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Amazed by the negativity of this article and comments. We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War, don't you think we're overdue? An

Amazed by the negativity of this article and comments. We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War, don't you think we're overdue? And to Americans who think that getting high speed trains is just a matter of government willpower, might be worth remembering that railways were originally private ventures which only stopped being profitable once they could no longer compete with the newer technologies of cars+highways and air travel.

erispoe 6y ago
Highway infrastructure in the US is largely publicly funded. It's no surprise that a mode of transport which doesn't pay for its infrastructure and externalities (long-distance road transport) is more competitive than a mode that does (long-distance rail).
- tompccs 6y ago
  Air travel is a better natural competitor than highways. Ultimately highways are already sunk costs which can be seamlessly upgraded to work with new tech (ie more efficient, and soon electric, cars). Air travel is heavily taxed rather than subsidised, and yet it's still preferable to road travel over long distances, for the simple reason that it's faster.
matthewmacleod 6y ago
We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War, don't you think we're overdue? No. There is no schedule for the delivery of new forms of transport that we can be overdue on; they emerge when technology and economics make them possible. A new transport technology can emerge if it can demonstrate that it is better in some way relative to existing technologies. It would be great if Hyperloop can do something like that, and R&D should be encouraged. But it’s not at all clear how it could effectively be better than existing solutions.
- tompccs 6y ago
  'overdue' is obviously a rhetorical device in this context. Otherwise I agree. I find however that bashing people trying new things and pushing the envelope very distasteful, especially from Americans whose culture historically supported ventures that would have been mocked in Europe, and especially from people on a website built for technologists and entrepreneurs!
ant6n 6y ago
The big private rail empires of old in the us became so because of subsidies in the form of land and cheap access to loans. The privately built new York subway system was actually built on a complicated contact system with the city, which today would be called a build-design-operate-maintain Public private partnership. The privately built high speed rail lines in the world... wait a minute, those don’t really exist. Even in Japan the public was involved with the construction of hsr... ...just like the public is involved in the construction of any transport infrastructure.
DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
> We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War It depends on what you mean why "new." Trains existed before WWII, but high-speed trains only began to be deployed in the 1960s, with the Japanese Shinkansen. Modern high-speed trains are more than twice as fast as the fastest WWII-era trains. * The American Morning Hiawatha ran at a top speed of 160 km/h in 1939. * The Japanese Shinkansen ran at a top speed of 210 km/h in 1961. * The French TGV reached 300 km/h in 1995. * The Chinese Fuxing trains have been running commercial service at up to 350 km/h since 2018.

erispoe 6y ago

Highway infrastructure in the US is largely publicly funded. It's no surprise that a mode of transport which doesn't pay for its infrastructure and externalities (long-distance road transport) is more competitive than a mode that does (long-distance rail).

tompccs 6y ago
Air travel is a better natural competitor than highways. Ultimately highways are already sunk costs which can be seamlessly upgraded to work with new tech (ie more efficient, and soon electric, cars). Air travel is heavily taxed rather than subsidised, and yet it's still preferable to road travel over long distances, for the simple reason that it's faster.

matthewmacleod 6y ago

We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War, don't you think we're overdue? No. There is no schedule for the delivery of new forms of transport that we can be overdue on; they emerge when technology and economics make them possible. A new transport technology can emerge if it can demonstrate that it is better in some way relative to existing technologies. It would be great if Hyperloop can do something like that, and R&D should be encouraged. But it’s not at all clear how it could effectively be better than existing solutions.

tompccs 6y ago
'overdue' is obviously a rhetorical device in this context. Otherwise I agree. I find however that bashing people trying new things and pushing the envelope very distasteful, especially from Americans whose culture historically supported ventures that would have been mocked in Europe, and especially from people on a website built for technologists and entrepreneurs!

ant6n 6y ago

The big private rail empires of old in the us became so because of subsidies in the form of land and cheap access to loans. The privately built new York subway system was actually built on a complicated contact system with the city, which today would be called a build-design-operate-maintain Public private partnership. The privately built high speed rail lines in the world... wait a minute, those don’t really exist. Even in Japan the public was involved with the construction of hsr... ...just like the public is involved in the construction of any transport infrastructure.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

> We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War It depends on what you mean why "new." Trains existed before WWII, but high-speed trains only began to be deployed in the 1960s, with the Japanese Shinkansen. Modern high-speed trains are more than twice as fast as the fastest WWII-era trains. * The American Morning Hiawatha ran at a top speed of 160 km/h in 1939. * The Japanese Shinkansen ran at a top speed of 210 km/h in 1961. * The French TGV reached 300 km/h in 1995. * The Chinese Fuxing trains have been running commercial service at up to 350 km/h since 2018.