Analyzing the Potential for High-speed Rail as Part of the Multimodal Transportation System in the Midwest Corridor

摘要

With ever-increasing congestion and rising fuel costs, both the travel time and cost of intercity passengertransportation are becoming increasingly significant. Around the world, high-speed rail (HSR) is seen as away to mitigate the risk of volatile petroleum prices while alleviating congestion on highways and atairports. However, HSR is a contentious issue in the United States due to justifiable concerns of ridershipand the large capital investment. Ridership is the critical element in determining the viability of a largecapital, long-term transportation investment in terms of costs, revenue and the resulting societal impacts.This paper analyzes the potential for high-speed rail as part of the existing multimodal transportationsystem in a region. It provides a systematic methodology for analyzing transportation systemwide modalridership with and without a proposed HSR network. Demographic, technological, economic, and policytrends are used to project ridership in the long-term. Experiments are conducted for the US Midwestcorridor, but the methodology is extendable and modular to incorporate any mode in any region. Theresults show that passenger rail and commercial air ridership will increase at a faster rate than the roadmode due to rising gasoline prices. The level-of-service and operational characteristics of HSR are criticalin attracting ridership. Ridership forecasts range from 7 to 50 million riders annually based on currentAmtrak and commercial airline service characteristics, respectively.