10 ms·

Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

54 points by gammarator 4y ago

sien 4y ago
This is a very good article. It's interesting to see why HSR costs so much. For those TLDR. HSR fails cost/benefit analysis. The paragraph is very good : "By CA HSR’s own numbers, the completed system may carry 35 million passengers per year by 2040, or 100,000 per day. This capacity could also be served by a fleet of just 40 737s (less than current LAX-SFO traffic), of which Boeing makes more than 500 per year. Bought new, this fleet would cost $3.6b, and with a lead time of, at most, a few months. Upgrades to Modesto and Bakersfield airport terminals could service the 737 for mere $10s of millions. The fleet would cost about $2.9b to operate each year, which under current airline business models can be served by fares of about $60 each way. If we operate this airline for free (no tickets!) for 40 years, the total operating costs climb to $120b, which is equivalent to CA HSR’s currently wildly unrealistic estimated construction costs." Rail is great, for freight.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  >HSR fails cost/benefit analysis It only fails the cost/profit analysis. The benefits are priceless when we consider the environmental impact.
  - matkoniecz 4y ago
    >priceless not really environmental impact has limited costs, and investing to reduce environmental damage makes sense when benefits are sufficiently large for given cost
  - LilBytes 4y ago
    Yep, it's easy to calculate the cost analysis of a train. But the numbers of its benefits aren't defined or understood since environmental impact of what they replace (car creation costs, car maintainence,road build and maintainence, fuel extraction and use). What's the economic (and environmental) cost of cars where these costs aren't priced in to the value proposition?
  - viraptor 4y ago
    Even ignoring the environmental impact, good train network is a benefit to a country. Too many people get stuck with the "train lines most be private and profitable" line of thinking.
    - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
      That too!
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  CA HSR is indictment of California, not of high-speed rail. CA HSR is uniquely badly mismanagement and operating in runaway NIMBY land.
leoedin 4y ago
What I find odd about this is that... Trains are the go-to means of intercity transport across much of Europe. The term "High speed rail" isn't strictly defined, but seems to kick in somewhere between 110 and 155 mph. Pretty much every intercity train in the UK is running at 125mph for at least some of their journey. Europe is full of functioning high speed rail networks - TGV, ICE, Eurostar, networks in Spain and Italy. If you include 125 mph networks then there's loads of them - and those older, slower high speed networks have more or less been profitable. Even the US has a high speed rail corridor in the North East. The author tries to make the argument that there's physical limits to high speed rail that mean it'll never catch on. But the limits are far more political than physical. If you live in the UK or Europe, rail is the go to method of travel between cities. Edit to add: the distance between LA and San Francisco is 382 miles. Almost exactly the same distance as between either London and Edinburgh and London and Glasgow. There's something like 22 trains a day on each route - more or less every half hour during the day. The time from city centre to city centre is better by train than plane or driving. That's not even a proper "high speed" train - the routes they follow were laid out in the 1800s.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dasloop 4y ago
  In many HN publications the label "In USA" is applicable, the equivalent of "In mice" for many medical studies :)
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    Read the article—the author prefaces with their experience riding trains all over the world and has worked in rail. There is a ton of detail, much more interesting than the conclusion.
    - addicted 4y ago
      A clarification. They’ve not worked in rail. They’ve worked in hyperloop. A fantasy technology that does not, and probably never will, exist. Imagine being able to destroy the idea of constructing rail in a few paragraphs of a tiny blog and then choosing to work on hyperloop, which has all the problems mentioned about rail but also throws in creating and maintaining a vacuum pipe in addition.
bmitc 4y ago
Riding the high-speed rail in China made me so envious of that setup. If we had that in certain locations in the U.S., it would be absolutely amazing. You just show up a half hour before your train (gotta get there earlier in certain huge stations) and basically walk on. The train ride is buttery smooth with a lot of space, and you can order food from the next station to be delivered to you if you don't want any of the food available directly on the train. And with USD, first class and the even higher end business class is not just attainable but cheap. The equivalent train rides with Amtrak in the U.S. are twice as long and several times as expensive and uncomfortable. Edit: Did some searching and found the North Atlantic Rail initiative. According to the article I read, it would take 20 years to build. What a joke. What is going on in the U.S. that we can't do this stuff? https://secretnyc.co/empire-state-building-lights/ https://secretnyc.co/empire-state-building-lights/ https://northatlanticrail.org/ https://northatlanticrail.org/
- bergenty 4y ago
  But why do this over just flying. You can show up 30-45 mins before any domestic flight and leave as soon as you land on the other end.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    *Usually In practice we've seen hours long security/departure queues, having to wait for the luggage after landing, joining the wait for the expensive taxi/bus transfer from the airport, and many other issues which don't exist for train travel. Then there's "yes you can show up 30min before, if you booked the plane ticket a week ago". Having done both a lot, I'll take the train any time.
  - eipie10 4y ago
    Trains can be more frequent and carry a lot more passengers
  - matkoniecz 4y ago
    > You can show up 30-45 mins before any domestic flight Where? I was flying in Europe and was asked to be on airport 150 minutes before departure.
matkoniecz 4y ago
> Despite decades of development, only a handful of routes in Europe operate at anything like airplane-competitive speeds, which for all but the shortest routes, require > 300 km/h or > 185 mph. Not really, given massive fixed cost at airplane terminal and airports being typically harder to get to than train station. When I was flying this summer, I was asked to come to airport 150 minutes before planned departure. 200 km/h train would still be faster for distances of about 700 km. And even for longer routes benefits of comfort, larger possible baggage, lower stress and so on would make it a clear winner.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Yeah definitely. I'd rather take a train even if it was quite significantly slower. The real downside of train travel is the phenomenal cost.
- wskinner 4y ago
  I’ve never been asked to show up early for any domestic flight in the USA, let alone 2.5 hours early. I wonder why that is the case in the airports you’re using.
- cipher_system 4y ago
  At least where I live, the 150 minutes before time is a side effect of Covid. A lot of airport staff were let go and restaffing with security clearances takes a while. This summer was exceptional, it will go back to normal like 60 minutes for domestic travel and maybe 90 minutes for international travel. Break even, time wise, here is around 500 km and then train is the better choice. But there are a lot of destinations that can only be served realistically by airplanes and that is not likely to change much during my life time.
thrown_22 4y ago
>I also worked on track-based transport as a levitation engineer at Hyperloop between 2015 and 2018, That's a big red flag as anyone with half a brain knew it was bullshit.
bergenty 4y ago
I don’t understand the point of high speed rail. You can just show up for a domestic flight 30 mins before and you get to your destination 4x faster. The only good thing about trains are the views.
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  I was flying this summer in Europe and was asked to come to airport 150 minutes before departure. > The only good thing about trains are the views. And allowed baggage, and far more space...
  - galaxyLogic 4y ago
    > The only good thing about trains are the views. I think train-operators should build more trains with transparent walls cars and lounge-space. It's more fun to travel when you don't have to sit in the same place for many hours. But not sure how much it would add to the cost.
- trophycase 4y ago
  flying is miserable unless you are first class
- pmontra 4y ago
  Milan to Rome by rail is 30 minutes from home to a seat on the train (by underground, one train every 3 minutes,) 3 hours to the center of Rome. By plane is 30 minutes to the closest airport or 90 minutes to the two further away (by train or bus, about one every 20/30 minutes.) Boarding time, probably at least one hour (factor in the connection time with the train or bus). Taxi to take off, one hour flight, taxi to terminal, leaving the plane. At this point we're spent about the same time. We still have to possibly collect luggage and go from the airport to the city. The high speed train is a no brainer. Naples is one hour of train further away. The choice between train or plane starts to be more nuanced. I went by train last time because I just sit down once and I don't have to move me and my luggage anymore. Milan to Paris? Fly.
  - 4y ago
alex028502 4y ago
Maybe the emphasis on high speed in not necessary. People already seem to love sitting around in all kinds of environments.. bars, watching netflix, or programming for a lot of people here. What if instead of figuring out what kind of rails would be needed to move a train at the speed of flight, we figured out what kind of rails were needed to economically move the equivalent of a first class lounge from Los Angeles to San Francisco in like seven or eight hours... or maybe it's an eco cruise ship, or a new bus design. Either way, for a lot of people who board just before 10AM on a Sunday, and watch two NFL games, the net travel time from Los Angeles to San Francisco could be close to 0.. and you can't beat that.
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  Good idea. But also, why not invest in virtual presence so we don't need to travel so much? Except if we want to.
  - alex028502 4y ago
    Good point. The same kinds of technologies that allow us to make use of the travel time allow us to not travel at all.. two prong strategy
- alex028502 4y ago
  It should also leave every 20 mins with no late penalty (lots of spare capacity) so that you don't have to get there early just in case. That "buffer" standing around is also a waste of time. We invent a way to get there super fast and then we have to optimise it to the point where we have to get there an hour early to make it work reliably.. because a traffic jam or security delay can destroy everything.
habibur 4y ago
> Indeed, as far as I know there isn’t a single HSR route anywhere on Earth that operates profitably on ticketing revenue The key part.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  What about automobile roads and highways? If there's any, on a mile-per-mile basis, it's probably <0.001%. The actual problem is that we have imposed a profitability imperative on some services and not others.
  - sien 4y ago
    Everywhere except the US cars pay far more in petrol tax than roads cost. In Australia, where we have cheap petrol compared to Europe or Japan a little over half of petrol tax goes into roads or public transport. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-21/fuel-excise-not-being-spent-on-roads-amid-calls-to-cut-tax/100920658 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-21/fuel-excise-not-being...
    - orwin 4y ago
      Does this tax pays for land value lost to parking requirements and for city roads? Because i know my petrol tax pays for roads in-between cities, I'm not sure it pays for city roads and for respiratory issues caused by cars.
    - TMWNN 4y ago
      >Everywhere except the US cars pay far more in petrol tax than roads cost. US highways subsidize other forms of transportation, too. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33222584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33222584>
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >What about automobile roads and highways? >If there's any, on a mile-per-mile basis, it's probably <0.001%. US highways do pay for themselves <https://web.archive.org/web/20170712175437/www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/federal_subsidies_to_passenger_transportation/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170712175437/www.rita.dot.gov/...>, and help pay for other modes of transportation. Transit receives the biggest subsidy per passenger-mile, with rail and airlines in between. (For those wishing more detail: From the executive summary <https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/federal_subsidies_to_passenger_transportation/html/executive_summary.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.d...>: >*Highways* >* Users of the highway passenger transportation system paid significantly greater amounts of money to the federal government than their allocated costs in 1994-2000. <https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/federal_subsidies_to_passenger_transportation/html/figure_01.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.d...> This was a result of the increase in the deficit reduction motor fuel tax rates between October 1993 and September 1997, and the increase in Highway Trust Fund fuel tax rates starting in October 1997. >* School and transit buses received positive net federal subsidies over the 1990-2002 period, but autos, motorcycles, pickups and vans, and intercity buses paid more than their allocated cost to the federal government. >* On average, highway users paid $1.91 per thousand passenger-miles to the federal government over their highway allocated cost during 1990-2002.)
Greek0 4y ago
The author speaks with an authoritative voice and presents the content as facts. Sadly, the article also contains factual errors. For example: > This capacity could also be served by a fleet of just 40 737s [...], of which Boeing makes more than 500 per year. Bought new, this fleet would cost $3.6b, and with a lead time of, at most, a few months. Boeing has a backlog of 4000 planes.[1] Current delivery lead times are 5-10 years, so getting 40 planes within months is ludicrous. Aircraft might be available on shorter timelines from aircraft lenders, but probably not in that timeframe either. It's also not what the article argues. This puts a question mark over the content: which parts are actually correct and which are merely presented as fact without any checking? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_and_deliveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_...
bcrosby95 4y ago
> Serving peripheral population centers in California is a nice thing to do So you want to build a train network that costs hundred(s) of billions but skip adding a couple stations for millions of people the track is passing by? Sounds like a poor idea.
roeles 4y ago
This summer I took my first sleeper train, and it opened my eyes. Instead of treating the journey as wasted time, something to optimize away, it makes a lot of sense to me to make the most of it. The need for rushing dissappears and the experience becomes much more enjoyable. Not long after my sleeper train holiday I had to travel from Schiphol Airport for work, where I was expected to be 4 hours before take off. Those 4 hours could have been spent working in a train in a quiet zone, or looking at the scenery pass by. Next time I will try to take a train instead of an airplane.
politelemon 4y ago
A lot of small things seem 'off' to me in this piece. After having gone through it, it should really say "in the US" because many parts of it around reasoning and attitudes come off as nonsense for someone living in the 'rest of the world'. It even feels like a "this is why things should stay as they are". > airplane-competitive speeds, which for all but the shortest routes, require > 300 km/h or > 185 mph. This number feels arbitrary, where did this come from, is it because very very few exist? Looking at the map, > 200 would do just as well and still lend itself to the author's point - some exist but not a huge amount. Even taking that point, high enough speed rail is good enough for inter-city travel, it isn't meant to be an aircraft replacement, it is an alternative form of travel. You wouldn't say that people shouldn't drive between cities, because airplanes are faster. It is an alternative form of travel which allows for mass transit, and in using it, you adjust expectations. > Comfort and convenience are other important factors, but there aircraft are also quite competitive. I doubt that, it's possible the author flies exclusively in business/first class, which is giving them a skewed perception. Aircraft are uncomfortable compared to trains. > Contrast this with aircraft. There are 15,000 airports in the US. Any but the largest aircraft can fly to any of these airports. If I build another airport, I have added 15,000 potential connections to the network. If I build another rail terminal and branch line, at significantly greater cost than an airstrip, I have added only one additional connection to the network. This is completely wrong. Building an airport doesn't automatically come with the ability to accept any aircraft. There are a lot of restrictions and regulations around what you can and cannot do with an airport and its associated routes. An "untowered paved strip" has a specific kind of usage which does not include commercial routes, which is what the premise of the post is, so this is a disingenuous, unfair, and misleading comparison.
bigbacaloa 4y ago
The author defines high speed to mema more than a certain never satisfied threshold ...
bigbacaloa 4y ago
The author defines high speed as above some little satisfied threshold. I'm Spain quite fast rail has replaced planes as the preferred means of travel. Spain, señite being quite "bumpy", does have the advantage that a hub structure is natural.
cycomanic 4y ago
The article seems to be completely littered with factual errors. 1. The author says that HSR projects are about a third below passenger projections everywhere. Everyone who has taken the TGV between Bordeaux and Paris, the ICE between Cologne and Frankfurt and many of the other lines in Europe knows that it is trivially not true. The Bordeaux Paris train is often sold out several times a day. 2. The author says the SFO to LA line comes at $350m/mile which he gives as indication for HSR construction. I don't know about the accuracy for the SFO to LA line, but it's completely off for general HSR. Even the highest estimate here for a double track HSR line is $2.6m/mile here: https://compassinternational.net/railroad-engineering-construction-cost-benchmarks/ https://compassinternational.net/railroad-engineering-constr... 3. The author says that 100,000 passengers daily is the SFO to LAX traffic today. If I look at stats for SFO it has around 3M passengers per month, I assume not all are flying to/from LA so the number can't be right. 4. The whole discussion about interruptions is also weird. Yes if a rail line gets interrupted you probably can't easily route around it. But it's incorrect to say you can always do that in a car, as everyone stuck in a traffic jam can attest to. Also I would like to see some statistics on rail/track interruptions vs road interruptions. 5. The subsidies discussion also seems weird. He acknowledges that roads and airtravel receive subsidies as well, but then dismisses them because road operation cost are covered by the driver. Sure but maintanance is covered by the state again. Most rail companies would be very profitable if they would not have to pay for the network (admittedly they often don't want to let go of that control, because it allows them to keep competition put) I don't think I can take any argument so littered with factual errors seriously.
- fomine3 4y ago
  Add: This quote seems to false. Even in Tokaido Shinkansen (extremely utilized), it is said that rails are replaced about every 10yr. In Tohoku Shinkansen, officially said that it replaced about every 35 yr. > A typical Japanese maintenance schedule has each segment of rail reground, to exacting tolerances, every 6 months while total replacement is required every 5 years.
ribawuwym 4y ago
The answer is very simple actually. Railroad is a cheap and primitive tech and doesn't support anything high speed. Several advancements are pushing track quality toward faster speed and toward the point of convergence where it will cease to be cheap.
lyschoening 4y ago
Negativity aside, the article makes fair arguments against setting expectations for rail speed too high. The thing is, trains do not have to be faster than 300kph/185mph to compete with planes. Modern trains are infinitely more comfortable than modern planes, so they do not need to match planes in travel times. A modern train features silent travel, ample leg room, unpressurized air and no seat belts. Reliability is key and that does require infrastructure investment. Rail infrastructure will always require subsidies but the costs do not have to be astronomical. Meanwhile, the cost of air traffic emissions are carried by society, which can't go on much longer.
paganel 4y ago
As someone mentions in one of the article's comments, the solution is to "drop down the speed a bit". I.e. HSR will never be able to compete with airplanes if you take both cost and time into the equation, but lower-speed rail can definitely compete against privately-own cars, which would be a bigger win imo. To take the example of Europe, it's much more important to connect a location, by rail, with as many other locations in a radius of 200-300 km, and, even more importantly, to connect those other locations between themselves, than to connect that location by HSR with another one placed at ~1000 km. So, much more important to connect Paris with Caen, Nantes, Rennes, Brest, Reims, Rouen, Troyes, Tours, Orleans, and, more importantly, to connect Nantes with Caen, or Troyes with Tours, or Reims with Rouen, than is to spend the money in order to build a HSR between Paris and Berlin. More to the point, I'd rather we spend the money to have the French rail network of 1914, which was slower, but which was covering a lot more places, than the French rail network of 2014, which is way faster, but which is covering fewer places. See this reddit thread for the relevant rail maps [1] [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/202ym3/evolution_of_the_french_railway_network_from_1910/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/202ym3/evolution_o...
kkfx 4y ago
The main high cost of high speed rails is that they need to be VERY planar, a thing hard to create and harder to maintain. It's easy create a short-length perfectly aligned planar metallic stuff BUT it's far harder for very big sizes and rails need to be veeery long, so change veeery little over length. As a result there are many issues in both mere orographic terms and in maintenance terms. Rails are good for applications like non perishable goods transport, they can sustain heavy loads, move them with less energy than others ground means, they are easy to automate, so ideal for mid and long range on-ground logistic. For transporting people the air, yes, I'm definitively serious, is the best and cheapest solution: - it's fast, at least it can be fast, while supporting a wide range of speeds and ranges - it's flexible, behind VTOLs/STOLs we just need "terminal" infra, the path between them is free - in whole infra terms it demand far less infra to build and maintain than roads and rails You might argue that actually the cheapest STOL is far more expensive than a car, but in resource terms it's not. In fuel terms consume more than an equivalent (load capacity) car, for safety demand more entertainment to be sure nothing fails, but just in raw material terms is a damn cheap car, very little steel, less aluminum, a bit of copper, glass, eventually wood and plastic. On scale planes can be on par with cars in final product costs and while we need more energy we do not need complex road infrastructure hard to maintain and evolve. Not really flexible. We do not develop such mean in most of the world just because we need roads anyway to move heavy loads, we already have much of them since centuries etc, but while most disagree it's the future. Some know and know most disagree https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-report.pdf https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... but as any real tech evolution it will happen, it's just a matter of time.
Markoff 4y ago
In Europe? Because it's slower and more expensive than budget airlines.
rogue7 4y ago
I've thought about this and there's I think another reason coming from combinatorics. Consider a set of n cities. Being able to go from one city to another by plane only requires n airports. However, to have a complete rail network, one needs n (n-1) / 2 tracks. Hence the complexity analysis: one solution is linear, the other one is quadratic.
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  Take a look at actual rail networks. Noone is building N-1 separate tracks to N-1 cities, network is closer to minimum spanning tree.

54 points by gammarator 4y ago

sien 4y ago

This is a very good article. It's interesting to see why HSR costs so much. For those TLDR. HSR fails cost/benefit analysis. The paragraph is very good : "By CA HSR’s own numbers, the completed system may carry 35 million passengers per year by 2040, or 100,000 per day. This capacity could also be served by a fleet of just 40 737s (less than current LAX-SFO traffic), of which Boeing makes more than 500 per year. Bought new, this fleet would cost $3.6b, and with a lead time of, at most, a few months. Upgrades to Modesto and Bakersfield airport terminals could service the 737 for mere $10s of millions. The fleet would cost about $2.9b to operate each year, which under current airline business models can be served by fares of about $60 each way. If we operate this airline for free (no tickets!) for 40 years, the total operating costs climb to $120b, which is equivalent to CA HSR’s currently wildly unrealistic estimated construction costs." Rail is great, for freight.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago
>HSR fails cost/benefit analysis It only fails the cost/profit analysis. The benefits are priceless when we consider the environmental impact.
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  >priceless not really environmental impact has limited costs, and investing to reduce environmental damage makes sense when benefits are sufficiently large for given cost
- LilBytes 4y ago
  Yep, it's easy to calculate the cost analysis of a train. But the numbers of its benefits aren't defined or understood since environmental impact of what they replace (car creation costs, car maintainence,road build and maintainence, fuel extraction and use). What's the economic (and environmental) cost of cars where these costs aren't priced in to the value proposition?
- viraptor 4y ago
  Even ignoring the environmental impact, good train network is a benefit to a country. Too many people get stuck with the "train lines most be private and profitable" line of thinking.
  - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
    That too!
matkoniecz 4y ago
CA HSR is indictment of California, not of high-speed rail. CA HSR is uniquely badly mismanagement and operating in runaway NIMBY land.

leoedin 4y ago

What I find odd about this is that... Trains are the go-to means of intercity transport across much of Europe. The term "High speed rail" isn't strictly defined, but seems to kick in somewhere between 110 and 155 mph. Pretty much every intercity train in the UK is running at 125mph for at least some of their journey. Europe is full of functioning high speed rail networks - TGV, ICE, Eurostar, networks in Spain and Italy. If you include 125 mph networks then there's loads of them - and those older, slower high speed networks have more or less been profitable. Even the US has a high speed rail corridor in the North East. The author tries to make the argument that there's physical limits to high speed rail that mean it'll never catch on. But the limits are far more political than physical. If you live in the UK or Europe, rail is the go to method of travel between cities. Edit to add: the distance between LA and San Francisco is 382 miles. Almost exactly the same distance as between either London and Edinburgh and London and Glasgow. There's something like 22 trains a day on each route - more or less every half hour during the day. The time from city centre to city centre is better by train than plane or driving. That's not even a proper "high speed" train - the routes they follow were laid out in the 1800s.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dasloop 4y ago
In many HN publications the label "In USA" is applicable, the equivalent of "In mice" for many medical studies :)
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Read the article—the author prefaces with their experience riding trains all over the world and has worked in rail. There is a ton of detail, much more interesting than the conclusion.
  - addicted 4y ago
    A clarification. They’ve not worked in rail. They’ve worked in hyperloop. A fantasy technology that does not, and probably never will, exist. Imagine being able to destroy the idea of constructing rail in a few paragraphs of a tiny blog and then choosing to work on hyperloop, which has all the problems mentioned about rail but also throws in creating and maintaining a vacuum pipe in addition.

bmitc 4y ago

Riding the high-speed rail in China made me so envious of that setup. If we had that in certain locations in the U.S., it would be absolutely amazing. You just show up a half hour before your train (gotta get there earlier in certain huge stations) and basically walk on. The train ride is buttery smooth with a lot of space, and you can order food from the next station to be delivered to you if you don't want any of the food available directly on the train. And with USD, first class and the even higher end business class is not just attainable but cheap. The equivalent train rides with Amtrak in the U.S. are twice as long and several times as expensive and uncomfortable. Edit: Did some searching and found the North Atlantic Rail initiative. According to the article I read, it would take 20 years to build. What a joke. What is going on in the U.S. that we can't do this stuff? https://secretnyc.co/empire-state-building-lights/ https://secretnyc.co/empire-state-building-lights/ https://northatlanticrail.org/ https://northatlanticrail.org/

bergenty 4y ago
But why do this over just flying. You can show up 30-45 mins before any domestic flight and leave as soon as you land on the other end.
- viraptor 4y ago
  *Usually In practice we've seen hours long security/departure queues, having to wait for the luggage after landing, joining the wait for the expensive taxi/bus transfer from the airport, and many other issues which don't exist for train travel. Then there's "yes you can show up 30min before, if you booked the plane ticket a week ago". Having done both a lot, I'll take the train any time.
- eipie10 4y ago
  Trains can be more frequent and carry a lot more passengers
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  > You can show up 30-45 mins before any domestic flight Where? I was flying in Europe and was asked to be on airport 150 minutes before departure.

matkoniecz 4y ago

> Despite decades of development, only a handful of routes in Europe operate at anything like airplane-competitive speeds, which for all but the shortest routes, require > 300 km/h or > 185 mph. Not really, given massive fixed cost at airplane terminal and airports being typically harder to get to than train station. When I was flying this summer, I was asked to come to airport 150 minutes before planned departure. 200 km/h train would still be faster for distances of about 700 km. And even for longer routes benefits of comfort, larger possible baggage, lower stress and so on would make it a clear winner.

IshKebab 4y ago
Yeah definitely. I'd rather take a train even if it was quite significantly slower. The real downside of train travel is the phenomenal cost.
wskinner 4y ago
I’ve never been asked to show up early for any domestic flight in the USA, let alone 2.5 hours early. I wonder why that is the case in the airports you’re using.
cipher_system 4y ago
At least where I live, the 150 minutes before time is a side effect of Covid. A lot of airport staff were let go and restaffing with security clearances takes a while. This summer was exceptional, it will go back to normal like 60 minutes for domestic travel and maybe 90 minutes for international travel. Break even, time wise, here is around 500 km and then train is the better choice. But there are a lot of destinations that can only be served realistically by airplanes and that is not likely to change much during my life time.

thrown_22 4y ago

>I also worked on track-based transport as a levitation engineer at Hyperloop between 2015 and 2018, That's a big red flag as anyone with half a brain knew it was bullshit.

bergenty 4y ago

I don’t understand the point of high speed rail. You can just show up for a domestic flight 30 mins before and you get to your destination 4x faster. The only good thing about trains are the views.

matkoniecz 4y ago
I was flying this summer in Europe and was asked to come to airport 150 minutes before departure. > The only good thing about trains are the views. And allowed baggage, and far more space...
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  > The only good thing about trains are the views. I think train-operators should build more trains with transparent walls cars and lounge-space. It's more fun to travel when you don't have to sit in the same place for many hours. But not sure how much it would add to the cost.
trophycase 4y ago
flying is miserable unless you are first class
pmontra 4y ago
Milan to Rome by rail is 30 minutes from home to a seat on the train (by underground, one train every 3 minutes,) 3 hours to the center of Rome. By plane is 30 minutes to the closest airport or 90 minutes to the two further away (by train or bus, about one every 20/30 minutes.) Boarding time, probably at least one hour (factor in the connection time with the train or bus). Taxi to take off, one hour flight, taxi to terminal, leaving the plane. At this point we're spent about the same time. We still have to possibly collect luggage and go from the airport to the city. The high speed train is a no brainer. Naples is one hour of train further away. The choice between train or plane starts to be more nuanced. I went by train last time because I just sit down once and I don't have to move me and my luggage anymore. Milan to Paris? Fly.
- 4y ago

alex028502 4y ago

Maybe the emphasis on high speed in not necessary. People already seem to love sitting around in all kinds of environments.. bars, watching netflix, or programming for a lot of people here. What if instead of figuring out what kind of rails would be needed to move a train at the speed of flight, we figured out what kind of rails were needed to economically move the equivalent of a first class lounge from Los Angeles to San Francisco in like seven or eight hours... or maybe it's an eco cruise ship, or a new bus design. Either way, for a lot of people who board just before 10AM on a Sunday, and watch two NFL games, the net travel time from Los Angeles to San Francisco could be close to 0.. and you can't beat that.

galaxyLogic 4y ago
Good idea. But also, why not invest in virtual presence so we don't need to travel so much? Except if we want to.
- alex028502 4y ago
  Good point. The same kinds of technologies that allow us to make use of the travel time allow us to not travel at all.. two prong strategy
alex028502 4y ago
It should also leave every 20 mins with no late penalty (lots of spare capacity) so that you don't have to get there early just in case. That "buffer" standing around is also a waste of time. We invent a way to get there super fast and then we have to optimise it to the point where we have to get there an hour early to make it work reliably.. because a traffic jam or security delay can destroy everything.

habibur 4y ago

> Indeed, as far as I know there isn’t a single HSR route anywhere on Earth that operates profitably on ticketing revenue The key part.

kristopolous 4y ago
What about automobile roads and highways? If there's any, on a mile-per-mile basis, it's probably <0.001%. The actual problem is that we have imposed a profitability imperative on some services and not others.
- sien 4y ago
  Everywhere except the US cars pay far more in petrol tax than roads cost. In Australia, where we have cheap petrol compared to Europe or Japan a little over half of petrol tax goes into roads or public transport. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-21/fuel-excise-not-being-spent-on-roads-amid-calls-to-cut-tax/100920658 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-21/fuel-excise-not-being...
  - orwin 4y ago
    Does this tax pays for land value lost to parking requirements and for city roads? Because i know my petrol tax pays for roads in-between cities, I'm not sure it pays for city roads and for respiratory issues caused by cars.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >Everywhere except the US cars pay far more in petrol tax than roads cost. US highways subsidize other forms of transportation, too. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33222584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33222584>
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >What about automobile roads and highways? >If there's any, on a mile-per-mile basis, it's probably <0.001%. US highways do pay for themselves <https://web.archive.org/web/20170712175437/www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/federal_subsidies_to_passenger_transportation/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170712175437/www.rita.dot.gov/...>, and help pay for other modes of transportation. Transit receives the biggest subsidy per passenger-mile, with rail and airlines in between. (For those wishing more detail: From the executive summary <https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/federal_subsidies_to_passenger_transportation/html/executive_summary.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.d...>: >*Highways* >* Users of the highway passenger transportation system paid significantly greater amounts of money to the federal government than their allocated costs in 1994-2000. <https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/federal_subsidies_to_passenger_transportation/html/figure_01.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.d...> This was a result of the increase in the deficit reduction motor fuel tax rates between October 1993 and September 1997, and the increase in Highway Trust Fund fuel tax rates starting in October 1997. >* School and transit buses received positive net federal subsidies over the 1990-2002 period, but autos, motorcycles, pickups and vans, and intercity buses paid more than their allocated cost to the federal government. >* On average, highway users paid $1.91 per thousand passenger-miles to the federal government over their highway allocated cost during 1990-2002.)

Greek0 4y ago

The author speaks with an authoritative voice and presents the content as facts. Sadly, the article also contains factual errors. For example: > This capacity could also be served by a fleet of just 40 737s [...], of which Boeing makes more than 500 per year. Bought new, this fleet would cost $3.6b, and with a lead time of, at most, a few months. Boeing has a backlog of 4000 planes.[1] Current delivery lead times are 5-10 years, so getting 40 planes within months is ludicrous. Aircraft might be available on shorter timelines from aircraft lenders, but probably not in that timeframe either. It's also not what the article argues. This puts a question mark over the content: which parts are actually correct and which are merely presented as fact without any checking? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_and_deliveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_...

bcrosby95 4y ago

> Serving peripheral population centers in California is a nice thing to do So you want to build a train network that costs hundred(s) of billions but skip adding a couple stations for millions of people the track is passing by? Sounds like a poor idea.

roeles 4y ago

This summer I took my first sleeper train, and it opened my eyes. Instead of treating the journey as wasted time, something to optimize away, it makes a lot of sense to me to make the most of it. The need for rushing dissappears and the experience becomes much more enjoyable. Not long after my sleeper train holiday I had to travel from Schiphol Airport for work, where I was expected to be 4 hours before take off. Those 4 hours could have been spent working in a train in a quiet zone, or looking at the scenery pass by. Next time I will try to take a train instead of an airplane.

politelemon 4y ago

A lot of small things seem 'off' to me in this piece. After having gone through it, it should really say "in the US" because many parts of it around reasoning and attitudes come off as nonsense for someone living in the 'rest of the world'. It even feels like a "this is why things should stay as they are". > airplane-competitive speeds, which for all but the shortest routes, require > 300 km/h or > 185 mph. This number feels arbitrary, where did this come from, is it because very very few exist? Looking at the map, > 200 would do just as well and still lend itself to the author's point - some exist but not a huge amount. Even taking that point, high enough speed rail is good enough for inter-city travel, it isn't meant to be an aircraft replacement, it is an alternative form of travel. You wouldn't say that people shouldn't drive between cities, because airplanes are faster. It is an alternative form of travel which allows for mass transit, and in using it, you adjust expectations. > Comfort and convenience are other important factors, but there aircraft are also quite competitive. I doubt that, it's possible the author flies exclusively in business/first class, which is giving them a skewed perception. Aircraft are uncomfortable compared to trains. > Contrast this with aircraft. There are 15,000 airports in the US. Any but the largest aircraft can fly to any of these airports. If I build another airport, I have added 15,000 potential connections to the network. If I build another rail terminal and branch line, at significantly greater cost than an airstrip, I have added only one additional connection to the network. This is completely wrong. Building an airport doesn't automatically come with the ability to accept any aircraft. There are a lot of restrictions and regulations around what you can and cannot do with an airport and its associated routes. An "untowered paved strip" has a specific kind of usage which does not include commercial routes, which is what the premise of the post is, so this is a disingenuous, unfair, and misleading comparison.

bigbacaloa 4y ago

The author defines high speed to mema more than a certain never satisfied threshold ...

bigbacaloa 4y ago

The author defines high speed as above some little satisfied threshold. I'm Spain quite fast rail has replaced planes as the preferred means of travel. Spain, señite being quite "bumpy", does have the advantage that a hub structure is natural.

cycomanic 4y ago

The article seems to be completely littered with factual errors. 1. The author says that HSR projects are about a third below passenger projections everywhere. Everyone who has taken the TGV between Bordeaux and Paris, the ICE between Cologne and Frankfurt and many of the other lines in Europe knows that it is trivially not true. The Bordeaux Paris train is often sold out several times a day. 2. The author says the SFO to LA line comes at $350m/mile which he gives as indication for HSR construction. I don't know about the accuracy for the SFO to LA line, but it's completely off for general HSR. Even the highest estimate here for a double track HSR line is $2.6m/mile here: https://compassinternational.net/railroad-engineering-construction-cost-benchmarks/ https://compassinternational.net/railroad-engineering-constr... 3. The author says that 100,000 passengers daily is the SFO to LAX traffic today. If I look at stats for SFO it has around 3M passengers per month, I assume not all are flying to/from LA so the number can't be right. 4. The whole discussion about interruptions is also weird. Yes if a rail line gets interrupted you probably can't easily route around it. But it's incorrect to say you can always do that in a car, as everyone stuck in a traffic jam can attest to. Also I would like to see some statistics on rail/track interruptions vs road interruptions. 5. The subsidies discussion also seems weird. He acknowledges that roads and airtravel receive subsidies as well, but then dismisses them because road operation cost are covered by the driver. Sure but maintanance is covered by the state again. Most rail companies would be very profitable if they would not have to pay for the network (admittedly they often don't want to let go of that control, because it allows them to keep competition put) I don't think I can take any argument so littered with factual errors seriously.

fomine3 4y ago
Add: This quote seems to false. Even in Tokaido Shinkansen (extremely utilized), it is said that rails are replaced about every 10yr. In Tohoku Shinkansen, officially said that it replaced about every 35 yr. > A typical Japanese maintenance schedule has each segment of rail reground, to exacting tolerances, every 6 months while total replacement is required every 5 years.

ribawuwym 4y ago

The answer is very simple actually. Railroad is a cheap and primitive tech and doesn't support anything high speed. Several advancements are pushing track quality toward faster speed and toward the point of convergence where it will cease to be cheap.

lyschoening 4y ago

Negativity aside, the article makes fair arguments against setting expectations for rail speed too high. The thing is, trains do not have to be faster than 300kph/185mph to compete with planes. Modern trains are infinitely more comfortable than modern planes, so they do not need to match planes in travel times. A modern train features silent travel, ample leg room, unpressurized air and no seat belts. Reliability is key and that does require infrastructure investment. Rail infrastructure will always require subsidies but the costs do not have to be astronomical. Meanwhile, the cost of air traffic emissions are carried by society, which can't go on much longer.

paganel 4y ago

As someone mentions in one of the article's comments, the solution is to "drop down the speed a bit". I.e. HSR will never be able to compete with airplanes if you take both cost and time into the equation, but lower-speed rail can definitely compete against privately-own cars, which would be a bigger win imo. To take the example of Europe, it's much more important to connect a location, by rail, with as many other locations in a radius of 200-300 km, and, even more importantly, to connect those other locations between themselves, than to connect that location by HSR with another one placed at ~1000 km. So, much more important to connect Paris with Caen, Nantes, Rennes, Brest, Reims, Rouen, Troyes, Tours, Orleans, and, more importantly, to connect Nantes with Caen, or Troyes with Tours, or Reims with Rouen, than is to spend the money in order to build a HSR between Paris and Berlin. More to the point, I'd rather we spend the money to have the French rail network of 1914, which was slower, but which was covering a lot more places, than the French rail network of 2014, which is way faster, but which is covering fewer places. See this reddit thread for the relevant rail maps [1] [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/202ym3/evolution_of_the_french_railway_network_from_1910/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/202ym3/evolution_o...

kkfx 4y ago

The main high cost of high speed rails is that they need to be VERY planar, a thing hard to create and harder to maintain. It's easy create a short-length perfectly aligned planar metallic stuff BUT it's far harder for very big sizes and rails need to be veeery long, so change veeery little over length. As a result there are many issues in both mere orographic terms and in maintenance terms. Rails are good for applications like non perishable goods transport, they can sustain heavy loads, move them with less energy than others ground means, they are easy to automate, so ideal for mid and long range on-ground logistic. For transporting people the air, yes, I'm definitively serious, is the best and cheapest solution: - it's fast, at least it can be fast, while supporting a wide range of speeds and ranges - it's flexible, behind VTOLs/STOLs we just need "terminal" infra, the path between them is free - in whole infra terms it demand far less infra to build and maintain than roads and rails You might argue that actually the cheapest STOL is far more expensive than a car, but in resource terms it's not. In fuel terms consume more than an equivalent (load capacity) car, for safety demand more entertainment to be sure nothing fails, but just in raw material terms is a damn cheap car, very little steel, less aluminum, a bit of copper, glass, eventually wood and plastic. On scale planes can be on par with cars in final product costs and while we need more energy we do not need complex road infrastructure hard to maintain and evolve. Not really flexible. We do not develop such mean in most of the world just because we need roads anyway to move heavy loads, we already have much of them since centuries etc, but while most disagree it's the future. Some know and know most disagree https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-report.pdf https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... but as any real tech evolution it will happen, it's just a matter of time.

Markoff 4y ago

In Europe? Because it's slower and more expensive than budget airlines.

rogue7 4y ago

I've thought about this and there's I think another reason coming from combinatorics. Consider a set of n cities. Being able to go from one city to another by plane only requires n airports. However, to have a complete rail network, one needs n (n-1) / 2 tracks. Hence the complexity analysis: one solution is linear, the other one is quadratic.

matkoniecz 4y ago
Take a look at actual rail networks. Noone is building N-1 separate tracks to N-1 cities, network is closer to minimum spanning tree.