Evansville Rail: June 2012

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Outside of Evansville, The Entire Midwest is Preparing For Passenger Rail

progressohio.org

The following are diagrams of proposed passenger rail lines from the Midwest High Speed Rail Association. Not pictured is the current proposed route going from Chicago to Champaign to Indianapolis...

http://cee.illinois.edu/HSR_research

Notice, in the MWHSR pictures, Evansville remains only one of a few cities in the Midwest not planning for passenger rail...

Map KeyHigh Speed Rail - 125-220mph
Regional Rail - 80-125mph
Commuter Rail - 50-100mph

http://www.midwesthsr.org/projects-by-state

(Note the map of Indiana below has Evansville as a "proposed Amtrak" route. This was put in after State Senator Dennis Avery requested $300,000 for a study for a route going from Evansville to Chicago. The study was left out of the 2009 budget and has since been abandoned. The newly created map from the Midwest High Speed Rail Association leaves Evansville out once more: http://www.midwesthsr.org/network)

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Michigan

Minnesota

Missouri

Ohio

Wisconsin

Will Evansville join the rest of the Midwest?

http://www.midwesthsr.org/sites/default/files/images/map_integrated_network.gif

Did You Know?

-An intercity high-speed passenger train is three times as energy efficient as commercial air, and six times as efficient as a car traveling with one occupant.

-Switching 5% of US highway travel to high-speed passenger rail would save more that one-sixth the amount of oil imported annually from the Middle East.

-High-Speed Rail service requires less land acquisition that other modes of travel. According to the Worldwatch Institute, two railroad tracks can carry as many people per hour as sixteen lanes of highway. Farmlands and environmentally-sensitive geography are preserved.

-One railway track mile uses 0.42 football field(s) worth of land compared to one highway mile that equals 1.10.

-One Virginia Railway Express commuter train can equal as many as 800 cars taken off the highway.

-One intermodal freight train can equal up to 300 tractor-trailers.

-For every $1 invested in public transportation such as intercity passenger rail, $4 is returned in economic development.

-One regional passenger train equals 4 regional planes

-For the cost of building a third airport in the Chicago area, a network of high-speed trains could be built in nine states and serve far more travelers.

-In addition, the cost of building quality interstate highways in urban areas cost between $15 and $20 Million per mile, while infrastructure for high-speed passenger trains traveling at 125 mph costs between $3 and $6 Million per mile.

-In over 35 years of operation, the high-speed passenger rail system, carrying over 6 million passengers a day, worldwide, has only had a few minor incidents and one fatal accident.

-In the United States, Amtrak's Metroliner, a passenger train traveling at 125 Mph between New York and Washington, has had no passenger fatalities since it was established in 1986. Compare that to 500,000 motor vehicle fatalities in the United States since 1986.

-High-speed trains speed travelers from city center to city center. For most passengers, the rest of the trip is a simple walk or short taxi ride from the train station to their final destination.