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Blaise (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:00 am
i have thought this way for almost 40 years but I have not been able to persuade anyone else!
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It's interesting how efforts for balanced, intermodal transportation play out in this country. Rail and bus for short distances, High-speed rail for medium distances and air for long distances. Intermodal terminals would allow easy transfer between the various modes of transportation. Such terminals do exist, for container freight, at major ports, but passenger service is not in the mix.
Officials missed a great opportunity to create such a terminal with the plans to upgrade the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. The airport sits in a "Y" of two major rail lines and has more land than needed for the terminal expansion. Running along side one of the rail lines is the I-5 freeway, the major North-South route in the state. There is a rail passenger station, on the South boundary of the airport, but it is little more than an open platform commuter stop although some Amtrak trains do stop there.
In the moving of the terminal further away from the runways to meet current FAA standards they could have made a combined air, bus and rail terminal. With the addition of some rail sidings, an intermodal air, truck, rail freight transfer terminal could have been set up on the mostly unoccupied North-East section of the airport property. Dedicated on and off ramps to the freeway for trucks, buses and passenger cars would have completed the project. It was obvious, but, as far as I know, no one in any official position even suggested it.
The railroads don't want to carry passengers. They make much more money carrying freight and they don't have to maintain trackage to such a high level. (All they need is basic safety. Boxes of stuff don't complain about comfort.)
As for dedicated right-of-way for high speed, passenger rail, everyone thinks that it's a great idea except they don't want it running through their town, farm, wild-life preserve, etc. etc. With so many people driving the I-15 from Los Angeles to Las Vegas you would think that there would be substantial support for high-speed rail on that route. However, the NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard, if you have never seen the expression.) with support from environmental groups and the Indian tribes with casinos (who have their own agenda in this case) have successfully blocked all efforts to start on the project.
In fact, Amtrak has not been able to maintain service on the LA to LV route. Going Amtak now, you take the train to Barstow and a bus to Las Vegas. Of course, the fact that the 245 mile train trip used to take 8 hours when you could drive it in 4-1/2 hours and the schedule was only two days a week each way may have had something to do with the deterioration of interest in the route. I wonder what kinds of ridership they would have had if they had two trains a day, each way, with three to LV on Friday and Saturday and four to LA on Sunday, with five-hour run time, a decent dining car, and auto-train cars in the train so you could buy a ticket for your car (common in Europe).
You can't even take the Coast Daylight from LA to San Francisco any more. The train takes you as far as Paso Robles where you get on a bus to go the rest of the way. How lame is that? There is a bond measure for high-speed rail from San Diego to Sacramento on the November ballot in California. With the state of the economy, and substantial opposition, from the usual groups (Delete Indian tribes, add intra-state airlines.), I expect it to be soundly defeated.
:-\
It seams to me that the people were lead to that airlines and hi-ways were the wave of future and railroads were dead. What we need is a balance transportation system!Anything under 500 miles should be ground trasportion Hi speed rail and anything under 5 miles light rail or bus All three can be electrified a maigor reduction in fosel fuel uses! most truck trasportion to 100 miles. this would reduse hi-way cost as well. Hi speed trains could do 500 miles in under 4 hrs. You could spend that much time at the airport
_____Ernie of Maine______________________
