4 ms·

At 200 miles an hour, NY to Chicago is less than four hours. It takes about an hour total for transportation between downtowns and the airports; you need to be

At 200 miles an hour, NY to Chicago is less than four hours. It takes about an hour total for transportation between downtowns and the airports; you need to be at the airport about an hour ahead of your flight; the flight itself is 2 and a half hours. So, a 200mph train would be _faster_ for most travelers.

jcranmer 9y ago
> At 200 miles an hour, NY to Chicago is less than four hours. Assuming you can a) maintain that speed the entire length and b) there are no stops along the route. A long-distance point-to-point HSR system is simply not cost-effective, particularly when you've got a geographic barrier like the Appalachians. That's what makes Chicago so problematic for HSR: the Midwest ends up being a region where no city is particularly close to being "on the way" between any other city pairing.
- Johnny555 9y ago
  Osaka to Fukuoka in Japan is about 2.5 hours by Shinkansen high speed train with 6 stops. Chicago to NYC is about twice that distance, so 5 hours should be obtainable
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    The question is what the situation on the ground looks like. The short distance for NY/Chicago is around 800mi following more or less I-80. The problem with that route is you're missing any viable station between Cleveland and NY (maybe Scranton, but that's sending you in the wrong direction), and there's no real feasible reuse of that route for any other pairings other than NY/Chicago. The "easy" route via the Erie canal (so Chicago/Cleveland/Buffalo/Albany/NY) is 950mi or so, which is simply getting too long to capture traffic. Going via Detroit and Niagara doesn't really add any time, and cutting the trip in half via Toronto would add some time, but you'd get two viable trip corridors out of it, if you could solve border control issues. The most logical route is the Pittsburgh/Philly route, because you get the topography in your favor east of Harrisburg, reuse of corridor (Pittsburgh, Philly, and Harrisburg are all en route, not to mention the wye at Pittsburgh gives you basically Chicago/NYC and Chicago/DC on the same corridor). But this route is still 860mi, which is hard to keep to 5 hours.
    - niftich 9y ago
      To expand this with more detail, NYC-Chicago is between 900 and 1000 miles on existing railroad tracks, depending on which way you go: ~910 miles through Philadelphia -> Harrisburg -> Pittsburgh -> Cleveland; ~960 miles through Albany -> Buffalo -> Cleveland; ~1000 miles through Philadelphia -> Baltimore -> DC -> Pittsburgh -> Cleveland. The route that touches DC is the one that passes through the most valuable intermediate stops, but most of that demand is intra-corridor and doesn't concern Chicago. Furthermore, DC is a logical place to serve as a hub to connect the two corridors: one a high-demand DC-NYC, and one a long-distance Chicago-DC. Since to go into Union Station, you have to double-back, this could be a two-segment train where you'd have one-seat travel between Chicago and NYC, but there would be a mandatory stop in DC. This all sounds good, but the segment between DC and Pittsburgh is awful: it's crowded with CSX freight trains, it's either hemmed in by populated areas or follows river valleys or narrow ravines, and there's much work to be done to bring it up to a state that can host High Speed Rail. Between DC and Pittsburgh, one would basically have to build a dedicated line for High Speed passenger rail. The route through Albany and Buffalo avoids the Appalachians but is forced into the busy Hudson Valley. Route improvements here are expensive. East of Cleveland, the Upstate New York cities along the route simply don't generate enough Chicago-bound demand, nor enough connecting opportunities to make routing this way worthwhile. The route of the old Pennsylvanian Railway through Philly, Harrisburg, Altoona, Pittsburgh is indeed the most logical 'direct' route, both in terms of macro and micro; most of the right-of-way is multi-tracked so even with the heavy Norfolk Southern freight traffic, it'd be competitive; and the route touches Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, all of which can generate local and connecting passengers. But even this route is substandard for High Speed Rail: most of it is in river valleys, where there isn't space for the overly broad, sweeping curves with large radii that are needed for high speed travel. The gist is, between Pittsburgh and the Appalachian Great Valley -- home to Harrisburg and Hagerstown, on the routes going towards Philadelphia and DC respectively -- significant engineering effort (that I wrote about previously [1]) would be needed to cut down on travel time on what would become one of the most profitable segments of the route: between Western PA and the rest of the Northeast Corridor. As for the Midwest, there are no convenient cities west of Cleveland to chain onto the route. Toledo or Fort Wayne are the most logical choices, but Toledo lacks north-south connections currently, while Fort Wayne is out of the way of the direct route and also lacks connections. Chaining them both along with South Bend would be best, but that's a complicated route that adds travel time. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13414587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13414587
- dheera 9y ago
  The Appalachians aren't particularly an insurmountable barrier. Japan, Switzerland, China, and France all have much bigger and more formidable mountains than the Appalachians. The real problem is: - Not enough government funding for mass transit projects - Not enough people supporting government funding - Too much power at the city level and not enough power at the state/national level for transportation projects - Terrible UX and not enough city-level public transit infrastructure. When you exit the train station in most of the above countries, you are greeted with a properly air-conditioned/heated waiting hall, delicious food, hotels within walkable distance, and buses/subway to anywhere you would need to go. In a LOT of US cities when you exit the train station you are greeted with a massive parking lot and not even so much as a restroom. (Okay, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Washington are fine, but they are quite the exception. Most other cities suck.) Even if California gets the high-speed rail going any time soon to Los Angeles, the fact is that it's stupidly hard to get around anywhere in LA without a car, so I don't imagine it getting much ridership until that problem is solved (maybe by autonomous cars, maybe not).
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    Appalachians aren't insurmountable as a geographic barrier, particularly because there's a very easy topographical shortcut by going next to the Erie Canal. What makes it really challenging is the lack of lesser-tier cities to plug into the network, combined with the sheer length. Put another way, the distance between Chicago and New York is roughly 700mi as the crow flies. The distance between Edinburgh and London is 330mi, Calais and Marseilles 550mi, Zurich and Copenhagen 600mi, Milan and Calabria 600mi, Shanghai and Beijing 650mi, Hiroshima and Sendai 530mi. You're looking at a distance that's longer literally than the longest axis of most European countries, and at a much more sparsely populated region than the linear corridors of other countries that have axes that long. NY/Chicago is on the edge of viability in terms of distance. As the crow flies, you're talking a 3½ hour trip minimum; as you actually build it, a non-stop express is looking like at least 4-4½ hours. The most feasible route with intermediate stops (via Pittsburgh and Philly) is around 860 miles, an even longer trip. If the trip were on pretty much flat, featureless terrain, the cost and time could both be kept small, but the mountainous terrain means you're generally on the worse ends of the estimate. That's the biggest problem with the US: our cities are just simply too far apart for HSR to be viable in most of the country. And where they aren't, they tend to be in the worst pattern for utilizing HSR effectively.

jcranmer 9y ago

> At 200 miles an hour, NY to Chicago is less than four hours. Assuming you can a) maintain that speed the entire length and b) there are no stops along the route. A long-distance point-to-point HSR system is simply not cost-effective, particularly when you've got a geographic barrier like the Appalachians. That's what makes Chicago so problematic for HSR: the Midwest ends up being a region where no city is particularly close to being "on the way" between any other city pairing.

Johnny555 9y ago
Osaka to Fukuoka in Japan is about 2.5 hours by Shinkansen high speed train with 6 stops. Chicago to NYC is about twice that distance, so 5 hours should be obtainable
- jcranmer 9y ago
  The question is what the situation on the ground looks like. The short distance for NY/Chicago is around 800mi following more or less I-80. The problem with that route is you're missing any viable station between Cleveland and NY (maybe Scranton, but that's sending you in the wrong direction), and there's no real feasible reuse of that route for any other pairings other than NY/Chicago. The "easy" route via the Erie canal (so Chicago/Cleveland/Buffalo/Albany/NY) is 950mi or so, which is simply getting too long to capture traffic. Going via Detroit and Niagara doesn't really add any time, and cutting the trip in half via Toronto would add some time, but you'd get two viable trip corridors out of it, if you could solve border control issues. The most logical route is the Pittsburgh/Philly route, because you get the topography in your favor east of Harrisburg, reuse of corridor (Pittsburgh, Philly, and Harrisburg are all en route, not to mention the wye at Pittsburgh gives you basically Chicago/NYC and Chicago/DC on the same corridor). But this route is still 860mi, which is hard to keep to 5 hours.
  - niftich 9y ago
    To expand this with more detail, NYC-Chicago is between 900 and 1000 miles on existing railroad tracks, depending on which way you go: ~910 miles through Philadelphia -> Harrisburg -> Pittsburgh -> Cleveland; ~960 miles through Albany -> Buffalo -> Cleveland; ~1000 miles through Philadelphia -> Baltimore -> DC -> Pittsburgh -> Cleveland. The route that touches DC is the one that passes through the most valuable intermediate stops, but most of that demand is intra-corridor and doesn't concern Chicago. Furthermore, DC is a logical place to serve as a hub to connect the two corridors: one a high-demand DC-NYC, and one a long-distance Chicago-DC. Since to go into Union Station, you have to double-back, this could be a two-segment train where you'd have one-seat travel between Chicago and NYC, but there would be a mandatory stop in DC. This all sounds good, but the segment between DC and Pittsburgh is awful: it's crowded with CSX freight trains, it's either hemmed in by populated areas or follows river valleys or narrow ravines, and there's much work to be done to bring it up to a state that can host High Speed Rail. Between DC and Pittsburgh, one would basically have to build a dedicated line for High Speed passenger rail. The route through Albany and Buffalo avoids the Appalachians but is forced into the busy Hudson Valley. Route improvements here are expensive. East of Cleveland, the Upstate New York cities along the route simply don't generate enough Chicago-bound demand, nor enough connecting opportunities to make routing this way worthwhile. The route of the old Pennsylvanian Railway through Philly, Harrisburg, Altoona, Pittsburgh is indeed the most logical 'direct' route, both in terms of macro and micro; most of the right-of-way is multi-tracked so even with the heavy Norfolk Southern freight traffic, it'd be competitive; and the route touches Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, all of which can generate local and connecting passengers. But even this route is substandard for High Speed Rail: most of it is in river valleys, where there isn't space for the overly broad, sweeping curves with large radii that are needed for high speed travel. The gist is, between Pittsburgh and the Appalachian Great Valley -- home to Harrisburg and Hagerstown, on the routes going towards Philadelphia and DC respectively -- significant engineering effort (that I wrote about previously [1]) would be needed to cut down on travel time on what would become one of the most profitable segments of the route: between Western PA and the rest of the Northeast Corridor. As for the Midwest, there are no convenient cities west of Cleveland to chain onto the route. Toledo or Fort Wayne are the most logical choices, but Toledo lacks north-south connections currently, while Fort Wayne is out of the way of the direct route and also lacks connections. Chaining them both along with South Bend would be best, but that's a complicated route that adds travel time. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13414587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13414587
dheera 9y ago
The Appalachians aren't particularly an insurmountable barrier. Japan, Switzerland, China, and France all have much bigger and more formidable mountains than the Appalachians. The real problem is: - Not enough government funding for mass transit projects - Not enough people supporting government funding - Too much power at the city level and not enough power at the state/national level for transportation projects - Terrible UX and not enough city-level public transit infrastructure. When you exit the train station in most of the above countries, you are greeted with a properly air-conditioned/heated waiting hall, delicious food, hotels within walkable distance, and buses/subway to anywhere you would need to go. In a LOT of US cities when you exit the train station you are greeted with a massive parking lot and not even so much as a restroom. (Okay, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Washington are fine, but they are quite the exception. Most other cities suck.) Even if California gets the high-speed rail going any time soon to Los Angeles, the fact is that it's stupidly hard to get around anywhere in LA without a car, so I don't imagine it getting much ridership until that problem is solved (maybe by autonomous cars, maybe not).
- jcranmer 9y ago
  Appalachians aren't insurmountable as a geographic barrier, particularly because there's a very easy topographical shortcut by going next to the Erie Canal. What makes it really challenging is the lack of lesser-tier cities to plug into the network, combined with the sheer length. Put another way, the distance between Chicago and New York is roughly 700mi as the crow flies. The distance between Edinburgh and London is 330mi, Calais and Marseilles 550mi, Zurich and Copenhagen 600mi, Milan and Calabria 600mi, Shanghai and Beijing 650mi, Hiroshima and Sendai 530mi. You're looking at a distance that's longer literally than the longest axis of most European countries, and at a much more sparsely populated region than the linear corridors of other countries that have axes that long. NY/Chicago is on the edge of viability in terms of distance. As the crow flies, you're talking a 3½ hour trip minimum; as you actually build it, a non-stop express is looking like at least 4-4½ hours. The most feasible route with intermediate stops (via Pittsburgh and Philly) is around 860 miles, an even longer trip. If the trip were on pretty much flat, featureless terrain, the cost and time could both be kept small, but the mountainous terrain means you're generally on the worse ends of the estimate. That's the biggest problem with the US: our cities are just simply too far apart for HSR to be viable in most of the country. And where they aren't, they tend to be in the worst pattern for utilizing HSR effectively.