Mike and Tammy talk about commuter rail in the US and the possibility of high speed rail.
Also, check out the Green City podcast episodes where Mike was interviewed: https://anchor.fm/lynnae-hentzen/episodes/MIKE-ARMSTRONG-e13r0rk
https://anchor.fm/lynnae-hentzen/episodes/MIKE-ARMSTRONG-2-0-e146fco
And register for the Des Moines Data & Analytics NLP Roundtable on August 13th: https://www.meetup.com/Des-Moines-Data-Analytics/events/279938252/
Full transcript:
Tammy: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Hello, and welcome to bright lights, big data, a podcast about people, places and data. I'm your data host Tammy Armstrong.
[00:00:27] Mike: [00:00:27] I'm your planning host Mike Armstrong. And I'm disappointed that none of my cool dance moves are caught on this podcast.
[00:00:33] Tammy: [00:00:33] I mean, you know how they say, when you're on the phone, people can hear whether or not you're smart.
[00:00:38] Mike: [00:00:38] You think they can hear me dancing?
[00:00:39] Tammy: [00:00:39] I think they can hear it in my smile. Yeah. Particularly the little hair flip that you just did. Maybe unintentionally. I almost lost it then. So our last hodgepodge episode was so popular by that.
[00:00:57] I mean, nobody complained we were going to do another [00:01:00] one.
[00:01:00] Mike: [00:01:00] Yeah. We have a number of interviews we're pretty excited about, but with getting sort of a. Zoom tech. Yeah, some of the technical aspects of recording and editing that you're just going to have us for another episode.
[00:01:15] Tammy: [00:01:15] W and we know you hate that.
[00:01:18] Mike: [00:01:18] That's not why you're here.
[00:01:19] Tammy: [00:01:19] You're not for us, but yeah. So, so I asked Mike a question a couple of weeks back that I thought might've ended up on our last episode time depending, but we ended up blathering on as podcasters do. And that's good because it meant we didn't have to come up with new content. So we're gonna talk about that.
[00:01:39] And in a similar vein, I have more natural language processing stuff that I didn't get to last time getting into the weeds there. I did a bad job of, I meant to look up where I left off. So these are just my notes from last time. I don't know what I did and didn't do. So that's going to be great. No, I'm pretty sure I know what I did.
[00:01:59] I think we went [00:02:00] through stop words,
[00:02:01] Mike: [00:02:01] right?
[00:02:01] Tammy: [00:02:01] Does that sound familiar to you. Yes. Great. So I know where to pick up yeah. So There were some things recently that led me to the question that I asked you to prep for. So they're not all necessarily related, but
[00:02:17] Mike: [00:02:17] like
[00:02:18] Tammy: [00:02:18] Tokyo Olympics happening. And we had the pleasure of going to Japan several years ago and rode the shin content like wonderful high speed train system.
[00:02:29] get to travel all around the different parts of Japan and not necessarily be too concerned about the distance. And also, current , federal negotiations for infrastructure plans and they want a ton of money to do that. And then I think I also saw something on Facebook, which was like, why can't we have high speed rail?
[00:02:48] And so,, knowing that the railroad is such an important part of a portion of America's history or of the United States, it's interesting to me that [00:03:00] we have not maintained that or kept moving that forward. We've been so car centric and we've joked in the past about like, , Elon Musk backwards, inventing trains or something, through electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles that are all at a row or something going into a tunnel, like different things like that.
[00:03:17] But just thinking about like, there are these great options. We have so much land to traverse. It's awesome. To not have to drive your car, that you could just ride a train and read a book or something like that. So I was curious about whether or not anyone has attempted this in the U S or, , what the history of those attempts might be or why it could or could not potentially work for us here.
[00:03:47] So I gave you. homework and
[00:03:50] Mike: [00:03:50] And I love trains. I don't love, I don't love trains as many, as much as most people. Maybe that's not true as much as many people.
[00:03:58] Tammy: [00:03:58] Right. I think [00:04:00] you love it. I think you love them more than the average person. But you don't like your uncle, Steve loved them.
[00:04:06] Mike: [00:04:06] Right? I'm very much a fan of them.
[00:04:08] I'm not whatever the equivalent of a gearhead is for trains,
[00:04:13] Tammy: [00:04:13] Props to uncle Steve. Like he makes very cool. Like model train things that are a skill I do not have.
[00:04:20] Mike: [00:04:20] Absolutely.
[00:04:21] Tammy: [00:04:21] But you're more into the like, Hey, trains are a great way to get around.
[00:04:26] Mike: [00:04:26] So first question to you, where's the closest Amtrak station
[00:04:32] Tammy: [00:04:32] downtown Dubois. No, that's not true. We don't have one. I'm thinking about Portland, right? I'm I'm, I'm transporting myself to a city. We lived in 5, 6, 7 years ago and picturing the one in. Like near old town
[00:04:46] Mike: [00:04:46] Raleigh.
[00:04:47] Tammy: [00:04:47] Right. And there was an, I wrote Amtrak and Raleigh Chicago or Minneapolis,
[00:04:53] Mike: [00:04:53] Iowa.
[00:04:54] Tammy: [00:04:54] Oh, there is one in Iowa.
[00:04:55] We've talked
[00:04:56] Mike: [00:04:56] It just doesn't come to mind. It comes to a very, very small [00:05:00] down. Second question. We have technically one high speed rail line in the U S current. Okay. Which two cities does it connect?
[00:05:14] Tammy: [00:05:14] D C to New York?
[00:05:17] Mike: [00:05:17] Okay, so you were close. It's the Sila express which is DC to Boston.
[00:05:23] Tammy: [00:05:23] That was actually also in my head. I going to say Boston and I was like, maybe that's too far.
[00:05:29] Mike: [00:05:29] So high-speed rail, like it's very basic definition is heavy rail trains that go more than 160 miles per hour.
[00:05:41] Tammy: [00:05:41] That's decent.
[00:05:41]Mike: [00:05:41] And so the Sila express can do 165.
[00:05:48] Tammy: [00:05:48] does It
[00:05:50] Mike: [00:05:50] typically averages closer to seven. And that's the, by far, the closest in the U S that exists right now. So with that, if we hit [00:06:00] that speed, , if we were going 160 miles per hour, it would be four hours from Chicago to New York. Not bad. Like pretty comparable for flying. The problem is that. Amtrak as a whole the rail lines that it uses all have essentially priority given to freight traffic everywhere. So it is very much a freight line that sometimes sends people along. So anytime there's a conflict of which there are many, the passenger rail stops, the freight train does what it needs to do.
[00:06:37] And then it starts up again. We also struggle a lot with separations, you know, the shinkansen does not stop. It does not slow down, does not cross.
[00:06:48] Tammy: [00:06:48] Like road traffic or anything Like that.
[00:06:51]Mike: [00:06:51] It always has top priority. It is as separated as can be from roadways.
[00:06:57] Tammy: [00:06:57] And you could see where that's like potentially [00:07:00] a Tata logical or paradoxical sort of thing, right.
[00:07:06] Where like shin content can get away with that because it's so popular and so used, and it is so popular and so used because it's so efficient and effective because it takes that priority. , Amtrak, ridership being what it is. I don't have figures in front of me, anytime I've ever been on one, they're pretty sparse.
[00:07:27] And I know that they've had financial issues in the past and things like that. It would be very difficult to make the argument that they should take priority. And so it becomes a slow way to get around and people don't use it because it's slow way to get it. Like I took a train from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Chicago when we were in college.
[00:07:47] And to visit you for like Christmas or something. I think it took me more than 24 hours.
[00:07:57] Mike: [00:07:57] The only
[00:07:57] Tammy: [00:07:57] reason I didn't drive it was because I didn't have my own [00:08:00] car Right. and it was cheaper than flying and I was on school break. So I was like, I've got time.
[00:08:06] Mike: [00:08:06] I've got time to be uncomfortable for sure.
[00:08:09] Tammy: [00:08:09] yeah. You know, I didn't pay for a sleeper car.
[00:08:11]Mike: [00:08:11] So I mean, there's certainly ours, significant differences, but to a degree at functions like local transit writ large. So when you think about Des Moines, , our bus system is not going to be that appealing if it is the faster, oftentimes cheaper to drive, If buses are not giving priority.
[00:08:34] So if there's traffic, they're also stuck in traffic, like they have no advantage. Given aside from either you have to take the bus or it's sort of like a, I love the bus, I'm going to support it. Right? Like we've cut out so much of the potential population. , who may not like driving and just want to [00:09:00] get to where they're going easily, but we've made the transit system where that is not the easy option.
[00:09:05] Tammy: [00:09:05] Great.
[00:09:05] Mike: [00:09:05] So one of talk about like, why don't we have it, especially when, as you say, like, there is a pretty strong, like mythos and identity in the U S around the railroads, , like,
[00:09:20] Tammy: [00:09:20] the
[00:09:22] Mike: [00:09:22] Robber barons, barons of industry, whatever side of that you're on. But like building the railroads was a massive thing.
[00:09:29] We have folk tales about it. We have the John Henry's of the world, like it is part of American identity, and yet we have a terrible system and it is falling further and further behind our peers. And falling more and more apart as we under invest in it. So we've had a few instances where it's like, this would have been the [00:10:00] moment.
[00:10:00]So one of the biggest challenges for high-speed rail. Is that it is by its very nature long distance, which almost always means across state lines, which means a lot of different governments. And if we want to do this on a significant scale pretty firm handed, centralized planning, like federal government has to take a very strong role in it.
[00:10:27] And then it's just. Not the lead that federal government has been given
[00:10:32] Tammy: [00:10:32] in this
[00:10:33] Mike: [00:10:33] right area. Which is funny because its greatest competition. And one of the major times we had that chance we had highly centralized planning, massive investment and it was for the highway system. Right, 1950s. We have the impetus of.
[00:10:51] Sort of the military tactical side of things of like, we need to be able to connect cities and have very fast transportation [00:11:00] between them so that like we can move tanks and stuff. We can have massive troop movements. And honestly, in a lot of other countries I'd just done through rail. Instead we went the highway route.
[00:11:12] And we're not going to create a competing system at the same time. Like this is incredibly expensive, takes a lot of land. It takes a lot of cooperation. So we kind of missed the boat there. , after world war II highways were massively subsidized to the point of Lank, a 90 10, or like an 80 20 split.
[00:11:33] So if you're the state of Iowa and then you wanted to. Build highways you had to pay for 20% of the cost and the federal government would pay the rest. And it's like, yeah, everyone's going to build that free money, massive infrastructure that we don't have to pay for. Like, who's going to build a rail when you got this amazing deal.
[00:11:55]So we had that opportunity. The. Following opportunity was in the [00:12:00] 1970s. A lot of our traditional rail lines were going bankrupt and the federal government bought out those rail lines and that's how we created Amtrak.
[00:12:11] So again, this one scent, we laid train lines for passenger rail. It was already afraid system that we sort of tacked on passenger rail.
[00:12:23] Tammy: [00:12:23] to
[00:12:24] Mike: [00:12:24] A lot of those lines went bankrupt, so there wasn't freight running on it, but there still were active freight lines. And sort of because of that underlying option. And because so much of this planning was influenced by sort of corporate business sector.
[00:12:41], those are sort of the groups selling off these rail lines and putting stipulations in these are also the groups that still have. Rail interests with freight. So they were pressuring throughout the entire process. Like freight has to come first. We have to be able to move goods. We have to keep the economy [00:13:00] humming, all that, all those arguments.
[00:13:02] Right. So that was our next big investment. And, , we added something. Amtrak is Pretty expansive option. It's just,
[00:13:10] Tammy: [00:13:10] goes a lot of
[00:13:11]Mike: [00:13:11] , outside of key commuter lines, it's not a great option. So , you know, I lived near the Amtrak line in the Chicago suburbs. It got used pretty well, For the commute hours.
[00:13:28] Yeah.
[00:13:29] Tammy: [00:13:29] Yeah. It's the long distances. Right. You have these, like
[00:13:33] Mike: [00:13:33] in.
[00:13:34] Tammy: [00:13:34] Bigger areas, New York has a lot of that. Like, those major metropolitan areas where your urban sprawl is happening by train, as opposed to by highway. But yeah, you're not going to use it to go anywhere near the distances that you would in other places.
[00:13:49] Mike: [00:13:49] Right. And again, it comes back to sort of the micro level of like [00:14:00] citywide transit. Right. Of like in less it's very well funded and laid out, ideally, which it never is. Transit doesn't really function well until there are other constraints that make it attractive. So driving into Chicago from the suburbs is terrible.
[00:14:17] So that train trip where it's going to take. The same time or less, you're not going to be crazy stressed and you can work on the trip in way better than sitting in traffic on the highway coming in. But if you're in Des Moines and we had, , Amtrak, like it's not going to do a whole long, Cause you can drive from the east side of the west side in 15 minutes. We have, , rush 10 minutes.
[00:14:46] Tammy: [00:14:46] yeah,
[00:14:46] Mike: [00:14:46] There's a lot of issues there. We're kind of hitting a new, , decision point opportunity for high speed rail. In 2010 California secured federal [00:15:00] funds to do Anaheim to Los Angeles, to San Francisco.
[00:15:05]And this would be built by 2029. For several years of a Republican leadership, that money was withheld and they weren't allowed to build it.
[00:15:14] Tammy: [00:15:14] I kind of remember hearing whispers about like all this crazy stuff they're trying to do Yeah. Is
[00:15:19] Mike: [00:15:19] frequently held up in California politics as well as national politics of like boondoggle, terrible government overspend on something that people don't need.
[00:15:30]So like highly politicized And they're back on not, maybe not necessarily schedule, but it's moving ahead again, which would be great. , you try to think of an area that is terrible. The driving could use some transit. That's a good spot for it.
[00:15:46] Tammy: [00:15:46] Well, in one where they've had like somewhat localized private transit systems, right?
[00:15:53] Isn't there like Google or somebody has their own bus system, basically that has [00:16:00] competing For like bus spots with the actual like Bart or whatever, like you know, yeah. It just,
[00:16:08] Mike: [00:16:08] Yeah. So they have company shuttles, which are mean are not terribly unusual. But they're using city bus stops. They're using curb space.
[00:16:17] So it's not for it holding up the city buses and , that became a.
[00:16:22] Tammy: [00:16:22] I guess my being that Even like sort of your intermediate transit options are still getting congested there because they're, , they just have such a need
[00:16:33] Mike: [00:16:33] on the other side of things for this current opportunity.
[00:16:37]The other big project that we have is in Texas. Connecting Houston to Dallas Fort worth. And I think this is a in partnership with a Japanese company that's coming to help planet. So they're looking at speeds of 200 miles per hour between those two cities. , this is [00:17:00] a heavily congested area of life.
[00:17:03] High number of super commuters, which are people who spend more than 90 minutes, one way.
[00:17:09] Tammy: [00:17:09] Yeah, I can't imagine I know people who do it, but so like three hours of your day, every day. it's a lot.
[00:17:19] Mike: [00:17:19] So, I mean, Texas is not what you would think as a bastion of train, but it's also a fantastic place to try it.
[00:17:26]
[00:17:26] Tammy: [00:17:26] Pretty flat,
[00:17:27] Mike: [00:17:27] It's relatively flat. You can find corridors where there's not as much development where you could put it in. It's going to have a lot of challenges. I mean, flash flooding and that kind of stuff, but it's awesome that it's not a, , sort of Democrats. Hub felt like we're in a red state trying this out too.
[00:17:47] And like this really shouldn't be a political thing. That should be a, like, this is a good tool when and where can we use it? Not, this is a blue thing,
[00:17:57] Tammy: [00:17:57] I mean, it's political, I suppose, to the extent [00:18:00] that it sort of, ,
[00:18:01] Mike: [00:18:01] the,
[00:18:02] Tammy: [00:18:02] the way the, the automotive industry has political influence, right. And we've talked about past.
[00:18:08] right. I mean, let's be real, like,
[00:18:10] Mike: [00:18:10] It's amazing. This is happening in Texas and connecting Dallas and Houston. When so much of the oil industry is there, right. Like mess. So suddenly we have multiple projects that are, are not just sort of pie in the sky, but like have funders and partners built up, like they're going for it. That doesn't mean it's going to happen, but like realistic projects, which is amazing.
[00:18:34] Tammy: [00:18:34] dumb question. So that's great. I was not aware of either of those. I think, like I said, I heard something about the California project, but it had been sort of like, , I mean, headline level awareness and talking about like, oh, , another left coast, stupid thing, wasting all this money and it's never gonna happen kind of tones.
[00:18:55] But it's awesome that that's, there's some, some things moving forward. [00:19:00] But dumb question. Are these like electric, like how would they be? powered? I don't know how trains go, how train go.
[00:19:08]Mike: [00:19:08] I mean, it depends. Right?
[00:19:11] Tammy: [00:19:11] And the sort question behind my question there is that I'm assuming, , when we think about
[00:19:15] Mike: [00:19:15] like
[00:19:16] Tammy: [00:19:16] High-speed rail would be a serious competitor or a serious, what's the word that I want.
[00:19:24]Like it would be a serious alternative to air travel and, , air travel, people talk about it being the the safest way to travel. It's often the quickest above a certain threshold. When you get past, , parking and security and all that, there's, there's short trips you don't want to bother with.
[00:19:41]But it's expensive typically and not the best for the environment. When we think about carbon emissions, I don't really know what's worse pound for pound. Like I, I, that's not something I have a ton of awareness of , but versus, , driving on the highway versus, flying, but I [00:20:00] kind of have this assumption that high speed rail would, especially if it's heavily used would be better.
[00:20:07] I'm sure if you have in a train by themselves, that's not great, but if you're . taking A bunch of cars off the road or flights out of the sky.
[00:20:16] Mike: [00:20:16] Right. And there's a lot of efficiencies the same way. Like, , if we can do trucking in convoys, that saves a lot. Right. I think, I don't know, for sure.
[00:20:27] Even in recent history, I think typically now it is electrical. So it's as clean or dirty as your electrical supply. But certainly much less of an emitter. And especially not, I mean, again, it's versus realistic, but like a potentially positive thing is it's not an emitter through the places it travels.
[00:20:54] Right. If the power supply emissions are happening, [00:21:00] hopefully far away from where people live. Whereas, , the interstate in de Moines goes right by a ton of schools and the stuff like
[00:21:07] Tammy: [00:21:07] and fields.
[00:21:08] Mike: [00:21:08] There's, there's potential benefits there, for sure. Sure. So there's always a lot of hurdles for this.
[00:21:14] Most of them, we talked about the other, , as we mentioned with the California project kind of kicked off. I mean, they had done a lot of planning, but when it became a realized project we're doing, this was 2010 and the end of the build was going to be 20, 29. So you have to go through multiple cycles of elections to get it done.
[00:21:37] So
[00:21:38] Tammy: [00:21:38] highway projects by comparison probably take three to five years. They
[00:21:42] Mike: [00:21:42] still take quite a long time, but like, It's just a bit more rare that you get massive pushback
[00:21:50] on them. Like,
[00:21:51] Tammy: [00:21:51] and known and familiar,
[00:21:53] Mike: [00:21:53] I mean, you can see from the current infrastructure bill that they're putting together, like it's finalized and going for [00:22:00] approval right now.
[00:22:00] I'm like they're saying, and , it's true, like sort of record rates of like transit, active transportation funding. But they're still increasing the amount of funding going to highways and it's not restricted to mate.
[00:22:17] Tammy: [00:22:17] pig.
[00:22:17] Mike: [00:22:17] It's not restricted to maintenance. You're allowed to build new highways or expand highways, something that, , for art overbuilt quite a bit, but like that's one that is in the democratic platform and the Republican platform.
[00:22:32], we've had politicians here run on potholes as a campaign issue. Like these sort of like very basic, like shallow, but very broad issues that like, aren't really turning up against them. So like they don't have to worry as much. Whereas, , the California high-speed rail project.
[00:22:53] Really pisses off, , a smaller number of people, but people who will mobilize and spend a lot of money [00:23:00] against it.
[00:23:01] Tammy: [00:23:01] Well, And if you're spending 20 years to get something done to the detriment of the existing system, right? Like if this is something you can't use for 20 years, you kind of do have to overspend for awhile. right?
[00:23:13] Like you have to do that on top of what you're doing to get people around for the intervening 20 years. So I can kind of see. that.
[00:23:21] Mike: [00:23:21] Yeah. So we had some substitutes for a little bit. We had Megabus, I used Megabus.
[00:23:30] Tammy: [00:23:30] Yeah.
[00:23:31]Mike: [00:23:31] Our service was canceled in 2016. It doesn't come to Des Moines anymore.
[00:23:34] Tammy: [00:23:34] I totally told one of my team members that that was still a thing
[00:23:38] Mike: [00:23:38] there weren't great.
[00:23:39] Ridership numbers published. The only thing I saw was that the first year it was an operation they had about 90,000. Right. It's not bad. You know, a lot of people are using that. But even then, like it's cheaper, it's an option. If you had the option of a car, you're probably gonna do that, but like we're [00:24:00] more resilient or more able to serve our people if we have more options.
[00:24:05] Right. So. You can, if you type like high speed rail on Twitter, you will find a lot of of like here's what our high speed rail map should look like for the U S there's one that's especially popular, but there's a ton of different options, but yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:23] Tammy: [00:24:23] a Midwest one I've seen it's
[00:24:25] Mike: [00:24:25] and that, , has been talked about since the yeah.
[00:24:29] Forties fifties, I'm guessing, you know? And certainly it's been talked about for a long time. If you want to take a fun approach to it. And I thought of this after we talked about, so social media last time do you know what a numb Tata is? And U M T O
[00:24:44] Tammy: [00:24:44] I have totally seen that before, but I can't put my finger on what it is other than it sounds a lot, like one of the made up words Vivian was using today.
[00:24:52] Mike: [00:24:52] It's an amazing. Thing for a sort of cultural awareness, because I'm going to tell you what it is [00:25:00] and you are going
[00:25:00] Tammy: [00:25:00] Good. I hoped you went
[00:25:02] Mike: [00:25:02] You are going to have so much disbelief, like this is what it is, but it has really wide reach, which is hilarious. So this is started as a Facebook group that has grown to other things called new urbanist memes for transit oriented teens
[00:25:20] Tammy: [00:25:20] so, so this is familiar. now that you're saying this, but I had completely forgotten about that, but.
[00:25:26] Mike: [00:25:26] That's great. That's incredible.
[00:25:28] Tammy: [00:25:28] I mean, I follow Like what zoning board approved this? And like, there's like a bunch of other, like really good social media groups on silly architecture or crazy intersections. And it's just.
[00:25:41] kind of fun to look at.
[00:25:42] Mike: [00:25:42] It's a fantastic group. You'll find a lot of very intelligent, interesting things, and then just some silly things. But yeah, those are good. If you want to talk more about trains or transit I would also suggest looking up human transit.org. It's a. [00:26:00] Professional blog from a public transit consultant.
[00:26:04] Who's been around for a long time. Jared Walker, who is sort of a leader in the field, but like writes really accessibly and irrationally about sort of regional transit, but also some national transit there too. But there's a lot of cool stuff to read there because. We spent a little time talking about it and I've barely scratched the surface.
[00:26:25] Tammy: [00:26:25] Right. I mean, this is a big, big topic. Right. You know, and I really appreciate the way you responded to it. Yeah. , again, I'm somebody who knows so little about this, just sort of like by osmosis, what I've absorbed, just living and , teensy bit of American history kinds of things. Certainly don't keep up with these things actively.
[00:26:45] So very cool to, to hear that. And I guess it's almost kind of bittersweet, like, maybe there is hope that's great. There are projects moving forward. by the time those are done and relevant to anywhere we live, we will be [00:27:00] retired at best. So that's great. We should definitely keep going in that direction. And, I'm glad that Some people are making forays into that.
[00:27:10] And again, , with everything that's happening, I know it's interesting like the pandemic and what's what that's done to where people locate across the country versus where they work. And
[00:27:23] how people may or may not want to get around and Hey, if you've got a wifi connection, you might be willing to work on the train.
[00:27:32] So you don't have to take a travel day. and, , go see your parents or something. There's just some really interesting possibilities to that as well as just dealing with like climate change things and trying to reduce our emissions and improving safety outcomes. And yes, there are,
[00:27:45] Mike: [00:27:45] are,
[00:27:46]Tammy: [00:27:46] , train derailments that happen, but pound for pound, it's like a tiny fraction of the auto.
[00:27:54] collisions that every single day.
[00:27:57]So,
[00:27:57] Mike: [00:27:57] and the thing is like, this is something that. [00:28:00] Can happen. And I mean, like the rate of construction can change at any point. So right now the U S has like 192, sorry, this is 192 kilometers. Okay.
[00:28:17] Tammy: [00:28:17] Yup. Yup. Yup. That's a unit of measurement. I totally use all the time.
[00:28:21] Mike: [00:28:21] high-speed rail sort of under construction.
[00:28:23] China currently has 10,000. Spain has 1800. So like 10 times as much as what we're doing. And it's Spain, like there are many places that are doing this and are doing this where like, it would be within our generation that we'd get to use this. But yeah, for now it's when we travel, we get to walk and we get to ride trains and all that fun stuff.
[00:28:47] I just want to have it.
[00:28:48] Tammy: [00:28:48] Right. And I feel like, you know, earlier we were talking about this and it occurred to me it sounded like, I wonder both of us were kind of giving current Amtrak a bad rap. And [00:29:00] I certainly
[00:29:00] Mike: [00:29:00] don't
[00:29:01] Tammy: [00:29:01] mean that fully. Like I have written Amtrak several. times. It was most useful to me as a student when again, time was not as much of an issue for me.
[00:29:12] I wrote it from Harrisburg. to New York to visit my best friend freshman year and undergrad. And she showed me around. That was great. Popped in a couple of CDs. And my disc man, and enjoyed myself. I wrote it from Raleigh to DC to visit my brother when I was in grad school. And. then. The train did not have wifi or at least not free wifi, but I downloaded all my homework onto my laptop.
[00:29:36] And I just did all my homework for the next week when I was on this train. And I read like a book, like it was great and I loved it. So absolutely it, it has
[00:29:47] Mike: [00:29:47] like, Amtrak is great for what it is, , it's very much. , we just bought a house built in the twenties, [00:30:00] your budget for fixing it up as a thousand dollars.
[00:30:03] Right? Like there's some really good bones there. It
[00:30:07],
[00:30:07] serves some fantastic purposes, but we get derailments because it's been like, not just underfunded, like massively underfunded.
[00:30:17] Tammy: [00:30:17] Well, until you mentioned that, so I'm assuming where we're at. I kind of go into my topic and that's totally fine. I'm, I'm actually really happy with where this conversation has gone. And we don't need to, , sort of force that through. But current rail was not designed the rails themselves. I'm sure were not planned to accept 200 miles. an hour, know, trains going around curves that fast as well as whatever other kinds of friction sort of things.
[00:30:42] Like I remember her brother and sister-in-law visited as, when we lived in Portland. They had to crack up because it was pretty, particularly hot summer day. And they were taking the max, which is sort of the the local train or light rail or whatever you want to. call that. In Portland. And [00:31:00] the train had to stop a couple times and wait, because it was like over a hundred degree day it was really pretty unusual for Portland or at least it was.
[00:31:08] And they were just kind of cracking up that like, , over the Intercom the people were saying. It's too hot for the train to go.
[00:31:16] Mike: [00:31:16] I mean, that's, that's happened to the L in Chicago, too,
[00:31:20] Tammy: [00:31:20] but like, , I, I'm assuming high-speed friction. Like there's, there's gotta be a lot of engineering things about why you can't just plop a high-speed train onto our current rails, even if they were in pristine condition for what they are.
[00:31:32] Mike: [00:31:32] And it's when you think about it, like a lot of these are recaptured freight lines, so. Are they prioritizing, like, this is where people would want to go, or this is where freight would want to go. Right? Like you're pulling into a city and like you're down, like essentially by the day.
[00:31:55] Tammy: [00:31:55] So dumb question. Does it have to be priority? Like.
[00:31:58] Mike: [00:31:58] Katie,
[00:31:59] Tammy: [00:31:59] can you [00:32:00] mix and match? Can you do like, okay, we got the, we got the people car and we got the the freight car. and yeah. Yes. It's going to make some stops, but there has to be a point in optimization point where that is actually better for you than versus the conflict. Like if your choice is pick one or the other, or deal with both and like deal with the stops versus waiting for the prioritization, like there might be a breakeven there.
[00:32:26]Mike: [00:32:26] I would need to do a lot more looking. I'm almost curious. Like I would imagine that there would be significant legal battles. If we tried to switch that priority, that's not to say we couldn't most likely, but like I am guessing there were some ridiculous contract signed.
[00:32:45] Tammy: [00:32:45] Build it underground, build it. cause the other thing, right? Like snow is an issue. Like If you could just like bunch of snow on the rails, that's [00:33:00] probably not great.
[00:33:02] build up.
[00:33:04] Mike: [00:33:04] Yeah. We're not, we're not talking further about that in the same way. We're not talking about double Decker in high highways. But I mean, the one thing that you couldn't change prioritization on of like outside of some historic station, We've purchased like we're using old freight lines. They do not go to the, , residential part of cities.
[00:33:29] Like, you know, they go to where you drop off freight. And a lot of times, sometimes
[00:33:35] Tammy: [00:33:35] that is the same, but yeah.
[00:33:37] Mike: [00:33:37] Right. Like if we designed a system, we would not pick the cities that we have. And we would not pick the part of cities that they currently go to because they were built with a vastly different purpose.
[00:33:52]Tammy: [00:33:52] Yeah. Sort of smoggy factories, ? Yeah. In the city,
[00:33:58] Mike: [00:33:58] but I love trains. [00:34:00] It's how I, it's how I review movies.
[00:34:02] Tammy: [00:34:02] right? No, we have shared on our social media and talked about, I think maybe during one of our movie episodes about the Marvel. movies ranked in order of, of the presence of trains, I think black Panther taking the top stop top spot, because it's actually important in the
[00:34:20] Mike: [00:34:20] the final boss.
[00:34:22] Great public transit.
[00:34:23] Tammy: [00:34:23] Yeah. Okay, well, so me wanting to build trains underground, maybe unrelated, maybe part of why I'm so bad at ticket to ride.
[00:34:35] Epically bad at Yeah. Well, thank you for following up on my question in such a thoughtful way. I appreciate that. Cause I definitely just lobbed it at you. Like why not fast trains?
[00:34:49] Mike: [00:34:49] I mean, well, let's move into plugs real quick. Because this question was actually asked of me recently by someone else as well.
[00:34:57] Tammy: [00:34:57] Oh, so you've researched it for them.
[00:35:00] [00:35:00] Mike: [00:35:00] No, I didn't answer it. Like we talked a little bit after an interview, you know, just like, oh, this is great, but can we have trains? It's like, well, we don't because of this, this and this. But I was recently on the Green City podcast which is part of A weekly show that's on a 98.9 FM. But you can , listen to the archives.
[00:35:24]Tammy: [00:35:24] You can download it as a podcast as well?
[00:35:27] Mike: [00:35:27] Yeah. So this was with linear. Marty Hanson with Green City. It's a podcast and radio show that's been running for a long time. She interviews a lot of really interesting people, just about sort of sustainability and environmental movements within a ton of different topics.
[00:35:46] So I actually did two.
[00:35:47] Tammy: [00:35:47] I see that I'm looking at on my podcast app right we'll definitely link to those on our social media. and in the show
[00:35:53] Mike: [00:35:53] Yep. So you can find the links there. The website is your green portal.com. And one [00:36:00] episode I'm talking about sort of the work we do at the street collective and the second act episode, she somehow got me to talk about federal transportation.
[00:36:08] Tammy: [00:36:08] policy. Nice. Somehow got you.
[00:36:13] Mike: [00:36:13] Lot of fun, really enjoyed talking to Lanai. Highly recommend you check her out. If not for me, for the many other fantastic guests, Very nice. Very nice.
[00:36:22] Tammy: [00:36:22] All right. So yeah. I, I'm going to give a plug as well. So there is a group called de Moines data and analytics, which formed I think a couple of years ago on meetup.
[00:36:33]And I've actually never been able to attend one of their things. I think , I've maybe RSVP to a couple of times, but I am actually going to attend this next one and hope you'll all join too, but on Wednesday, August 18th, they are having one of their first events in awhile.
[00:36:47]It's a fully virtual
[00:36:48] Mike: [00:36:48] event,
[00:36:50] Tammy: [00:36:50] which is part of why I'm going but it's called an NLP round table. So natural language processing round
[00:36:55] Mike: [00:36:55] table.
[00:36:55]Tammy: [00:36:55] So they've got a couple of people from principal financial. They named [00:37:00] Zach Deichert Oscar Aguila, Brandon, true Hilo. I May or may not be saying any of those names correctly but there'll be sharing their experience as best practices and where they see the practice of natural language processing heading.
[00:37:11] So, I will be attending that on again, Wednesday, August 18th, from noon to one. You can find that again on meetup and I'll link to that in the show notes as well. And , I'll take lots of notes and we can maybe cover it in a future episode. , especially if you're interested in learning more about data and analytics in connecting with data and analytics professionals in the Des Moines area, definitely check that out.
[00:37:37]The two main organizers for the group are Jenny Schmidt and Joel Rosenberg. And I know I've talked to Joel Rosenberg in the past. He's phenomenal. So really looking forward to checking that out.
[00:37:49] Mike: [00:37:49] Yeah.
[00:37:50] Tammy: [00:37:50] So thanks all for listening to us.
[00:37:52] Talk about trains and again it's been really. great Seeing everybody's messages, questions, comments about the show. [00:38:00] Please keep those coming. We'd love it. And we will probably totally answer your question. Cause you know, every couple of weeks we're like, what are we going to talk about? So please keep those coming. you can always reach out to us on Twitter B L B D pod, Facebook, bright lights, big data, or email us bright lights, big data@gmail.com.
[00:38:20] Mike: [00:38:20] So it's nice to talk about trains. I'm excited to hear what you have next. This has been bright lights, big data. We'll talk to you next time.