As I said yesterday, it strikes me as odd that the designated high-speed rail corridors system involves two different corridors that are partially in Texas, but doesn’t include a Dallas-Houston line. I thought I would look into Dallas-Houston transportation a bit more. Kayak showed 20 flights per day from Houston to DFW airport plus another ten from Houston to Love Field. According to Google Maps it’s a 3 hour 40 minute drive. And the distance is almost exactly the same as the distance from Washington, DC to New York. In other words, the city-pair is at a distance where we know that rail can be competitive even if it’s not true HSR. And based on the 30 daily flights between the two cities, there seems to be ample demand.

At any rate, with Rick Perry talking about secession from the United States in order to shore up his flank amidst a primary campaign, I doubt we’ll be seeing Texas get behind any far-sighted initiatives any time soon. But this would be a good idea for the state to pursue.

A railroad journalist emails in to say I’m wrong to think that doing upgrades to the existing Northeast Corridor should be a priority use of HSR funds. He makes the point that the lowest hanging fruit on the NEC has already been picked. Instead:

By contrast, look at some other corridors in the country. Chicago-Minneapolis and Chicago-Indianapolis both have one train each way daily, long distance trains that often run late. Chicago-Indy is so slow that nobody who actually wants to get somewhere in any kind of a decent timeframe will ride the train; the track is just really poor. Between Chicago and the Twin Cities, they add at least a couple coaches to the Builder for that stretch, but it’s still sold out every day during the summer. For chump change, you could add a second daily train between Chicago and the Twin Cities, and you’d pick up a ton of riders because you’re offering some schedule flexibility. Right now, if I want to take the train to the Cities, I have to be back on the eastbound around 7 a.m. at St. Paul; truly a pain if I want to spend the weekend with friends or family. Give me an evening departure, and I’ll start riding instead of driving. You don’t even need to run it at 100 mph; the existing 79 will do just fine. But with just one departure daily, it isn’t practical.

That makes a ton of sense. With a limited amount of money initially available, you’ll get the most done by identifying a couple of routes where demand seems plausible but where the existing service stinks. Then relatively modest upgrades might do a lot to help people and build passenger volume. That, in turn, broadens the political support for more funding in years to come.

Incidentally, just to show that if nothing else this is an administration that takes its graphic design seriously, today’s HSR announcement comes with a new and more attractive version of the Department of Transportation’s old map of proposed HSR corridors:

Impressive. I also like the ghostly non-HSR passenger routes.

I’m watching Barack Obama’s remarks on high-speed rail, which I think are excellent, but I’m more interested in the fact sheet I’ve gotten in the old inbox from the White House since it sheds some light on something that I and others have been wondering about—how is this money supposed to be spent? The answer is that there will be a two-stage competitive grant process. In the first stage “applications will focus on projects that can be completed quickly and yield measurable, near-term job creation and other public benefits” and then there will be a “next round to include proposals for comprehensive high-speed programs covering entire corridors or sections of corridors.” What corridors are we talking about?

—California Corridor (Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego)

—Pacific Northwest Corridor (Eugene, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver BC)

—South Central Corridor (Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Little Rock)

—Gulf Coast Corridor (Houston, New Orleans, , Mobile, Birmingham, Atlanta)

—Chicago Hub Network (Chicago, Milwaukee, Twin Cities, St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville,)

—Florida Corridor (Orlando, Tampa, Miami)

—Southeast Corridor (Washington, Richmond, Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta, Macon, Columbia, Savannah, Jacksonville)

—Keystone Corridor (Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh)

—Empire Corridor (New York City, Albany, Buffalo)

—Northern New England Corridor (Boston, Montreal, Portland, Springfield, New Haven, Albany)

Also, opportunities exist for the Northeast Corridor (Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Newark, New York City, New Haven, Providence, Boston) to compete for funds for improvements to the nation’s only existing high-speed rail service, and for establishment and upgrades to passenger rail services in other parts of the country.

My take on this is that the most promising projects on the merits, from a federal point of view, are probably those that upgrade the existing Northeast Corridor (where we know demand exists) and those that connect to the Northeast Corridor since the existing passenger rail corridor extends the utility of the new link. The Chicago Hub Network and the California Corridor concepts strikes me as very important for the long-term future of their regions, but for it to be useful will take a lot of time and money. I assume that the relevant state-level politicians for the Gulf Coast and South Central Corridors aren’t going to be interested in ponying up the sort of state funds that would make these projects competitively viable, and that may be for the best since I think those corridors may be a bit ill-conceived. It seems strange to build so much track in Texas and not manage to link Houston with Dallas.