" up, based study of observed travel demand, looking across all modes (existing air, auto, pedicab, since it's Seattle and Portland, or whatever...). The next step should be to evaluate "all" relevant potential passenger rail operational and investment scenarios, which could attract and/or compete for that observed (and forecasted future...) travel demand, to identify costs and benefits of the trade offs between different alternatives, to identify the most cost effective options, at various investment levels and operational scenarios.
Specifying "ultra high speed" is the same kind of reaching the conclusion "first" and never doing the real "due diligence" "needs based" planning (required of all federally funded highway and transit project)to see if it is the most cost effective or efficient operating or investment scenario "assumes" that since we are only here to study "ultra high speed", that it is the "answer".... Which is indeed very similar to the utterly incompetent planning approach that lead directly to the poorly planned, utterly mismanaged, gold plated CAHSRA "runaway money train" fiasco....