6 ms·

To go from coast to coast even with a dedicated high speed train would easily take a day or two. It’s just not competitive over 1000km.

comte7092 4y ago
Definitely, there’s a ton of low hanging fruit to be picked in the US, in both the NE and the Midwest alone. Pretty much everywhere east of the Mississippi is a prime target for high speed rail.
- Operyl 4y ago
  Brightline is giving us a decent high speed rail in Florida, and I’ve heard they’re doing something on the west coast too. I can’t wait for it to be connected state wide, all the Disney trips … heh.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Beightline travels at the normal federal limit of 79mph. The _lowest_ internationally accepted limit for high speed rail is 125mph. Even if Beightline ever actually upgrades to 110mph that still won’t be real HSR. They also have a real problem with Florida drivers being Florida drivers. True high speed rail is fully grade separated (no road crossings)
    - Operyl 4y ago
      Sorry, I thought I put that in quotes when I posted. It’s high speed compared to everything else here, and better than what we had before. That said, this is their plan for the expansion to Orlando: > Brightline will terminate at this station once the 170-mile (270 km) Orlando Extension track is built. Trains will run up to 125 mph (201 km/h) with a travel time of approximately three hours from Orlando's airport to Miami.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Disney specifically said no (so far) because Brightline said yes to Universal.
    - Operyl 4y ago
      Yeah, but Brightline will do connections via their own “taxi” service, like they do down here.
- cguess 4y ago
  Dallas/Austin/San Antonio is also ripe for the picking, and luckily it's being planned.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    It may have won a pyrrhic victory; the private company building it won its lawsuit to get eminent domain powers but not before its CEO resigned and the board disbanded: https://www.thebatt.com/news/texas-central-railway-high-speed-slow-progress/article_d095c9e0-532f-11ed-a3c7-bb210840aa75.amp.html https://www.thebatt.com/news/texas-central-railway-high-spee...
simfree 4y ago
Vancouver BC to Portland OR or San Diego to Sacramento and all thr cities in between could be competitive though. Its a shame that High Speed Rail is not a priority.
- rhino369 4y ago
  The sweet spot for HSP in North America is pretty small. The vast majority of people who could a ride afford already have a vehicle. And the vast majority of people don't live particularly close to a central rail station. So even though there already is a sort of high speed rail between DC and Philly, I, as resident in the suburbs, would probably just drive unless work was paying for ubers on both ends. Even if Acela was a true HSP rail, that wouldn't really change my calculus. So while there is a goldilocks zone where cars take too long and its too short for airplanes to be faster, it's probably not very viable.
  - kjkjadksj 4y ago
    Why not turn your commute into a 5 min drive to the station, then a book?
    - bmelton 4y ago
      I'm sure that works splendidly for some, but I used to commute into "the city" and while the commute itself wasn't particularly bad (thanks, Kindle!) it's still time spent commuting that isn't spent with my wife, my daughter, my dogs, or taking care of the neverending list of things that need to be done having bought an older home. If my circumstances were different, and that time was mostly recoverable as leisure then it's absolutely great advice, but it doesn't scale to every person.
      - burkaman 4y ago
        Why can't we build it then and have it work splendidly for some. There's a lot of people out there, it doesn't need to work for everybody. It would make your commute better too if half the drivers started taking a train instead.
godelski 4y ago
I'm not sure tbh. Would you trade a 6hr flight (travel time) for a 13hr train ride? 15? I could see people that would. Flights are incredibly uncomfortable and it is hard to work on them. On that long of a flight you've practically given up your day anyways. If on the train you had WiFi, could stretch your legs, eat mediocre food, and it was cost competitive, I would see plenty of people making that switch. I definitely think that the markets would be far better doing along the coasts rather than connecting them, but I don't think there is zero market either.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  It’s an interesting equation. You need to add about 2 hours to the flight for check in, parking, travel etc. and then you need to add a bit more to the arrival for getting out the airport and transport to where you are going. If the train is an overnight with a bed, and goes midtown to midtown, I’d take it every time.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > Would you trade a 6hr flight (travel time) for a 13hr train ride? 15? For as slow as such a train ride would be, it still seems implausibly fast. For example, flying from Seattle to Miami today takes less than 6 hours. If you laid a perfectly straight rail line all the way from Seattle to Miami, and ran a TGV along it at its top speed with no stops, it'd take more than 13 hours. And once you make the train case even slightly more realistic instead of using all of those best-case assumptions that are impossible in practice, you easily exceed 15 hours too.
humanizersequel 4y ago
If it was meaningfully cheaper it definitely would be competitive. Taking a train is a more pleasant experience on multiple levels. As far as the ancillary logistics, less secondary infrastructure is needed meaning you don't have to go to a designated chunk of land the size of a midsized town that literally cannot be conveniently located, and you avoid the hassle associated with onboarding (read: the TSA). Luggage also doesn't seem to be nearly as much of a hassle for whatever reason. I'm not sure if this would carry over to true high-volume long distance trains, but at the very least the baggage problem is conceptually simpler than at an airport. There are definitely downsides for the passenger, mostly the added time in transit, but in my experience this only matters is when you require quick turnaround and spontaneity in your travel — in which case you'd just take a plane. For a trip that is planned in advance, even a cross-country train trip can make sense, especially if you work on your computer/phone. The main downside is that long-distance train travel requires a sleeper car and a roomette to be really viable in the general case, and this is hard to scale. This may be an unsolvable problem since it's just so much less space-efficient than row seats, but if it isn't I see no reason why long distance rail couldn't carve out a significant chunk of the cross-country market.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  The problem is also that high speed rail has quite high maintenance requirements. Currently most if not all networks perform this maintenance at night, so trains cannot run while maintenance is ongoing.
  - humanizersequel 4y ago
    How often does this maintenance need to be performed? To be frank, I find it very unlikely that the Shinkansen, with its reputation for reliability, is having repairs performed on track sections at anything higher than a monthly cadence.
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      Not just repairs, but track and tunnel conditioning monitoring, checking the tension in catenary lines, the maintenance of the trains themselves, etc. Is every track maintained every night? No. But: * it is incredibly dangerous for a high speed train to collide with anything low speed (track maintenance vehicles, supplies, or workers). The rights of way are so constrained that there is no safe way to have them maintain only one track out of two, so they insist on total separation as a policy: https://international-railway-safety-council.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/sasaki-safety-system-for-track-maintenance-vehicle-operation-of-shinkansen.pdf https://international-railway-safety-council.com/wp-content/... * the Shinkansen are a two track network without parallel lines of the same gauge, so any maintenance reroute would require changing to either a normal train or to a bus, making sleepers impossible to operate normally. Even if you could though, trains need regular schedules for both riders and employees, and using different reroutes every night would be a scheduling nightmare

comte7092 4y ago

Definitely, there’s a ton of low hanging fruit to be picked in the US, in both the NE and the Midwest alone. Pretty much everywhere east of the Mississippi is a prime target for high speed rail.

Operyl 4y ago
Brightline is giving us a decent high speed rail in Florida, and I’ve heard they’re doing something on the west coast too. I can’t wait for it to be connected state wide, all the Disney trips … heh.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Beightline travels at the normal federal limit of 79mph. The _lowest_ internationally accepted limit for high speed rail is 125mph. Even if Beightline ever actually upgrades to 110mph that still won’t be real HSR. They also have a real problem with Florida drivers being Florida drivers. True high speed rail is fully grade separated (no road crossings)
  - Operyl 4y ago
    Sorry, I thought I put that in quotes when I posted. It’s high speed compared to everything else here, and better than what we had before. That said, this is their plan for the expansion to Orlando: > Brightline will terminate at this station once the 170-mile (270 km) Orlando Extension track is built. Trains will run up to 125 mph (201 km/h) with a travel time of approximately three hours from Orlando's airport to Miami.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Disney specifically said no (so far) because Brightline said yes to Universal.
  - Operyl 4y ago
    Yeah, but Brightline will do connections via their own “taxi” service, like they do down here.
cguess 4y ago
Dallas/Austin/San Antonio is also ripe for the picking, and luckily it's being planned.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  It may have won a pyrrhic victory; the private company building it won its lawsuit to get eminent domain powers but not before its CEO resigned and the board disbanded: https://www.thebatt.com/news/texas-central-railway-high-speed-slow-progress/article_d095c9e0-532f-11ed-a3c7-bb210840aa75.amp.html https://www.thebatt.com/news/texas-central-railway-high-spee...

simfree 4y ago

Vancouver BC to Portland OR or San Diego to Sacramento and all thr cities in between could be competitive though. Its a shame that High Speed Rail is not a priority.

rhino369 4y ago
The sweet spot for HSP in North America is pretty small. The vast majority of people who could a ride afford already have a vehicle. And the vast majority of people don't live particularly close to a central rail station. So even though there already is a sort of high speed rail between DC and Philly, I, as resident in the suburbs, would probably just drive unless work was paying for ubers on both ends. Even if Acela was a true HSP rail, that wouldn't really change my calculus. So while there is a goldilocks zone where cars take too long and its too short for airplanes to be faster, it's probably not very viable.
- kjkjadksj 4y ago
  Why not turn your commute into a 5 min drive to the station, then a book?
  - bmelton 4y ago
    I'm sure that works splendidly for some, but I used to commute into "the city" and while the commute itself wasn't particularly bad (thanks, Kindle!) it's still time spent commuting that isn't spent with my wife, my daughter, my dogs, or taking care of the neverending list of things that need to be done having bought an older home. If my circumstances were different, and that time was mostly recoverable as leisure then it's absolutely great advice, but it doesn't scale to every person.
    - burkaman 4y ago
      Why can't we build it then and have it work splendidly for some. There's a lot of people out there, it doesn't need to work for everybody. It would make your commute better too if half the drivers started taking a train instead.

godelski 4y ago

I'm not sure tbh. Would you trade a 6hr flight (travel time) for a 13hr train ride? 15? I could see people that would. Flights are incredibly uncomfortable and it is hard to work on them. On that long of a flight you've practically given up your day anyways. If on the train you had WiFi, could stretch your legs, eat mediocre food, and it was cost competitive, I would see plenty of people making that switch. I definitely think that the markets would be far better doing along the coasts rather than connecting them, but I don't think there is zero market either.

lostlogin 4y ago
It’s an interesting equation. You need to add about 2 hours to the flight for check in, parking, travel etc. and then you need to add a bit more to the arrival for getting out the airport and transport to where you are going. If the train is an overnight with a bed, and goes midtown to midtown, I’d take it every time.
josephcsible 4y ago
> Would you trade a 6hr flight (travel time) for a 13hr train ride? 15? For as slow as such a train ride would be, it still seems implausibly fast. For example, flying from Seattle to Miami today takes less than 6 hours. If you laid a perfectly straight rail line all the way from Seattle to Miami, and ran a TGV along it at its top speed with no stops, it'd take more than 13 hours. And once you make the train case even slightly more realistic instead of using all of those best-case assumptions that are impossible in practice, you easily exceed 15 hours too.

humanizersequel 4y ago

If it was meaningfully cheaper it definitely would be competitive. Taking a train is a more pleasant experience on multiple levels. As far as the ancillary logistics, less secondary infrastructure is needed meaning you don't have to go to a designated chunk of land the size of a midsized town that literally cannot be conveniently located, and you avoid the hassle associated with onboarding (read: the TSA). Luggage also doesn't seem to be nearly as much of a hassle for whatever reason. I'm not sure if this would carry over to true high-volume long distance trains, but at the very least the baggage problem is conceptually simpler than at an airport. There are definitely downsides for the passenger, mostly the added time in transit, but in my experience this only matters is when you require quick turnaround and spontaneity in your travel — in which case you'd just take a plane. For a trip that is planned in advance, even a cross-country train trip can make sense, especially if you work on your computer/phone. The main downside is that long-distance train travel requires a sleeper car and a roomette to be really viable in the general case, and this is hard to scale. This may be an unsolvable problem since it's just so much less space-efficient than row seats, but if it isn't I see no reason why long distance rail couldn't carve out a significant chunk of the cross-country market.

bobthepanda 4y ago
The problem is also that high speed rail has quite high maintenance requirements. Currently most if not all networks perform this maintenance at night, so trains cannot run while maintenance is ongoing.
- humanizersequel 4y ago
  How often does this maintenance need to be performed? To be frank, I find it very unlikely that the Shinkansen, with its reputation for reliability, is having repairs performed on track sections at anything higher than a monthly cadence.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Not just repairs, but track and tunnel conditioning monitoring, checking the tension in catenary lines, the maintenance of the trains themselves, etc. Is every track maintained every night? No. But: * it is incredibly dangerous for a high speed train to collide with anything low speed (track maintenance vehicles, supplies, or workers). The rights of way are so constrained that there is no safe way to have them maintain only one track out of two, so they insist on total separation as a policy: https://international-railway-safety-council.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/sasaki-safety-system-for-track-maintenance-vehicle-operation-of-shinkansen.pdf https://international-railway-safety-council.com/wp-content/... * the Shinkansen are a two track network without parallel lines of the same gauge, so any maintenance reroute would require changing to either a normal train or to a bus, making sleepers impossible to operate normally. Even if you could though, trains need regular schedules for both riders and employees, and using different reroutes every night would be a scheduling nightmare