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The fact the US is basically empty means the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high because of the sheer distances involved. Y

The fact the US is basically empty means the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high because of the sheer distances involved. You’re talking like 1000 miles, not 200. The places which are closer together, like the East Coast, do have some passenger rail but they’re also much denser, like Europe, and so they have the same kind of constraints (or worse). The US has a lot of freight rail, and we use it. The Wild West mentality has gone away in the railroad industry which is now hyper-conservative and regulated. I do sometimes wish the US lived up to the Wild West stereotype the Europeans imagine. But no, we often have just as much stifling regulation (if not more), depending on where you’re talking about. But we do have gun violence, so there’s that.

OJFord 4y ago
I don't know why this is down-voted so, but to me also outside the US it seems correct? You bill for travel between stations, there'd be a lot more track & travel between stations in the US, on average, if it were as ubiquitous. Intranational flight is a lot more common there. I imagine the economics of it are better, lower ticket price, and in many cases probably quicker too, even including airport BS.
- ejb999 4y ago
  >>Intranational flight is a lot more common there. I imagine the economics of it are better, lower ticket price, and in many cases probably quicker too, even including airport BS. That is the problem in my opinion - I prefer sitting on a train, to sitting on a plane, but for most routes I need to travel (within the US) it takes longer to get there and is more expensive than flying - why would anyone want to pay more and waste more time? You either need to be faster or cheaper if you want my business.
  - secretsatan 4y ago
    The more rail improves the more I'm tempted to take it, with flying you have the additional time cost of just dealing with the airports, turn up an hour early, then get put in the metal tube where they won't serve you drink till they're up in the air, and you can't bring your own. A train may take longer sometimes, but I find the whole thing much less stressful, you're not strapped to the seat, you have leg room, even a table, power sockets, bring your own food and drink, and the prices are competitive. It still takes longer than I'd like to get from Switzerland to the UK, and that's mostly due to a lengthy change in Paris. I think in France, and prob other countries too, their moving to ban domestic flights that can be done on rail instead
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      It's hard to overstate how different the European rail experience is from the American experience. SF<->LA is a 50m, $50 flight. It's approx. 9h and $400 by rail. In practice, the last time I attempted that route it took 15h because the train had issues halfway and none of the assigned seats had power or legroom.
      - brewdad 4y ago
        Even the Seattle to Portland route, probably the best on the west coast, has issues. A flight takes about 50 mins and can be had for about $60. Alaska Airlines runs flights at least once an hour all day long. From 6am until midnight. The train takes 3.5 hours (often closer to 4 and I've had it take more than 5 just because of freight priority). The train makes 4 trips a day (one being a longer route that is usually delayed) and the timing means that any business trip will probably require an overnight stay. The train is only $27 though because both states (especially WA) heavily subsidize the route. In the end, it really comes down to where in the metro areas your trip begins and ends as to which works out best. For us, the train station saves about an hour of ground transport time compared to the airports and we can arrive much closer to departure, so the train works best. For plenty of others, the airport will be faster and probably easier logistically.
      - mikotodomo 4y ago
        wow wtf, american trains are so bad. the government should force those companies to fix it
  - OJFord 4y ago
    Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying really. It's going to be slower and more expensive so not so many people are going to want to do it so why build more of it. If the major stops are closer together, 'a journey' is shorter and cheaper and beats air travel, and many more people will pay for it.
  - chrisfinazzo 4y ago
    I don't really have a preference, but having done my first couple flights in close to 20 years in the past 3 months, I was struck by how much has changed in that time. PreCheck and Global Entry weren't around when we went to Bermuda in August 2001. It was a trip notable not only for its proximity to 9/11 - by chance, my bag was searched either before we left L.F Wade in St. George's or on arrival back in Newark, but this happened without my knowledge and I only found out about it because customs had repacked it included a note informing me of this fact inside. - and also because a trip to camp the previous week was the start of an ear infection which burst my ear drum on the plane going down. Fun times. However, I quite like the idea of passport control on a train happening before you embark on the departing leg of a trip. With those formalities out of the way, just collect your bags at the destination and you're free to go. I don't know if the FAA or TSA would consider this too burdensome to implement, but it's an idea.
    - anonymous_sorry 4y ago
      > However, I quite like the idea of passport control on a train happening before you embark on the departing leg of a trip. With those formalities out of the way, just collect your bags at the destination and you're free to go. It's better than that. Space on board is at less of a premium so train carriages can be made with plenty of room for luggage alongside passengers. No need to check baggage.
    - jrockway 4y ago
      They've been trying to implement passport control before boarding the train between NYC and Montreal for a while, but nothing seems to have come of it. It was an Obama-era priority. I haven't taken that train in many years, but they basically stop the train at the border and immigration agents board and check everyone's passport. It's scheduled to take 2 hours. Really stupid. It's a 45 minute flight, and you go through US immigration in Canada before boarding the flight.
      - OJFord 4y ago
        That's crazy. Perhaps a good comparison is the channel tunnel, e.g. going from London to Paris you go through security similar (a bit less onerous) to that at an airport before boarding. That was the case even with the UK in the EU (maybe it's not any less onerous than an airport now actually, idk) but otherwise intra-EU over land is not an issue, almost necessarily. (But then, you might think that about Canada/US.)
- hannasanarion 4y ago
  Nobody's asking for an express train between Jackson and Billings. When you exclude the Mountain States and Alaska, the US has about the same population density as Western Europe. There's no good reason for us to have zero public transit options between Atlanta and Savannah, Madison and Milwaukee, Columbus and Cincinatti, Denver and Colorado Springs, or Mobile and New Orleans.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    >There's no good reason for us to have zero public transit options between Atlanta and Savannah, Madison and Milwaukee, Columbus and Cincinatti, Denver and Colorado Springs, or Mobile and New Orleans. Does regular bus service not count? Sure they're not publicly owned but does that result in any meaningful differences to the users?
  - madcaptenor 4y ago
    Quick sanity check here, because I've seen this claim and never bothered to check. Let's say Western Europe = Germany, Austria, Italy, and everything west of them, i. e. Benelux, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain (= UK - Northern Ireland). (I'm including the UK and excluding Ireland because there are rail connecctions from Britain to the mainland but not from Ireland to Britain. I'm excluding Denmark because isn't that really Scandinavia?) Total population: Germany = 84m, France = 68m, Britain = 66m, Italy = 59m, Spain = 47m, Netherlands = 18m, Belgium = 12m, Portugal = 10m, Austria = 9m, Switzerland = 9m, Luxembourg = 1m. Total is 383m. Total area, in km^2: Germany = 358k, France = 551k, Britain = 228k, Italy = 301k, Spain = 499k, Netherlands = 41k, Belgium = 31k, Portugal = 88k, Austria = 84k, Switzerland = 41k, Luxembourg = 3k. Total is 2225k. So the population density of western Europe is about 172/km^2 or 445/mi^2. The only states this dense are DC, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware; New York and Florida are just under the cutoff. If I've done the math right, DC + NJ + RI + MA + CT + MD + DE + NY + PA + OH (74m people/429k km^2) is the largest contiguous bunch of states which is over 172 people/km^2. If we take the east to be everything east of the Mississippi, I get 190m people in 2.301m km^2, or 82 people/km^2. If we add in CA + OR + WA that actually drags down the density a bit. So the densely populated bits of the Northeast/mid-Atlantic are as densely populated as Western Europe. But the eastern US as a whole isn't. I agree that those pairs of cities you mentioned should have better connections between them though.
melling 4y ago
Yes, we agree we should only build where it makes sense. 1000 miles is quite far. That would be 5-6 hours! - NYC - Miami 1300 miles - NYC - Chicago 800 miles Then we have these: - NYC - Philly 92 miles - NYC - DC 225 miles - NYC - Boston 215 miles - NYC - Portland, ME 325 miles - NYC - Pittsburgh 380 miles - NYC - Cleveland 470 miles - Cleveland - Chicago 350 miles - St. Louis - Chicago 320 miles - Houston - Dallas 240 miles - Houston - Austin 170 miles - Dallas - Austin 200 miles - Seattle - Portland 175 miles - Las Vegas - Los Angeles 280 miles California too.
- dahart 4y ago
  Sadly our 1000 mile trips currently take ~24 hours rather than the 5-6 that it could. Multiple factors for that: slow trains; long stops; cargo rail gets priority over passenger rail.
  - chrisfinazzo 4y ago
    Yep. Even the fastest trains Amtrak offers ("Acela") are zoned - or permitted, not sure what the right term is here - up to 150 MPH, and only on specific portions of the route. Makes no sense at all.
    - redtexture 4y ago
      The sense is that the Northeast corridor has too many curves and roadbed issues to be able to go faster. There would have to be constructed a new corridor, not in the same path as existing railroad rights of way, for not a small amount of money, and going through expensive real estate. The political will for that is not in existence, so far.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        And the fact is that while taking a train the full length of the Northeast Corridor takes too long to be practical most of the time, NYC to points north and NYC to points south works pretty well (i.e. is competitive with flying) with existing trains.
woodruffw 4y ago
I agree that we should let density and demand drive construction of HSR. That being said, there are plenty of plausible HSR routes in the US. We're a very sparsely populated country in our middle, but there's effectively a "string" of large cities right through our middle: NYC - Pittsburgh - Columbus - {Cincinnati, Indianapolis} - {Louisville, St. Louis} - Kansas City - Oklahoma City - Albuquerque - {Phoenix, Tucson} - Los Angeles. All of the legs there should under 400 miles, and most should be under 200. There's also plenty of room for adjustment: Louisville - Nashville - Memphis - Dallas and then onward south, for example.
aj7 4y ago
I see no mention of 737’s and A320’s here or in most posts. Compare the price per mile with those of alternatives. The U.S. doesn’t even resemble Europe.
wbsss4412 4y ago
The center of population in the US is still just barely to the west of the Mississippi, whenever people point out how vast and largely empty the US is, the leave out that the population itself is actually generally fairly close together for a majority of the country. You could easily have HSR all over the south, Midwest and NE, and then between population centers on the west coast, just likely not in the desert and western Great Plains.
- madcaptenor 4y ago
  See for example Alon Levy's map of proposed HSR for the Eastern United States: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-rail-for-the-eastern-united-states/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-rai... They've actually done serious investigation of what's viable given typical costs and ridership of high-speed lines elsewhere in the world. The high-speed bits they propose are basically a Boston-Atlanta-Chicago triangle with some ornaments (Chicago - KC, Chicago - Minneapolis, Cleveland - Pittsburgh - Philadelphia, and connections to Toronto, Montreal, Quebec), and separate networks in Florida and Texas. Connecting the Florida and Texas networks to the main one is marginal. I'm not sure of their opinions on separate networks in the Pacific Northwest and in California, but I'm sure they have looked at it. I do recall them saying that it doesn't make sense to connect, say, Portland to San Francisco - there's just not much in between.
  - wbsss4412 4y ago
    It doesn’t make sense to connect Portland and SF, but there’s a lot of value to be gained in connecting Portland and Vancouver BC, and San Diego to SF/possibly Sacramento. We would definitely want to have a “constellation” of networks rather than one interconnected system given the geography of the US, and that’s fine. There’s never going to be a time when it makes more sense to travel from LA to NYC by rail instead of flying. The biggest takeaway is that there is a specific role that HSR can play, but it’s not going to take over all long distance trips. Given where we are starting in the US, however, there is a massive mine of untapped potential.
    - 4y ago
scythe 4y ago
> the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high The cost is high, but more painfully, the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of railroad in Europe or East Asia. That's not a result of pure geography. Also, while the cost is high, it's not actually that large in comparison to the overall DoT budget, which is projected at $142B for FY2023. You could build a lot of train for that. Political will is a much more important factor. We just dropped $40B on the Current War without blinking. Even so, this misses another key step: intercity rail in Europe usually connects seamlessly to metro rail, which is what makes it so easy and nice to use. But the cities themselves in the United States do not usually have rail systems to connect to. That's why the best near-term rail corridor IMHO is NY-Buffalo (subway) - Youngstown (possible Pittsburgh metro extension) - Cleveland (subway) - Toledo (possible Detroit metro extension) - Chicago, connecting to six subway systems.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of railroad in Europe how does this make any sence, we have to deal with tonneling under or demolishing existing densely populated real estate along the route, literal mountains in the way, etc. HS2 in UK caused an outrage, someone's farm was cut in half, houses had to be demolished, etc
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  Toledo directly to Chicago doesn't make a lot of sense. Most of the track would go through Indiana, which is at best indifferent to Amtrak. Consider instead putting Detroit in between the two. The Chicago-Detroit route already operates at 110 mph, Amtrak and the Michigan Dept of Transportation already own the majority of the track and give routing priority to passenger trains. Amtrak and VIA are already talking about a Chicago-Toronto train that doesn't require passengers to disembark for immigration/customs, and their systems are already connected via a rail tunnel under the Detroit River.
  - scythe 4y ago
    Oh, yeah, that sounds pretty good. My main point is that you want to connect the long train to short trains. In theory, if Raleigh and Richmond (both very "blue" cities and maybe open to it) built LRT systems, you could get another route in DC-Richmond-Raleigh-Charlotte-Atlanta, where the other three have existing intracity rail.
darksaints 4y ago
The Midwest cluster of cities which include Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St Louis, Columbus, and Detroit, have an extremely similar density and distance distribution compared to France, where high speed rail is incredibly successful. We could have successful high speed rail nearly everywhere in the US with a possible exception of the rocky mountain regions. I wish this density trope would die. The real reason we don't have high speed rail is that right of way acquisition is ridiculously costly unless government is involved, and we don't trust our government to do it right. Probably justified, if urban rail costs are indicative.
eloisant 4y ago
We're not talking about doing NYC - SF by train, but there are a lot of places where it makes sense. As I used to live in the Bay Area, it really surprised me that there was no bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it. Americans don't realize how much nicer train is compared to plane for medium distances (up to 500 miles). Station being in the middle of the city, get in the train 10 minutes before departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door time is going to be lower. Also train is more confortable, seats are wider, you can use phones/electronics for the full duration of the trip...
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  > without check-in or security The biggest break for trains in the last 20 years hasn't been Maglevs or Japan's bullet. Matter of fact it has been OBL fixation on attacking America in a spectacular and televised fashion. The lack of security abord trains is shocking honestly. Trains are special, there is something about them which calms people even the most evil, because ill intentioned people like terrorists and mentally deranged domestic shooters just ignore them.
- labcomputer 4y ago
  > Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it. Basically because there are only 2-3 places you can practically cross the mountains surrounding LA (Tehachapi Tejon, and the coast), and 3-4 places you can do the same for the SFBA. All of them are already occupied by existing rail or roads. Those mountain crossings cost more that the rest of the system combined. > get in the train 10 minutes before departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door time is going to be lower. I wish, but you're wrong and it's not even close. (SFO, OAK or SJC) to (LAX, BUR, LGB or ONT) is about 45 minutes gate to gate. Add 5 minutes for security[], 25 minutes boarding, 15 minutes deplaning and you're at 1h30 curb to curb (vs. the almost 3 hours station to station that CAHSR claims* they will provide when finished). The plane is faster even accounting for travel time to and from the station or airport. The contrast is especially stark if your destination is not downtown LA. [*] TSA with PreCheck has gotten really fast in the past couple years. They no longer scan your boarding pass (just your ID + a database of the day's travelers). You don't need to unpack your bag, remove your shoes, nor remove your jacket. On a dozen trips in the past year, security has never taken me more than 5 minutes. It takes almost as long to walk through the maze of ropes forming the queue as the actual security procedure itself.
not2b 4y ago
You'd only want to build regional HSR systems that would connect cities that get a lot of traffic and flights between them and are under 300 miles / 500 km apart. So, the northeast corridor, connect California major cities, connect Portland to Seattle, connect Dallas/Austin/Houston/San Antonio. In Canada, half the population lives near a nearly straight line from Quebec City to Windsor; you could put a high speed rail line down the middle of that.
teloli 4y ago
Distance alone isn't enough of a reason though, Beijing–Shanghai is 1200 KM and yet you can cover that by train no problem in < 5 hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_high-speed_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_high-...

OJFord 4y ago

I don't know why this is down-voted so, but to me also outside the US it seems correct? You bill for travel between stations, there'd be a lot more track & travel between stations in the US, on average, if it were as ubiquitous. Intranational flight is a lot more common there. I imagine the economics of it are better, lower ticket price, and in many cases probably quicker too, even including airport BS.

ejb999 4y ago
>>Intranational flight is a lot more common there. I imagine the economics of it are better, lower ticket price, and in many cases probably quicker too, even including airport BS. That is the problem in my opinion - I prefer sitting on a train, to sitting on a plane, but for most routes I need to travel (within the US) it takes longer to get there and is more expensive than flying - why would anyone want to pay more and waste more time? You either need to be faster or cheaper if you want my business.
- secretsatan 4y ago
  The more rail improves the more I'm tempted to take it, with flying you have the additional time cost of just dealing with the airports, turn up an hour early, then get put in the metal tube where they won't serve you drink till they're up in the air, and you can't bring your own. A train may take longer sometimes, but I find the whole thing much less stressful, you're not strapped to the seat, you have leg room, even a table, power sockets, bring your own food and drink, and the prices are competitive. It still takes longer than I'd like to get from Switzerland to the UK, and that's mostly due to a lengthy change in Paris. I think in France, and prob other countries too, their moving to ban domestic flights that can be done on rail instead
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    It's hard to overstate how different the European rail experience is from the American experience. SF<->LA is a 50m, $50 flight. It's approx. 9h and $400 by rail. In practice, the last time I attempted that route it took 15h because the train had issues halfway and none of the assigned seats had power or legroom.
    - brewdad 4y ago
      Even the Seattle to Portland route, probably the best on the west coast, has issues. A flight takes about 50 mins and can be had for about $60. Alaska Airlines runs flights at least once an hour all day long. From 6am until midnight. The train takes 3.5 hours (often closer to 4 and I've had it take more than 5 just because of freight priority). The train makes 4 trips a day (one being a longer route that is usually delayed) and the timing means that any business trip will probably require an overnight stay. The train is only $27 though because both states (especially WA) heavily subsidize the route. In the end, it really comes down to where in the metro areas your trip begins and ends as to which works out best. For us, the train station saves about an hour of ground transport time compared to the airports and we can arrive much closer to departure, so the train works best. For plenty of others, the airport will be faster and probably easier logistically.
    - mikotodomo 4y ago
      wow wtf, american trains are so bad. the government should force those companies to fix it
- OJFord 4y ago
  Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying really. It's going to be slower and more expensive so not so many people are going to want to do it so why build more of it. If the major stops are closer together, 'a journey' is shorter and cheaper and beats air travel, and many more people will pay for it.
- chrisfinazzo 4y ago
  I don't really have a preference, but having done my first couple flights in close to 20 years in the past 3 months, I was struck by how much has changed in that time. PreCheck and Global Entry weren't around when we went to Bermuda in August 2001. It was a trip notable not only for its proximity to 9/11 - by chance, my bag was searched either before we left L.F Wade in St. George's or on arrival back in Newark, but this happened without my knowledge and I only found out about it because customs had repacked it included a note informing me of this fact inside. - and also because a trip to camp the previous week was the start of an ear infection which burst my ear drum on the plane going down. Fun times. However, I quite like the idea of passport control on a train happening before you embark on the departing leg of a trip. With those formalities out of the way, just collect your bags at the destination and you're free to go. I don't know if the FAA or TSA would consider this too burdensome to implement, but it's an idea.
  - anonymous_sorry 4y ago
    > However, I quite like the idea of passport control on a train happening before you embark on the departing leg of a trip. With those formalities out of the way, just collect your bags at the destination and you're free to go. It's better than that. Space on board is at less of a premium so train carriages can be made with plenty of room for luggage alongside passengers. No need to check baggage.
  - jrockway 4y ago
    They've been trying to implement passport control before boarding the train between NYC and Montreal for a while, but nothing seems to have come of it. It was an Obama-era priority. I haven't taken that train in many years, but they basically stop the train at the border and immigration agents board and check everyone's passport. It's scheduled to take 2 hours. Really stupid. It's a 45 minute flight, and you go through US immigration in Canada before boarding the flight.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      That's crazy. Perhaps a good comparison is the channel tunnel, e.g. going from London to Paris you go through security similar (a bit less onerous) to that at an airport before boarding. That was the case even with the UK in the EU (maybe it's not any less onerous than an airport now actually, idk) but otherwise intra-EU over land is not an issue, almost necessarily. (But then, you might think that about Canada/US.)
hannasanarion 4y ago
Nobody's asking for an express train between Jackson and Billings. When you exclude the Mountain States and Alaska, the US has about the same population density as Western Europe. There's no good reason for us to have zero public transit options between Atlanta and Savannah, Madison and Milwaukee, Columbus and Cincinatti, Denver and Colorado Springs, or Mobile and New Orleans.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >There's no good reason for us to have zero public transit options between Atlanta and Savannah, Madison and Milwaukee, Columbus and Cincinatti, Denver and Colorado Springs, or Mobile and New Orleans. Does regular bus service not count? Sure they're not publicly owned but does that result in any meaningful differences to the users?
- madcaptenor 4y ago
  Quick sanity check here, because I've seen this claim and never bothered to check. Let's say Western Europe = Germany, Austria, Italy, and everything west of them, i. e. Benelux, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain (= UK - Northern Ireland). (I'm including the UK and excluding Ireland because there are rail connecctions from Britain to the mainland but not from Ireland to Britain. I'm excluding Denmark because isn't that really Scandinavia?) Total population: Germany = 84m, France = 68m, Britain = 66m, Italy = 59m, Spain = 47m, Netherlands = 18m, Belgium = 12m, Portugal = 10m, Austria = 9m, Switzerland = 9m, Luxembourg = 1m. Total is 383m. Total area, in km^2: Germany = 358k, France = 551k, Britain = 228k, Italy = 301k, Spain = 499k, Netherlands = 41k, Belgium = 31k, Portugal = 88k, Austria = 84k, Switzerland = 41k, Luxembourg = 3k. Total is 2225k. So the population density of western Europe is about 172/km^2 or 445/mi^2. The only states this dense are DC, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware; New York and Florida are just under the cutoff. If I've done the math right, DC + NJ + RI + MA + CT + MD + DE + NY + PA + OH (74m people/429k km^2) is the largest contiguous bunch of states which is over 172 people/km^2. If we take the east to be everything east of the Mississippi, I get 190m people in 2.301m km^2, or 82 people/km^2. If we add in CA + OR + WA that actually drags down the density a bit. So the densely populated bits of the Northeast/mid-Atlantic are as densely populated as Western Europe. But the eastern US as a whole isn't. I agree that those pairs of cities you mentioned should have better connections between them though.

melling 4y ago

Yes, we agree we should only build where it makes sense. 1000 miles is quite far. That would be 5-6 hours! - NYC - Miami 1300 miles - NYC - Chicago 800 miles Then we have these: - NYC - Philly 92 miles - NYC - DC 225 miles - NYC - Boston 215 miles - NYC - Portland, ME 325 miles - NYC - Pittsburgh 380 miles - NYC - Cleveland 470 miles - Cleveland - Chicago 350 miles - St. Louis - Chicago 320 miles - Houston - Dallas 240 miles - Houston - Austin 170 miles - Dallas - Austin 200 miles - Seattle - Portland 175 miles - Las Vegas - Los Angeles 280 miles California too.

dahart 4y ago
Sadly our 1000 mile trips currently take ~24 hours rather than the 5-6 that it could. Multiple factors for that: slow trains; long stops; cargo rail gets priority over passenger rail.
- chrisfinazzo 4y ago
  Yep. Even the fastest trains Amtrak offers ("Acela") are zoned - or permitted, not sure what the right term is here - up to 150 MPH, and only on specific portions of the route. Makes no sense at all.
  - redtexture 4y ago
    The sense is that the Northeast corridor has too many curves and roadbed issues to be able to go faster. There would have to be constructed a new corridor, not in the same path as existing railroad rights of way, for not a small amount of money, and going through expensive real estate. The political will for that is not in existence, so far.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      And the fact is that while taking a train the full length of the Northeast Corridor takes too long to be practical most of the time, NYC to points north and NYC to points south works pretty well (i.e. is competitive with flying) with existing trains.

woodruffw 4y ago

I agree that we should let density and demand drive construction of HSR. That being said, there are plenty of plausible HSR routes in the US. We're a very sparsely populated country in our middle, but there's effectively a "string" of large cities right through our middle: NYC - Pittsburgh - Columbus - {Cincinnati, Indianapolis} - {Louisville, St. Louis} - Kansas City - Oklahoma City - Albuquerque - {Phoenix, Tucson} - Los Angeles. All of the legs there should under 400 miles, and most should be under 200. There's also plenty of room for adjustment: Louisville - Nashville - Memphis - Dallas and then onward south, for example.

aj7 4y ago

I see no mention of 737’s and A320’s here or in most posts. Compare the price per mile with those of alternatives. The U.S. doesn’t even resemble Europe.

wbsss4412 4y ago

The center of population in the US is still just barely to the west of the Mississippi, whenever people point out how vast and largely empty the US is, the leave out that the population itself is actually generally fairly close together for a majority of the country. You could easily have HSR all over the south, Midwest and NE, and then between population centers on the west coast, just likely not in the desert and western Great Plains.

madcaptenor 4y ago
See for example Alon Levy's map of proposed HSR for the Eastern United States: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-rail-for-the-eastern-united-states/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-rai... They've actually done serious investigation of what's viable given typical costs and ridership of high-speed lines elsewhere in the world. The high-speed bits they propose are basically a Boston-Atlanta-Chicago triangle with some ornaments (Chicago - KC, Chicago - Minneapolis, Cleveland - Pittsburgh - Philadelphia, and connections to Toronto, Montreal, Quebec), and separate networks in Florida and Texas. Connecting the Florida and Texas networks to the main one is marginal. I'm not sure of their opinions on separate networks in the Pacific Northwest and in California, but I'm sure they have looked at it. I do recall them saying that it doesn't make sense to connect, say, Portland to San Francisco - there's just not much in between.
- wbsss4412 4y ago
  It doesn’t make sense to connect Portland and SF, but there’s a lot of value to be gained in connecting Portland and Vancouver BC, and San Diego to SF/possibly Sacramento. We would definitely want to have a “constellation” of networks rather than one interconnected system given the geography of the US, and that’s fine. There’s never going to be a time when it makes more sense to travel from LA to NYC by rail instead of flying. The biggest takeaway is that there is a specific role that HSR can play, but it’s not going to take over all long distance trips. Given where we are starting in the US, however, there is a massive mine of untapped potential.
  - 4y ago

scythe 4y ago

> the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high The cost is high, but more painfully, the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of railroad in Europe or East Asia. That's not a result of pure geography. Also, while the cost is high, it's not actually that large in comparison to the overall DoT budget, which is projected at $142B for FY2023. You could build a lot of train for that. Political will is a much more important factor. We just dropped $40B on the Current War without blinking. Even so, this misses another key step: intercity rail in Europe usually connects seamlessly to metro rail, which is what makes it so easy and nice to use. But the cities themselves in the United States do not usually have rail systems to connect to. That's why the best near-term rail corridor IMHO is NY-Buffalo (subway) - Youngstown (possible Pittsburgh metro extension) - Cleveland (subway) - Toledo (possible Detroit metro extension) - Chicago, connecting to six subway systems.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of railroad in Europe how does this make any sence, we have to deal with tonneling under or demolishing existing densely populated real estate along the route, literal mountains in the way, etc. HS2 in UK caused an outrage, someone's farm was cut in half, houses had to be demolished, etc
Kon-Peki 4y ago
Toledo directly to Chicago doesn't make a lot of sense. Most of the track would go through Indiana, which is at best indifferent to Amtrak. Consider instead putting Detroit in between the two. The Chicago-Detroit route already operates at 110 mph, Amtrak and the Michigan Dept of Transportation already own the majority of the track and give routing priority to passenger trains. Amtrak and VIA are already talking about a Chicago-Toronto train that doesn't require passengers to disembark for immigration/customs, and their systems are already connected via a rail tunnel under the Detroit River.
- scythe 4y ago
  Oh, yeah, that sounds pretty good. My main point is that you want to connect the long train to short trains. In theory, if Raleigh and Richmond (both very "blue" cities and maybe open to it) built LRT systems, you could get another route in DC-Richmond-Raleigh-Charlotte-Atlanta, where the other three have existing intracity rail.

darksaints 4y ago

The Midwest cluster of cities which include Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St Louis, Columbus, and Detroit, have an extremely similar density and distance distribution compared to France, where high speed rail is incredibly successful. We could have successful high speed rail nearly everywhere in the US with a possible exception of the rocky mountain regions. I wish this density trope would die. The real reason we don't have high speed rail is that right of way acquisition is ridiculously costly unless government is involved, and we don't trust our government to do it right. Probably justified, if urban rail costs are indicative.

eloisant 4y ago

We're not talking about doing NYC - SF by train, but there are a lot of places where it makes sense. As I used to live in the Bay Area, it really surprised me that there was no bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it. Americans don't realize how much nicer train is compared to plane for medium distances (up to 500 miles). Station being in the middle of the city, get in the train 10 minutes before departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door time is going to be lower. Also train is more confortable, seats are wider, you can use phones/electronics for the full duration of the trip...

Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
> without check-in or security The biggest break for trains in the last 20 years hasn't been Maglevs or Japan's bullet. Matter of fact it has been OBL fixation on attacking America in a spectacular and televised fashion. The lack of security abord trains is shocking honestly. Trains are special, there is something about them which calms people even the most evil, because ill intentioned people like terrorists and mentally deranged domestic shooters just ignore them.
labcomputer 4y ago
> Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it. Basically because there are only 2-3 places you can practically cross the mountains surrounding LA (Tehachapi Tejon, and the coast), and 3-4 places you can do the same for the SFBA. All of them are already occupied by existing rail or roads. Those mountain crossings cost more that the rest of the system combined. > get in the train 10 minutes before departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door time is going to be lower. I wish, but you're wrong and it's not even close. (SFO, OAK or SJC) to (LAX, BUR, LGB or ONT) is about 45 minutes gate to gate. Add 5 minutes for security[], 25 minutes boarding, 15 minutes deplaning and you're at 1h30 curb to curb (vs. the almost 3 hours station to station that CAHSR claims* they will provide when finished). The plane is faster even accounting for travel time to and from the station or airport. The contrast is especially stark if your destination is not downtown LA. [*] TSA with PreCheck has gotten really fast in the past couple years. They no longer scan your boarding pass (just your ID + a database of the day's travelers). You don't need to unpack your bag, remove your shoes, nor remove your jacket. On a dozen trips in the past year, security has never taken me more than 5 minutes. It takes almost as long to walk through the maze of ropes forming the queue as the actual security procedure itself.

not2b 4y ago

You'd only want to build regional HSR systems that would connect cities that get a lot of traffic and flights between them and are under 300 miles / 500 km apart. So, the northeast corridor, connect California major cities, connect Portland to Seattle, connect Dallas/Austin/Houston/San Antonio. In Canada, half the population lives near a nearly straight line from Quebec City to Windsor; you could put a high speed rail line down the middle of that.

teloli 4y ago

Distance alone isn't enough of a reason though, Beijing–Shanghai is 1200 KM and yet you can cover that by train no problem in < 5 hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_high-speed_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_high-...