Lucas Peilert

I saw it in one of the SCMP articles after the launch, but I think it was wrong.

HNTB took some nice photos

(Photo not mine)

The Erie!

Elmira, NY has a really cool concrete grade separation structure running through downtown. It was built in the 1930s, and restored by the town a few years ago.

Abu Dhabi – Dubai high speed rail construction tenders called UAE: The executive councils of Abu Dhabi and Dubai have signed a co-operation charter for the development of a 150 km high speed rail link between the cities which would be designed for 350 km/h runni...

And they’re building a 350km/h high-speed rail line to Abu Dhabi.

Hopefully they stop throwing away money on the other stuff, and double down even more on the HSR & automated metros.

www.railwaygazette.com/high-speed/a...

Also for good transport ideas, though. In addition to all this silly stuff, they’re doing a huge expansion of their automated metro.

The Chamartín Station project in Madrid will double the number of HSR platforms while constructing a deck over the railyards, opening up 700 acres for development, for which the high-speed rail operator will receive 1 billion euros, more than covering the cost of the infrastructure improvements.

Obviously we've done this before in the U.S., but I think there are plenty of opportunities still out there, both for transit and intercity rail, and both for new projects and station overhauls.

It wasn't malpractice on the part of CHSRA. They just weren't set up with the right structures in place (e.g., their charter, FRA/FTA rules) to play a role in station area development.

The site plans show mostly surface parking at station sites--more surface parking than even Brightline Florida.

One of the biggest missed opportunities to capture land value is in San Jose.

Diridon Station is benefiting from $10s of billions in public transit investment.

Who has bought up all the land? Google.

They have a beautiful plan, but Google did not need a land value windfall. CHSRA and VTA did!

Brightline probably pulled in ~$0.5 - $1.0b in property sales, mostly at the Miami station, to fund the $6b system. But they probably could have 2x-3x'ed that with a more aggressive strategy and financing.

As the article indicates, all *six train stations are emerging as major commercial centers*.

Homes prices and new developments are booming along South Florida’s train line The right track: It’s full steam ahead, as luxe towers chug along Brightline route.

High-speed rail increases land values!

With questionable federal support over the next four years, rail & transit project sponsors should think hard about how they can capture more of this value to help fund projects. This is how it works overseas, too. 

1/
nypost.com/2025/02/14/r...

I think it’d only work if you had a 10 minute high-speed rail connection to downtown

YouTube video by IBEW Hour Power Business Development: Brightline West - High Speed Electric Rail From LA to Las Vegas

This would be great…keep the work coming for @ibewinternational.bsky.social

youtu.be/N3CMWTIb1mA?...

Seikan is 33 miles—I’m not sure if it’s possible to use the “parallel tube” solution at even longer distances.

I think the ventilation isn’t the issue as much as evacuation. The two longest undersea tunnels (Seikan and Channel Tunnel) both have a parallel tube that runs the entire length of the tunnel just for emergency evacuations.

what scalable decarbonization tech actually looks like:

e-bikes and e-cargo bikes
bicycle networks
passivhaus retrofits w/ prefab exterior straw wall panels
bus priority lanes
pedestrian zones

YouTube video by Alptransit Gotthard Gotthard Base Tunnel operational ventilation

Here’s a good video on how the system works at Gotthard: youtu.be/aL8PjaDPxHw?...

If you had room for service access/emergency egress points and vertical ventilation every 10-15 miles, cross passages every ~300m, and a few rail crossover tunnels, you can go quite far, in theory.

With electrified trains, your main issues in operations are ventilation, fire suppression, dust/cleaning, and emergency egress in the case of a disabled train. Gotthard is currently the longest tunnel and mostly solves these problems using two access tunnels and a large firefighting operation.

The real constraint is cost, but setting that aside, it mostly depends on how much access you have through vertical or graded horizontal access tunnels. During construction, these access points are important for getting equipment into the tunnel and taking excavated material out.

They’re definitely industrial espionage issues on chips, etc., but they’re winning trains fair and square

YouTube video by Sándor Csaba TGV speed record 574,8 km/h

Seating capacity isn’t really relevant. And top speed records are cool, but those speeds were totally unsustainable financially for SNCF. A big point of national pride, to be sure, but a total money burn. They were melting pantographs to make it work.

youtu.be/EOdATLzRGHc?...

Most European trains top out at 300kmh/186mph, unchanged since 1981. A few stretches track now support 320kmh/199mph.

China started operating their first 350kmh train a decade ago, and no one in Japan or China or anywhere else has been able to match it in service.

No one in the west can even come close to this

Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu is the biggest HSR projects underway in China today.

It’s opening in 2027 and will connect Chongqing to Shanghai in 5 hours.

I’m definitely with you that shorter routes (in the 200-500 mile range) have the best bang for buck over the next few years! Just putting into context what China is doing—not necessarily arguing we should replicate it 1:1 in the US

Connecting these routes by high speed rail would dramatically change both traffic-ease and carbon footprint in this country. Heck, you could connect half the country with a Chicago hub. Truly the dream.

Yeah they’re obviously not the same distance apart, but the point is that they’re all roughly in the same range where a China-style high-speed rail service would connect them in less than four hours.
ATL-CHI: 590 miles
ATL-DC: 540 miles
ATL-NYC: 750 miles