Bullet Trains for America?
8th November 2009
Because a railroad built today will probably still be in operation 150 years from now, rights of way should be engineered for maximum speeds from end to end. Overseas, where many high-speed trains run on dedicated tracks, they are. (In Japan and most of Europe, passenger trains are dominant and railroads carry a relatively small proportion of all freight—the reverse of the situation in the United States. Europe’s freight railroads are hampered by national differences in signaling systems and other technologies.) The sharpest curves permitted for trains operating over 170 m.p.h. are a close approximation of a straight line. Grades are typically restricted to one percent, or a one-foot rise or fall per 100 feet of distance. “Together, the limits on curvature and gradient mean that high-speed rail requires extensive land acquisition and expensive cutting, filling, bridging, and tunneling, especially in hilly areas,” Thompson noted. Expanding such corridors through heavily populated areas presents environmental hazards and NIMBY (not in my backyard) challenges, not to mention costs ranging up to $50 million a mile.