Wonder what the cost per mile would be to put a basic two-track elevated high speed electrified passenger railway down the center of existing Interstate highways would be?

Speaking as someone once involved in the design of such structures, the cost would be high, really high.

Once it used to be said that a single track of commuter rail could be self-supporting only in a corridor that had 12 lanes of Interstate or equivalent highway (Garden State, etc, altho that isn't 12 lanes wide). The only corridor in the east here that meets that criteria is the northern part of the New Jersey Turnpike, down to somewhere south of New Brunswick.

Pennsy ran a commuter operation in this corridor, from Trenton up to Pennsylvania Station (midtown Manhattan), with a stop in Newark that facilitated (IIRC) transfer to the PATH trains to lower Manhattan. Not many came all the way from Trenton, although I worked with someone who did. I would guess that that line may have been self-supporting, and might still be. But it is an isolated example.

There is also a section of the 401 expressway around the north of Toronto that is 12 lanes wide (even before the Turnpike). Toronto has a kind of semi-linear development due to Lake Ontario that has fostered this, and they had a commuter train operation in parallel along existing tracks. I do not know its financial situation.

One problem with using the Interstate right-of-ways is that the law establishing them governed and limited the width of RoW that could be acquired. That was 150 feet beyond the baseline of the nearest main roadway, and perhaps 100 feet on ramps, unless steep topography actually required more for cuts and fills. That baseline was usually the centerline of median, so you had a 300-foot right of way.

Without laying it all out, what you could build in that space in average topography with full shoulders (8' inside, 12' outside) and safety runout flats on the outside (15 more feet with guardrail, 30 without) turned out to be four 12-foot lanes in each direction. Usually this was done by constructing two lanes each way with a median wide enough to accommodate two more each way with the widened inside shoulder and a little 3 or 4 foot strip for a median barrier.

So you can't put piers in the median barrier strip for this train bridge because it isn't wide enough unless you sacrifice some of the 8 lanes, which already aren't enough (as an indicator of potential traffic) to support even one track of such a railroad. And you can't widen to the outside by acquistion of more RoW, because the adjoining property like as not has been very attractive to companies wanting visibility. And where vacant, it is pricey because of this potential use; ironically all because of the presence of the Interstate.

Of course you can cramp everything and reduce highway safety, as if our highway injuries and fatalities aren't high enough already; put piers for a dual line of transit/commuter bridge in where one line already isn't financially prudent; subsidize that by putting tolls on the Interstate; and then still have much the same congestion, delay, and cost on either option. Or you can privitise the whole shebang, and then find out that the reason we have public roads is that we once had private roads.

What people overlook are three issues: weight per seat; empty deadheading one way some distance for a second trip, or expensive downtown layovers in costly underutilized equipment; and finally that the crew can't handle morning and evening rush in a single 8-hour shift-- you need two crews no matter 12-hour shifts or not. Now if you put only two people in a car, it is going to beat you hands down on every one of these issues, even including the cost of the Interstate (expressed as a gas tax). It even beats buses. Even with gasoline going through the roof, three people in a car is going to take care of that; and still there will be an empty seat so that a four-person group will assure mostly three available for car-pool lane qualification.

It is just simple mathematics. Even if the tracks can be conventional on the ground in the median, the numbers still favor the car as the economic choice in most areas. Elevated train bridges are just going to create a situation beyond all reason. Here in DC we speak about billions as if it were Monopoly money. And the car takes you where you want to go.

--Frank

Here in northern NJ the grades on the highways are much too steep for trains, not to mention the fact that they are already too crowded. In central NJ (Trenton etc.) such a thing might be possible, but why bother to build an elevated railroad when so many right of ways and existing lines offer the opportuninty for less expensive expantions. For example, the Reading line to West Trenton, now a single track CSX line, used to be four tracks, and could be easily double tracked at a much lower cost than building an elevated railroad. Of course, thanks to limited capacity into NYC these new lines would not offer one seat service, and would not see much ridership. In the end rail only pays for itself if the quality of service is competitive with the roads, and that will not happen until more tunnels under the Hudson River are built.

Frank-

Most commuter railroads do cover many morning and afternoon rush hour trains with a single crew. The Federal hours of service law counts a 4hr+ break as rest. For example, a crew can do one round trip in the moring, and one trip in the evening, thus, working 13 or 14 hours, but with a 4 hour plus break they will be on duty less than 12 hours under the hours of service. Some crews lay over in the city during this break, and some are able to go home. Some railroads pay the crew for these layovers, and others do not, it all depends.

quote:

Wonder what the cost per mile would be to put a basic two-track elevated high speed electrified passenger railway down the center of existing Interstate highways would be?

See the JFK Airtrain for the answer to your question. they built the extention from Jfk Up the middle of the Van Wyck to Jamaica Station. I am Surprised they didn't go all the way to LaGuardia. Guess the powerful T&LC as well as the huge expense in NYC construction stopped that.

http://www.subwaynut.com/airtrain/jamaica/jamaica4.jpg

In SoCal there are commuter trains that run down the center of a few freeways.
MetroLink runs down the center of I-10 for a few miles and the Metro GoldLine (light-rail) runs down the center of I-210 through Pasadena.

Both were on pre existing rail lines however.

.


......Well, this is what we should have running down our freeways

I seem to recall in the late 90's the cost was around 10 million per mile as opposed to about 3 million per mile for on-grade operations including infrastructure. Here in Phoenix the average mile of freeway (6 traffic lanes, 2 HOV lanes, center barrier, 8" concrete base over another 8" of concrete and topped with rubberized asphalt).

It is hard to compare these though as the freeway does not move nearly as many people as a train can for that same mile.

4877:

Does the HOV lanes rune 2 in the same direction, or one in each direction?

Just asking. We have 'em here in Houston.

quote:

Originally posted by F Maguire:

One problem with using the Interstate right-of-ways is that the law establishing them governed and limited the width of RoW that could be acquired. That was 150 feet beyond the baseline of the nearest main roadway, and perhaps 100 feet on ramps, unless steep topography actually required more for cuts and fills. That baseline was usually the centerline of median, so you had a 300-foot right of way.


--Frank

Frank, would you happen to know how the acquisition for the Metro in the I-66 median ever played out?

As a child in the 60's I remember visiting relatives on Cottage St, just a block or so from the current Dunn Loring station. The discussion from my uncle was how some day they were going to put train tracks in the median... which they did.

As for the rest of your post, it was awesome... a sheer pleasure to read someone with a realistic worldview of commutation and mass transit... and the "reason we have public roads" is a modern classic, I'm sending it in to my Governor Emeritus.

Oh, and Toronto traffic reminds me of my beltway nightmares of my happy days of yore when the cabin john bridge was only 4 lanes...

Looking back at the original poster, the traffic in question is electrified high-speed trains, not a conventional commuter rail operation.

(Above: JFK AirTrain)
If I recall correctly, it is said that France's TGV lines feature gradients in excess of what would be considered acceptable for conventional traffic, since the lightweight trainsets are less affected by grades owing to their high operating speeds.

Now, whether you could shoehorn HST operation into the typical curves found on interstate highways, is another matter. A recent documentary on Korea's KTX high-speed railway indicated that they tried to hold mainline curvature to 7000 metres (a little less than 23,000 feet) radius. Sounds like a lot gentler than what you'd find on a typical interstate, even in the middle of nowhere.

---PCJ

The Baltimore Light Rail system has some pretty
steep (6%) grades, tight turns and clearances
(as little as 1 foot) and seems to work out just
fine! Has much elevated structures for rails.
Might want to look at that as an example before
all of that naysaying.

quote:

The Baltimore Light Rail system has some pretty
steep (6%) grades, tight turns and clearances
(as little as 1 foot) and seems to work out just
fine!

Oh PlEAAASE! The BLR took lessons from Pittsburg, PA with 9% grades! I can imagine the Siemens engineers when they herd of the specs for Pittsburg, PA!

quote:

6 traffic lanes, 2 HOV lanes

Can't help but notice that you also recognize that HOV lanes are not traffic lanes but political PC lanes.

Something like that was proposed for years in Orlando along the I-4 corridor to relieve the congestion. It never made it past the idea stage though as none of the local politicians wanted to cut money from their needless social programs, and put it into something worthwhile.

PRRDave