High Speed Rail: Atlanta to Orlando

Today’s guest is Miles Kauffman. Every now and again this national high speed rail map for the US by Alfred Twu blows up on the internet:

One can see there is a route from Atlanta through Macon, Savannah, Jacksonville then Daytona Beach to Orlando. There have of course been many proposals over the years, a summary of them is found at the High Speed Rail Alliance here. Lucid Stew on YouTube is another great source of inspiration here and he has produced several videos mentioning Atlanta, one is of the Southeast Corridor:

Someone even more brilliant is Ray Delahanty, see this video of the top 56 city pairs based on a cool population gravity analysis. Funnily enough, this analysis does not support what Miles is proposing, only finding that Atlanta to Charlotte is supported by enough population. He found that this pair came in at 30 out of 56, see 12:41 in the video:

He instructs us also to review Alan Fisher’s work and I found a video about the corridor from Atlanta to Savannah, 7:41:

Lucid Stew also covered Atlanta to Charlotte in detail:

So there has been plenty of analysis going on. It is a privilege to have Miles on to consider his work and also promote a student who has had the courage to have a go. This shows that the commentary from others in society is inspiring those who are at the beginning of their careers. By nurturing this talent and interest, we give society a chance at solving these long running problems.

Miles provided a couple of versions of maps of his proposed route, I’m throwing them in here.

One can see that Miles has chosen not to go via Savannah. Watch the full video for his selection process.

Thanks Miles for the episode and keeping the momentum going on an important front of nation building in America - catching up with China’s 30,000km high speed rail network:

Rail Map of People's Republic of China

BTW, at the beginning of the episode, a couple of tram/trolley network history animations were shown. For Adelaide:

For Los Angeles:

The LA animation is particularly heartening. It shows several decades of redevelopment of the rail transit network after decades of decline. We are finally putting the car cult behind us.