Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Trust the Sharrow: It's the answer to everything from high-speed rail to the national debt
It’s a metaphor for our times. Can we move forward together in Raleigh?
I believe we can with the aid of a unifying emblem that, with proper promotion, could also heal the nation.
[Update: I'm adding a well-done analysis by Wayne Pein of the problem on Hillsborough Street and his suggestion solution. He, too, trusts the sharrow, albeit in a different configuration: Raleigh_Hillsborough_Street.pdf
I asked Wayne how I should decribe him, occupationally speaking (e.g, he could be a bicycling dentist). A bicycling lorax, he said. ]
On Tuesday, the City Council was expected to approve an experiment: It calls for a single, 11-foot lane in each direction for the cars on Hillsborough Street (an earlier plan called for 10-foot car lanes); that leaves just five feet, not six, between the car lanes and the marked parking spaces on each side of the street.
That’s five feet, in other words, to be shared by bicycles and the open doors of any parked cars. Thus, the idea of having four-foot bike lanes is out the window, at least temporarily: Bicyclists fear being “doored” almost as much as they fear being run into by a car; riding with just 12 inches of clearance, they’d be doored daily.
So the new scheme, suggested by the state Department of Transportation, is not to mark the bike lanes. Simply stripe the car lanes and let the bicyclists figure out where to ride within the five-foot area remaining.
Because the DOT has the final say, Raleigh could do little but follow its lead, says Russ Stephenson, chair of the council’s public works committee. Thus his committee went along, but with the proviso that the car lanes be striped at first with tape, not paint. That way, Stephenson says, Raleigh can see whether the 11/5 split is working before applying the finishing touches.
Good idea. A lot of people, including Stephenson, think 10 feet for cars is enough, but DOT didn’t, and maybe they’re right. The point is, we’ll all learn how best to share the road and proceed from there. But to do so, I think we’re going to need more than just some white tape to guide us. We’re going to need a slew of sharrows.
Consider: Sharrows on the roadway (it’s a made-up word from Australia — out of share and arrow) are a sign to the motorist to give the bicyclist a fair shake. Give him his own lane where there’s room for one. Share your lane where there isn’t.
On Hillsborough Street, we’re going to need lots of sharrows in the spaces between the car lanes and the parking spaces. We’re also going to need them in the car lanes approaching the intersections and the roundabouts.
And it’s not just on Hillsborough Street. In the coming year, Raleigh will roll out bike lanes across the city, which means that soon, we’ll be resplendent with the sharing symbol that can help us solve so many other big problems.
* The high-speed rail problem? Trust the sharrow. Coming through the center of Raleigh, the trains should share the streets with everyone else. These are not bullet trains, after all. They’ll be—for the foreseeable future—the same old Amtrak trains that currently go to Washington at slowpoke speeds via Rocky Mount. They can get to Washington faster if they cut through the city, but that doesn’t mean they can’t share the corridor and slow down as they go by. Either that or spring for a system of overhead or tunneled tracks.
* The school assignment problem? Trust the sharrow. The Wake school system is a shared trust of the city and Wake County. It does not belong to the five-member majority currently in control of the nine-member school board. The majority should share its power with the four other members. If they did, they’d find that stability in student assignments—the majority’s goal—can exist in harmony with diversity in student populations.
At the national level, too, the sharrow can be our guide.
* The federal deficit problem? Trust the sharrow. As David Stockman, President Reagan’s first budget director, argued Sunday in The New York Times, the top 1 percent of Americans received two-thirds of the gain in national income during the 2002-06 economic “bubble”. Meanwhile, the Bush tax cuts reduced federal revenues to just 15 percent of gross domestic product, turning Clinton-era surpluses into huge budget deficits. With a bit more sharing by the rich, however, the deficits would shrink dramatically.
* Immigrants rights? Trust the sharrow. U.S. Sen. John Kyl, R-Arizona, is among the Republicans who want to repeal the part of the Fourteenth Amendment that confers citizenship on anyone born in this country. Really? We can’t share our country with our fellow Americans?
We’re just rusty when it comes to sharing, I think, too busy grabbing for our own selves to notice that things work better if and when we work together. Which is why it’s so much fun watching the traffic move through the roundabouts. Because everyone’s going in turn, no one has to stop for very long and we don’t need any red lights. So by sharing the road, we all get there faster.
Comments (21)
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I disagree that building a 110mph railroad is a lot more expensive than a 90mph railroad. The old S line wasn't exactly straight as an arrow. There were plenty of curves that would have limited speed to 60mph or less, even in the sparsely populated rural countryside of Virginia. So you'd have to straighten it anyway if you are even shooting for 90mph. And if you're going to have to straighten it to bring it up to 90mph, you might as well straighten it even more.. build it right the first time. Actually, they're planning to build a railroad that can accommodate 150mph (or faster, it seems) for much of its length. Even a 150mph railroad still uses 60% of the old right-of-way, and the big deviations are out in the countryside where land is inexpensive.
Now, maintaining a railroad to so that trains can run at 150mph is significantly more expensive than maintaining one for 110mph.So, they're planning to run trains at 110mph for now, until it can be electrified. 150mph diesel trains do exist, but they accelerate slowly. Pulling some numbers out of a hat, maybe a 150mph diesel train would save 15 minutes, but a 150mph electric train would save 30, because an electric train can get up to top speed after a station stop or after a slower curve more quickly than a diesel. The 30 minutes might justifiy the ongoing expense of maintaining the tracks to 150mph standards while the 15 minutes might not.
A big chunk of the cost of the project is the grade separations, and you can bet they would cost pretty much the same, regardless of whether it is designed for 90mph, 150mph or 300mph. You can argue whether they are necessary or not but to build a 150mph railroad without grade separation is pointless since federal regulations don't allow grade crossings over 110mph.
The only real options I see here are:
(1) Just upgrade the CSX A-line to 90mph and send trains through Selma and Rocky Mount. Under this scenario, a trip to Richmond might drop from 3h45m to 3h15m. This is a less expensive solution and an improvement, but not high speed rail. We forever have to deal with CSX train congestion. Further improvements are possible to lessen congestion such as fully double-tracking the A-line but that will raise costs substantially. Punt building any new direct alignment from Raleigh to Richmond to the next generation.
(2) Build a future-proof right-of-way with full grade separation on an alignment that will serve us for the next 100 years. At 110mph, trains will take about 2 hours to get to Richmond. 20 years later with electrification and 150+mph trains, 1 hour 30 minutes.
(3) As you suggest, tebuild the CSX S-line exactly as it was when it was torn up in the 1980s, with few or no alignment changes and few or no new grade separations. Set up signals for 90mph but leave in place many sharp curves limiting speed to 60mph or so. Given that the entire line will have to be cleared, re-graded, and all structures rebuilt, and new tracks laid, this will probably cost 60% as much as a faster, fully grade separated line. Travel time to Richmond might drop to 2 hours 45 minutes (old SAL trains did it in about 3 hours.) I agree, shaving an hour off the schedule and avoiding the congested A-line would be an improvement over what we have now, but if we spend billions building this, I think we would be unlikely to ever go in and tear it up, and straighten it to allow for higher speeds in the future.
1. $500 million for an upgraded A-line that still suffers with freight congestion and summer slow zones and improves trip times by only 30 minutes
-Or-
2. $2.5 billion now for a 110mph railroad that can be upgraded to 150mph in the future
-Or-
3. $1.5 billion now for a 90mph railroad that cannot be upgraded; if we want something better we have to spend another $2 billion later to improve it to 150mph standards.
I say, build it right the first time.
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SEHSR calls for at most two stops between Raleigh and Petersburg, Va., so station stops won't be much of a factor in trip time. The current objective is a 4:00 trip from Raleigh to Washington. From Petersburg north to Washington, the speed limit will be 90 mph; the only way that 4:00 can be achieved is to run faster than 90 mph for a substantial part of Raleigh-Petersburg. Problem is, 110 mph (the next step up) requires a massive amount of construction to achieve. Personally I think a 4:30 trip time Raleigh-Washington is good enough -- certainly faster than I-85/95 at any time of day -- and the 2:30 apportionment between Raleigh and Petersburg would require only 90 mph to attain. Building a 90 mph railroad is much cheaper than building a 110 mph railroad, which requires straightening existing curves on the right-of-way and eliminating virtually every road crossing.
FYI I've cycled the length of Hillsborough Street about a dozen times since it's been reduced to one lane in each direction and have had no problems riding in the center of the lane - no horn honks. The traffic moves slower than it did at two lanes per direction, so I'm usually keeping up with traffic anyway. Of course, I biked Hillsborough daily when I attended State ('91-'97) and had no problems then either - I just rode in the center of the outside lane and drivers changed lanes to pass.
Bob,
Thanks for the discussion on sharrows and bike lane design. I used to think bike lanes might work better than wide lanes, but my experience with numerous before/after conversions and literature search into the matter has changed my mind. Bike lanes might work okay on some limited access thoroughfares with abundantly wide pavement , no on-street parking and very few junctions; Hillsborough Street is the opposite, and is exactly the worst type of street for striped bike lanes. The pavement isn't wide enough for a bus to pass a cyclist at safe distance if the cyclist is safely outside the opened door of a car, and the bus can't move farther left due to the median.
It seems to me that high speed train travel is overrated. If time spent traveling is thought of as wasted time, then yes, speed is important. The longer the distance the more important speed becomes.
But if time spent traveling is useful then speed isn't as important. Wireless internet would be useful for business as well as recreational travelers. Other ways to make the train user friendly could mitigate the need for speed.
Speed costs, not only in the infrastructure to support it, but also in the power required to propel the train.
90 seems plenty fast. Of course, any top speed is not the average speed, which will be a function of how many stops the train makes.
My guess is that politics and budget realities will knock the excesses off the SEHSR design. It's nice to think of 110 mph in 10 years, with 150+ mph in 30 years. Ain't gonna happen. Between tight money (both federal and state) and small-town pushback against too many closures of grade crossings, it's only a matter of time until pragmatics take over and force Raleigh-Richmond down to a 90 mph design -- just like Raleigh-Charlotte.
Truth is, 90 mph would be just fine. And if the money ever becomes available to increase it to 110 mph or 150 mph, it could be.
The reason trains can't go slowly through downtown Raleigh is that slow-moving trains (10mph) would tie up the tracks too long. A 10mph freight train takes three times as long to clear the area as a 30mph freight train. It would be a bottleneck that would be too congested to accommodate the number of passenger and freight trains that are planned.
A passenger train moving 10mph would take 3 minutes to travel 1/2 mile, whereas a 30mph train would take 1 minute. I agree, 2 minutes of travel time isn't the end of the world.
Something else you have to bear in mind, though, is consistency. If Raleigh gets to keep its crossings open, then so do Henderson, Franklinton, Kittrell, and every other little burg along the line. After all, why should the rich folks in the richest part of Raleigh get special consideration? Pretty soon you will wind up with too many crossings to have a safe high speed line and the project gets canned. I understand that may be what some of you want, but not me.
Think long term here. As so many have said, this is a 50-100 year investment. Building it with no grade crossings leaves the door open for electrification and higher speeds in the future, and maybe even a 2 hour 30 minute trip to Washington by 2040. If we wait until 2040 to close the crossings then there will be even more development near the line and it will be even harder.
I see the concerns about the businesses and buildings on West Street, but any infrastructure project has impacts, it's a fact of life. Within Glenwood South (South of Peace Street), there are two or three one-story buildings that IMO are not that big of a deal when you look at it from the standpoint of impacts versus benefits. The building owners will be compensated for the loss of their property, and business owners will be compensated and assisted with the relocation process. I'd like to see something incorporating retail into the viaduct built in its place. That is a constructive, somewhat realistic suggestion.
High speed rail in NC has some momentum behind it. Be careful what you ask for when you try to throw on the brakes. You're likely to get nothing more than a stalled project going nowhere.
Closing Jones to cars would be absolutely nothing like what happened when the Durham Freeway was built. More than anything, I think implying as such minimizes the damage that was done to Durham and Hayti. As I said in a previous post, there was a plan in the 70s to build a similar freeway through Raleigh, demolishing everything between East and Bloodworth for 20+ blocks. THAT would have been like the Durham Freeway, and thank god it didn't happen.
Seriously - we're talking about closing ONE railroad crossing. And I argue that it can be kept open for bikes and pedestrians with a pretty small investment. We should be constructively arguing for things that are practical and make sense, like adding a pedestrian tunnel at Jones, rather than saying "either can the project or build a billion dollar tunnel."
The Jones crossing needs to be closed. It's literally a disaster waiting to happen, and it will be even worse once there are more trains moving three times as fast through there. You don't need to look far (Mebane) to see that even "quadrant gates" or whatever other sealed corridor technologies you advocate are not failproof.
2001? Let me think ... :) Weren't we going to war or something?
But, yes, points all taken. A nice tunnel would be nice. It's not part of the plan, of course. And HSR would be a plus for Raleigh, though I don't think it would be the end of the world if it took 4 1/2 to get to Washington instead of 4. (I go there frequently; right now, anything under 7 hours is considered on-time.)
So we're all listening and debating --
I've yet to hear why a train slowing to a stop as it approaches the Raleigh station, or pulling away from the Raleigh station and heading north, could not go slowly for half a mile on the way in or out of town. Doing so would cost it, what, 15 seconds each way?
As to the other impacts of the HSR line, Glenwood-Brooklyn has yet to be heard from, not to mention the businesses on West Street that would need to be closed if the N-S route is used. If the CSX route is used -- and that was DOT's first choice, as I understand it, before Raleigh asked that the N-S route be looked at too -- then it isn't just Jones Street that would close but West and Harrington as well. Not to mention that the HSR line could foreclose any attempt to re-establish a street grid across Capital Boulevard as that area redevelops.
I say it could foreclose it because it may be the case that, done right, the HSR line might be part of a re-do of Capital Boulevard that would be good for Raleigh. I am not the expert on this project; what I do observe is that very few people are, and there's a general lack of understanding of what will be required to make HSR a plus for Raleigh and not a big ugly obstacle course.
Bob,
Will Alphin's depiction of what happens is simply wrong. Yes, motorists initially center within the apparent clear space, but when passing a bicyclist within the shared lane the motorist will move over and/or slow down. The sharing creates ambiguity and thus caution. The more prominent the bicyclist makes himself, the more induced caution exhibited.
In contrast, if motorists' space is clearly defined and devoid of bicyclists, then the motorist is enabled to go faster with no regard for the bicycle user. The passing will be closer and faster. Further, the motorist may be subject to inattention blindness and "not see" the irrelevant bicyclist.
Wayne
The Raleigh 2030 Comprehensive Plan designates Jones Street, West Street and Harrington Street as Priority Pedestrians Streets AND all three are also Retail Streets. Not only that, but they are among a very small number of connections between the network of Priority Pedestrian and Retail Streets in the Glenwood South area, and the larger network in the downtown area. Whereas highways and airports suck the life out of downtowns, the SEHSR high speed rail project has the potential to "revitalize important urban centers," as claimed in the SEHSR PowerPoint. Let's don't screw it up like we did when we blasted highways through downtown Durham and obliterated the thriving black business district there. Using technologies such as four-quadrant gates, median separators, one-way pairs, and pedestrian channelization, we can dramatically improve safety without closing any crossings, and save a lot of money to boot. Sounds like a win-win to me.
First of all, whose fault is it that you didn't take this seriously in 2001? Back then, they had public hearings all up and down the corridor and they were fairly well publicized in the newspapers and on TV, and actually reasonably well attended.
That aside, the fact of the matter is, the reason that we're getting money already for HSR and reasonably likely to get more in the future is that NC has already spent so much time and money in the planning process. We're further ahead than pretty much everybody else except maybe California and Florida. (The other projects that were in the same ballpark such as Wisconsin, Illinois, and Washington State, are already pretty much fully funded by the stimulus.) By revisiting the 2001 decision, you would send us to the back of the line along with dozens of other corridors such as Tulsa-OKC. All the environmental studies that have been done so far would have to be completely thrown away. If that's what you really want, then fine, but I contend that the alternative you suggest might come out of revisiting that decision (skipping Raleigh and going straight to Durham) is actually not a desirable one at all. And seriously - do you have any reason for opposing the high speed rail coming to Raleigh other than that one block of Jones Street will probably be closed to cars? You may have other objections and I'd love to hear them, but you haven't aired them here yet.
Rather than advocating throwing away everything that's been done so far, from what I would say a reasonably influential platform as a writer and columnist for the Indy, I would say that we should look for constructive ways to turn the small lemon of lost vehicular connectivity at Jones into some delicious lemonade.
First, my suggestion would be to (as I have said before) build a pedestrian tunnel under the tracks. Three such tunnels already exist in Raleigh and are very heavily used. Don't just make it a tunnel, make it a NICE tunnel.
Next, find some other use for the dead ends on Jones Street other than just a blank dead end street. What I'd love to see would be a project to turn them into a pair of pocket parks, connected by the tunnel. That fills a huge need for public space in Glenwood South. That could be a REALLY lively little spot - if only we could get the cars off it!
Last, rather than just building a blank boring concrete viaduct with gravel and weeds underneath for the rail line along West Street, do something like the Viaduc des Arts in Paris with retail underneath. This is what it looks like:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/kmaraj/RmIGN7cOawI/AA…
Don't just think of the negative that this project can bring to Raleigh. Think of the POSITIVE too.
To sggoodri: I think we agree. I was drawn to the idea of bike lanes by Will Alphin's depiction of what happens without them -- i.e., the cars/motorists move down the center of what looks to them like a 16-foot travel lane, and they do so at high(er) speeds than if they think they're restricted to a 10- or 11-foot travel lane.
That said, the whole point of redoing the street was to slow the car traffic, and slow it enough that bicyclists should feel comfortable riding with the cars. So, yes, sharrows everywhere.
In that vein, I've updated the post to include an analysis of the problem and a slightly different solution sent to me by Wayne Pein. He wants signage clearly indicating that bicyclists can use the main travel lane OR stay to the right of it -- their choice. His illustration of the SUV with its door opening is chlling, as is the picture of the cyclist who swerved left to avoid a dooring and was run down by a bus. Take a look.
On the issue of high-speed rail, the discussion continues. Orulz is quite right that I'm raising issues -- isn't this when we're supposed to raise them? I do find it distasteful to be told that all the key decisions were made eight years ago in a Tier I analysis when nobody was paying any attention, and now we're handed a choice between two options that amount to the same thing and told, you can have chocolate or, uh, choco-late.
We're all in a learning mode, and the $2 billion is nowhere in prospect anyway, so why not take some time and see if maybe strawberry, or perhaps vanilla, would be a better choice.
It all boils down to a discussion of what is the dog and what is the tail. If you believe, as I do, that trains (passenger and freight) and the high speed rail project are the dog, then Jones Street must therefore be the tail. Connectivity issues are important, but they must be handled in a way that does not severely compromise the integrity of the rail project.
It is of course anybody's right to argue the opposite position. Perhaps there is some middle ground to be reached. But particularly when it comes to downtown Raleigh, the argument that downtown must be completely untouched by the HSR project or else the HSR project should be cancelled seems counterproductuve; there is so much to gain from HSR. Everything in the world, except nothing, is a trade-off. Nothing ever happens without a cost of some sort.
The argument that grade crossings should be kept open does have merit, I'll allow, but in the end I still think a grade separated corridor is best, even at the expense of slight to moderate impacts to connectivity. Cities change. They are living, breathing things. If we were talking about something like the Raleigh north-south freeway that was planned in the 70s, that would have buldozed everything between East and Bloodworth for 20+ blocks, and probably severed at least a dozen streets, maybe more, then I would say you have a point. The benefits wouldn't justify the impacts, not by a longshot.
But a single grade crossing downtown, that can be kept open to pedestrians and bikes by building a tunnel or a bridge, and where cars can drive an extra 700 feet to cross at North Street instead, I think you need to consider the possibility that the benefits might just be worth the cost.
Shared use works well for vehicles with similar maneuverability and rules - like cars and bikes - and not so well for radically different maneuverability and rules, like cars and trains. Trains can't move/merge laterally in response to gaps in traffic; they either move forward, or they don't.
I have biked Hillsborough Street quite a bit before and after the reconstruction, and I am convinced that the safest and easiest way to ride it is to stay far enough into the lane to prevent same-lane passing. That way you don't get clobbered between a passing bus and an opening car door. There simply isn't enough space to allow bus traffic to pass a cyclist staying a safe distance from the door zone.
My vote: Put the sharrows in the center of the 11' travel lane. This will encourage cyclists to ride more safely, and help legitimize their control of the lane, but they can still move to the right if and when they want, such as to let traffic pass on an uphill stretch where there are no parked cars.
One reason a "sealed corridor" is not in the plans is that sealed corridors are only acceptable per regulations for speeds up to 110mph.
The trains are only going 110mph so why, then, do we need grade separations?
Well, the line is designed so that the speed can eventually be raised to 150, 180, or 200mph in the future once electric lines are added. Depending on funding priorities, that could conceivably be as soon as a decade or so after the 110mph line is built. If you want real, European high speed rail in the future, then you gotta close the grade crossings, and do it NOW since it will only be harder in the future.
As for the NCRR between Raleigh and Charlotte: trains will supposedly never go faster than 90mph there, so that's all that they are doing, a sealed corridor. They're still trying to close or separate most crossings, but a few (maybe 1/4 as many as there are now) will remain open.
Even if the high speed rail line is never upgraded over 110mph, Railroad crossings are still dangerous. Mebane is proof that even a supposed "sealed corridor" crossing has the potential for CATASTROPHIC consequences. Imagine if the train that hit that truck was a freight train pulling a dozen tankers of chlorine gas. Or if the passenger train had been longer or moving faster and full of 500 passengers, and dozens lost their lives. This is not fear mongering. It's not that far fetched of a scenario - it's happened before!
This is not Jane Jacobs versus Robert Moses. Robert moses evicted tens of thousands of people to build his expressways across Manhattan, and proposed evicting tens of thousands more. High speed rail is transformative, and unfortunately no transformative change can happen without some impacts.
I firmly believe that a grade separated corridor really is the best possible solution for everybody. I live on Powell Drive in Raleigh, a street that is planned for eventual closure as part of the "sealed corridor" program. Does Powell Drive's closing impact me? Yes. I will have to drive or walk a bit further to cross the tracks. But frankly every time I see a huge freight train pulling caustic or explosive chemicals go through that crossing, or a passenger train whiz by at 80mph, I think to myself "This crossing really needs to be closed." There are more close calls than you might realize at crossings, even ones that are supposedly "sealed".
With all the impediments facing the South East High Speed Rail Corridor, one would not be amiss in thinking NCDOT would be all behind the success of the project, right? Well, as one begins to examine the various factions, sides and opinions, some very peculiar omissions and, um -- misdirection begin to emerge. As everyone who keeps up with such things knows by now one of the major points of contention that threatens to steer or in fact scuttle the entire project is the closure of roadways which cross the intended route(s). I've been to the meetings, read the official papers and kept up with news/opinions.
Most of the public comment on HSR, from Raleigh to Roxboro, include concerns about potential disconnections via road closure. Well they should, for within the current parameters road closures could have the opposite effect of what rail promises, enhanced connections and improved transportation options as well as critical, primary decisions on the route of the corridor. So why, I ask, or rather how, amid all the hoopla, has one key detail on that critical matter managed to have been exempt, conveniently forgotten – or worse, possibly downplayed deliberately for some purpose, say to obtain some sort of economic or policy leverage? A missing link is the sealed corridor concept.
Sealed corridors represent a potential solution to the most significant hurdle to SEHSP. A sealed corridor is one that can be cut off selectively from conflicting modes, cars and other trains via minimal infrastructural changes, so-called 4 quadrant gates and the like, which would obviate the unfortunate need for road closure. Four-quadrant gates are a variation on the familiar one per side gates, i.e. four per intersection, which discourage or render impossible the careless, drunk and/or foolhardy from crossing a busy track and getting creamed. Throughout the current period of public debate, I never heard of the sealed corridor concept. I first learned about the sealed corridors concept from a source outside of the current debate, very curious considering the origins and widespread utility of the idea.
From the Federal Railroad Administration's High Speed Grade Crossing Guidelines:
The State of North Carolina has pioneered many of the subsequent advances on the North Carolina Railroad under the concept of a “Sealed Corridor.” NCDOT defines the concept as follows ... redundant and/or unsafe crossings are consolidated through closure and/or grade separation and all remaining public crossings are equipped as appropriate with four quadrant gates, median separators and longer gate arms [my bold]
You read right. Suddenly a heretofore unknown detail offers a way out of the closure conundrum. I like to think of myself as fairly well informed but find it quite peculiar and somewhat suspicious that an advance wrought by a North Carolina agency is MIA from a debate -- in the very state where said advances could stand to radically alter the end result. What do you think? What is even odder is that I was not the only one who was bereft of this important piece of data. Of all the coverage in the local news, only Bob Geary, a former colleague of mine at the Independent, included the detail; it was absent from all other news sources, the N&O and the myriad broadcast media, so it isn't just me. I will go ahead and be bold and express the only two possibilties: the omission of the sealed corridor concept was either A LIE of omission or a ham-handed attempt to control the debate by some person or agency in a North Carolina government agency, read NCDOT or NCRR. Go ahead, boys and girls of the press, tear yourselves away from Lindsey Lohan, dig in and figure it out.
But there's another detail lost in the mists of time that gives the guilty needle a twitch. Some of y'all might remember Triangle Transit's early attempt to foster light rail in the Triangle. Some of the better informed still in possession of a memory: remember why light rail foundered? Give up? 'Cause NCRR, like some petulant snot-nosed Trustifarian, refused to let anyone come and play in their sandbox aka the NCRR right of way. Well that seems like very odd behavior for a corporation, a railroad OWNED BY THE PEOPLE of North Carolina, actively preventing infrastructure advances in the very business they are in, namely providing passenger rail for its citizens. Were I to hazard a guess as to why, seems that like any other for-profit corporation, the NCRR wants to stack the deck in their favor, at the expense of reasonable alternatives, or maybe as my all-seeing brother claimed, it is simply for the small-minded expedience of an easy way to keep that pesky High Speed Rail out of their yard
To Bob's comment about existing Amtrak trains, bear in mind that Amtrak equipment (cars and locomotives) are designed for 110 mph. They run that fast elsewhere. The only thing limiting their speed to 70 or 79 mph between Raleigh and Richmond today is track conditions via Selma and Rocky Mount. SEHSR is designed for 110 mph, but it could use existing Amtrak equipment.
The Henderson-Durham line was a poorly constructed railroad. I don't think its speed limit ever exceeded 25 mph even when the line was new; in latter years it had a 10 mph speed limit and severe weight restrictions. On the other hand, the line through Wake Forest was used by Amtrak as late as 1985 with 70 mph. It's less expensive to use that line as a starting point for SEHSR.
Bob - Are you seriously suggesting that high speed rail skip downtown Raleigh just because you don't want to close the Jones Street crossing to cars? I'm telling you, Jones Street can be converted to a pedestrian / bike only crossing like a tunnel or bridge. Is it a slight loss of connectivity? Sure. But why are you so unwilling to consider a tradeoff? High speed rail would be huge for Raleigh, and closing Jones to cars is such a minimal impact.
As for going through Durham or Rocky Mount, these alternate routes were studied during the Tier I Alternatives Analysis process, and the one along the S-line was chosen as the one that is the most viable, most convenient, and has the highest ridership. That report is available on sehsr.org (but you've probably already read it.)
As for the necessity of closing crossings, true, FRA would allow the crossings to stay open. What I'm saying is that allowing Jones Street to stay open is not a desirable outcome for High Speed Rail, for Downtown Raleigh, or for the SEHSR project - for the sake of safety, for the sake of future upgrades to the line, and for the sake of consistent treatment of every town and municipality along the route. Why is having cars be able to cross at Jones so important that some people are willing to say "Cancel the whole damn project!" I just don't get it.
BTW - Ever been to Europe? NONE of their mainline railroads have any grade crossings in major cities. Light rail and trams, sure, but railroads? Nope.
Orulz -- If the SEHSR trains can't move safely through downtown Raleigh without closing the cross streets, then perhaps they ought not be there in the first place. The alternative does exist (although I know DOT says they rejected it eight years ago and don't bring it up again) to run the trains via the Rocky Mount route, which is used today and skirts Raleigh rather than plowing through it.
As you may know, the City Council's Passenger Rail Task Force voted 8-1 for the Norfolk-Southern route; the one negative vote was from Gerry Cohen, the legislative staffer who served on the STAC committee and staffed the General Assembly's 21st Century Transportation study as well. He knows a bit about this subject too. From his "minority report" --
"The necessity for closing all crossings in the vicinity of the new Union Station [in Raleigh] intermodal facility has not been shown. The FRA will allow at grade crossings with sufficient protection and gating, and the running speeds as far north as West and Harrington do not necessitate all crossings being closed, to the detriment of interconnectivity in the Glenwood South area."
Based on that reasoning, Cohen preferred one of the two CSX alternatives to the Norfolk Southern one.
By the way, has anyone considered that the easiest way for the SEHSR line to enter the Triangle might be via Durham? It will go through there anyway en route to Charlotte; I'm told there's an old rail corridor between Durham and Petersburg that could be used (no tracks -- but there are no tracks from Norlina to Petersburg, either -- the DOT's preferred route), and folks from Raleigh could catch the higher-speed trains over in Durham via a connection on the Durham-to-Raleigh light-rail line that we could be building with some of the $2.1-$2.4 billion that may or may not materialize for the SEHSR project.
The idea of heavy trains "sharing space" with cars, bikes, and pedestrians is absolutely ludicrous. Shared space makes sense when we're talking about cars, bikes, and pedestrians, and lightweight trams and streetcars that can stop, slow down, and adjust to each others' presence. For example, a car traveling 30mph can stop in just a few dozen feet.
But for the love of God. Close the freaking railroad grade crossings. A freight train traveling at 30mph takes HALF A MILE to stop. This is why trains cannot, do not, and should not "share" space with anything. The last thing I want to deal with is a freight train pulling half a dozen cars filled with chlorine gas or better yet carcinogenic benzene derailed because a car stalled out on the tracks or because a driver impatiently tried to beat the gates.
Trains, freight and passenger, travel over Jones Street at 10mph now but will have to move 30mph through there in the future in order to clear out quickly enough to prevent a severe bottleneck. The SEHSR project team says that 30mph will be required and they're experts, and given how long freight trains can tie up the crossing at Jones right now, I can believe it. Maybe the idea of trains and bikes and cars and pedestrians all being pals and sharing the same space sounds nice and it might work out if the trains stayed at 10mph but that's just not a realistic solution.
As for raising or lowering the tracks, if you lower the tracks into a trench at Jones, then you wind up blocking North, Tucker, Johnson and Peace streets. If you raise the tracks at Jones, then you block Hillsborough and Morgan. A tunnel would solve the technical problem, but would also cost a billion dollars that nobody has (or will ever have - any idea how expensive an underground high speed rail station would be??) Let's look for REALISTIC solutions: a tunnel so pedestrians and bikes can go under the tracks at Jones Street would cost under $5 million (One such tunnel was recently completed at Elon and cost $2.25 million to build.) I estimate that keeping Fairview open would add $10-$15 million to the project. These are realistic possibilities; a billion dollar tunnel in downtown Raleigh is not.
If the only thing that happens downtown because of High Speed Rail is that Jones Street is closed to cars that's fine with me.
I realize you're trying to look for flawed assumptions in the project that you can upend, but I really think that if you look carefully, all the assumptions they have made hold water.
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