5 ms·

It is a shame, but it's expected, right? How many edges would a well connected graph of the US have (or rather need if we use nodes as passthrough), how much wo

by jjice 5y ago

It is a shame, but it's expected, right? How many edges would a well connected graph of the US have (or rather need if we use nodes as passthrough), how much would this cost to build and operate, and how much would these be used compared to planes? I want to say that I would love better train infrastructure as well, and spending some time in New England has shown me what a fraction of a good one could be and I love it. That said, I don't see how it can be done financially possible, with extremely rough overviews in my head. I'm very ignorant on the topic, so please enlighten me if I'm missing some stuff, which is very possible. I'd honestly love to know.

opinion-is-bad 5y ago
The US has world-class train service for freight. The lower population density of the US than Europe and East Asia makes planes a better investment in the US. Less rail to lay per person server makes a big difference.
- bluGill 5y ago
  The midwest of the US has similar population density to France. The western half of the US with few people (not to mention Alaska) really skew the population density.
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    By way of Alon Levy's blog (although original credit goes to a Twitter user), here's the TGV overlaid on the Midwest: https://twitter.com/Artifact_Scott/status/1377702867944009737 https://twitter.com/Artifact_Scott/status/137770286794400973... The major Midwestern cities are remarkably close in distance from Chicago as major French cities are from Paris, and in terms of population counts, the US has consistently larger cities.
    - multiplegeorges 5y ago
      Sure, but the problem is what do you do once you get there? In France, the cities are dense with decent to great transit. In the US, you have low, flat, sprawling cities with no real transit to speak of. You have to drive.
      - clairity 5y ago
        > "...what do you do once you get there?" car rental, ridehailing, metro bus/train, taxi, friends/family pickup, etc., just as with air travel.
      - gsnedders 5y ago
        This is why looking at the current number of aviation passengers on these routes that's often the most valuable thing. It shows where people think the time savings justify hiring a car/taking taxis. Clearly not having overheads of airport security will probably reduce the minimum distance required for this, but as a first pass it's good data source.
      - soperj 5y ago
        Same thing with planes except you start way outside the city.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        I have long said that we need to work on local transit before we work on HSR, but in truth the two do compliment each other. All cities of any size at all have at least a small amount of useful local transit. Expand the local system and make it useful would be a great investment and HSR will make it more useful. Most local transit systems are run by people who drive though, and it shows in how bad the majority of the system is.
- mimixco 5y ago
  It's interesting that Amazon (who spends a fortune on trucking) has created their own cargo airline and starting buying metal because it works out better for them than paying a trucking company. They make money on fast turnaround and big distribution warehouses close to population centers, then they truck the last mile with their own vans. Historically, the cheapest ways to ship anything are by sea, by rail, and by truck, in that order. Airplanes are still inordinately more expensive but folks are willing to pay for that quick delivery that trucks and rail simply can't do.
equalsione 5y ago
Your comment reminded me of this video illustrating the travelling salesman algorithm on a US map (I love the music): https://youtu.be/SC5CX8drAtU https://youtu.be/SC5CX8drAtU
jcranmer 5y ago
The viable HSR network for the US looks roughly like this: * Existing NEC (DC to Boston via Baltimore, Philly, NYC, Hartford/Springfield/Worcester or Providence) * NYC to Montreal and Boston to Toronto, with an interchange at Albany * Midwest star shape, centered at Chicago, with prongs to Minneapolis, St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Louisville or Cincinnati. The southern Midwest region is kind of hard for me to crayon a network. * (Not part of the US strictly speaking) Detroit to Quebec via Windsor, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal. Basically all of Canada's population on one rail line, with easy access to the US via interchanges at three separate points. * Hooking up the Midwest to the NEC, although I'm somewhat dubious of the viability here. * Texas Triangle (Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio) * California: SF, San Jose, Sacramento, LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix. * Maybe viable: Portland-Seattle-Vancouver * Maybe viable: SEHSR, from Miami to Atlanta, and thence to Midwest (via Nashville) or NEC (via North Carolina's Research Triangle and Richmond). (Citation: this is largely based on Alon Levy's crayoning, found here: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/03/22/high-speed-rail-followup/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/03/22/high-speed-rai...)
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Existing NEC (DC to Boston via Baltimore, Philly, NYC, Hartford/Springfield/Worcester or Providence) This is the problem. The real route is Boston - New York - D.C. The others are lower population, lower GDP and not in line with the other three. But if you build the core route and exclude Philadelphia, you'll have an uproar in the Senate.
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    I was on the train a week ago. Of the three of us sitting at the table who got on at Boston, one was going to Philadelphia, one was going to Wilmington, and one was going to Baltimore. One of the chief advantages of trains is that you do not have to cater only to point-to-point routes; you can instead serve a combinatorial explosion in routes for comparatively little time: a stop adds only ~5 minutes to a HSR train, and that's the worst-case scenario. There is no advantage to bypassing Philadelphia: the amount of money it costs to bypass the city is going to be quite large, and you will miss out on all the potential revenue from stopping at the city itself. From my practical experience riding the train, the biggest factor in existing slow trains in Connecticut isn't all the stops it makes in Connecticut, but the incompetence of Metro North's dispatching that keeps a high-speed train plodding along below highway speeds between stations. (Also, side note: Philly's MSA is larger than Boston's, and Philly provides more Amtrak riders than Boston's 4 stations combined--and one of those isn't even on the NEC!).
lostapathy 5y ago
Our only hope is that, at some point, the US can reap the advantages of tech advances elsewhere and go straight to really great trains, rather than having a bunch of meh passenger rail we can't justify replacing. Kind of like how, supposedly, 4G networks were more widespread in pockets of Africa you'd never expect before they were widespread in the US, because those parts of Africa didn't have 2G/3G infrastructure to depreciate and customers to migrate off before 4G could be deployed.
- bluGill 5y ago
  The problem is everyone is looking to the next advance and so nothing gets built. Eventually you have to commit to something and build it. Right not politicians are looking at things like hyperloop which maybe can be useful in the future, but right now are power point slides and other hype. Instead we could go with something that works - there is plenty of things much better than we have.

by jjice 5y ago

opinion-is-bad 5y ago

The US has world-class train service for freight. The lower population density of the US than Europe and East Asia makes planes a better investment in the US. Less rail to lay per person server makes a big difference.

bluGill 5y ago
The midwest of the US has similar population density to France. The western half of the US with few people (not to mention Alaska) really skew the population density.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  By way of Alon Levy's blog (although original credit goes to a Twitter user), here's the TGV overlaid on the Midwest: https://twitter.com/Artifact_Scott/status/1377702867944009737 https://twitter.com/Artifact_Scott/status/137770286794400973... The major Midwestern cities are remarkably close in distance from Chicago as major French cities are from Paris, and in terms of population counts, the US has consistently larger cities.
  - multiplegeorges 5y ago
    Sure, but the problem is what do you do once you get there? In France, the cities are dense with decent to great transit. In the US, you have low, flat, sprawling cities with no real transit to speak of. You have to drive.
    - clairity 5y ago
      > "...what do you do once you get there?" car rental, ridehailing, metro bus/train, taxi, friends/family pickup, etc., just as with air travel.
    - gsnedders 5y ago
      This is why looking at the current number of aviation passengers on these routes that's often the most valuable thing. It shows where people think the time savings justify hiring a car/taking taxis. Clearly not having overheads of airport security will probably reduce the minimum distance required for this, but as a first pass it's good data source.
    - soperj 5y ago
      Same thing with planes except you start way outside the city.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I have long said that we need to work on local transit before we work on HSR, but in truth the two do compliment each other. All cities of any size at all have at least a small amount of useful local transit. Expand the local system and make it useful would be a great investment and HSR will make it more useful. Most local transit systems are run by people who drive though, and it shows in how bad the majority of the system is.
mimixco 5y ago
It's interesting that Amazon (who spends a fortune on trucking) has created their own cargo airline and starting buying metal because it works out better for them than paying a trucking company. They make money on fast turnaround and big distribution warehouses close to population centers, then they truck the last mile with their own vans. Historically, the cheapest ways to ship anything are by sea, by rail, and by truck, in that order. Airplanes are still inordinately more expensive but folks are willing to pay for that quick delivery that trucks and rail simply can't do.

equalsione 5y ago

Your comment reminded me of this video illustrating the travelling salesman algorithm on a US map (I love the music): https://youtu.be/SC5CX8drAtU https://youtu.be/SC5CX8drAtU

jcranmer 5y ago

The viable HSR network for the US looks roughly like this: * Existing NEC (DC to Boston via Baltimore, Philly, NYC, Hartford/Springfield/Worcester or Providence) * NYC to Montreal and Boston to Toronto, with an interchange at Albany * Midwest star shape, centered at Chicago, with prongs to Minneapolis, St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Louisville or Cincinnati. The southern Midwest region is kind of hard for me to crayon a network. * (Not part of the US strictly speaking) Detroit to Quebec via Windsor, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal. Basically all of Canada's population on one rail line, with easy access to the US via interchanges at three separate points. * Hooking up the Midwest to the NEC, although I'm somewhat dubious of the viability here. * Texas Triangle (Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio) * California: SF, San Jose, Sacramento, LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix. * Maybe viable: Portland-Seattle-Vancouver * Maybe viable: SEHSR, from Miami to Atlanta, and thence to Midwest (via Nashville) or NEC (via North Carolina's Research Triangle and Richmond). (Citation: this is largely based on Alon Levy's crayoning, found here: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/03/22/high-speed-rail-followup/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/03/22/high-speed-rai...)

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Existing NEC (DC to Boston via Baltimore, Philly, NYC, Hartford/Springfield/Worcester or Providence) This is the problem. The real route is Boston - New York - D.C. The others are lower population, lower GDP and not in line with the other three. But if you build the core route and exclude Philadelphia, you'll have an uproar in the Senate.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  I was on the train a week ago. Of the three of us sitting at the table who got on at Boston, one was going to Philadelphia, one was going to Wilmington, and one was going to Baltimore. One of the chief advantages of trains is that you do not have to cater only to point-to-point routes; you can instead serve a combinatorial explosion in routes for comparatively little time: a stop adds only ~5 minutes to a HSR train, and that's the worst-case scenario. There is no advantage to bypassing Philadelphia: the amount of money it costs to bypass the city is going to be quite large, and you will miss out on all the potential revenue from stopping at the city itself. From my practical experience riding the train, the biggest factor in existing slow trains in Connecticut isn't all the stops it makes in Connecticut, but the incompetence of Metro North's dispatching that keeps a high-speed train plodding along below highway speeds between stations. (Also, side note: Philly's MSA is larger than Boston's, and Philly provides more Amtrak riders than Boston's 4 stations combined--and one of those isn't even on the NEC!).

lostapathy 5y ago

Our only hope is that, at some point, the US can reap the advantages of tech advances elsewhere and go straight to really great trains, rather than having a bunch of meh passenger rail we can't justify replacing. Kind of like how, supposedly, 4G networks were more widespread in pockets of Africa you'd never expect before they were widespread in the US, because those parts of Africa didn't have 2G/3G infrastructure to depreciate and customers to migrate off before 4G could be deployed.

bluGill 5y ago
The problem is everyone is looking to the next advance and so nothing gets built. Eventually you have to commit to something and build it. Right not politicians are looking at things like hyperloop which maybe can be useful in the future, but right now are power point slides and other hype. Instead we could go with something that works - there is plenty of things much better than we have.