Hey Everybody,
I'm going on vacation for a week and a half. While I'm gone, be sure to check out The Infrastructurist and The Transport Politic. Both are very good sites for news on trains and infrastructure.
03 June 2009
01 June 2009
LaHood in Spain
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood is finishing up a trip to Europe to examine their use of high speed rail. He vised the countries of Germany (Deutsch Bahn), France (SNCF), and Spain (Renfe). It's good to see that our leaders are looking to other countries to see how we should model our system, I would also like to point out that Ray LaHood is just following in Gov. Doyle's footsteps.
From my experiences in Germany and their train system, here is what I hope Mr.LaHood takes away from his trip to Europe:
1. The majority of passenger rail should be state run. This allows for more profitable routes to subsidize less popular routes, making sure that everyone and everyplace is included by the rail system. There is a great article over on the Transport Politic debating public versus private ownership, it can be found here.
2. Each country has there own engineering companies helping build the railways and the trains. Germany has Siemens and some parts of Bombardier, France has Alstom (all three produce trains), and Spain has ACS which builds the tracks. The U.S. needs its own rail company to build our equipment. Why can't GM build trains? The U.S. government now has a 60% stake in the company, so we'll see if that leads to anything. Although, initially we may have to purchase rail equipment from Europe just like Russia and China have done, since the European companies are so far ahead of the U.S. in rail technology.
3. High speed rail is going to need a lot more money. I'll just leave this one to a graph:
From my experiences in Germany and their train system, here is what I hope Mr.LaHood takes away from his trip to Europe:
1. The majority of passenger rail should be state run. This allows for more profitable routes to subsidize less popular routes, making sure that everyone and everyplace is included by the rail system. There is a great article over on the Transport Politic debating public versus private ownership, it can be found here.
2. Each country has there own engineering companies helping build the railways and the trains. Germany has Siemens and some parts of Bombardier, France has Alstom (all three produce trains), and Spain has ACS which builds the tracks. The U.S. needs its own rail company to build our equipment. Why can't GM build trains? The U.S. government now has a 60% stake in the company, so we'll see if that leads to anything. Although, initially we may have to purchase rail equipment from Europe just like Russia and China have done, since the European companies are so far ahead of the U.S. in rail technology.
3. High speed rail is going to need a lot more money. I'll just leave this one to a graph:
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