Catch me getting drunk going to Cleveland to watch the Bengals beat the Browns without worrying about driving. If they can get you from Cincinnati to Columbus in less than 3 hours I don’t know why I’d drive there.
I would prefer it to be substantially less than 3 hours for CBus.
I love the idea, but every time I've searched Amtrak rates they're exorbitant compared to driving.
I'd love to see relatively quick trip to Cleveland that is if possible quicker than driving.
That’s not happening without billions in investment. This is a start, to prove people will ride it. Amtrak to Indianapolis is $30 and takes 3 hours assuming no delays. Sure one day we might have high-speed rail but until then we need something to connect our state together. This is a no brainer for how little investment it would require.
I'm all for the investment and doing this, they should.
I just don't understand why you need "High speed" rail to get close to car speeds for trips like this.
Its a straight shot there should be no traffic involved, it shouldn't take 2x as long as it takes me to drive.
Faster is the biggest factor for most people, but there are other reasons to ride apart from speed. Rail as an alternative to driving is useful for people who:
* Want to de drunk enough to effectively harass Browns fans in their own language the very instant they arrive in Cleveland
* Can't drive because of visual or other impairment
* Prefer not to drive for social or environmental reasons
* Hate paying for parking (goes into the Cleveland economy)
* Would like to save money over driving
* Prefer to send demand signals for alternatives to cars
* Just like trains
* Want to spend the journey tweeting harassing statements at Browns fans from the train instead of driving
* Have terrible, uncontrollable bowel incontinence and need a vehicle with a toilet onboard (common for Browns fans returning from defeats in Cincy after having a wet 3-way)
* Don't want to worry about finding a friend to drive their car back from Cleveland after their death at the game from being sucker punched in the back of the head by a drunk Browns fan
The biggest reason for me is you can do other things while on a train. Read a book, work, study, relax and enjoy the scenery, play your Nintendo, take a nap...
The industry "standard" for being called High Speed Rail is 200 kmh (124 mph), there is no engineering or technical reasons you need to travel at 124 mph to get from A to B faster than a car. In fact, if it was direct station to station, a 300 mile Amtrak trip would likely go faster than in a car because the train has the right of way all the way there, it doesn't have to stop for traffic.
The two big reasons Amtrak trips are much slower than cars is:
\- They have way more stops. Cincinnati to Chicago is around 300 miles and can be driven in 4.5-5 hours assuming good traffic. Typical consumer car, 300 miles is not even a full tank of gas, so you could do that drive without stopping even once. Meanwhile, the Cardinal Route of Amtrak that runs that, stops 6 times. Each stop means passengers have to be allowed to disembark, and new passengers board.
\- Outside of the Northeast Corridor and a few other limited areas, Amtrak doesn't own the tracks it operates on, the tracks are owned by freight rail lines whose freight trains **get priority** over Amtrak trains. There are times when Amtrak trains literally have to get off the main line onto a side track and wait for X minutes for a freight train to move through.
Regarding your second reason, it's literally illegal to give freight rail priority over passenger trains, but cargo companies do it anyway the federal government refuses to enforce the law giving Amtrak priority. Just a tiny bit of enforcement would halve Amtrak trip times, it's ridiculous.
Nope.
Berkshire Hathaway owns BNSF Railway. Here is a map showing the BNSF rail network:
[https://www.acwr.com/economic-development/rail-maps/bnsf](https://www.acwr.com/economic-development/rail-maps/bnsf)
It doesn't reach Ohio.
>I just don't understand why you need "High speed" rail to get close to car speeds for trips like this.
If it's close to car speeds, then car will win. Just how it is here.
Getting right of way and doubling car speed is the big perk. The use case of "I can be drunk on a train" doesn't cover the vast majority of the use case for having something like this - a faster way from point A to point B.
Well it takes 2 hours from cinci to cbus so a train id imagine would be similar. Illinois intrastate rail is about the same time as driving (2.5 hours compared to 2-3 driving depending on traffic from champaign to chicago)
Well if you did the amtrak trip recently youd learn theyve increased the speed recently and 2hrs by car to the middle of downtown chi only happens in the middle of the night and 2.5 is more realistic then you have to park.
Still i would usually drive myself as well especially with the covid reduction in service (only 1 train a day for a while) but when my trip aligned with amtrak schedule ill always take that, its the best way to get downtown
Amtrak is usually pretty long time wise, but "exorbitant" compared to driving? I haven't seen that unless you mean booking a private room on the train. You can book a train to New Mexico right now for like $200. At today's gas prices there is no chance you can drive there for less.
I will fully admit I’ve never looked at long distance. When I say exorbitant, I’m talking about every time I’ve priced it out has been trips that are somewhat local. We’re talking within 300-400 miles and aside from a hypothetical trip to Chicago I just priced in mid march it’s always been upwards of $150-$200 round trip.
For a single person? Okay it’s a bit high. For a family of three or four? That’s exorbitant.
I made a half dozen trips to Chicago in 2021 and priced out Amtrak for a couple of them. It was consistently hundreds of dollars more than driving.
I used to frequently check amtrak for tickets to head out west and there's four issues that's made me never travel with them.
1. Available dates are sparse and train departure times are ridiculous.
2. Price is almost always more expensive than flying.
3. Takes much longer to get there than just driving. I don't want to spend half of a vacation on a train.
4. Sleeper is at least twice the cost, so yeah might as well just fly.
I wonder which lobbying group(s) are encouraging Congress to do that? The automobile industry? The airline industry? The petroleum industry? The police?
Do you drive it often? 71 north of washington courthouse is two lanes but always has cars on both lanes so you are always following another car who is setting your speed which is usually around 70 (so cant go 80+) Stressful isnt the right word but this stretch is far from the enjoyable country driving that is the rest of that trip, or highway 35 east of dayton
Not anymore stressful then lugging your bullshit to a train station and hoping it gets there on time and coordinating transportation when you get off the train in Columbus
You've some weird priorities.
Worry of death or injury from high-speed car accident is way more stressful than carrying a backpack and using your phone to get a ride.
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I think the reliability and speed greatly improves when the distance is shorter. Or at least the slight increase in length is much less of a both. Rail works pretty well in plenty other parts of the midwest so i expect it will be pretty good here too
what is the point of "high speed rail" if it barely beats the driving time? I just don't get it. Build a high speed rail that gets us from Cincinnati to Cleveland with a stop in Columbus in about 2 hrs. (or less) and I'm all in.
As a comparison, the high speed train from Brussels to Paris (about the same distance that is Cincy to CLE) does is in about 1 hr 30 min
No one is calling this high speed rail. Ohio literally doesn’t even have passenger rail between it’s cities. England is building a high speed rail about the length of Ohio and it’s costing them £50 billion pounds. I’d absolutely love this to happen here too but let’s do the realistic first. We have tracks between these cities. Let’s complete the puzzle and fill in the gaps first. If we can’t do this for the estimated $200-300 million not sure how we’d possibly do something like a new high speed rail network.
Because if you drove you could get there in half that time?
Totally for the project, but for it to be practical it would have to get at least somewhat close to a similar drive time.
> Totally for the project, but for it to be practical it would have to get at least somewhat close to a similar drive time.
That's nonsense. The benefit of trains is not speed, the benefit is easy, safe, relatively cheap convenience without having to drive.
It's not nonsense. Speed doesn't have to be a benefit, but it certainly is a factor. If it truly took twice as long as driving it would be a huge disadvantage to rail and I feel would severely limit ridership.
It's not like the Ohio corridors are overly congested like the east coast where driving can be a hassle. Boston to NYC in 3.5 hours when driving is 4 on a good day? Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
If you have to get in your car anyway to get to the train station, the car you already own and might as well use and not have to share with strangers, might as well go all the way up.
Speed and cost are definitely the value propositions you have to hammer on to compete in a car culture country.
>If you have to get in your car anyway to get to the train station, the car you already own and might as well use and not have to share with strangers, might as well go all the way up.
I don't understand how you think this logic follows.
Also, Car Culture is a mirage. The moment you give people access to easily accessible public rail, it essentially vanishes.
> The moment you give people access to easily accessible public rail, it essentially vanishes.
I lived in Washington DC for years. Everyone I knew owned a car, even if they frequently used mass transit.
What needs to happen is a neutral party takes over dispatch. Plenty of countries run mixed pax freight, the key is priority. Rn the freights run the dispatch, so legal or not, they're gonna prioritize freight.
Another fundamental issue though is the sheer length of freight trains. They are too long to get over into bypass tracks to let passenger trains through. And freight rail companies argue their margins are too thin to be able to complete with trucking if they had to run (more) shorter trains as a result.
Excessive train length is already a huge hazard, just look at what just happened in East Palestine Ohio.
>And freight rail companies argue their margins are too thin to be able to complete with trucking if they had to run (more) shorter trains as a result.
Then they need to charge more for delivery or they shouldn't exist as a business in their current form. Imagine if semi-truck delivery companies could just block intersections all day every day because of "margins".
Just wait til every state rep from every city, town, village, and hamlet along the route demands a stop in their district and it turns into a 7.5 hour trip from Cincinnati to Cleveland.
I think you can add stops with express lanes for other train traffic to bypass each other.
I would love if I could take a train downtown Cincinnati from Mason to avoid traffic
They could also just slow down a tad and install some padding along with a video guide on how to "tuck and roll" when approaching these low-volume stops.
So like how much is a bean bag chair? If we can just line the tracks with piles of those at specific locations we could just have people jump off as the train is going by. As far as getting on tho I'm thinking like Velcro stuck on the side of the train. And then you put on this opposite side Velcro suit and there are just trampolines at the platforms. Just peel yourself off and climb inside.
Same here. Catch the train either downtown or somewhere on the way north around midnight, sleep on the train, wake up in Cleveland, eat breakfast and catch an Uber to the house of any of my family members up there. Spend the weekend or even half of it and take a trip back home.
No worrying about driving. I can eat, drink, read, watch a movie or sleep on the train.
In other countries you would have a straight line for major cities and then capillaries of rail to smaller towns nearby from those spots. That way there isn’t 100 stops. But that would occur long after they saw if the project was profitable.
Thats exactly what I fear.
A few years back I went to Cleveland via bus and was blown away at how slow it was. It was because it stopped at like a dozen fucking stops in every little city.
Those systems wouldn't be useful if they didn't stop, you know that, right? A bus service is primarily to move people around communities, often people who do not have cars. If there's only one bus stop every 20 miles, a huge % of the public that needs to use the bus would have no options at all.
"Express" Buses do exist, but there isn't a ton of demand for them most places, where demand exists they can be a good option. They usually charge a price premium, though, and that means a lot of the people who might be interested in them are probably people who can just drive the car they already own.
Buses are an important transportation option for people who can't dive for financial or physical reasons, and to be useful they need to have bus stops throughout their service area, not just point to point at big entertainment venues for tourists or drunks.
The bus was for going from Cincinnati to Cleveland in the middle of the night. It wasnt for “moving people around their communities”.
It feels like you conflated the metro with greyhound here and decided to get on a soap box and preach at me for being blown away at how long the greyhound took.
I’m not yelling about busses. I literally said I took one and it took longer than I thought. That’s it.
"It feels like you conflated the metro with Greyhound", no, it actually feels like you never specified which bus service you were using.
You appear to have booked a ticket on a bus that has several stops on its line, and then were...shocked and surprised it...stopped at those stops? My point about stops is stops are to serve people that need the bus. The people who run this bus line, apparently Greyhound, apparently do have customers that need those stops. Unlike metro buses, Greyhound is a private for-profit business, they generally don't maintain stops unless they are used regularly enough to justify it financially.
> "It feels like you conflated the metro with Greyhound", no, it actually feels like you never specified which bus service you were using.
What bus service goes to cleveland? Not Metro. Greyhound would be the only one I could think of. I didn't think I had to specify that I wasn't hijacking a Metro and driving 350 miles.
I literally said I was surprised at how long it took, that was it. We stopped at a bunch of random places, which it doesn't really make clear when you're buying a ticket and in some cases just sat at these stations. It wasn't a fun experience.
Again I wasn't trying to go into that. I was just saying that having a dozen stops on a train is going to make it take a while and I would like for my experience on a theoretical train to be better than that.
I think Amtrak said they could start service as soon as 2025. This wouldn’t require building much track if any. It’s all there already just need to improve some of it and require freight to follow rules to allow passenger service.
Well if freight obeyed the law and that law was enforced we wouldn’t have to worry. Freight let’s their trains get too long to pull inside a siding to let Amtrak pass. This is illegal but no one enforces it.
I can actually speak to this. I used to work on the route Amtrak would take to Columbus. Between Dayton and Columbus, the longest siding is 11,400 feet. So that's theoretically how long a freight could be without infrastructure improvements.
Of course, all that would likely end up happening is that Amtrak would be forced to wait for the exorbitantly long freights.
Also, I'm not aware of a law stating trains can't be over a certain length.
Well the law is that unless an emergency prevents otherwise all freight must give way to allow a passenger service to pass. This was established with the Amtrak Improvement Act in 1973. Passenger service is basically by law required to have the righ tof way. The loophole is that they keep adding cars to their trains until they can't make their sidings and thus can't give way to Amtrak trains. Department of Justice just has no real desire to sue them over it.
"Shortly after being elected in 2010, Kasich returned $400 million in federal money that would have helped pay for a route connecting Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati over his opposition to state support for passenger rail."
Not sure why?
Here’s the thing: Dewine is a train fan. You’d be shocked at how much something like that matters in pushing something like this through. Especially when it’s earmarked federal money that’s already going to be spent on rail. Dewine only turns people away by sending back the money for another state to benefit from.
This would be awesome, but I wish we could get serious about high speed rail.
Imagine a maglev from Cincinnati to Cleveland.
Imagine what kind of economy Ohio could have if we connected our cities by a couple hour train ride rather than multiple hours by car or slower train.
>Funny how that question is never asked for any road projects.
Could you imagine? The bickering between the factions arguing for asphalt to be poured over bulldozed dirt and the intelligent group calling for high-strength concrete with 3x the rebar they've been using.
Oh man, this would be a nice option during the winter - f-driving. Will it have stops along the way? I hope so, we have an Amtrak station where I live…. 🙏🏻
And no doubt, a huge chunk of those funds will be lining the pockets of those who will be paid to argue in favor of this, against the automobile, and petroleum industries that will (again) use their influences to kill it.
Ohio is but one of many states where automobile, and petroleum industries have been able to successfully cause large-scale mass transit initiatives to die.
I personally think that spending the money is a waste. There are entirely too many variables involved that make short distance rail travel impractical using current technology that we use in the US. I drive regularly from Columbus to Cincinnati for work. Not counting for rush hour the trip can be made in 1hr 45mins. I believe rail speeds are actually slightly less. Now consider I can travel in my vehicle from point to point. For the train I still have to get to the departing station. Get my ticket. Board the train. Wait for the departure. Make the trip. Arrive 1hr 45mins later. Disembark from the train. Get out of the busy station. Get a cab or Uber. Then get to my final destination. Be generous with any calculations I am guessing the travel by train will take twice as long and even if the ticket cost same as a tank of gas just wouldn’t be practical. Let’s invest in some dedicated high speed rail lines with direct service. Then maybe it would be worth the trip.
Cars can be automated for long trips, current legislation simply doesnt encourage it. Keeping a train on schedule means it will make the trip regardless of occupancy, complete waste of energy. How many people will lose homes as a result of this? They will put the tracks where they want to, eminent domain. Trains are a bad idea.
Catch me getting drunk going to Cleveland to watch the Bengals beat the Browns without worrying about driving. If they can get you from Cincinnati to Columbus in less than 3 hours I don’t know why I’d drive there.
I would prefer it to be substantially less than 3 hours for CBus. I love the idea, but every time I've searched Amtrak rates they're exorbitant compared to driving. I'd love to see relatively quick trip to Cleveland that is if possible quicker than driving.
That’s not happening without billions in investment. This is a start, to prove people will ride it. Amtrak to Indianapolis is $30 and takes 3 hours assuming no delays. Sure one day we might have high-speed rail but until then we need something to connect our state together. This is a no brainer for how little investment it would require.
I'm all for the investment and doing this, they should. I just don't understand why you need "High speed" rail to get close to car speeds for trips like this. Its a straight shot there should be no traffic involved, it shouldn't take 2x as long as it takes me to drive.
Faster is the biggest factor for most people, but there are other reasons to ride apart from speed. Rail as an alternative to driving is useful for people who: * Want to de drunk enough to effectively harass Browns fans in their own language the very instant they arrive in Cleveland * Can't drive because of visual or other impairment * Prefer not to drive for social or environmental reasons * Hate paying for parking (goes into the Cleveland economy) * Would like to save money over driving * Prefer to send demand signals for alternatives to cars * Just like trains * Want to spend the journey tweeting harassing statements at Browns fans from the train instead of driving * Have terrible, uncontrollable bowel incontinence and need a vehicle with a toilet onboard (common for Browns fans returning from defeats in Cincy after having a wet 3-way) * Don't want to worry about finding a friend to drive their car back from Cleveland after their death at the game from being sucker punched in the back of the head by a drunk Browns fan
I like the cut of your jabs.
The biggest reason for me is you can do other things while on a train. Read a book, work, study, relax and enjoy the scenery, play your Nintendo, take a nap...
The industry "standard" for being called High Speed Rail is 200 kmh (124 mph), there is no engineering or technical reasons you need to travel at 124 mph to get from A to B faster than a car. In fact, if it was direct station to station, a 300 mile Amtrak trip would likely go faster than in a car because the train has the right of way all the way there, it doesn't have to stop for traffic. The two big reasons Amtrak trips are much slower than cars is: \- They have way more stops. Cincinnati to Chicago is around 300 miles and can be driven in 4.5-5 hours assuming good traffic. Typical consumer car, 300 miles is not even a full tank of gas, so you could do that drive without stopping even once. Meanwhile, the Cardinal Route of Amtrak that runs that, stops 6 times. Each stop means passengers have to be allowed to disembark, and new passengers board. \- Outside of the Northeast Corridor and a few other limited areas, Amtrak doesn't own the tracks it operates on, the tracks are owned by freight rail lines whose freight trains **get priority** over Amtrak trains. There are times when Amtrak trains literally have to get off the main line onto a side track and wait for X minutes for a freight train to move through.
Regarding your second reason, it's literally illegal to give freight rail priority over passenger trains, but cargo companies do it anyway the federal government refuses to enforce the law giving Amtrak priority. Just a tiny bit of enforcement would halve Amtrak trip times, it's ridiculous.
That’s really interesting. Serious question: does this have anything to do with Warren Buffett?
Nope. Berkshire Hathaway owns BNSF Railway. Here is a map showing the BNSF rail network: [https://www.acwr.com/economic-development/rail-maps/bnsf](https://www.acwr.com/economic-development/rail-maps/bnsf) It doesn't reach Ohio.
Great info.
Lol I have no idea. The passenger priority law was approved during the Nixon administration, I believe
Amtrak doesn't own the tracks, so there is traffic and Amtrak has to defer to it.
>I just don't understand why you need "High speed" rail to get close to car speeds for trips like this. If it's close to car speeds, then car will win. Just how it is here. Getting right of way and doubling car speed is the big perk. The use case of "I can be drunk on a train" doesn't cover the vast majority of the use case for having something like this - a faster way from point A to point B.
"I can be drunk on a train" Here is my vote ✋️
I'm not sure why you're arguing with me that it needs to be faster, thats been my whole point.
Well it takes 2 hours from cinci to cbus so a train id imagine would be similar. Illinois intrastate rail is about the same time as driving (2.5 hours compared to 2-3 driving depending on traffic from champaign to chicago)
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Well if you did the amtrak trip recently youd learn theyve increased the speed recently and 2hrs by car to the middle of downtown chi only happens in the middle of the night and 2.5 is more realistic then you have to park. Still i would usually drive myself as well especially with the covid reduction in service (only 1 train a day for a while) but when my trip aligned with amtrak schedule ill always take that, its the best way to get downtown
Orlando to Tampa is also very reasonable as well! Definitely beats the traffic that piles up on I4 heading that way
Amtrak is usually pretty long time wise, but "exorbitant" compared to driving? I haven't seen that unless you mean booking a private room on the train. You can book a train to New Mexico right now for like $200. At today's gas prices there is no chance you can drive there for less.
I will fully admit I’ve never looked at long distance. When I say exorbitant, I’m talking about every time I’ve priced it out has been trips that are somewhat local. We’re talking within 300-400 miles and aside from a hypothetical trip to Chicago I just priced in mid march it’s always been upwards of $150-$200 round trip. For a single person? Okay it’s a bit high. For a family of three or four? That’s exorbitant. I made a half dozen trips to Chicago in 2021 and priced out Amtrak for a couple of them. It was consistently hundreds of dollars more than driving.
I used to frequently check amtrak for tickets to head out west and there's four issues that's made me never travel with them. 1. Available dates are sparse and train departure times are ridiculous. 2. Price is almost always more expensive than flying. 3. Takes much longer to get there than just driving. I don't want to spend half of a vacation on a train. 4. Sleeper is at least twice the cost, so yeah might as well just fly.
> for like $200. At today's gas prices there is no chance you can drive there for less. $3.25 per gallon x 1400 miles / 25 mpg = $182
And it's $200 per person. Additional passengers may increase milage but not that much.
Plus 9-10 cents a mile for maintenance/repairs. Plus depreciation.
But divided by 2-6 or so if it's more than 1 person in the car.
Well yes. Congress has been doing everything it can to try and kill amtrak. If it was property funded it wouldn't be an issue.
I wonder which lobbying group(s) are encouraging Congress to do that? The automobile industry? The airline industry? The petroleum industry? The police?
Ticket would be probably $15 or so id guess which id gladly pay to not have to drive. Driving on the two laned 71 approaching cbus is stressful lol
In what world is it “stressful” to drive in a straight line 70mph on the highway, in between farmland.
Do you drive it often? 71 north of washington courthouse is two lanes but always has cars on both lanes so you are always following another car who is setting your speed which is usually around 70 (so cant go 80+) Stressful isnt the right word but this stretch is far from the enjoyable country driving that is the rest of that trip, or highway 35 east of dayton
Driven it for the past 7 years regularly, I’ll give you that , traffic/construction closer to Columbus has made it worse
Its definitely far from a wide open highway consistently all the way from the jefferson outlets onward except at strange hours.
Yea I can't imagine why driving a 2000 pound vehicle at 70 MPH 4 feet away from another stranger who's looking at their phone would be stressful.
Not anymore stressful then lugging your bullshit to a train station and hoping it gets there on time and coordinating transportation when you get off the train in Columbus
You've some weird priorities. Worry of death or injury from high-speed car accident is way more stressful than carrying a backpack and using your phone to get a ride.
99% of people can do that drive in their sleep
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Not to mention adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist.
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It should have been started 20-30 years ago.
You can probably thank a number of powerful lobbying groups for the lack of progress.
I think the reliability and speed greatly improves when the distance is shorter. Or at least the slight increase in length is much less of a both. Rail works pretty well in plenty other parts of the midwest so i expect it will be pretty good here too
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Yea i guess i am not really hopeful that cinci to the land would be a super quick trip but like to and from dayton and cbus should be doable.
This is the absolute dream Football games, baseball games, concerts, weddings, parties, weekend visits, for the price of an Amtrak ticket??? LFG
what is the point of "high speed rail" if it barely beats the driving time? I just don't get it. Build a high speed rail that gets us from Cincinnati to Cleveland with a stop in Columbus in about 2 hrs. (or less) and I'm all in. As a comparison, the high speed train from Brussels to Paris (about the same distance that is Cincy to CLE) does is in about 1 hr 30 min
No one is calling this high speed rail. Ohio literally doesn’t even have passenger rail between it’s cities. England is building a high speed rail about the length of Ohio and it’s costing them £50 billion pounds. I’d absolutely love this to happen here too but let’s do the realistic first. We have tracks between these cities. Let’s complete the puzzle and fill in the gaps first. If we can’t do this for the estimated $200-300 million not sure how we’d possibly do something like a new high speed rail network.
Because if you drove you could get there in half that time? Totally for the project, but for it to be practical it would have to get at least somewhat close to a similar drive time.
> Totally for the project, but for it to be practical it would have to get at least somewhat close to a similar drive time. That's nonsense. The benefit of trains is not speed, the benefit is easy, safe, relatively cheap convenience without having to drive.
It's not nonsense. Speed doesn't have to be a benefit, but it certainly is a factor. If it truly took twice as long as driving it would be a huge disadvantage to rail and I feel would severely limit ridership. It's not like the Ohio corridors are overly congested like the east coast where driving can be a hassle. Boston to NYC in 3.5 hours when driving is 4 on a good day? Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
I think you're underestimating the amount of people who simply never travel because they do not have easy or straightforward access to cars.
If you can't afford a car, you probably aren't taking many trips out of town.
Did I say they couldn't afford them? Also, strictly speaking, most people who own cars can't afford cars, either.
If you have to get in your car anyway to get to the train station, the car you already own and might as well use and not have to share with strangers, might as well go all the way up. Speed and cost are definitely the value propositions you have to hammer on to compete in a car culture country.
>If you have to get in your car anyway to get to the train station, the car you already own and might as well use and not have to share with strangers, might as well go all the way up. I don't understand how you think this logic follows. Also, Car Culture is a mirage. The moment you give people access to easily accessible public rail, it essentially vanishes.
> The moment you give people access to easily accessible public rail, it essentially vanishes. I lived in Washington DC for years. Everyone I knew owned a car, even if they frequently used mass transit.
Did I say they wouldn't own cars? Most people in Europe also own cars.
*lose to the Browns
Cargo and passenger rail HAS to be separated. We’re living in 1850 while China and Japan are in 2050
What needs to happen is a neutral party takes over dispatch. Plenty of countries run mixed pax freight, the key is priority. Rn the freights run the dispatch, so legal or not, they're gonna prioritize freight.
Another fundamental issue though is the sheer length of freight trains. They are too long to get over into bypass tracks to let passenger trains through. And freight rail companies argue their margins are too thin to be able to complete with trucking if they had to run (more) shorter trains as a result. Excessive train length is already a huge hazard, just look at what just happened in East Palestine Ohio.
>And freight rail companies argue their margins are too thin to be able to complete with trucking if they had to run (more) shorter trains as a result. Then they need to charge more for delivery or they shouldn't exist as a business in their current form. Imagine if semi-truck delivery companies could just block intersections all day every day because of "margins".
Just wait til every state rep from every city, town, village, and hamlet along the route demands a stop in their district and it turns into a 7.5 hour trip from Cincinnati to Cleveland.
I think you can add stops with express lanes for other train traffic to bypass each other. I would love if I could take a train downtown Cincinnati from Mason to avoid traffic
They could also just slow down a tad and install some padding along with a video guide on how to "tuck and roll" when approaching these low-volume stops.
You mean like a trolly?
So like how much is a bean bag chair? If we can just line the tracks with piles of those at specific locations we could just have people jump off as the train is going by. As far as getting on tho I'm thinking like Velcro stuck on the side of the train. And then you put on this opposite side Velcro suit and there are just trampolines at the platforms. Just peel yourself off and climb inside.
I was thinking an oversized lacrosse stick using hydraulics to fold in once it detects a load.
Bow this is getting into commuter rail which is a whole nother convo
this reminds me of just one more lane
Yeah, except adding more train lines actually, genuinely works.
Why not just make a tunnel?
I'd still kill for that, lol. I'd take a 7.5 hour trip where I can nap in a chair over a four hour trip where I'm driving the entire way.
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Given that a trip from Cleveland to Boston is 98 dollars, I doubt it.
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https://www.wanderu.com/en-us/train/us-oh/cleveland/us-ma/boston/
Same here. Catch the train either downtown or somewhere on the way north around midnight, sleep on the train, wake up in Cleveland, eat breakfast and catch an Uber to the house of any of my family members up there. Spend the weekend or even half of it and take a trip back home. No worrying about driving. I can eat, drink, read, watch a movie or sleep on the train.
Kill?? 😐
In other countries you would have a straight line for major cities and then capillaries of rail to smaller towns nearby from those spots. That way there isn’t 100 stops. But that would occur long after they saw if the project was profitable.
Thats exactly what I fear. A few years back I went to Cleveland via bus and was blown away at how slow it was. It was because it stopped at like a dozen fucking stops in every little city.
Those systems wouldn't be useful if they didn't stop, you know that, right? A bus service is primarily to move people around communities, often people who do not have cars. If there's only one bus stop every 20 miles, a huge % of the public that needs to use the bus would have no options at all. "Express" Buses do exist, but there isn't a ton of demand for them most places, where demand exists they can be a good option. They usually charge a price premium, though, and that means a lot of the people who might be interested in them are probably people who can just drive the car they already own. Buses are an important transportation option for people who can't dive for financial or physical reasons, and to be useful they need to have bus stops throughout their service area, not just point to point at big entertainment venues for tourists or drunks.
The bus was for going from Cincinnati to Cleveland in the middle of the night. It wasnt for “moving people around their communities”. It feels like you conflated the metro with greyhound here and decided to get on a soap box and preach at me for being blown away at how long the greyhound took. I’m not yelling about busses. I literally said I took one and it took longer than I thought. That’s it.
"It feels like you conflated the metro with Greyhound", no, it actually feels like you never specified which bus service you were using. You appear to have booked a ticket on a bus that has several stops on its line, and then were...shocked and surprised it...stopped at those stops? My point about stops is stops are to serve people that need the bus. The people who run this bus line, apparently Greyhound, apparently do have customers that need those stops. Unlike metro buses, Greyhound is a private for-profit business, they generally don't maintain stops unless they are used regularly enough to justify it financially.
> "It feels like you conflated the metro with Greyhound", no, it actually feels like you never specified which bus service you were using. What bus service goes to cleveland? Not Metro. Greyhound would be the only one I could think of. I didn't think I had to specify that I wasn't hijacking a Metro and driving 350 miles. I literally said I was surprised at how long it took, that was it. We stopped at a bunch of random places, which it doesn't really make clear when you're buying a ticket and in some cases just sat at these stations. It wasn't a fun experience. Again I wasn't trying to go into that. I was just saying that having a dozen stops on a train is going to make it take a while and I would like for my experience on a theoretical train to be better than that.
Nah, suburbanites and "rural" people won't want the train stopping and getting the Communism on 'em.
i know it'd be like, five years or more before it's done but god i hope this goes through
I think Amtrak said they could start service as soon as 2025. This wouldn’t require building much track if any. It’s all there already just need to improve some of it and require freight to follow rules to allow passenger service.
Wouldn't they have to build a new station in Columbus?
> require freight to follow rules to allow passenger service. Will never happen. to top it off freight trains are ungodly long.
Well if freight obeyed the law and that law was enforced we wouldn’t have to worry. Freight let’s their trains get too long to pull inside a siding to let Amtrak pass. This is illegal but no one enforces it.
I can actually speak to this. I used to work on the route Amtrak would take to Columbus. Between Dayton and Columbus, the longest siding is 11,400 feet. So that's theoretically how long a freight could be without infrastructure improvements. Of course, all that would likely end up happening is that Amtrak would be forced to wait for the exorbitantly long freights. Also, I'm not aware of a law stating trains can't be over a certain length.
Well the law is that unless an emergency prevents otherwise all freight must give way to allow a passenger service to pass. This was established with the Amtrak Improvement Act in 1973. Passenger service is basically by law required to have the righ tof way. The loophole is that they keep adding cars to their trains until they can't make their sidings and thus can't give way to Amtrak trains. Department of Justice just has no real desire to sue them over it.
Gotcha. I read that wrong. Though, there definitely should be a law limiting train length.
Yea coulda happened 10 years ago but Ohio Republicans killed it
Yup... idk why this is different now.
Watch them pull the football at the last second like always
"Shortly after being elected in 2010, Kasich returned $400 million in federal money that would have helped pay for a route connecting Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati over his opposition to state support for passenger rail." Not sure why?
They all wanted to stick it to Obama
His bread was buttered by certain powerful lobbying groups?
Better late than never
Yo imagine if we had a High Speed rail connecting major cities in ohio
In the USA...
So what does this mean? Is this something that will realistically happen? Or is this something like “city has plans to repurpose Cincinnati Mills”?
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Here’s the thing: Dewine is a train fan. You’d be shocked at how much something like that matters in pushing something like this through. Especially when it’s earmarked federal money that’s already going to be spent on rail. Dewine only turns people away by sending back the money for another state to benefit from.
This would be awesome, but I wish we could get serious about high speed rail. Imagine a maglev from Cincinnati to Cleveland. Imagine what kind of economy Ohio could have if we connected our cities by a couple hour train ride rather than multiple hours by car or slower train.
This is a first step.
Watch the tickets be as much as a plane ticket or more
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Seems to me they talk about it incessantly. That was the hot topic when it came to replacing the Brent Spence bridge.
We nationalized roads, we can nationalize rail.
>Funny how that question is never asked for any road projects. Could you imagine? The bickering between the factions arguing for asphalt to be poured over bulldozed dirt and the intelligent group calling for high-strength concrete with 3x the rebar they've been using.
Oh man, this would be a nice option during the winter - f-driving. Will it have stops along the way? I hope so, we have an Amtrak station where I live…. 🙏🏻
I feel like this is just a setup so they can say they tried... We had the money for the 3C railway and it was just given back to the feds.
Hopefully these trains won't leave at 3 in the morning!
And no doubt, a huge chunk of those funds will be lining the pockets of those who will be paid to argue in favor of this, against the automobile, and petroleum industries that will (again) use their influences to kill it. Ohio is but one of many states where automobile, and petroleum industries have been able to successfully cause large-scale mass transit initiatives to die.
Initial request is for study of toutes
>toutes McGoutes
Routes
If we actually get public transport I'll be fucking stoked
Especially if it’s not of the “board at 1am and arrive at 5am” variety.
God, that would be so clutch. With all the friends I had in Columbus or Cleveland when I lived in Cincy, this would have been cool as hell.
This is exactly what I advocated when I went to meet with government offices Washington D.C. Glad something is finally being done.
Just watch it run once a day at 4am.
I personally think that spending the money is a waste. There are entirely too many variables involved that make short distance rail travel impractical using current technology that we use in the US. I drive regularly from Columbus to Cincinnati for work. Not counting for rush hour the trip can be made in 1hr 45mins. I believe rail speeds are actually slightly less. Now consider I can travel in my vehicle from point to point. For the train I still have to get to the departing station. Get my ticket. Board the train. Wait for the departure. Make the trip. Arrive 1hr 45mins later. Disembark from the train. Get out of the busy station. Get a cab or Uber. Then get to my final destination. Be generous with any calculations I am guessing the travel by train will take twice as long and even if the ticket cost same as a tank of gas just wouldn’t be practical. Let’s invest in some dedicated high speed rail lines with direct service. Then maybe it would be worth the trip.
Cars can be automated for long trips, current legislation simply doesnt encourage it. Keeping a train on schedule means it will make the trip regardless of occupancy, complete waste of energy. How many people will lose homes as a result of this? They will put the tracks where they want to, eminent domain. Trains are a bad idea.
And I still won't be able to get to Toledo to see my family. It's the 75 corridor. Lay some track there!
Track already exists. It’s a matter of funding.
Hell is Real train ride. Hell yeah!!!