11 ms·
Let's invest in a high speed national passenger rail system!
by tlow 6y ago
Let's invest in a high speed national passenger rail system!
- nickff 6y agoRail has much higher initial and fixed costs than air travel, and high-speed trains consume more energy than aircraft on long-distance routes (as airliners travel at high altitude with low air resistance). The literal footprint of a rail system is also very large; clearing and grading rail lines across the country would have a significant environmental impact.
- turnsnake55 6y agoThey can be electric and carry far more people than airplanes. There is no comparison. Planes are worse.
- iso947 6y agoThat’s a bold Claim. What proof do you offer?
- nickff 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail for the costs side. https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/drageq.html https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/drageq.html for the drag side. There are also a huge number of fuel consumption, economic analysis, and environmental impact studies, but I am sure you can find those easily if you're interested.
- wpm 6y agoCHSR is like the worst case example of cost. That project is a disaster.
- nickff 6y agoI agree, but I see no reason to assume other states would be better. New York's subway cost spiral has been quite bad as well.
- Alupis 6y agoEvery contractor and their mother had their hand in the cookie jar. And every politician wanted a stop in their constituency town(s). This will not be any different nationally. It might actually be quite worse.
- ozzy6009 6y agoBased on this equation, shouldn't high speed trains consume less energy since they travel so much slower than planes (3x speed = 9x drag)?
- djsavvy 6y agoReally not sure whether the person you’re replying to is actually correct, but the air is a lot denser on the ground than at cruising altitude. That’ll have an effect on energy consumption that works in the other direction.
- iso947 6y agoOf course it’s not correct. A high speed train will use about 40kwh per 1000 people per mile A plane is about 5 tons an hour, or 10kg per 300 people per mile, so 30kg of jet fuel per 1000 people per mile, or 1.2GJ So a cruising a330 uses about 10 times the energy per passenger mile as an ICE high speed train. Clearly the comparison of polution caused it then affected by how green the electricity source is and the extra environmental impact of burning fuel in the high atmosphere.
- titzer 6y ago> high-speed trains consume more energy than aircraft citation needed. It helps a lot that (electric) trains do not need to carry their own fuel. Also, trains can run on low-carbon energy, whereas there is no viable alternative to jet fuel at the moment, and producing that from net-zero-carbon processes (akin to biodiesel) is not economical.
- nickff 6y agoAirliners travel in air that is >60% less dense than the air at sea level, and usually travel over or around energy-wasting terrain features and weather.
- titzer 6y agoThat's not a citation, it's a random factoid, which doesn't make for a fruitful discussion. Other random factoids include: * trains are long * trains travel slower than airplanes, and drag is proportional to the square of speed * making conclusions solely based drag coefficients from the density of the air is sound reasoning One of these statements is false. I get that hackernews is just a forum for casual discussion of various technical topics, but overly categorical statements based on a reasoning in a vacuum (no pun in intended) just force the conversation into unproductive threads like this one. I'm kinda sorry I took the bait at this point.
- deepnotderp 6y agoTrains are long, but skin friction drag is real. Traveling slower is a bug, not a feature. If you want to go slower, airplanes can be more efficient as well!
- kerkeslager 6y ago> I get that hackernews is just a forum for casual discussion of various technical topics I hear this sentiment a lot, and I don't understand it. Trying to speak the truth isn't just optional outside formal contexts. There's no situation so casual that I it suddenly becomes appropriate to make up bullshit and present it as facts. That is to say, I agree with your larger point: if nickff wants to make the claim that trains consume more energy than aircraft, he'd better come up with a reasonable source for that information.
- CydeWeys 6y agoThe advantage with the train though is that it can use renewably produced electricity, whereas the plane burns hydrocarbons.
- missedthecue 6y agoIt's pretty cheap to offset. About $5 to offset all the carbon produced during a transatlantic flight in economy seating
- charwalker 6y agoThat's great, but the environment doesn't care about the cost to offset just that it has less CO2/etc in the air from humans.
- CydeWeys 6y agoYeah, and the offset is directly causing that much less of the gas to be emitted into the atmosphere by someone else. CO2 is fungible. Rather than eliminating it from the hardest to eliminate use cases first (planes), it makes sense to tackle the easiest use cases first (power generation, trains, and road vehicles). Your dollar goes a lot farther there.
- missedthecue 6y agoCool. Air travel is not getting banned.
- hanoz 6y agoMuch as I love trains, air travel's crisis at hand is predicated on people's widespread and perfectly understandable reluctance to spend long hours in a sealed tube in close proximity to all and sundry, so I don't think this is the cue for trains to step in and save the day.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoDo we know anything about how strong the economic pressures are for airlines vs. trains, regarding cramming passengers closer together? Obviously, for a given number of passengers, more space = more cars or larger cars. But I'm curious if giving passengers 8" of extra legroom is cheaper per passenger-mile for trains than it is for airlines. I'd assume so.
- paledot 6y agoOne competitive advantage of trains is that if they sell more tickets than anticipated, they can (capacity permitting) add an extra car at relatively low cost. An airline has to add another plane or bump passengers. Equally, rail companies can scale more easily to different social distancing guidelines.
- CydeWeys 6y agoDoes this ever actually happen though? I'm not aware of variable length passenger trains along a single route. And the stations for boarding are only so long.
- nikhilsimha 6y agoNot your ideal train system, but happens in India. Quite often.
- robga 6y agoMore often what happens (London) is the inverse. They’ll take two carriages off and squeeze you in tighter. Mornings always 10 carriages comfortably seated? So, Let’s take two off and let them stand for their expensive season pass.
- fennecfoxen 6y agoOh, yes, indeed! Let us invest, using the fantastic negative-$864 billion/month budget surplus that we have been so blessed as to earn amidst this global pandemic.
- paulmd 6y agoProvoking people into this exact argument was, in fact, the entire point of blowing up the budget deficit in the first place. Put military spending, corporate tax rates, and upper income tax rates back to where they were, and re-allocate that money to productive infrastructure and it'll be fine.
- titzer 6y agoIt's a shame that Coronavirus doesn't succumb to cruise missiles, predator drones, and air-superiority fighters....it almost seems like we spent money on the wrong things!
- arvinsim 6y agoSssshhh! Don't give them ideas to weaponized viruses!
- fennecfoxen 6y agoI am confused; you seem to say that trillions of dollars in US taxation and spending were chosen primarily for their rhetorical effect? This seems like a pretty stunning accusation to make against policymakers.
- kemayo 6y agoThere has been a long-term effort by the Republican party to shrink government, the core of which is often called "starve the beast"[1]. The idea is that by cutting the revenue of the government, it will have to reduce spending on things like, say, a national high-speed rail system. So, yeah, regardless of how you feel about the goal, I don't think it's unfair to say that trillions of dollars in US taxation and spending were chosen primarily for their rhetorical effect. Being able to say "but we can't afford that!" was a top goal in recent tax policy. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
- m0zg 6y agoHow would locking _more_ people together in a confined space for even _longer_ help in this situation?
- devonkim 6y agoTrains at least stop and open their doors occasionally letting in fresh air. Each car has less people in it than a typical commercial flight, and my train trips are significantly shorter than my plane flights as well. It’s not obvious to me what’s worse one way or the other.
- shreyansj 6y agoCan you give an example of your train trips that are shorter than the flights. It seems like a short flight between SFO-LAX is about ~1.5 hours of sitting-inside-the-tube. I am not aware of a train between these two cities that can do this trip in any significantly less time than that.
- peacefulhat 6y agothe parent comment is that we should build highspeed trains like the ones in other countries that demolish plane travel time and overall checkin to destination time.
- xvilka 6y agoBuilding high-speed train track would provide exactly that, something like Shinkansen or CRH trains.
- devonkim 6y agoWasn't sure which were the apples and oranges to even begin comparing it seems. I was thinking of train trips locally like commuter trains for about 30 - 40 miles v. short flights a state away because for a train trip to be made a route needs to exist, and those tend to be commuter trains. I wouldn't suggest a train to be an aggregately shorter time period for a long distance trip. Another factor to consider is that total time for air travel for the covid context should include sitting on a tarmac and loading / unloading.
- oarabbus_ 6y agoAs someone who voted for the California initiative in 2008, I don't trust the competency of our national (or CA state) government. Perhaps it can be done in a privatized manner somehow.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoHighway self driving will make virtually all of those obsolete as well.
- bfieidhbrjr 6y agoWe did, then it was regulated to bankruptcy and the government took it over and now we have Amtrak. Trains used to be high speed new technology. If the government got out of the way (I'm looking at you, California high speed train fiasco) we'd be fine and there would be great systems.
- redtexture 6y agoThe interstate highway system had something to do with the end of long distance rail.
- redtexture 6y agoLet's invest in medium speed national passenger rail that will go to cities of 100,000 population everywhere.
- growlist 6y agoI agree with this - max speed around 120mph looks like the sweet spot in terms of ROI. I see HSTs as more of a vanity project these days - lots of them run under capacity and are even worse on paying back the money invested into them than standard rail. I love HSTs, and have been on Eurostar, Thales, ICE, AVE. But in many circumstances - and obviously it's down to the particular geographical situation, and many other factors - HSTs are not the optimal solution.
- wojciii 6y agoReally? Why not develop something you can use to stop wasting fossile fuels on trucking stuff around? A rail system using small electrical vehicles instead of diesel would make more sense with an option to move people as well. Since I live in EU that would only make sense for this to be multinational and therefore probably never get built. Also it would require our leaders to think about the future and not just about how to get more votes.
- Valgrim 6y agoMost high speed trains are actually powered by electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_trains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_trains First-and-last mile delivery need the flexibility of trucks, there's no way around it. So an expanded railway system and electric trucks are the way to go I believe.
- wojciii 6y agoNot in Denmark where I live. Most (I think) trains are running on Diesel as our politicians decides not to electrify all parts of the country. When travelling on our highway (e-45) I see many trucks which are not first/last mile but more likely in the 1000 km range. I think that we should consider smaller trains which cost more to establish but could use some of the power getting wasted (wind/solar) at times where it is generated but the demand is low.
- bobthepanda 6y agoThe problem here is that Europe optimized for passenger rail (so the rail is fast, which is good for people, but expensive per mile, which is bad for freight) and the US optimized for freight with the reverse positives and negatives. The only country that I’m aware of that did both great on the same network was China, but they ran into capacity issues so they spent hundreds of billions to move people onto a brand new dedicated passenger high speed rail network and now the legacy slow one has more room for freight.
- charwalker 6y ago
- innagadadavida 6y agoWe’ll need to solve the last mile problem effectively - especially in low density areas. At least with airports you can rent a car and continue your journey. Train stations need to have similar infrastructure.
- angmarsbane 6y agoHaving just completed the 32 hr train trip from Los Angeles to Seattle I would love a high speed alternative.