Page 423 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

”LOS ANGELES-BOSTON: 20h on High Speed”

Unit VI, “Missouri-Illinois-Indiana-Ohio Connection (VI 1-3)”. This connection: Saint
LouisSpringfield-Chicago / Gary-Indianapolis-Cincinnati allows, alternatively, in a part of
sub-unit II3 “Saint Louis-Louisville-Cincinnati Route, to realize it” via Chicago “or” via
Louisville “, giving So high-speed access to the third urban agglomeration of the United
States.

2. State of the art (Exposition)

The proposed commissioning of the Los Angeles (CA) -Boston (MA) itinerary requires at
least the construction of 5,876 km (5834 + 42 km state of the branch to Carson (NV)), and
an investment of 112,175 M $, with itinerary integrated only by Structural Units I and II,
connecting a population of 32.5 Mhab. in every sense.

If in this itinerary, the Saint Louis-Cincinnati route “via Louisville” is replaced by “Chicago
route”, the total length to be built is 6,170 km (5979 + 191 km state) of the branches to
Carson (NV), Jefferson (MO) and Mount Vernon (TN)), with an investment of 116,917 M $ and a
connected population of 36,5 Mhab. in every sense.
This second option has the objective advantage that, with a 4% increase in investment,
the population connected to a large distance is increased by 14%, with no appreciable
difference in travel times. References to the Los Angeles-Boston route, are made
considering it “via Chicago”.

This itinerary, which is part of the United States High Speed Network “USHSRS”, can be
carried out, according to the Approach planned for its development in four five-year (20
years) stages, by the USHSRS Association, within fifteen years, taking the initial proposal
of the authors (Ref. 11), to construct the more than 27,000 km of estimated total length
of the network from ten major poles of action, dedicating six of them for the direction
and coordination of the execution of this itinerary (San Francisco, Denver, Chicago,
Pittsburgh, New York and Boston).
The other four large poles would occupy in this same period of construction of the
“injection” to the vertebral route of the network, another 20 Mhab. In each direction:
2.5 Mhab. from the Seattle Polo (Salt Lake City Connection); 8.0 Mhab. from the Dallas
Pole (Kansas City Connection); 3.0 Mhab from Atlanta´s Polo (Connection Saint Louis) and
6.5 Mhab. from the Miami Polo (Washington DC Connection)
In the following five years, from the ten poles, the planned network could be completed,
but with more than 50% of the urban working population already connected with traveling
times of less than 20 hours, with an investment of less than 25%, overall.

2.1 LA-BO Itinerary Description

A detailed description of the route with the HSR lines that form it is found in the preliminary
projects whose characteristic, morphometric, constructive and budgetary figures are
summarized in the attached Tables

The following is a summary of the length of each line, the number of LT “Long Tunnels”,
the longest and total length of them, as well as the number of SB “Suspension Bridges”
and their total length .

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 421