7 ms·

High speed train works well in France (and it's just 300km/h) because the country is small. Australia is huge. And so is the US. This would make sense along co

High speed train works well in France (and it's just 300km/h) because the country is small. Australia is huge. And so is the US. This would make sense along coasts though but you wouldn't be able to cross the country from sea to sea in a few hours of course. What's good with trains is that you can hop in at the very last moment (when the bell rings, happened to me a couple times) and the train stops in the center of cities, instead of the suburbs. This is the main reason why high speed train in France can compete with airplanes when crossing the country. By plane I must first reach the airport (30 mins), have some time ahead before embarking (30 mins), the flight is 1 hour long but the time to actually take off and pick back your luggages it's almost 2 hours long, and then you have to reach the center of your destination city (30 mins). By my generous estimates, it takes 3h30 to travel by plane North/South in France vs 4 hours by train. And because currently not every railroad segment can support high speed trains going at full velocity (but work is in progress) it could take 3 hours. 300 km/h Also note that Amdahl's law [1] applies in this context (there are diminishing returns in optimizing the speed of only one segment of the full path) and travelling the last kilometers accounts for a significant portion of the travel time. For instance the TGV has to slow down when entering cities (because of the noise) and at some point in the development of the high speed rail network, it might become more interesting to dig long tunnels under cities for these trains rather than increasing the train's maximum speed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

jacquesm 7y ago
> By plane I must first reach the airport (30 mins), have some time ahead before embarking (30 mins), the flight is 1 hour long but the time to actually take off and pick back your luggages it's almost 2 hours long, and then you have to reach the center of your destination city (30 mins). By my generous estimates, it takes 3h30 to travel by plane North/South in France vs 4 hours And then there is the inevitable delays before the plane will be allowed to take off and if you're lucky the same before you're allowed to land. And in NL, if you land on Schiphol if you're particularly unlucky they will land the plane on the 5th strip which is more accurately located in Haarlem and it takes about 15 minutes to taxi to the gate.
Zardoz84 7y ago
And Spain with the AVE and Talgos
kuschku 7y ago
> it might become more interesting to dig long tunnels under cities for these trains rather than increasing the train's maximum speed. That’s actually part of what the Stuttgart 21 project is doing, and why it’s so expensive (it’s not just a train station): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 They’re building several massive tunnels below the city and through the surrounding mountains to put the entire station and all rails underground, which also improves travel times on the Paris—Vienna magistrale. Being one of the first major projects of that kind in Germany, it has to deal with massive budget overruns and delays.
- quakeguy 7y ago
  Berlins main station as well, there are 4 tracks underground.
melling 7y ago
High-speed rail also works well in China. It’s the same size as the United States, which is about the size of Australia. There are only 25 million people in Australia though.
- fluffything 7y ago
  > There are only 25 million people in Australia though. There are a "couple" more million people in France, and there are many areas in the US and Europe which much higher population than Australia, and a fraction of its size.
- cantankerous 7y ago
  China's population is concentrated in one part of the country. That makes it easier to serve them more efficiently with mass transit. This isn't true for the United States. The population resides on the coasts, which you can serve with high-speed rail, but connecting the two coasts with the inland population centers via rail is a much, much bigger project.
  - melling 7y ago
    Yes, this excuse has been given for the past 50 years. Usually, in reference to Europe. That might explain why they’re building 25,000 miles of high-speed rail in China, but it doesn’t address why the US has zero. You’re being sort of vague with the numbers of course. If you actually look at population densities in Spain, for example, and compare them to California or New York, what do you think we’d find? For some reason, people like yourself want to average Montana, North Dakota, California, and New York. The US does not have a uniform population density.
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      People also want the federal government to fund the construction of this infrastructure, which is a very hard sell (and possibly unconstitutional) if you don't average all of those states in some way. Most of the opposition to Amtrak and existing infrastructure projects like the Gateway Project is coming from those states, who don't see improving rail service in the Mid-Atlantic and New England as something they want their tax money spent on. We need to fix that problem, and that means not simply writing them off as irrelevant because of their lack of population. Australia is likely facing the same problem.
sanxiyn 7y ago
> it might become more interesting to dig long tunnels under cities for these trains rather than increasing the train's maximum speed. South Korea built >50 km tunnel out of Seoul for this reason. It opened in 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulhyeon_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulhyeon_Tunnel
Jaruzel 7y ago
Here in the UK we enjoy low speed trains every day. ;) Just seeing this stuff in other countries really makes me sad about how my countries technological developments have been left to rot.
- netcan 7y ago
  Every time I visit London, I'm puzzled by the seeming paradox. That system was dug in the 1800s, when light-bulbs and bicycles were still in beta. Over 150 years later, a project like that is out of reach for nearly all western cities. It's like the "we can't go to the moon anymore." It just offends my/our intuition about progress.
  - rswail 7y ago
    The reason the British Empire flourished is because, well, the British Empire flourished. The industrial revolution began in the UK, the engineering of the time was lead by the British. So yes, London got the tube, it got sewerage, it got all wonders of public facility because it was a win-win. Proclaimed the glory of the Empire to keep others in check and provide the people with the spoils of Empire.
    - roboys 7y ago
      To be fair, robbing indigenous people at gun point is a very profitable endeavor and why Britain flourished. Fact: There is no chance of Britian reaching its former greatness without this crucial criminal component.
      - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
        Fact: that was made up
        roboys 7y ago
        You may not know the economic history of Britain, if you disagree. Peak of British economy was after it invaded/sabotaged/drugged/then robbed two of the richest civilizations at that point (accounting for 50% of world GDP) China & India. The beginning of British decline started in the early 1900s with the end of the opium trade (which at its peak, in ~1895, accounted for 35% of Britain's GDP) Do you think UK, China, India, US, Germany, etc... placed at the same starting point, would result in UK economic victory without foul play? UK can't even beat California on many economic metrics after centuries of historical advantages, lol.
rswail 7y ago
Australia is huge, but everyone lives in 7 cities (within a margin of error). A high speed rail that covered Melbourne/Albury/Canberra/Sydney/Newcastle/Tamworth?/Brisbane would have a huge impact. The distances are (as the crow flies): Melbourne-Albury: 260km Albury-Canberra: 219km Canberra-Sydney: 247km Sydney-Newcastle: 117km Newcastle-Tamworth: 219km Tamworth-Brisbane: 450km That last leg might need another break in it. But at 300kph average speed that's 2.5 hours Melbourne - Sydney (CBD-CBD), say 3.5 hours with stopovers. To get to Sydney for a 9:00 start in the CBD from Melbourne now takes (CBD - CBD): Taxi: 30m + 1hr check in + 1.5 hour flight + 30m taxi: 3.5 hours. I'd take the train any day. Space, able to work, sleep, dining car etc. Not affected by weather or other airport backlogs. You still get up at a god-awful time of the morning, but the actual travel would be much more tolerable.
- narag 7y ago
  One more: later, trains will be faster. In the 20 years that I've been in Madrid time to my hometown has come down from 5.5 to little more than 4 hours. Edit: last hour is not high speed because the rails are regular ones (the train adapts in a ten minutes stop) so the high speed interval went from 4.5 down to 3.
- chrismorgan 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia_by...: it’s actually under 70% of the population in the top 7 cities in that list, with the two giants being Sydney and Melbourne with 20% each. 30% is a fairly large rounding error! :-) I agree with your judgement in general, nonetheless.
  - kuzehanka 7y ago
    That 30% rounding error are people who don't have any interest in travelling to major cities. Giving mobility to those people would unlock new use cases of its own, but the GP post is actually accurate to commercial reality.
    - 7y ago
makomk 7y ago
Note that, as I understand it, the security checks and queues for Chinese high-speed trains are comparable to those required at airports elsewhere if not worse.
- dnh44 7y ago
  For what it's worth I've traveled on them about 15 times over the last few years, mostly to or from Shanghai and while it's comparable I'd say it's still way easier than an airport. At a glance though it definitely looks very crowded though because there is only one very large departure lounge (at least in Shanghai). In the smaller cities though you don't have the same crowds and the whole process is very quick and easy. Security involves putting your bags on a conveyor that goes through an x-ray machine but no one actually has their bags opened so it moves quickly. Boarding is much quicker because a train has a lot more doors than an airplane. However the queues to get to the metro/subway/underground system can indeed be horrifically long.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Not really. It’s basically a metal detector conveyer belt out front with very little flow control, fast to get through and not much thought going into finding anything. Compared to airport security, it’s a breeze (but it might have changed since 2016?).
anoncake 7y ago
> For instance the TGV has to slow down when entering cities (because of the noise) and at some point in the development of the high speed rail network, it might become more interesting to dig long tunnels under cities for these trains rather than increasing the train's maximum speed. It has to slow down anyway if it wants to stop.
- quakeguy 7y ago
  I laughed, good point.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  You could lose a car on the back for departing passengers and pick one up on the front for embarking one’s. Only a bit of loss in kinetic energy needed (to slow down the last car and get the first car up to speed).
  - anoncake 7y ago
    Interesting idea, but there are some issues: - Many modern trains, including the TGV, are not designed to be separated during normal operation. - If you add a car to the front, the train driver can't see anything. If you remove it, you remove their workplace. In a push-pull train, the same applies to the back. A foldable cab like the IC3[1] has might be a solution, but it's far from aerodynamic. - Uncoupling the last cab instead of stopping has been done in the past. But coupling one without stopping sounds very hard. - Instead of one train, you now have three: The car being decoupled, the new one, and the rest. Generally, that means the station needs a higher capacity. Not sure if that's the case here though. Normally what limits a station's capacity is that you can't have two trains using the same track, but that doesn't really apply when you want to couple/uncouple them. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC3 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC3
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
The biggest issue for HSR is straightened track, which should be possible in Australia as far as I can tell: not many mountains, kind of empty between cities. This is also why’s hSR is so that impressive in China, they had none of those advantages sand had to keep blasting through mountains.

jacquesm 7y ago

> By plane I must first reach the airport (30 mins), have some time ahead before embarking (30 mins), the flight is 1 hour long but the time to actually take off and pick back your luggages it's almost 2 hours long, and then you have to reach the center of your destination city (30 mins). By my generous estimates, it takes 3h30 to travel by plane North/South in France vs 4 hours And then there is the inevitable delays before the plane will be allowed to take off and if you're lucky the same before you're allowed to land. And in NL, if you land on Schiphol if you're particularly unlucky they will land the plane on the 5th strip which is more accurately located in Haarlem and it takes about 15 minutes to taxi to the gate.

Zardoz84 7y ago

And Spain with the AVE and Talgos

kuschku 7y ago

> it might become more interesting to dig long tunnels under cities for these trains rather than increasing the train's maximum speed. That’s actually part of what the Stuttgart 21 project is doing, and why it’s so expensive (it’s not just a train station): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 They’re building several massive tunnels below the city and through the surrounding mountains to put the entire station and all rails underground, which also improves travel times on the Paris—Vienna magistrale. Being one of the first major projects of that kind in Germany, it has to deal with massive budget overruns and delays.

quakeguy 7y ago
Berlins main station as well, there are 4 tracks underground.

melling 7y ago

High-speed rail also works well in China. It’s the same size as the United States, which is about the size of Australia. There are only 25 million people in Australia though.

fluffything 7y ago
> There are only 25 million people in Australia though. There are a "couple" more million people in France, and there are many areas in the US and Europe which much higher population than Australia, and a fraction of its size.
cantankerous 7y ago
China's population is concentrated in one part of the country. That makes it easier to serve them more efficiently with mass transit. This isn't true for the United States. The population resides on the coasts, which you can serve with high-speed rail, but connecting the two coasts with the inland population centers via rail is a much, much bigger project.
- melling 7y ago
  Yes, this excuse has been given for the past 50 years. Usually, in reference to Europe. That might explain why they’re building 25,000 miles of high-speed rail in China, but it doesn’t address why the US has zero. You’re being sort of vague with the numbers of course. If you actually look at population densities in Spain, for example, and compare them to California or New York, what do you think we’d find? For some reason, people like yourself want to average Montana, North Dakota, California, and New York. The US does not have a uniform population density.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    People also want the federal government to fund the construction of this infrastructure, which is a very hard sell (and possibly unconstitutional) if you don't average all of those states in some way. Most of the opposition to Amtrak and existing infrastructure projects like the Gateway Project is coming from those states, who don't see improving rail service in the Mid-Atlantic and New England as something they want their tax money spent on. We need to fix that problem, and that means not simply writing them off as irrelevant because of their lack of population. Australia is likely facing the same problem.

sanxiyn 7y ago

> it might become more interesting to dig long tunnels under cities for these trains rather than increasing the train's maximum speed. South Korea built >50 km tunnel out of Seoul for this reason. It opened in 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulhyeon_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulhyeon_Tunnel

Jaruzel 7y ago

Here in the UK we enjoy low speed trains every day. ;) Just seeing this stuff in other countries really makes me sad about how my countries technological developments have been left to rot.

netcan 7y ago
Every time I visit London, I'm puzzled by the seeming paradox. That system was dug in the 1800s, when light-bulbs and bicycles were still in beta. Over 150 years later, a project like that is out of reach for nearly all western cities. It's like the "we can't go to the moon anymore." It just offends my/our intuition about progress.
- rswail 7y ago
  The reason the British Empire flourished is because, well, the British Empire flourished. The industrial revolution began in the UK, the engineering of the time was lead by the British. So yes, London got the tube, it got sewerage, it got all wonders of public facility because it was a win-win. Proclaimed the glory of the Empire to keep others in check and provide the people with the spoils of Empire.
  - roboys 7y ago
    To be fair, robbing indigenous people at gun point is a very profitable endeavor and why Britain flourished. Fact: There is no chance of Britian reaching its former greatness without this crucial criminal component.
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      Fact: that was made up
      - roboys 7y ago
        You may not know the economic history of Britain, if you disagree. Peak of British economy was after it invaded/sabotaged/drugged/then robbed two of the richest civilizations at that point (accounting for 50% of world GDP) China & India. The beginning of British decline started in the early 1900s with the end of the opium trade (which at its peak, in ~1895, accounted for 35% of Britain's GDP) Do you think UK, China, India, US, Germany, etc... placed at the same starting point, would result in UK economic victory without foul play? UK can't even beat California on many economic metrics after centuries of historical advantages, lol.

rswail 7y ago

Australia is huge, but everyone lives in 7 cities (within a margin of error). A high speed rail that covered Melbourne/Albury/Canberra/Sydney/Newcastle/Tamworth?/Brisbane would have a huge impact. The distances are (as the crow flies): Melbourne-Albury: 260km Albury-Canberra: 219km Canberra-Sydney: 247km Sydney-Newcastle: 117km Newcastle-Tamworth: 219km Tamworth-Brisbane: 450km That last leg might need another break in it. But at 300kph average speed that's 2.5 hours Melbourne - Sydney (CBD-CBD), say 3.5 hours with stopovers. To get to Sydney for a 9:00 start in the CBD from Melbourne now takes (CBD - CBD): Taxi: 30m + 1hr check in + 1.5 hour flight + 30m taxi: 3.5 hours. I'd take the train any day. Space, able to work, sleep, dining car etc. Not affected by weather or other airport backlogs. You still get up at a god-awful time of the morning, but the actual travel would be much more tolerable.

narag 7y ago
One more: later, trains will be faster. In the 20 years that I've been in Madrid time to my hometown has come down from 5.5 to little more than 4 hours. Edit: last hour is not high speed because the rails are regular ones (the train adapts in a ten minutes stop) so the high speed interval went from 4.5 down to 3.
chrismorgan 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia_by...: it’s actually under 70% of the population in the top 7 cities in that list, with the two giants being Sydney and Melbourne with 20% each. 30% is a fairly large rounding error! :-) I agree with your judgement in general, nonetheless.
- kuzehanka 7y ago
  That 30% rounding error are people who don't have any interest in travelling to major cities. Giving mobility to those people would unlock new use cases of its own, but the GP post is actually accurate to commercial reality.
  - 7y ago

makomk 7y ago

Note that, as I understand it, the security checks and queues for Chinese high-speed trains are comparable to those required at airports elsewhere if not worse.

dnh44 7y ago
For what it's worth I've traveled on them about 15 times over the last few years, mostly to or from Shanghai and while it's comparable I'd say it's still way easier than an airport. At a glance though it definitely looks very crowded though because there is only one very large departure lounge (at least in Shanghai). In the smaller cities though you don't have the same crowds and the whole process is very quick and easy. Security involves putting your bags on a conveyor that goes through an x-ray machine but no one actually has their bags opened so it moves quickly. Boarding is much quicker because a train has a lot more doors than an airplane. However the queues to get to the metro/subway/underground system can indeed be horrifically long.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Not really. It’s basically a metal detector conveyer belt out front with very little flow control, fast to get through and not much thought going into finding anything. Compared to airport security, it’s a breeze (but it might have changed since 2016?).

anoncake 7y ago

> For instance the TGV has to slow down when entering cities (because of the noise) and at some point in the development of the high speed rail network, it might become more interesting to dig long tunnels under cities for these trains rather than increasing the train's maximum speed. It has to slow down anyway if it wants to stop.

quakeguy 7y ago
I laughed, good point.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
You could lose a car on the back for departing passengers and pick one up on the front for embarking one’s. Only a bit of loss in kinetic energy needed (to slow down the last car and get the first car up to speed).
- anoncake 7y ago
  Interesting idea, but there are some issues: - Many modern trains, including the TGV, are not designed to be separated during normal operation. - If you add a car to the front, the train driver can't see anything. If you remove it, you remove their workplace. In a push-pull train, the same applies to the back. A foldable cab like the IC3[1] has might be a solution, but it's far from aerodynamic. - Uncoupling the last cab instead of stopping has been done in the past. But coupling one without stopping sounds very hard. - Instead of one train, you now have three: The car being decoupled, the new one, and the rest. Generally, that means the station needs a higher capacity. Not sure if that's the case here though. Normally what limits a station's capacity is that you can't have two trains using the same track, but that doesn't really apply when you want to couple/uncouple them. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC3 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC3

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

The biggest issue for HSR is straightened track, which should be possible in Australia as far as I can tell: not many mountains, kind of empty between cities. This is also why’s hSR is so that impressive in China, they had none of those advantages sand had to keep blasting through mountains.