25 ms·

This proposal seems totally disconnected from reality. First, Amtrak is not a competitive transportation option. It can be a fun novelty, but it's expensive an

by ggreer 6y ago

This proposal seems totally disconnected from reality. First, Amtrak is not a competitive transportation option. It can be a fun novelty, but it's expensive and slow. Going from Portland to Oakland is supposed to take 18 hours but actually took 20 when I rode it. The same trip in a car takes 10 hours. By plane is 90 minutes. It gets worse: Amtrak cost me more than a plane ticket to the same destination. Second, hundreds of billions of dollars doesn't get you much train in the US. California tried to build a high speed rail route between SF and LA. The estimated completion cost has skyrocketed to $100 billion and the completion date is 25 years after voters approved the project. The state has since given up on connecting LA & SF by high speed rail. There is simply no future in which passenger rail competes with air travel in the US. Even in circumstances where the distances are not too great, and the political and bureaucratic hurdles are.

tupshin 6y ago
The Northeast corridor is a strong counter argument.
- schoen 6y ago
  It's strange to see the contrast between how relatively large a share of transportation Amtrak has in the Northeast Corridor compared to elsewhere in the country. I've heard this ascribed to population density, but it doesn't seem like trains are as popular in places like Texas or Southern California.
  - blabitty 6y ago
    Development and land use patterns are way different in the Sunbelt. There are lines that go through most downtowns but most of the people live far from the stations. The passenger trains also share lines with freight and freight is prioritized, a trip from Austin to Dallas by Amtrak takes 6 hours but can be driven in 3 or so.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Lots of people in the Northeast don't live in downtowns either. One big difference if that, if you're taking a trip to one of the big cities, you often don't need or even want a car when you get there. On the other hand, if you can drive somewhere in 4-5 hours, taking a train and then having to rent a car when you arrive seems a lot less attractive.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    Huge advantage of amtrak is that the stations are in prime locations. In the northeast that's a huge advantage as going from train to destination might be a 15 minute walk. Meanwhile airport to destination could be an hour drive. Sunbelt cities have no density, so the trains location isn't as valuable.
- benatkin 6y ago
  It could exist without the rest of the network, and probably be cheaper. Why is NJ Transit so much cheaper to go from Philly (via Trenton) to NYC? I think the Northeast Corridor might be subsidizing other parts of Amtrak.
  - simfree 6y ago
    Yes, the Northeast Corridor is the only profitable part of Amtrak, that is why Amtrak tried to cut as much service as possible outside the Northeast Corridor prior to Joe Biden taking office.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Yep. Basically the Northeast Corridor is a pretty profitable route. In part, this is because the Acela is basically priced as high as it can be while remaining competitive with air. Business travelers generally pay it because it's a bit more comfortable, a bit faster, and there are fewer plebes than the non-Acela option. Oh, and it's not their money. (And it is competitive with air depending upon your preferences.) To be honest, when it's my own money I usually just take the regular regional train. It's about half the price and because it can piggyback off the electrification done for Acela, it takes less than an hour more.
      - benatkin 6y ago
        Agree. It's 30 more minutes to read or something and 30 less minutes at my destination. On other routes being slow is a massive liability though. If people could get from San Francisco to Portland in 10 hours, or even 12 hours, instead of 18 hours, it would be much more practical. At 18 hours it messes up your sleep schedule rather than just giving you more time to read. It might just not be worth it to spend more on rail travel from Portland to SF though. It's just a reality of geography rather than somebody's mistake that travel from SF to Portland is harder than travel from DC to NYC.
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  I’ve taken the Acela from NYC to DC and back many times, and it is quite nice. But a big advantage it gets is how much of a pain it is to reach area airports in both cities. If intra-regional mass transit was improved that would paradoxically hurt the competitiveness of inter-regional rail.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Reagan in DC is convenient to the metro (Dulles of course is not) but all of NYC's airports are a pain.
    - benatkin 6y ago
      What about Newark? I went through Newark Penn Station a few times and it seems decent. Is it a PITA to go between Newark Penn Station and the airport, or is the airport itself a bigger hassle than most? Last time I went through LAX there were no good options for getting from there to downtown LA.
      - bradleyjg 6y ago
        Newark is probably the least bad, but you still have to take a slow second train (AirTrain) after getting to Newark Penn. Also, while the NJ Transit trains are better set up for travelers than the LIRR to JFK they aren’t nearly as nice as the dedicated setup they have in London.
        ghaff 6y ago
        Although Heathrow Express is quite pricey compared to the tube and, depending upon where you're going, may not even be more convenient. More often than not, I'm near Trafalgar Square so I just take the Piccadilly Line in. But, yes, Heathrow has good transit options in general (although it's an expensive cab ride).
  - cromwellian 6y ago
    Even if getting to the airport is convenient, you still need to arrive 1 hour before your flight, and deal with security, boarding procedures, taxi, air traffic control, etc on both sides. In Japan, I can literally show up for a Shinkansen five minutes before departure and hop right on. Airports for short range traffic are fscking awful.
- marcianx 6y ago
  NYC to Montreal (~370mi) takes ~8 hours by bus and 11 hours by train, though granted, times at Customs is more variable for the bus than for the train. I'm often surprised at how much the train shakes side to side on the occasions it's going "fast". Contrast that to the TGV in France, which zooms around at 200mph and covered one of my trips between Paris and Avignon (~430mi) in ~2.75hrs about a decade ago. US train infrastructure feels extremely behind in comparison. Perhaps it's because of a greater emphasis on highway travel.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    NYC to Montreal is not part of the NEC; the NEC is solely the portion from DC to Boston. That said, the NYC-Montreal and Boston-Toronto lines are lines that absolutely should be dedicated high-speed passenger rail in addition to the NEC, but they are not even dedicated passenger rail lines at the moment let alone proper 220mph HSR lines.
    - sacredcows 6y ago
      To top it all off, Toronto-NY is one of the busiest air routes in the world, by number of scheduled flights.
  - matmatmatmat 6y ago
    To be fair, that leg of the TGV happens to be some of the best track in the whole system. It's practically a straight, non-stop shot from Paris to Avignon on double decker cars with panoramic windows.
  - JJMcJ 6y ago
    > how much the train shakes Roadbeds are maintained to freight train standards, e.g., the difference in height of the two rails. Amtrak depends on the "host railroads" who are not very hospitable to passenger traffic.
- GongOfFour 6y ago
  Much of the Northeast Regionals route is effectively a functioning megapolis. You are not going to find anywhere close to similar conditions anywhere else in the United States.
  - jzoch 6y ago
    It functions that way because it has a functioning rail line? Or at least semi-functional. YOu are right you won't find those conditions anywhere else in the US but that is our own fault
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I'm not sure how true that is even though Amtrak is one mover of people. One of the reasons I for one tend to take Amtrak is that Boston area into Manhattan is mostly a pretty awful drive and it isn't because there are so few vehicles on the road. Also, pre-Acela business travelers mostly flew (and many still do) on the northern section of the corridor. And, even today, most business travelers aren't going to take the train from Boston to DC. So it seems pretty probable to me that Acela came about because there was already a huge and increasing demand for such a service.
masklinn 6y ago
> Even in circumstances where the distances are not too great, and the political and bureaucratic hurdles are. NIMBY-ism as well? Because I can't fathom how a 400 miles high-speed rail route can cost $100bn unless you're spending years re-drafting your route because every asshole on the way has to be heard. 25 years is not completely nonsensical though, if you want to do this right it does take time. For a fairly recent example, the french LGV Est is 252 miles (406km), it cost 4bn (including 800 millions worth of rolling stock), and took 16 years before the construction and financing protocol of the first phase was signed and the opening of the second phase. First phase opened a year late, and second phase 3 months late because of the Eckwersheim testing accident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckwersheim_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckwersheim_derailment). Obviously building in California would require additional studies and expenses for earthquake safety and the like, but 12x… seems a bit much. The cost only makes sense if it's basically all tunnels and briges, like Chūō Shinkansen: that's estimated to cost north of $90 billion for 177 miles, but it's going straight through mountains, 90% of the way is through tunnels.
- bushbaba 6y ago
  Have to wonder if Elon’s boring company is the solution. The state can say you don’t own the ground underneath and just tunnel straight from sf to la
  - masklinn 6y ago
    The cost would actually make sense if it were all tunnels. Japan's newest Shinkansen route will be 90% tunnels, and it's estimated at $90bn for 180 miles. Tunneling is expensive as hell.
    - Pxtl 6y ago
      I wonder if you could lower cost by switching to narrower tunnel gauge. Also, if it's all tunnel you could evacuate some of the air to lower resistance... Oh crud Hyperloop finally makes sense to me.
gpvos 6y ago
It might in a future in which air travel is prohibitively highly taxed. Seems unlikely now, but one can dream.
- syshum 6y ago
  The the only way to make something "attractive" to the population is to place up on its competition prohibitive taxation then you have already lost. Further if that is your "dream" to impose prohibitive taxation on the population I would question your ethical foundation as well Edit: for the record since someone below is using a straw-man to claim I support subsidies, I dont. I prefer the government stay out it completely, neither taxing nor subsidizing (nor bailing out) anything, or any industry. I am not Pro or Anti Rail, nor I am Pro or Anti Air Travel. I am Anti-Government intervention...
  - kuschku 6y ago
    If you cling to subsidies as the only way your method of transportation can continue to work, what does that say about you? (Flights barely break even at all, and that's even with the absurd level of subsidies airlines get today)
    - syshum 6y ago
      Pretty sure I never claimed to support government subsidies either... Show me where I have. I prefer the government to stay out of it completely. I prefer the government stay out of everything...
      - kuschku 6y ago
        Without subsidies, there wouldn't be any airlines left :)
        harambae 6y ago
        Citation needed. In bankruptcy, assets would be sold off (the planes wouldn't be crushed). Businesses restructured and life would go on. It's extremely unlikely no one would be willing to take air travel, even at higher prices than current (I like flying NYC/SF at $150/flight, but I would do it at $600/flight too).
bradleyjg 6y ago
People seem to want inter-regional passenger rail for it’s own sake and search around for a justification to stick on that preference. From an environmental perspective low speed inter-regional fright rail makes a lot more sense. Where high(er) speed passenger rail could really shine is intra-regional lines. Granted stops slow things down, but the NYC region commuter lines (LIRR, MMR, NJT) have horrible average speeds. I understand from friends in greater DC and the Bay Area that the situations there are similar.
benatkin 6y ago
I agree that east to west and north to south cross-country rail is a novelty. The short haul trains are often useful though. I think the novelty is worth keeping but they should focus on that novelty. I'd like to see them have just one east to west route, say, from SF to NYC, and one route on each coast, and besides that coordinate the short haul trains with the cities/states that are using them, perhaps even letting the cities/states run some of them fully. The short haul trains should be run separately from the novelty trains. The proposal is the opposite, and that's why I think it's not a good one. For example, I'd like for the train to Miami to skip Orlando and Tampa, and for Brightline to be left to bring service back if it makes economic sense (they're already working on Orlando). If not, there are buses like Megabus and Flixbus. That would shorten the Boston to Miami route quite a bit.
- anaerobicover 6y ago
  It's been pointed out numerous times elsewhere in the threads, but long-haul routes are short-haul routes, for people in the middle. Very few people drive I-80 from end to end. Lots of people drive it for trips like Iowa City to Omaha.
  - benatkin 6y ago
    I'm aware of that. I don't think amtrak is a good alternative to the interstate (I agree with the comnent I'm replying to), so we should stop trying to make it one. A single cross-country route that runs during waking hours and has fewer stops would be cool though.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- ghaff 6y ago
  Amtrak does not actually go to SF today, to be pedantic.
  - benatkin 6y ago
bobthepanda 6y ago
CA fucking up HSR has more to do with CA than HSR. The entire thing is basically a mismanaged contractor/consultant gravy train. Interestingly enough, rail is competitive in the opposite direction from Portland, namely to Seattle, and Seattle to Vancouver. SeaTac is far enough away from both Tacoma and Seattle to be a slog from many parts of the metro area, and the sole highway corridor gets very congested. And it mostly consists of lots of small investments to the existing route, like a $181M bypass that shaved ten whole minutes off of a 3h30 trip, a 6.7% improvement in travel times. It's most likely these types of smaller improvements that Amtrak will be seeking, and other bang-for-the-buck improvements like electrification. (Even on the same track and same speed limits, electric trains offer better acceleration than their diesel counterparts, which is similar to what we're now seeing from the electrification of cars.)
- ffggvv 6y ago
  and a national one with the same party in charge would be any different?
Dopameaner 6y ago
Tbh, AMTRAK needs to find its target audience. Right now, work transportation has been a huge thorn for everyone involved. It would be such a boon to commute living from LA to sf for work.
yummypaint 6y ago
Most of the delays and lack of consistency come from the rail lines being controlled by other interests. Amtrak is always lowest on the priority totem pole, and is routinely forced to yield to freight lines for hours at a time arbitrarily and without notice. Lack of high speed rail is an orthogonal issue, and is constantly conflated with fixing the current state of affairs. we don't even have standard passenger rail yet! We need to build more cheap track to connect areas first. Rail travel is far more efficient than flying, both environmentally and economically. Flying is heavily subsidized in ways that rail is not, and that tends to hide the externalities. Rail has also been set up to fail with metrics like direct profitability, which is entirely not the point of public transportation. It's like claiming the entire value of a road is the toll money it generates.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  Also level crossings and equipment breakdowns. Collisions between cars and trains are not uncommon. In my first and last Amtrak trip, I rode from Chicago to Las Vegas and was nearly 24 hours late on arrival, due to delays from freight traffic, hitting a car at a crossing, and having a locomotive break down. And my luggage was delayed for another day after that.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Collisions between cars and trains are not uncommon https://www.bts.gov/content/train-fatalities-injuries-and-accidents-type-accidenta https://www.bts.gov/content/train-fatalities-injuries-and-ac... 91 rail collisions (not just with cars, but of all types) for trains (not just passenger trains) in 2020 nationally. That’s...pretty rare.
    - throwawayboise 6y ago
      Agreed, I'm surprised. I guess because I experienced it, I assumed it was rather more common.
- closeparen 6y ago
  I don’t think the “economically” part of this statement is at all obvious. Train sets are cheaper than passenger planes but they have to be tied up a lot longer to provide the same passenger-miles. Acquiring land and laying track costs what it actually costs in the US and not what it would it would theoretically cost under foreign labor, regulatory, and property-rights conditions.
jhgb 6y ago
> Going from Portland to Oakland is supposed to take 18 hours but actually took 20 when I rode it. Seriously? That's the speed of our slowest local regional trains here in Europe. Long distance trains are about twice as fast per km even on a trip one fourth the length and with several stops. If this is a regular state of affairs then it's no wonder that the state of train travel in the US is what it is.
- ac29 6y ago
  Its a little short of 1200km and goes through some very rugged terrain (cascade mountains). Yes, it would be nice if it was faster, but comparing it to say Paris - Berlin (about the same distance) isnt quite right for several reasons.
  - jhgb 6y ago
    Yep, that should be slightly under 10 hours on my country's terrible railway network (if my country were that long). We have to operate those ETR 470-derived trains ("ČD Class 680") at like 65-70% of their design speed since we don't have any proper rails for them either.
  - kuschku 6y ago
    Rome - Frankfurt (about 1200km) takes (with a looot of changes, and a lot of different trains) about 11 hours. With an ECx or ECE it'd be below 8h.
- ggreer 6y ago
  I know it sounds absurd, but you can check Google Maps for the possible routes and times.[1] It looks like a Greyhound bus is actually 2 hours faster (16 hours). Also it looks like some parts of the track along the west coast are undergoing maintenance. If you want to take the train down to San Diego you have to get off your train, take a bus, then get on another train.[2] 1. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Portland,+Oregon/Oakland,+California/@41.5818583,-126.904018,6z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x54950b0b7da97427:0x1c36b9e6f6d18591!2m2!1d-122.6750261!2d45.5051064!1m5!1m1!1s0x80857d8b28aaed03:0x71b415d535759367!2m2!1d-122.2711639!2d37.8043514!3e3 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Portland,+Oregon/Oakland,+Ca... 2. https://www.amtrak.com/alert/pacific-surfliner-coast-starlight-service-changes.html https://www.amtrak.com/alert/pacific-surfliner-coast-starlig...
Pxtl 6y ago
> There is simply no future in which passenger rail competes with air travel in the US. Even in circumstances where the distances are not too great, and the political and bureaucratic hurdles are. This ignores the existence of climate change. Air travel is not sustainable and air travel is least amenable to conversion to hydrogen or electric. As you mention, the chief barriers to HSR in North America are political and bureaucratic, not practical. What's missing, then, is the political will to do hard things. Governments used to be able to do things, when the situation demanded it. http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly080730.htm http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly080730.htm
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. It's not low-hanging fruit. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation
  - Pxtl 6y ago
    I'm not arguing the point. We are far more able to tackle ground-vehicle emissions, home heating, and electrical generation. But eventually air travel's time will come, and HSR is the only alternative that's on the table.
    - mlinksva 6y ago
      Less travel is also on the table. We should do all of the above. A hefty carbon tax is the holistic instrument, but I'll take any/all paths.
    - philwelch 6y ago
      There are also carbon capture and sequestration and closed-loop hydrocarbon fuel production using carbon-neutral energy sources. It’s completely false, unnecessary, and counterproductive to spread FUD about climate change requiring substantial reductions in quality of life. People are smart and resourceful enough to solve these problems.
  - 6y ago
jonas21 6y ago
You're right that the proposal is disconnected from reality -- but it's not because Amtrak can't be a competitive option for a significant portion of the population. It's because of how Amtrak is funded. There are a handful of routes in the US where Amtrak is currently competitive. As others have mentioned, these are mostly in the Northeast Corridor. Amtrak should be investing in improving these, but instead treats them like a cash cow to fund unprofitable routes elsewhere. There are also a few routes that, with a little bit of investment, could be competitive. LA to San Diego is one example -- they're the #2 and #8 largest cities in the US, only 120 miles apart, and one has notoriously bad traffic. The biggest problem with current service is that some sections of the route share a single track for both directions of travel, which can lead to cascading delays. They're fixing this, but because there's so little funding, it's going to take 30 years just to lay a few dozen miles of track alongside the existing track. It would seem like a no-brainer to prioritize this. But because Amtrak requires congressional funding, and no member of congress wants to be left out, you end up getting grand plans that touch every state in the country, and you have to add routes that have no chance of being successful just to get enough votes. Eyeballing the map, it looks like the only state in the continental US without a stop is South Dakota.
- pmayrgundter 6y ago
  I wonder if Amtrak is the antipattern here for just that reason. Or even the state. How about county to county? Rail just can't cost this much in actuality. It's gotta be the systematics
- presentation 6y ago
  I wish rail in the US were run more like those in Japan - private companies who derive their profits from real estate in and around stations, not solely from fares. It always astounds me how unproductive the land around Amtrak and other public transit stations are - if you’re building a tube that sends people into land you own, there’s immense opportunity for you, and in a way that’s the whole point - the reason people ride trains is usually not to ride the train, but to go somewhere, so why not operate that “somewhere”?
rgbrenner 6y ago
Just to add: Portland to Oakland is only 628mi.. most people have cars, and it's only $60-80 in gas. Even if they gave me a free ticket, I wouldn't trade 10 hours for that.
- nn3 6y ago
  That assumes that you don't need to drive? 10 hours of active driving is something completely different than 20 hours being a passenger/sightseer (of which I would spend significant part asleep or reading) In fact I don't think it's safe to drive for 10 hours, you probably need to add several hours of rest, and will still be half zombie after that. At some point the train becomes attractive. It's certainly a much less stressful option. That said I must agree American trains are in poor shape compared to other places.
  - harambae 6y ago
    >10 hours of active driving Well-marked, well-maintained, well-signed, and gradient/curve controlled interstate highways are among the easiest for self-driving vehicles. It's just about possible today (but expensive and in some ways legally unsolved). It would be shocking if America didn't have popular, reasonably-priced self-driving highway vehicles in 14 years to do that (14 years used to match the timeline of Amtrak's 2035 map).
  - brudgers 6y ago
    So take the bus.
- ac29 6y ago
  > only $60-80 in gas And an additional amount of maintenance costs, vehicle depreciation, insurance, etc. Driving might still come out less expensive, but ignoring all the extra costs makes it look cheaper than it really is.
brudgers 6y ago
At the scale of the US, passenger rail is disconnected from geography. Look at the map and locate Salt Lake City. It sits in the endorheic watershed known as the Great Basin. It is the only metro area of more than a million people in the Basin. The Great Basin is about the size of France. From Salt Lake City heading west the first metro of more than one million is Sacramento a thousand kilometers away. In between is nothing but mountain ranges running north south. The little ones only nerds and locals can name. The big one, the Sierra Nevada, which most Americans will vaguely allude to as “the Rockies.” Despite the Rockies being five hundred kilometers to the east of Salt Lake City. Even further on the other side of the Rockies sits Denver 800 km away. It's the closest million plus metro to the east of Salt Lake. Again across north south mountain ranges. That’s 1800 km of mountain traversing rail line that only serves Salt Lake City. And it’s still almost that far - 1600 km - to Chicago...and a mere 1200 km to New York City. The US is vast. Europeans don’t have practical rail from Helsinki to Athens. Or Berlin to Baku. Both significantly shorter than NYC to San Francisco.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  This only applies from the Midwest to the West Coast. There's no geographical reason the Northeast (and parts of the South) should not be densely connected with intercity rail.
  - brudgers 6y ago
    I agree in theory. In practice, national rail has to pass the Senate where Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Hawaii, and the Dakotas are twelve percent of the votes. Throw in all the places you are leaving out and you're close to half the of it. National passenger rail isn't politically viable in the US because passenger rail is an absurd approach in most of the US. The west and the midwest are most of the US.
    - idreyn 6y ago
      Not in terms of population density, which is what matters when it comes to intercity rail. I know this isn't convincing to senators from big western states — but we've gotta draw a line in the sand in allocating decision making power to big empty spaces in this country, it's becoming an existential concern at this point.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
That whole western north-south corridor is heavily populated by freight trains, and Amtrak trains have to sit on sidings to let the freighters go by. As a result, the train spends a lot of time not moving. It's one of Amtrak's worst lines, IMO. I did Seattle-to-LA once on Amtrak. Never again.
- bpye 6y ago
  It's unfortunate - the western north-south corridor has the potential to be a very useful transit link. I (pre-covid) took the train from Vancouver, BC to Seattle, WA semi-regularly as my preferred mode of travel, but there was at least one instance I can recall of a multi-hour delay due to freight traffic...
adventured 6y ago
> Second, hundreds of billions of dollars doesn't get you much train in the US. California tried to build a high speed rail route between SF and LA. It does, just not in hyper regressive California. You could build a full high-speed rail network between Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio for $100-$150 billion. You just can't build much of anything in California, period, that's the issue. It's a collapsing state in most metrics that matter for quality of life (and has been for a long time), even the venture capitalists can't abandon the state fast enough. As their capital flees, so goes what remains of California (tech). As taxes go far higher this decade, the flight will get worse, Texas and Florida will keep extracting immense value out of California and New York.
- devilbunny 6y ago
  You could, but really, what would HSR in Texas get you? None of those has especially good local transit networks to connect to. Houston and Dallas are famously huge sprawls. If you're talking about downtown to downtown, there's already luxury bus service (Vonlane).
nerdponx 6y ago
Rail travel shouldn't compete with air travel. It should be a fast, comfortable alternative to intercity car and bus travel between major destinations. This model already works well along the Northeast corridor. Even the slow, delay-ridden Empire Service (thank CSX for that) ran full trains between New York and Albany(before Covid). Not to mention the main DC to Boston route. The failure of intercity rail does not seem all that distinct from the general failure to invest in infrastructure in the US, and the enormous costs when the investment is attempted.
- chrononaut 6y ago
  > Rail travel shouldn't compete with air travel ... This model already works well along the Northeast corridor. Except the NEC is heavily competing against existing air travel between its common destinations. Or are you generally referring to longer distance air travel? (i.e., 2+ hours by plane?)
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    The latter, good clarification.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
I don't understand why self-driving cars aren't being discussed here. Trains require massively expensive redundant infrastructure, fail completely at last-mile, and you're at the mercy of a rigid departure schedule. We already have an incredible highway network in America - let's put it to better use. It's so easy to imagine taking a self-driving sleeper taxi overnight between Portland and Oakland in 10 hours - just throw a bed in the damn thing, go to sleep, and wake up at your destination. Give self-driving cars a dedicated lane with a different speed limit, and you could bomb the trip in 7 hours, easy. It'd all utilize existing infrastructure, we'd just be increasing the throughput. If the car is electric, it'll be multiples cheaper than the fuel costs of driving yourself, a spiffy van with nice spread out reclining seats could have multiple passengers so the cost could be split further, and it'd probably be 1-2 orders of magnitude better for the environment than taking a flight.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  Trains are more energy efficient, and unlike self-driving cars, this rail plan has a clear roadmap to being achieved by 2035.
  - bpye 6y ago
    Yes! The technology for rail exists today (and is well proven in Europe and Asia). Self driving cars are largely new and unproven with no clear path to widespread use, with both regulatory and sociatal challenges, in addition to the technical shortcomings that remain. I would hope that Amtrak in the long term also electrifies the rail network so that the dependency on diesel engines can be reduced - for some routes this may not make sense, but where you have frequent services it seems that it would be a worthwhile impovement too.
- dsr_ 6y ago
  Everything you've said there applies to a current mode of transportation called "the bus". Unlike self-driving cars, we already have them. Ten hours by road. Large enough to have sleeper compartments or reclining seats. (Large enough to have restrooms.) Driven by an NI -- natural intelligence -- whose competence is accredited by the state government in a reasonably fair examination of skills. Give a dedicated lane to the bus, and seven hours might be within reach. Really, the problem is that I see flights between the two cities at $70 per person and 2.5 hours in the air. Even if it takes an hour on each extra, that's 5.5 hours versus 7 for a fairly reasonable price.
regextegrity 6y ago
The job of government is to provide services for it's people, it doesn't have to be competitive, just useful.
bpye 6y ago
Amtrak is already competitive in certain regions. The northeast is the most obvious, but the train is my preferred mode of travel between Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA. Whilst a flight is quicker, in the air, door to door is no faster. Driving generally would be quicker but I do try to be concious of the carbon impact of my travel choices. The primary issue I have is that the hours the service runs, the first departure is a little too late to arrive for a morning meeting, and the latest is a little too early to leave the office after 5 - an earlier and later option would make it very viable for one day business travel. Whilst the US population is generally much less dense than much of Europe, there are large areas (PNW, the northeast, much of California) that definitely have high enough population density to support an extensive rail network. Yes there must be political will to make these improvements, but surely that is true of all infrastructure spending?
- ghaff 6y ago
  Even on the Northeast Corridor the morning meeting thing is real from Boston to NY. You really need to go down the night before. Which I'm generally fine with. Have a nice meal, etc. But when I can't I'll end up flying (or driving) in the morning.
m463 6y ago
I suspect it is a much stronger option to people without cars.
jlarocco 6y ago
The irony is that some parts of the United States had great rail connections in the past, and they were torn up to make way for roads. The front range of Colorado, for example, had trains everywhere in the late 1800s. It was the way to get between Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Boulder, Golden, and other cities on the front range. Now they're trying to build a rail link between Denver and Boulder, and it's costing a fortune and running into all kinds of NIMBYism and bureaucracy. I'd love to see it, but the way it's going I'm skeptical it will ever beat out the RTD buses.
mrgordon 6y ago
“The state has since given up on connecting LA & SF by high speed rail” We are going to need a citation here because I’m pretty sure this isn’t true
- ggreer 6y ago
  Back in 2019 Governor Newsom put most of the CA HSR plan on hold indefinitely.[1] Now the official plan is to build a 171-mile high speed rail link from Bakersfield (population 524,000) through Fresno (population 542,000) to Merced (population 83,000), though that might be cancelled since it'll cost over $20 billion.[2] 1. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/02/12/gavin-newsom-brakes-california-high-speed-rail-plan/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/02/12/gavin-newsom-br... 2.https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-08/newsom-bullet-train-faces-financial-crunch https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-08/newsom-b...
presentation 6y ago
It is depressing to me that entrenched interests make improving the US feel impossible. The American Dream is truly dead.
someonehere 6y ago
Part of why it ballooned was that Palmdale wanted to be in on the route. So that connection would add more time and money to the project. There were a lot of cities that wanted to be in on this. From personal experience (family that lives in Fresno), Fresno revamped downtown to get ready for all this. They cleaned up the Fulton Mall route, pumped a ton of money into the area, realtors were banking on Airbnb housing for all the construction jobs coming in from out of town. Fresno even made a concession to allow tiny trailers to be parked and connected on properties with homes on them already. Then the state shut it down. Another reason from what I’ve pieced together is that California had so many hurdles to jump through. Namely the environmental reports that had to be made.

by ggreer 6y ago

tupshin 6y ago

The Northeast corridor is a strong counter argument.

schoen 6y ago
It's strange to see the contrast between how relatively large a share of transportation Amtrak has in the Northeast Corridor compared to elsewhere in the country. I've heard this ascribed to population density, but it doesn't seem like trains are as popular in places like Texas or Southern California.
- blabitty 6y ago
  Development and land use patterns are way different in the Sunbelt. There are lines that go through most downtowns but most of the people live far from the stations. The passenger trains also share lines with freight and freight is prioritized, a trip from Austin to Dallas by Amtrak takes 6 hours but can be driven in 3 or so.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Lots of people in the Northeast don't live in downtowns either. One big difference if that, if you're taking a trip to one of the big cities, you often don't need or even want a car when you get there. On the other hand, if you can drive somewhere in 4-5 hours, taking a train and then having to rent a car when you arrive seems a lot less attractive.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Huge advantage of amtrak is that the stations are in prime locations. In the northeast that's a huge advantage as going from train to destination might be a 15 minute walk. Meanwhile airport to destination could be an hour drive. Sunbelt cities have no density, so the trains location isn't as valuable.
benatkin 6y ago
It could exist without the rest of the network, and probably be cheaper. Why is NJ Transit so much cheaper to go from Philly (via Trenton) to NYC? I think the Northeast Corridor might be subsidizing other parts of Amtrak.
- simfree 6y ago
  Yes, the Northeast Corridor is the only profitable part of Amtrak, that is why Amtrak tried to cut as much service as possible outside the Northeast Corridor prior to Joe Biden taking office.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Yep. Basically the Northeast Corridor is a pretty profitable route. In part, this is because the Acela is basically priced as high as it can be while remaining competitive with air. Business travelers generally pay it because it's a bit more comfortable, a bit faster, and there are fewer plebes than the non-Acela option. Oh, and it's not their money. (And it is competitive with air depending upon your preferences.) To be honest, when it's my own money I usually just take the regular regional train. It's about half the price and because it can piggyback off the electrification done for Acela, it takes less than an hour more.
    - benatkin 6y ago
      Agree. It's 30 more minutes to read or something and 30 less minutes at my destination. On other routes being slow is a massive liability though. If people could get from San Francisco to Portland in 10 hours, or even 12 hours, instead of 18 hours, it would be much more practical. At 18 hours it messes up your sleep schedule rather than just giving you more time to read. It might just not be worth it to spend more on rail travel from Portland to SF though. It's just a reality of geography rather than somebody's mistake that travel from SF to Portland is harder than travel from DC to NYC.
bradleyjg 6y ago
I’ve taken the Acela from NYC to DC and back many times, and it is quite nice. But a big advantage it gets is how much of a pain it is to reach area airports in both cities. If intra-regional mass transit was improved that would paradoxically hurt the competitiveness of inter-regional rail.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Reagan in DC is convenient to the metro (Dulles of course is not) but all of NYC's airports are a pain.
  - benatkin 6y ago
    What about Newark? I went through Newark Penn Station a few times and it seems decent. Is it a PITA to go between Newark Penn Station and the airport, or is the airport itself a bigger hassle than most? Last time I went through LAX there were no good options for getting from there to downtown LA.
    - bradleyjg 6y ago
      Newark is probably the least bad, but you still have to take a slow second train (AirTrain) after getting to Newark Penn. Also, while the NJ Transit trains are better set up for travelers than the LIRR to JFK they aren’t nearly as nice as the dedicated setup they have in London.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Although Heathrow Express is quite pricey compared to the tube and, depending upon where you're going, may not even be more convenient. More often than not, I'm near Trafalgar Square so I just take the Piccadilly Line in. But, yes, Heathrow has good transit options in general (although it's an expensive cab ride).
- cromwellian 6y ago
  Even if getting to the airport is convenient, you still need to arrive 1 hour before your flight, and deal with security, boarding procedures, taxi, air traffic control, etc on both sides. In Japan, I can literally show up for a Shinkansen five minutes before departure and hop right on. Airports for short range traffic are fscking awful.
marcianx 6y ago
NYC to Montreal (~370mi) takes ~8 hours by bus and 11 hours by train, though granted, times at Customs is more variable for the bus than for the train. I'm often surprised at how much the train shakes side to side on the occasions it's going "fast". Contrast that to the TGV in France, which zooms around at 200mph and covered one of my trips between Paris and Avignon (~430mi) in ~2.75hrs about a decade ago. US train infrastructure feels extremely behind in comparison. Perhaps it's because of a greater emphasis on highway travel.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  NYC to Montreal is not part of the NEC; the NEC is solely the portion from DC to Boston. That said, the NYC-Montreal and Boston-Toronto lines are lines that absolutely should be dedicated high-speed passenger rail in addition to the NEC, but they are not even dedicated passenger rail lines at the moment let alone proper 220mph HSR lines.
  - sacredcows 6y ago
    To top it all off, Toronto-NY is one of the busiest air routes in the world, by number of scheduled flights.
- matmatmatmat 6y ago
  To be fair, that leg of the TGV happens to be some of the best track in the whole system. It's practically a straight, non-stop shot from Paris to Avignon on double decker cars with panoramic windows.
- JJMcJ 6y ago
  > how much the train shakes Roadbeds are maintained to freight train standards, e.g., the difference in height of the two rails. Amtrak depends on the "host railroads" who are not very hospitable to passenger traffic.
GongOfFour 6y ago
Much of the Northeast Regionals route is effectively a functioning megapolis. You are not going to find anywhere close to similar conditions anywhere else in the United States.
- jzoch 6y ago
  It functions that way because it has a functioning rail line? Or at least semi-functional. YOu are right you won't find those conditions anywhere else in the US but that is our own fault
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I'm not sure how true that is even though Amtrak is one mover of people. One of the reasons I for one tend to take Amtrak is that Boston area into Manhattan is mostly a pretty awful drive and it isn't because there are so few vehicles on the road. Also, pre-Acela business travelers mostly flew (and many still do) on the northern section of the corridor. And, even today, most business travelers aren't going to take the train from Boston to DC. So it seems pretty probable to me that Acela came about because there was already a huge and increasing demand for such a service.

masklinn 6y ago

> Even in circumstances where the distances are not too great, and the political and bureaucratic hurdles are. NIMBY-ism as well? Because I can't fathom how a 400 miles high-speed rail route can cost $100bn unless you're spending years re-drafting your route because every asshole on the way has to be heard. 25 years is not completely nonsensical though, if you want to do this right it does take time. For a fairly recent example, the french LGV Est is 252 miles (406km), it cost 4bn (including 800 millions worth of rolling stock), and took 16 years before the construction and financing protocol of the first phase was signed and the opening of the second phase. First phase opened a year late, and second phase 3 months late because of the Eckwersheim testing accident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckwersheim_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckwersheim_derailment). Obviously building in California would require additional studies and expenses for earthquake safety and the like, but 12x… seems a bit much. The cost only makes sense if it's basically all tunnels and briges, like Chūō Shinkansen: that's estimated to cost north of $90 billion for 177 miles, but it's going straight through mountains, 90% of the way is through tunnels.

bushbaba 6y ago
Have to wonder if Elon’s boring company is the solution. The state can say you don’t own the ground underneath and just tunnel straight from sf to la
- masklinn 6y ago
  The cost would actually make sense if it were all tunnels. Japan's newest Shinkansen route will be 90% tunnels, and it's estimated at $90bn for 180 miles. Tunneling is expensive as hell.
  - Pxtl 6y ago
    I wonder if you could lower cost by switching to narrower tunnel gauge. Also, if it's all tunnel you could evacuate some of the air to lower resistance... Oh crud Hyperloop finally makes sense to me.

gpvos 6y ago

It might in a future in which air travel is prohibitively highly taxed. Seems unlikely now, but one can dream.

syshum 6y ago
The the only way to make something "attractive" to the population is to place up on its competition prohibitive taxation then you have already lost. Further if that is your "dream" to impose prohibitive taxation on the population I would question your ethical foundation as well Edit: for the record since someone below is using a straw-man to claim I support subsidies, I dont. I prefer the government stay out it completely, neither taxing nor subsidizing (nor bailing out) anything, or any industry. I am not Pro or Anti Rail, nor I am Pro or Anti Air Travel. I am Anti-Government intervention...
- kuschku 6y ago
  If you cling to subsidies as the only way your method of transportation can continue to work, what does that say about you? (Flights barely break even at all, and that's even with the absurd level of subsidies airlines get today)
  - syshum 6y ago
    Pretty sure I never claimed to support government subsidies either... Show me where I have. I prefer the government to stay out of it completely. I prefer the government stay out of everything...
    - kuschku 6y ago
      Without subsidies, there wouldn't be any airlines left :)
      - harambae 6y ago
        Citation needed. In bankruptcy, assets would be sold off (the planes wouldn't be crushed). Businesses restructured and life would go on. It's extremely unlikely no one would be willing to take air travel, even at higher prices than current (I like flying NYC/SF at $150/flight, but I would do it at $600/flight too).

bradleyjg 6y ago

People seem to want inter-regional passenger rail for it’s own sake and search around for a justification to stick on that preference. From an environmental perspective low speed inter-regional fright rail makes a lot more sense. Where high(er) speed passenger rail could really shine is intra-regional lines. Granted stops slow things down, but the NYC region commuter lines (LIRR, MMR, NJT) have horrible average speeds. I understand from friends in greater DC and the Bay Area that the situations there are similar.

benatkin 6y ago

I agree that east to west and north to south cross-country rail is a novelty. The short haul trains are often useful though. I think the novelty is worth keeping but they should focus on that novelty. I'd like to see them have just one east to west route, say, from SF to NYC, and one route on each coast, and besides that coordinate the short haul trains with the cities/states that are using them, perhaps even letting the cities/states run some of them fully. The short haul trains should be run separately from the novelty trains. The proposal is the opposite, and that's why I think it's not a good one. For example, I'd like for the train to Miami to skip Orlando and Tampa, and for Brightline to be left to bring service back if it makes economic sense (they're already working on Orlando). If not, there are buses like Megabus and Flixbus. That would shorten the Boston to Miami route quite a bit.

anaerobicover 6y ago
It's been pointed out numerous times elsewhere in the threads, but long-haul routes are short-haul routes, for people in the middle. Very few people drive I-80 from end to end. Lots of people drive it for trips like Iowa City to Omaha.
- benatkin 6y ago
  I'm aware of that. I don't think amtrak is a good alternative to the interstate (I agree with the comnent I'm replying to), so we should stop trying to make it one. A single cross-country route that runs during waking hours and has fewer stops would be cool though.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ghaff 6y ago
Amtrak does not actually go to SF today, to be pedantic.
- benatkin 6y ago

bobthepanda 6y ago

CA fucking up HSR has more to do with CA than HSR. The entire thing is basically a mismanaged contractor/consultant gravy train. Interestingly enough, rail is competitive in the opposite direction from Portland, namely to Seattle, and Seattle to Vancouver. SeaTac is far enough away from both Tacoma and Seattle to be a slog from many parts of the metro area, and the sole highway corridor gets very congested. And it mostly consists of lots of small investments to the existing route, like a $181M bypass that shaved ten whole minutes off of a 3h30 trip, a 6.7% improvement in travel times. It's most likely these types of smaller improvements that Amtrak will be seeking, and other bang-for-the-buck improvements like electrification. (Even on the same track and same speed limits, electric trains offer better acceleration than their diesel counterparts, which is similar to what we're now seeing from the electrification of cars.)

ffggvv 6y ago
and a national one with the same party in charge would be any different?

Dopameaner 6y ago

Tbh, AMTRAK needs to find its target audience. Right now, work transportation has been a huge thorn for everyone involved. It would be such a boon to commute living from LA to sf for work.

yummypaint 6y ago

Most of the delays and lack of consistency come from the rail lines being controlled by other interests. Amtrak is always lowest on the priority totem pole, and is routinely forced to yield to freight lines for hours at a time arbitrarily and without notice. Lack of high speed rail is an orthogonal issue, and is constantly conflated with fixing the current state of affairs. we don't even have standard passenger rail yet! We need to build more cheap track to connect areas first. Rail travel is far more efficient than flying, both environmentally and economically. Flying is heavily subsidized in ways that rail is not, and that tends to hide the externalities. Rail has also been set up to fail with metrics like direct profitability, which is entirely not the point of public transportation. It's like claiming the entire value of a road is the toll money it generates.

throwawayboise 6y ago
Also level crossings and equipment breakdowns. Collisions between cars and trains are not uncommon. In my first and last Amtrak trip, I rode from Chicago to Las Vegas and was nearly 24 hours late on arrival, due to delays from freight traffic, hitting a car at a crossing, and having a locomotive break down. And my luggage was delayed for another day after that.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Collisions between cars and trains are not uncommon https://www.bts.gov/content/train-fatalities-injuries-and-accidents-type-accidenta https://www.bts.gov/content/train-fatalities-injuries-and-ac... 91 rail collisions (not just with cars, but of all types) for trains (not just passenger trains) in 2020 nationally. That’s...pretty rare.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    Agreed, I'm surprised. I guess because I experienced it, I assumed it was rather more common.
closeparen 6y ago
I don’t think the “economically” part of this statement is at all obvious. Train sets are cheaper than passenger planes but they have to be tied up a lot longer to provide the same passenger-miles. Acquiring land and laying track costs what it actually costs in the US and not what it would it would theoretically cost under foreign labor, regulatory, and property-rights conditions.

jhgb 6y ago

> Going from Portland to Oakland is supposed to take 18 hours but actually took 20 when I rode it. Seriously? That's the speed of our slowest local regional trains here in Europe. Long distance trains are about twice as fast per km even on a trip one fourth the length and with several stops. If this is a regular state of affairs then it's no wonder that the state of train travel in the US is what it is.

ac29 6y ago
Its a little short of 1200km and goes through some very rugged terrain (cascade mountains). Yes, it would be nice if it was faster, but comparing it to say Paris - Berlin (about the same distance) isnt quite right for several reasons.
- jhgb 6y ago
  Yep, that should be slightly under 10 hours on my country's terrible railway network (if my country were that long). We have to operate those ETR 470-derived trains ("ČD Class 680") at like 65-70% of their design speed since we don't have any proper rails for them either.
- kuschku 6y ago
  Rome - Frankfurt (about 1200km) takes (with a looot of changes, and a lot of different trains) about 11 hours. With an ECx or ECE it'd be below 8h.
ggreer 6y ago
I know it sounds absurd, but you can check Google Maps for the possible routes and times.[1] It looks like a Greyhound bus is actually 2 hours faster (16 hours). Also it looks like some parts of the track along the west coast are undergoing maintenance. If you want to take the train down to San Diego you have to get off your train, take a bus, then get on another train.[2] 1. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Portland,+Oregon/Oakland,+California/@41.5818583,-126.904018,6z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x54950b0b7da97427:0x1c36b9e6f6d18591!2m2!1d-122.6750261!2d45.5051064!1m5!1m1!1s0x80857d8b28aaed03:0x71b415d535759367!2m2!1d-122.2711639!2d37.8043514!3e3 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Portland,+Oregon/Oakland,+Ca... 2. https://www.amtrak.com/alert/pacific-surfliner-coast-starlight-service-changes.html https://www.amtrak.com/alert/pacific-surfliner-coast-starlig...

Pxtl 6y ago

> There is simply no future in which passenger rail competes with air travel in the US. Even in circumstances where the distances are not too great, and the political and bureaucratic hurdles are. This ignores the existence of climate change. Air travel is not sustainable and air travel is least amenable to conversion to hydrogen or electric. As you mention, the chief barriers to HSR in North America are political and bureaucratic, not practical. What's missing, then, is the political will to do hard things. Governments used to be able to do things, when the situation demanded it. http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly080730.htm http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly080730.htm

throwawayboise 6y ago
Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. It's not low-hanging fruit. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation
- Pxtl 6y ago
  I'm not arguing the point. We are far more able to tackle ground-vehicle emissions, home heating, and electrical generation. But eventually air travel's time will come, and HSR is the only alternative that's on the table.
  - mlinksva 6y ago
    Less travel is also on the table. We should do all of the above. A hefty carbon tax is the holistic instrument, but I'll take any/all paths.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    There are also carbon capture and sequestration and closed-loop hydrocarbon fuel production using carbon-neutral energy sources. It’s completely false, unnecessary, and counterproductive to spread FUD about climate change requiring substantial reductions in quality of life. People are smart and resourceful enough to solve these problems.
- 6y ago

jonas21 6y ago

You're right that the proposal is disconnected from reality -- but it's not because Amtrak can't be a competitive option for a significant portion of the population. It's because of how Amtrak is funded. There are a handful of routes in the US where Amtrak is currently competitive. As others have mentioned, these are mostly in the Northeast Corridor. Amtrak should be investing in improving these, but instead treats them like a cash cow to fund unprofitable routes elsewhere. There are also a few routes that, with a little bit of investment, could be competitive. LA to San Diego is one example -- they're the #2 and #8 largest cities in the US, only 120 miles apart, and one has notoriously bad traffic. The biggest problem with current service is that some sections of the route share a single track for both directions of travel, which can lead to cascading delays. They're fixing this, but because there's so little funding, it's going to take 30 years just to lay a few dozen miles of track alongside the existing track. It would seem like a no-brainer to prioritize this. But because Amtrak requires congressional funding, and no member of congress wants to be left out, you end up getting grand plans that touch every state in the country, and you have to add routes that have no chance of being successful just to get enough votes. Eyeballing the map, it looks like the only state in the continental US without a stop is South Dakota.

pmayrgundter 6y ago
I wonder if Amtrak is the antipattern here for just that reason. Or even the state. How about county to county? Rail just can't cost this much in actuality. It's gotta be the systematics
presentation 6y ago
I wish rail in the US were run more like those in Japan - private companies who derive their profits from real estate in and around stations, not solely from fares. It always astounds me how unproductive the land around Amtrak and other public transit stations are - if you’re building a tube that sends people into land you own, there’s immense opportunity for you, and in a way that’s the whole point - the reason people ride trains is usually not to ride the train, but to go somewhere, so why not operate that “somewhere”?

rgbrenner 6y ago

Just to add: Portland to Oakland is only 628mi.. most people have cars, and it's only $60-80 in gas. Even if they gave me a free ticket, I wouldn't trade 10 hours for that.

nn3 6y ago
That assumes that you don't need to drive? 10 hours of active driving is something completely different than 20 hours being a passenger/sightseer (of which I would spend significant part asleep or reading) In fact I don't think it's safe to drive for 10 hours, you probably need to add several hours of rest, and will still be half zombie after that. At some point the train becomes attractive. It's certainly a much less stressful option. That said I must agree American trains are in poor shape compared to other places.
- harambae 6y ago
  >10 hours of active driving Well-marked, well-maintained, well-signed, and gradient/curve controlled interstate highways are among the easiest for self-driving vehicles. It's just about possible today (but expensive and in some ways legally unsolved). It would be shocking if America didn't have popular, reasonably-priced self-driving highway vehicles in 14 years to do that (14 years used to match the timeline of Amtrak's 2035 map).
- brudgers 6y ago
  So take the bus.
ac29 6y ago
> only $60-80 in gas And an additional amount of maintenance costs, vehicle depreciation, insurance, etc. Driving might still come out less expensive, but ignoring all the extra costs makes it look cheaper than it really is.

brudgers 6y ago

At the scale of the US, passenger rail is disconnected from geography. Look at the map and locate Salt Lake City. It sits in the endorheic watershed known as the Great Basin. It is the only metro area of more than a million people in the Basin. The Great Basin is about the size of France. From Salt Lake City heading west the first metro of more than one million is Sacramento a thousand kilometers away. In between is nothing but mountain ranges running north south. The little ones only nerds and locals can name. The big one, the Sierra Nevada, which most Americans will vaguely allude to as “the Rockies.” Despite the Rockies being five hundred kilometers to the east of Salt Lake City. Even further on the other side of the Rockies sits Denver 800 km away. It's the closest million plus metro to the east of Salt Lake. Again across north south mountain ranges. That’s 1800 km of mountain traversing rail line that only serves Salt Lake City. And it’s still almost that far - 1600 km - to Chicago...and a mere 1200 km to New York City. The US is vast. Europeans don’t have practical rail from Helsinki to Athens. Or Berlin to Baku. Both significantly shorter than NYC to San Francisco.

nerdponx 6y ago
This only applies from the Midwest to the West Coast. There's no geographical reason the Northeast (and parts of the South) should not be densely connected with intercity rail.
- brudgers 6y ago
  I agree in theory. In practice, national rail has to pass the Senate where Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Hawaii, and the Dakotas are twelve percent of the votes. Throw in all the places you are leaving out and you're close to half the of it. National passenger rail isn't politically viable in the US because passenger rail is an absurd approach in most of the US. The west and the midwest are most of the US.
  - idreyn 6y ago
    Not in terms of population density, which is what matters when it comes to intercity rail. I know this isn't convincing to senators from big western states — but we've gotta draw a line in the sand in allocating decision making power to big empty spaces in this country, it's becoming an existential concern at this point.

dreamcompiler 6y ago

That whole western north-south corridor is heavily populated by freight trains, and Amtrak trains have to sit on sidings to let the freighters go by. As a result, the train spends a lot of time not moving. It's one of Amtrak's worst lines, IMO. I did Seattle-to-LA once on Amtrak. Never again.

bpye 6y ago
It's unfortunate - the western north-south corridor has the potential to be a very useful transit link. I (pre-covid) took the train from Vancouver, BC to Seattle, WA semi-regularly as my preferred mode of travel, but there was at least one instance I can recall of a multi-hour delay due to freight traffic...

adventured 6y ago

> Second, hundreds of billions of dollars doesn't get you much train in the US. California tried to build a high speed rail route between SF and LA. It does, just not in hyper regressive California. You could build a full high-speed rail network between Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio for $100-$150 billion. You just can't build much of anything in California, period, that's the issue. It's a collapsing state in most metrics that matter for quality of life (and has been for a long time), even the venture capitalists can't abandon the state fast enough. As their capital flees, so goes what remains of California (tech). As taxes go far higher this decade, the flight will get worse, Texas and Florida will keep extracting immense value out of California and New York.

devilbunny 6y ago
You could, but really, what would HSR in Texas get you? None of those has especially good local transit networks to connect to. Houston and Dallas are famously huge sprawls. If you're talking about downtown to downtown, there's already luxury bus service (Vonlane).

nerdponx 6y ago

Rail travel shouldn't compete with air travel. It should be a fast, comfortable alternative to intercity car and bus travel between major destinations. This model already works well along the Northeast corridor. Even the slow, delay-ridden Empire Service (thank CSX for that) ran full trains between New York and Albany(before Covid). Not to mention the main DC to Boston route. The failure of intercity rail does not seem all that distinct from the general failure to invest in infrastructure in the US, and the enormous costs when the investment is attempted.

chrononaut 6y ago
> Rail travel shouldn't compete with air travel ... This model already works well along the Northeast corridor. Except the NEC is heavily competing against existing air travel between its common destinations. Or are you generally referring to longer distance air travel? (i.e., 2+ hours by plane?)
- nerdponx 6y ago
  The latter, good clarification.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago

I don't understand why self-driving cars aren't being discussed here. Trains require massively expensive redundant infrastructure, fail completely at last-mile, and you're at the mercy of a rigid departure schedule. We already have an incredible highway network in America - let's put it to better use. It's so easy to imagine taking a self-driving sleeper taxi overnight between Portland and Oakland in 10 hours - just throw a bed in the damn thing, go to sleep, and wake up at your destination. Give self-driving cars a dedicated lane with a different speed limit, and you could bomb the trip in 7 hours, easy. It'd all utilize existing infrastructure, we'd just be increasing the throughput. If the car is electric, it'll be multiples cheaper than the fuel costs of driving yourself, a spiffy van with nice spread out reclining seats could have multiple passengers so the cost could be split further, and it'd probably be 1-2 orders of magnitude better for the environment than taking a flight.

sangnoir 6y ago
Trains are more energy efficient, and unlike self-driving cars, this rail plan has a clear roadmap to being achieved by 2035.
- bpye 6y ago
  Yes! The technology for rail exists today (and is well proven in Europe and Asia). Self driving cars are largely new and unproven with no clear path to widespread use, with both regulatory and sociatal challenges, in addition to the technical shortcomings that remain. I would hope that Amtrak in the long term also electrifies the rail network so that the dependency on diesel engines can be reduced - for some routes this may not make sense, but where you have frequent services it seems that it would be a worthwhile impovement too.
dsr_ 6y ago
Everything you've said there applies to a current mode of transportation called "the bus". Unlike self-driving cars, we already have them. Ten hours by road. Large enough to have sleeper compartments or reclining seats. (Large enough to have restrooms.) Driven by an NI -- natural intelligence -- whose competence is accredited by the state government in a reasonably fair examination of skills. Give a dedicated lane to the bus, and seven hours might be within reach. Really, the problem is that I see flights between the two cities at $70 per person and 2.5 hours in the air. Even if it takes an hour on each extra, that's 5.5 hours versus 7 for a fairly reasonable price.

regextegrity 6y ago

The job of government is to provide services for it's people, it doesn't have to be competitive, just useful.

bpye 6y ago

Amtrak is already competitive in certain regions. The northeast is the most obvious, but the train is my preferred mode of travel between Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA. Whilst a flight is quicker, in the air, door to door is no faster. Driving generally would be quicker but I do try to be concious of the carbon impact of my travel choices. The primary issue I have is that the hours the service runs, the first departure is a little too late to arrive for a morning meeting, and the latest is a little too early to leave the office after 5 - an earlier and later option would make it very viable for one day business travel. Whilst the US population is generally much less dense than much of Europe, there are large areas (PNW, the northeast, much of California) that definitely have high enough population density to support an extensive rail network. Yes there must be political will to make these improvements, but surely that is true of all infrastructure spending?

ghaff 6y ago
Even on the Northeast Corridor the morning meeting thing is real from Boston to NY. You really need to go down the night before. Which I'm generally fine with. Have a nice meal, etc. But when I can't I'll end up flying (or driving) in the morning.

m463 6y ago

I suspect it is a much stronger option to people without cars.

jlarocco 6y ago

The irony is that some parts of the United States had great rail connections in the past, and they were torn up to make way for roads. The front range of Colorado, for example, had trains everywhere in the late 1800s. It was the way to get between Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Boulder, Golden, and other cities on the front range. Now they're trying to build a rail link between Denver and Boulder, and it's costing a fortune and running into all kinds of NIMBYism and bureaucracy. I'd love to see it, but the way it's going I'm skeptical it will ever beat out the RTD buses.

mrgordon 6y ago

“The state has since given up on connecting LA & SF by high speed rail” We are going to need a citation here because I’m pretty sure this isn’t true

ggreer 6y ago
Back in 2019 Governor Newsom put most of the CA HSR plan on hold indefinitely.[1] Now the official plan is to build a 171-mile high speed rail link from Bakersfield (population 524,000) through Fresno (population 542,000) to Merced (population 83,000), though that might be cancelled since it'll cost over $20 billion.[2] 1. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/02/12/gavin-newsom-brakes-california-high-speed-rail-plan/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/02/12/gavin-newsom-br... 2.https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-08/newsom-bullet-train-faces-financial-crunch https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-08/newsom-b...

presentation 6y ago

It is depressing to me that entrenched interests make improving the US feel impossible. The American Dream is truly dead.

someonehere 6y ago

Part of why it ballooned was that Palmdale wanted to be in on the route. So that connection would add more time and money to the project. There were a lot of cities that wanted to be in on this. From personal experience (family that lives in Fresno), Fresno revamped downtown to get ready for all this. They cleaned up the Fulton Mall route, pumped a ton of money into the area, realtors were banking on Airbnb housing for all the construction jobs coming in from out of town. Fresno even made a concession to allow tiny trailers to be parked and connected on properties with homes on them already. Then the state shut it down. Another reason from what I’ve pieced together is that California had so many hurdles to jump through. Namely the environmental reports that had to be made.