Western Rail Alliance Proposes HSR Routes, Including LA-Phoenix

Over the last year or so, since the passage of Prop 1A and the election of a high speed rail-friendly president, there has been a surge of interest in high speed rail across the country, and new organizations and consortiums have come together to propose new projects - as well as to revive ones that had been left for dead (looking at you, Florida).

One of these groups is the "Western Rail Alliance," a semi-official group that includes land-use planners from Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. Late last week this group unveiled their list of proposed routes, one of which includes California:

The idea, in a nutshell, is that planners in each state can best negotiate rail routes within their cities and have the expertise to find funding to develop high-speed rail between those cities. The current participants in the alliance are the local RTC [in Clark County, NV], the Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County in Reno, the Maricopa Council of Governments in Phoenix, the Utah Transit Authority in Salt Lake City and the Denver Council of Governments. The organizations also have made overtures to the Mid-Region Council of Governments in Albuquerque, but it has not signed on to the alliance yet.

They also have made contact with planning organizations in Tucson and Boise as potential future members.

Right now, the alliance is working toward turning itself into a legal non-profit organization. It also will move toward expanding membership to include prospective suppliers and service providers that could be a part of the effort to build high-speed rail in the Southwest.

Recently, Skancke made the first public presentation about the alliance, speaking to a lunch meeting of the North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce.

At that session, Skancke outlined the first five routes the alliance will focus on: between Los Angeles and Phoenix; between Las Vegas and Phoenix; between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City; between Salt Lake City and Denver; and between Salt Lake City and Reno.

Now, before you all run off to the comments to criticize this, let's be clear: these routes aren't going to be built anytime soon. They don't appear on the USDOT HSR map, nor are they likely to anytime soon. This certainly isn't going to get funded in any official way, aside from very preliminary studies, for many years.

And that's as it should be. Of these five routes, only LA-Phoenix made it onto The Transport Politic's Interstate Rail Network proposal (in the last of four phases). There are many higher priority corridors that should come before these five.

Yet that shouldn't cause us to dismiss the concept out of hand. My interest in high speed rail isn't specific to California, although this blog is. I quite strongly believe this country should invest in building a national HSR network, proceeding first along the highest priority corridors and over the next 2-3 decades, filling in the gaps so that by 2040 or so, there would be a much improved passenger rail network that could get one from coast to coast faster than you can today. Doesn't mean you'd have a 220mph bullet train going from SF to NY, but one could stitch together a network of long-distance trains that could have faster and more reliable travel times than Amtrak's current routes.

In any case, it can't hurt to take an evening and consider what the Western Rail Alliance is proposing. LA-Phoenix could be a very valuable route for California, depending on the alignment. Any LA-PHX train would include stops in San Bernardino and Palm Springs, reaching a part of the state with a growing population. The train could follow Interstate 10 east toward Phoenix over a relatively easy alignment, with only the climb out of the Coachella Valley posing engineering challenges. Or it could continue southeast to the Imperial Valley, which sports the highest unemployment rate of any California county at 30%, hit Yuma, and then find a path back into Phoenix. This route would be less direct and therefore more costly and with a higher travel time, but there's pretty much nothing between Indio and Buckeye along the I-10 route, so it's worth at least a study.

Las Vegas-Phoenix is already witnessing a major transportation project, the Hoover Dam Bypass, scheduled for completion next year. Aside from Kingman and Wickenburg, this route would also be running through mostly empty land.

Las Vegas-Salt Lake City has the benefit of serving more actual settlements between its two endpoints, including the rapidly growing Utah city of St. George, along with several towns scattered along Interstate 15 before the Wasatch Range metropolis at Provo (and giving a boost to cities just beyond the urban edge, like Nephi). Salt Lake City-Reno would also connect some smaller towns, such as Wendover, Elko, and Battle Mountain, but would otherwise be passing through completely empty land. Would be interesting to see how fast you could crank up the trainsets over the Bonneville Salt Flats.

The most intriguing, and almost certainly the most difficult, is a proposed Salt Lake City-Denver HSR route. Perhaps this one will appeal to the people who think the Grapevine should have been the alignment for the SF-LA route. If you think the Grapevine is easy for HSR, you're gonna love the Rocky Mountains!

An earlier Las Vegas Sun article examined one subset of the SLC-Denver route, the I-70 Coalition which has been proposing passenger rail as a solution to the traffic problems through the Rockies on Interstate 70, especially from Denver to the ski resorts in winter. There's been some discussion of maglev for this corridor, but no firm plans as of yet.

As a relatively young person, I might actually live to see some of these projects get built. As China pours hundreds of billions of dollars into their HSR system as an economic stimulus measure, it's not silly to start thinking on a nationwide scale for HSR. Perhaps none of these corridors are yet deserving of federal money, which for now needs to go to the higher priority corridors. But if the western states wanted to start planning these routes, and were willing to start funding it themselves, I wouldn't object. Better we start thinking about this now, instead of continuing to delude ourselves into thinking the status quo is tenable.

What a Difference 10+ Years Make: Arizona Solar Bullet (UPDATED)

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by Rafael

On Friday, the business section of the Arizona Daily Star published an article on a high-speed solar train, proposed as Tucson-Phoenix connection by Solar Bullet LLC, a two-man outfit in Tucson that doesn't appear to have a website with this single-page web site (h/t to Adirondacker). Neither the proposed route nor any description of the ROW issues/environmental impacts to be addressed are provided. The picture shows a three-car train, which implies frequent but expensive service. The catenaries lack support structures, but at least this image shows the tracks at grade. The author appears more focused on using photovoltaics to power the train that it is on the train itself.

Judging by the comments, this idea has been floated before but somehow never died. This is remarkable/suspicious given that the estimated price tag for the first segment of approx. 115 miles is a whopping $27 billion!

The solar panels above the tracks would not come cheap, especially given their proximity to the overhead wires and exposure to aerodynamic forces plus vibration every time a train runs past. However, the artist's rendering also shows an aerial structure with a wide gravel bed at grade. It's possible the artists was clueless, cp. the short length of the train, but a picture does say more than 1000 words. There are few major roads between the metro areas, so why not use the gravel as ballast and switch to aerial alignments only within the relatively populated regions.

Proponents are touting quad tracks so express trains can operate at 220mph, which requires 25kV AC. Note that the artist's rendering is plain mendacious in that it shows just a single track. No speed was given for the local trains, but with just six intermediate stations 150mph peak should be entirely feasible. Apparently, no-one considered if overall train frequency would justify even sidings at the intermediate stations, never mind dedicated super-express tracks.

Back in 2000, the Tucson metro area has 843,746, while Phoenix counted 3,251,786. The metro area added around one million residents before the real estate bubble burst and is now in modest decline.

The problem for any HSR project is that both cities have little or no connecting public transit. The sprawling metropolis of Phoenix has a grand total of one light rail line and has to resort to an artificial Copper Square umbrella brand for a $3 billion development effort aimed at creating a mixed use neighborhood that is intended to give the city a recognizable downtown area.

Downtown Tucson is also a branding effort rather than the result of decades of planning designed to create a shaded, walkable urban core. Tellingly, the site provides not a map of downtown but of its parking amenities, including numerous multi-story car parks where commercial or residential real estate could have been if public transport had been a priority. It was only in 2006 that residents decided to tax themselves to get streetcar service. Senator McCain's principled stance against earmarks may be laudable, but in times like these, it could also prove a liability: his fourth term is up in 2010.

HSR between Tucson and Phoenix could perhaps make sense, but perhaps only as a dual-track rapid rail proposition with tracks mostly at grade and in combination with projects to expand local light rail and/or BRT routes, all at a far lower capital investment than is being touted. I'm not sure if it's the dry desert heat, but there are actually other projects that are partially disconnected from reality. For example, DesertXPress will apparently use a near-invisible overhead wire that needs neither catenaries nor poles. The roof panels above an air-conditioned 21-mile bike path in Qatar are held up by a tangle of pipes carrying expensively refrigerated cold water, presumably to keep cyclists from suffering heat stroke. Note that the artist for this project also forgot support columns.

While I'm all for greener forms of transportation, especially electric trains and (electric) bikes, the Arizona Solar Bullet project in particular does the cause of getting HSR off the ground in the US no favors at all. In spite of criticism of the way certain CHSRA board members and staff have led the California HSR project in recent weeks and months, it is undeniable that the 10+ years spent on environmental and technical studies was not wasted. Not only do none of its renderings defy the laws of physics, the per-mile construction cost forecasts in e.g. the Central Valley are also an order of magnitude lower than the $237 million advanced by Solar Bullet LLC for the Arizona corridor. Indeed, the average for the entire 450 mile starter line from SF to LA and Anaheim, including several expensive mountain and fault crossings plus busy rail traffic at either end, is currently estimated at $73.3 million per mile.

There are good reasons why Secr. of Transportation Ray LaHood thinks California is far ahead of every other HSR project in the country, perhaps even including the still-stalled effort in Florida. Plus, CHSRA has decided it wants the high-speed network in California to run exclusively on renewable power, i.e. a reliable combination of wind, solar and geothermal, possibly assisted by hydro and biogas. However, the Authority has wisely left the implementation details to the experts in the utility sector.