Arkansas Blog

Max, there was a pretty huge police escort of six tour buses today around Broadway this morning. Any idea who were on those buses???????

ARK. BLOG: A sendoff for the latest National Guard brigade to be deployed to Iraq, this one to provide support on the existing bases that will remain staffed after troop pullbacks from the cities.

300 soldiers or so with the 90th sustainment brigade out of camp pike in NLR on their way to Ft. Hood in Texas before a year-long deployment in Iraq.

Richard Allin would be all over it.

Voices have been heard in NWA for several years clamoring for a high speed rail study. Sooner than we think it will become a necessity. Why not get it underway while the costs are lower and before more sprawl requires yet more highways to serve it.

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Thanks, TonyThom.

Max, thanks for the mention, and you too hugh. Any day your name shows up in the same sentence with the late Richard Allin is a good day. Of course, Richard was somewhat sentimental and nostalgic about passenger trains.

As to European-style 200 mph HSR between Memphis, LR, and Fort Worth, that is rather impractical for many reasons. However, what is now being called "high performance rail" is very practical and might provide a useful level of service. HPR = 110 mph conventional passenger trains. It's just like in the 1950s. Today's Amtrak trains in places like Arkansas are down to 79 mph max. Average speed very much lower.

The difference in cost between HSR and HPR is the difference between billions and millions. HSR requires a complete new road bed while HPR upgrades existing railroad tracks and signals. Memphis-Fort Worth should have some potential as a high performance corridor. The real beneficiaries are the smaller towns like Searcy, Arkadelphia, Texarkana, Marshall and Longview.

If the trains could reach the Memphis airport, that would be a brave new world for air travelers in Little Rock. The Dallas area has extensive public transit, including light rail to DFW.

My passenger train blog deals with this sort of thing. http://trains4america.wordpress.com/. No nostalgia, just practical discussion about sensible ground transportation.

I was at a local Union Pacific meeting a few months a go and UP was bragging on how well they they were doing on efficiency and bringing up train speeds, saving money and decreasing delivery times. Then they told us about their new average train speed record set earlier in the year. Somewhere around 23 mph as I recall. I about fell out my chair. It was like listening to someone talking about how fast their 56K modem was when the rest of are in a broadband world

I know Amtrak isn't UP, but they run on the same rails and what happens when Amtrak gets behind a freight train

Sam, that is exactly what the "high performance rail" upgrade is about. Getting stuck behind a freight train is a schedule killer.
Pat