will be an eight-month project, but with fi- nal reports to be presented in April 2014.
Hyperloop. Ho-Hum? Every once in a while, we have a tendency to get all excited about a new, new, “New, I tell ya’ doggone it!” breakthough in technology that will “revolutionize” the industry. A new “Hyperloop” carrier aims to zip you and me from San Francisco and Los Angeles in 30minutes,”
outperforming California’s
planned high speed rail, which would poke along at a mere two hours and 40 minutes, or thereabouts, endpoint to endpoint. In fact, the newly introduced Hyperloop would even beat the speed of air travel.
Wow! Tell Us More Well, now. Far be it for us to discourage as- piring 21st Century Thomas Edisons, but we have witnessed new ideas over the years, some of which did indeed change the world in many welcome ways. Successes, however, have been interspersed with other new tech- nologies that fell well short of expectations.
Maglev?
A few years ago, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) advanced a seri- ous proposal to build a Magnetic Levitation (Maglev) passenger train system in the United States. “Magnetic Levitation” is the technology by which a train would have the ability to bound forward inches above its tracks at speeds in excess of 300 m.p.h., far outperforming the more “conventional” HSR operations in Europe and Asia (and envi- sioned for California) whose top speeds are more likely in the 200-250 m.p.h. range. (The late railroad icon W. Graham Claytor, Jr. refused to acknowledge Maglev as a “rail- road train” because it did not operate literal- ly — well — on railroads — “steel wheels on steel rails,” you know. Smaller
“pilot” Maglev projects were
showing up on drawing board maps in places where “out of the box” thinking was encouraged. (Two examples were in Penn- sylvania and another that would shuttle passenger traffic from D.C. to Baltimore, Md. Neither has come close to reality.) Senator Moynihan (with a reputation as
an “out of the box” thinker himself) pushed hard for his idea and briefly appeared to have generated serious attention in quar- ters willing to reconsider the idea (rejected or “postponed” earlier). In the end, however, the senator reluc- tantly conceded that with Maglev — while it may have a future, possibly at some point in our children’s or grandchildren’s lifetimes — the technology, as applied to passenger trains in America in the here and now — would fail the tests of simple economics and political feasibility.
Maglev has in fact survived elsewhere in the world. Just not here. Even overseas, its implementation has been limited. George Warrington, when he headed Amtrak, point- ed out that in Japan, for example, Maglev might justify its expense because that coun- try has cities of such density — i.e., Tokyo — as to make our Manhattan look like coun- tryside. China also has deployed Maglev technology.
Some of us can recall post World War II when the industry held out hopes of whisk- ing passengers from Washington to New York in pneumatic tubes. That, too, fell by the wayside.
Back to Hyperloop
The Hyperloop is now put forward as a py- lon-supported,
sealed, above-ground
transportation system. The inventor/pro- moter is one Elon Musk, who claims his creation would carry passengers in a way that is cheaper, faster, and more efficient. Musk is no newbie. He has background in electric cars, invented PayPal and much else. So he is a proven, successful entre- preneur. His idea is intriguing, but we need a proven prototype.
An Advance for D.C. In our own backyard, we in the Washington area are ready to put on our big boys pants. For we are now joining New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities for weekend com- muter train service.
MARC (Maryland Commuter) is now planning to provide service on its Penn Line from Washington to Baltimore and points in between. The trains will operate nine round trips on Saturday and six on Sunday. Starting on December 7, 2013, they will
run on Amtrak’s NEC (the old Pennsy), but making more stops than Amtrak and also will be considerably less expensive to ride. That leaves two other MARC lines on the their same five-day schedules: the Camden Line also Washington-Baltimore but via the old B&O that used to take passengers from D.C. to N.Y. via Jersey City. Also the Brunswick Line, operating D.C.–Brunswick, Md. (also into West Virginia.) This was once the B&O Metropolitan Line from D.C to Chicago and elsewhere. Amtrak today uses it for the Capitol Limited. Both of these are now CSX-owned.
Also remaining on five-day schedules in
Washington are the two Virginia Railway Express (VRE) commuter routes. One largely on ex-CSX between D.C. and Fred- ericksburg (former RF&P main) and; and via Norfolk Southern between Washington and Manassas (the old Southern Railway main line. Those in D.C.who long for weekend com- muter train service on all lines, as they have in “big-time” cites, will have to wait. Just this one is a real breakthrough.
Adequate NEC Upgrade? The very busy Northeast Corridor is at or near capacity. Its more than 2000 Amtrak, commuter, and freight movements on any given weekday serve a regional popula- tion of 50 million and a $2.6 trillion econ- omy, all on two per cent of the nation’s land mass.
Annual ridership? More than 200 million on the NEC’s nine commuter operations (connecting different cities along the line with their suburbs) and more than 13 mil- lion on Amtrak. Yet, the NEC has fallen into a state of disrepair. The majority of that line, linking D.C., Philly, N.Y., Boston and inter- mediate points, is at least a century old. When Congress adjourned for the sum-
mer, it postponed final action on trans- portation bills. At some point, we will know whether the infrastructure is main- tained well enough just to “get by,” or on the other hand has a future worthy of its potential.
Wes Vernon is a Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist.
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