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Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on
- bilsbie 4y agoI always thought we could also improve air travel by running it more like a train. For popular routes just permanently schedule a flight say every two hours on the hour. No advanced purchase required. We could build parking garages many stories high or underground so people can park reasonably close. Expensive but way cheaper than high speed rail. Or what if we have secondary airports for commuter routes and leave the major airports for travellors.
- joak 4y agoTrains are ok if you have two or more nearby (<800km) walkable cities. If you need to get on a car to go the train station it doesn't make sense, you better go to the airport instead. Bay Area and LA are not walkable cities...
- simonblack 4y agoI once travelled from Paris to London on the Eurostar that goes via the Channel Tunnel. One of our travelling companions was a woman who complained loudly on getting on board that she should have been flying, but wasn't able to that day. Several hours later her tune had changed. She said she wouldn't bother flying between Paris and London again, because the train left and arrived in the centres of the cities and negated the need to travel for nearly an hour out to the airports. Once at the airports you had at least two hours to fill between check-in and take-off. And at the other end you had to travel nearly an hour back to the city centre. In other words, the 'short trip' between Paris and London would have taken around four hours at least, where the EuroStar took only two hours plus another 15-30 minutes for check-in and immigration.