Long distance service: Maximum efficiency possible in inter-city service
Approximate, assumes seats filled for all vehicles, no standees except where noted, see full table for details Mode Passenger-miles per gallon

Diesel‑electric commuter rail with standees 936
Electric Train (estimate - need more data) 800
High Speed Electric Train (300 km/h) 630
Highway coach 280
Diesel‑electric commuter rail 260
Toyota Prius 238
Ford Explorer 150
Hovercraft 80
Aircraft 70
Helicopter 20

That's interesting. Intercity buses aren't as efficient on a per passenger basis as I had assumed. Nevermind, the bus will run whether or not I'm onboard so guess it would be better to leave the car parked when I have the option.

You ever take AMTRAK for long distance travel? My wife and I have, from Portland, Oregon to Philadelphia, and back, with a stay in Chicago. I assure you, it was no dang holiday! Maybe it was better than hopping a freight or riding the rails, but not much; and certainly slower.

The only train trips I can recall taking that merit being called a holiday were a Steam Train Excursion from Nürnberg to Vienna. And Steam from Speyer to Pirmasens to Koblenz to Karlsruhe in 1999 on a Wochende DM40 ($20) ticket

Here is a short section from my draft that describes usinfn the AMTRAK. Other than being three hours late to the station We had the problem of, once we got to SanFrancisco (really Emeryville) we were stuck. Any plan that requires assistance from strangers is a failed plan.






The trip to the city where I was scheduled to work, Xinyang, China, involved several legs. I had planned as well as I could, however, plans often fail, as I will get to. It was our intent to leave on the southbound Amtrak train out of Dunsmuir, CA. The concern with this train is that it has a history of always being late. So much so that it would be hard to find a regular rider of this route that can remember it having ever been on time. I can say with certainty that I have never seen it on time and that I have never spoken to any person who recounted it having arrived on time.



I dealt with this untimelyness, of Amtrak, by working extra time into our schedule. So, when the train that was scheduled to leave at 0:25 in the morning, it did not greatly alter our schedule when it finally arrived at 3:25. In fact, I was somewhat surprised that it was so early.



The train from Dunsmuir, CA (DUN) to Emeryville, CA (EMY) was somewhat uneventful. It was at Emeryville that the plan ran into its first snag. I had called the BART(Bay Area Rapid Transit) office in order to plan our route from EMY to the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). I was told to catch the Emery-go-round shuttle at EMY, ride the light rail to the Mc Arthur Street Station, from there to go to the Balboa Street Station via light rail, and from there I was to catch the final light rail leg to SFO.

In order to make sure that this route was going to work I called the BART information line in order to insure that the Emery-go-round shuttle did indeed run on Sunday, the day I was scheduled to need it. I was assured that it did run by the person at the BART information line. However, upon arriving at EMY, I discovered the truth of the matter.

I asked at the Amtrak desk where I would catch the shuttle to the Mc Arthur Street station and I was told that there was none (actually, he said, "they lied to you."). I was directed to the bus stop where I could get the information number and the route number for the emery-go-round and find out when its next scheduled run was. When I called that number I was told by a recording that there was no pick up time for that day at EMY.

This was a definite snag in the plan. I was now standing in a train station about forty five miles from where I needed to go and no way to get there, not to mention Zeneta who was already exhausted from moving her luggage. We quickly discovered that the journey would be a very athletic endeavor.

The Amtrak employee told us that there was a BART stop on the other side of the set of tracks (many tracks) in front of the Borders Books, which we could barely see. Further, we were told that if we caught bus 57 that it would take us to the Mc Arthur Street rail station.

So, off we went, trekking off to Borders Books. It may have only been a couple of hundred yards. However, it was a long couple of hundred yards. Then, after arriving at the general vicinity of where we had been sent, I did not see a bus stop.

It was at this point that, while the plan had failed, our luck held. I asked a cheerful looking young woman where the bus stop was and she asked where we were trying to get. We told her that we were trying to get to the Mc Arthur Street Station. We also added that the ultimate destination was SFO.

After pointing to where the bus stop was, she offered to drive us to a more direct station, Oakland West, which would allow us to travel to SFO with no transfers. We took her up on her offer and loaded our luggage into her station wagon. On the way to the station we chatted with her about our intended destination and she mentioned having several friends who were in, or had recently returned from, China. She reported that all of them had enjoyed the experience and that several of them had traveled to China several times, with positive reports from each visit.

Unknown Woman who drove us to the BART. Thank You!

When we arrived at the BART station, she told us which train we would need to take to arrive at SFO. We thanked her and went inside for a rather uneventful ride across the bay.

Well I dont think High Speed train service is necessarily the answer. Trains have an advantage over cars anyway because they can travel at higher speeds for a more costant amount of time. Also...with urbanism/new urbanism you could eliminate the need for a car by using complex bike trail/alley systems like in Europe where most areas of a city are NOT accessible by car. This would make it impractical to have a car(unless traveling to traditional suburbs) which the traditional suburbs could be fixed by rapid bus service to the urban communities. Developers wouldnt have a problem with this because they would see higher returns and most trails/alleys could be made as public investment. While the light rail system in Washington would be handled by WMATA its not impossible to privatize it.


Enviromental impact would be less because because you'd have high density communities connected by train radiating into lower densities with rural density being achieved for 5-10 miles in cities connected by bike trail(paralleling train tracks to reduce impact.) The people who owned houses on these paths would not have developing rights so they couldnt sell the land to developers preserving a sense of place and forest conservation. In theory these communities connected by train could be 15-20 miles apart from the center city(radiating fashion), 4-10 miles apart from each other(in linear fashion), with hi-dense commercial/retail/low dense multi-fam residential employment centers 10-15 miles apart from the northernmost and southernmost poles of this theoretical circle.