Transformative-Rail-Vision.Pdf
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Dollars in Billions High-Speed Rail $512.70 Electrifica3on & Downtown Megaprojects $120.48 Conven3onal Routes $69.67 Long-Distance Segments $4.47 $0 $150 $300 $450 $600 • The collective costs of this vision may appear staggering. However, these funding levels are pay-back for more than a half-century of disinvestment in the nation’s passenger rail network, and would be still off-pace of leading Asian & European nations. • At the same time, this is not an all-out crayon exercise. There’s dozens of high-speed and a hundred or so other conventional routes that would fully-realize a world-class network. Therefore, there’s a bit of practicality in this vision, but we won’t argue it is realistic or likely. • The first version of this vision does not include ridership estimates or economic benefit multipliers. Our goal is to include this in the next iteration of this document. Because, too often we focus on fully-allocated costs of mobility investments but not the fully-allocated benefits. The trouble is those numbers are more abstract and difficult to calculate in advance. • Our vision generally does not include new local rail transit projects, such as heavy rail/metro, light-rail, streetcars and peak travel-focused commuter rail, and assumes the current federal New Starts funding program (and other programs included as part of Capital Investment Grants) continue and increase in investment levels to augment and leverage the high-speed, intercity and regional routes prioritized here. • Cost per mile rates were determined using published costs of recent service expansion and improvement projects, both in North America and global examples. • Funding is assumed for capital projects at 80% federal and 20% state, local or other matching funds, while operations are assumed at 50% federal and 50% state/local/other match. • Estimates included in this vision are generally liberal, with the expectation that elected officials and other policy-makers should leverage political will, global capital cost standards, project management techniques and economies of scale in procurement to make optimal use of public investment. • Implementation would occur on a phased or rolling approach, with full build-out and initiation of service likely requiring 30-40 years. This vision does not identify projects according to those phases. • This document attempts to calculate miles of new or improved rail lines only once. However, given this vision is aspirational and not technical, some unintended redundancies may exist. • The routes and services recommended here do not, generally, factor in massive shifts in population locations and travel habits related to climate change, although the position of RAIL Magazine is that climate change is real, is the result of human activity and may result in tremendous impacts to society. We simply do not have the expertise to make such projections. • RAIL Magazine’s continuing work is largely a labor of love and is personal commentary, and suggestions and feedback are welcome and appreciated, although we’ll maintain our editorial positions and viewpoints with the encouragement to others to draft their own vision statements. This document does not necessarily reflect the positions of the Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA) or the South West Transit Association (SWTA). 10 HIGH SPEED RAIL SYSTEMS Cost Per Mile Trainsets Cost Route/System Miles (in millions Notes Needed (1 per (billions) of $) every 16 miles) Full NEC 2nd corridor; Northeast Corridor 470 $75.2 160 29 includes Gateway tunnel Minus Madera- California 629 $56.6 90 39 Bakersfield IOS Minus Joliet-Decatur 110 Chicago-St Louis-Kansas City 585 $46.8 80 37 mph segment Chicago-Toledo/Detroit- Toronto/Cleveland-Pittsurgh- 1130 $90.4 80 Full new HSR corridor 71 Harrisburg-Baltimore Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison- Upgraded route CHI-MKE; 433 $34.6 80 27 Rochester-Twin Cities new infra. elsewhere Assumes Texas Central Texas Triangle / 925 $64.8 70 self-financed Dallas- 58 OKC/Monterrey Houston starter line Continues to DC- Charlotte-Atlanta 245 $20.0 80 15 Charlotte corridor Cascadia: Vancouver- 315 $28.3 90 Full new HSR corridor 20 Seattle-Portland (New York)-Boston-Albany- New HSR north of Albany 725 $65.3 90 45 Montreal/Toronto & west of Worcester Brightline: Orlando- Assumes I-4 highway 235 $16.5 70 15 Tampa/Cocoa-Jacksonville median @ no cost Total Infrastructure: 5692 $498.5 N/A Total Trainsets Needed 356 Average Infrastructure: 569 $49.9 89 Rolling Stock Cost Annul Operating & Maintenance $36,998,000 (in billions) $14.2 Cost (in millions) [$6,500 per mile] [$40 million per trainset] Total Cost – Infrastructure & Rolling Stock: $512.7 billion • Assumes continuation and completion of California High-Speed Rail’s Madera-Bakersfield Initial Operating Segment, Brightline’s West Palm Beach – Orlando Intnational Airport segment, Texas Central Railway’s Dallas – Houston line and Brightline’s Las Vegas – Southern California route. • Most international high-speed routes cover or are profitable based on operating revenues. Annual O&M cost is shown as a reference. • Some segments will be constructed to include local tracks and stations to serve regional trips. 75 NEW CONVENTIONAL INTERCITY & REGIONAL ROUTES • This collection of routes assumes varrying levels of existing and new infrastructure capacity to achieve differing levels of service, illustrated by the four colors described below, along with differing needs for rolling stock for each route. • While some intercity and regional routes are able to cover their annual operating costs, this vision does not speculate as to which of these routes would be operationally break-even or profitable. Total Infrastructure Rolling Stock Price: Rolling Stock Cost Total Miles: 14384 $62,444,290,000 Totail Trainsets Cost: Locomotive-hauled trainsets – routes of greater than 250 miles (at $20 million per 5 cars & 1 $1.4 billion Average Cost Per Mile: $4,150,146 Average Miles: 185.4 488 locomotive x 2 trains:250 miles; no less than 2 trains per route): 70 Diesel Multiple Units (at $10.5 million per unit x 3 trans:100 miles; $864 million Total Miles Electrified: 3009.4 fleet no less than 4 per route): 80 Diesel-Electric Multiple Units: (at $12.5 million per unit x 3 trans:100 Average Annual Operating Cost: $125 million Total Annual Operating Cost $2,440,000,000 miles; fleet no less than 4 per $5 million per roundtrip route) 10 Locomotive-hauled trainsets – routes of greater than 250 miles (at $20 million per 5 cars & 1 $1.56 billion Service Level Cost Per Mile locomotive x 2 trains:250 miles; no less than 2 trains per route): 78 Diesel Multiple Units (at $10.5 Non-Electrified, In- million per unit x 3 trans:100 miles; $588 million $450,000/mile Service; 4 or < TPD fleet no less than 4 per route): 56 Electric Multiple Unit trainsets (at $2.3 million per car x 6 cars per set Non-Electrified, In- $5.3 [$13.8m/trainset] x 5 trains:100 $1.81 billion Service; 4-12 TPD million/mile miles; fleet no less than 5 per route): 131 Electric Multiple Unit trainsets (at $2.3 million per car x 4 cars per set Electrified, In-Service; [$9.2m/trainset] x 5 trains:100 $874 million $13 million/mile 12 or < TPD miles; fleet no less than 5 per route): 95 New Build, Electrified: Total Rolling Stock Cost $7.221 billion $35 million/mile 2 or < TPH Total Infrastructure & Rolling Stock Cost: $69.665 billion 75 NEW CONVENTIONAL INTERCITY & REGIONAL ROUTES Project Miles Trainsets Segment State(s) Miles Owner(s) Cost Number Route/Service Name Electrified Needed 1 Alabama Connector Birmingham-Montgomery-Mobile AL 275 CSX $123,750,000 0 3 2 Arkansas Traveler Little Rock-Memphis AR, TN 133 UP $59,850,000 0 4 3 Sun Valley Flyer Phoenix-Tucson AZ 120 AzDOT $4,200,000,000 120 7 4 SamTrans Dumbarton Rail CA 20.5 SamTrans $717,500,000 20.5 12 Los Angeles-Riverside-Palm 5 Coachilla Valley Express CA 130 UP $58,500,000 0 6 Springs-Indio 6 Cross-Valley Corrior Tulare-Visalia CA 80 UP $1,040,000,000 80 5 7 TVSQVRRA Valley Link CA 12 TVSQVRRA $420,000,000 12 12 8 RTD B Line Boulder-Westminster CO 33.8 RTD $1,183,000,000 33.8 12 9 Front Range Cheyenne-Denver-Pueblo CO,WY 210 BNSF/UP; RTD $2,730,000,000 120 11 10 Front Range Pueblo-Albuquerque CO, NM 334 BNSF/NM/CO $150,300,000 334 4 11 Delmarva Service Wilmington-Dover-Salisbury DE, MD 110 Delmarva Central $49,500,000 0 6 Jacksonville-Tallahassee- 12 Emerald Coast Limited FL 357 Florida Gulf & Atlantic $160,650,000 0 4 Pensacola 13 Orange Blossom Special Orlando-Eustis/Winter Garden FL 49 Florida Central $637,000,000 49 5 Tampa-Brandon-Ft. Myers-N. 14 Florida West Coast FL 180.5 CSX/Seminole Gulf $81,225,000 0 8 Naples 15 Tampa Bay Connector St. Petersburg-Tampa-Sarasota FL 71.4 CSX/Seminole Gulf $928,200,000 71.4 5 16 Brain Train Atlanta-Athens GA 72 CSX $936,000,000 72 5 CSX/NS/Georgia 17 Peachtree Limited Atlanta-Macon-Savannah GA 282 $1,494,600,000 0 12 Central GA, AL, MS, 18 Meridian Speedway Atlanta-Dallas 495 NS/KCS $222,750,000 0 4 LA, TX 19 Lowcountry Limited Atlanta-Augusta-Charleston GA, SC 295 CSX $132,750,000 0 4 Quad Cities-Iowa City- 20 Midwesterner IA, IL, NE 305 IAIS $1,616,500,000 0 5 Des Moines-Omaha 21 Idahoan Rexburg-Ontario ID, OR 360 UP $1,908,000,000 0 4 22 Peoria Rocket Chicago-Peoria-Springfield IL 130 UP $58,500,000 0 6 IL, IN, OH, NS/Chicago, Ft Wayne 23 Ft Wayne Line Chicago-Ft Wayne-Columbus 300 $1,590,000,000 0 5 PA & Eastern/CSX Chicago-Nashville-Chattanooga- IL,KY,TN, 24 Floridian Corridor 1100 CSX $495,000,000 0 6 Altanta-Jacksonville GA,FL Kansas City-Newton-Wichita- 25 Heartland Flyer