5 ms·
Extremely unlikely. The population density just isn't there. There are 12m people in Washington and Oregon combined, a substantial portion of whom are not on th
by jaggederest 3y ago
Extremely unlikely. The population density just isn't there. There are 12m people in Washington and Oregon combined, a substantial portion of whom are not on the I-5 corridor. The corridor in general is about 800km long. Compare to ~70m within 500 km of Paris.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NegativeLatency 3y agoDid you know there are nice and fast trains in Europe outside of the Paris region?
- b112 3y agoWhich carry all those people mentioned, around? Europe is crazily, densely populated.
- bigDinosaur 3y agoPerhaps you'll be shocked to hear that countries like Sweden have HSR despite not being particularly densely populated? It's absurd how much money is poured into roads and yet never attracts the same criticism.
- jaggederest 3y agoThe areas in Sweden with railroads are more populated than the Van/Sea/Pdx corridor, by about 1.8x, more if you drop a couple outlying small towns that don't make sense in themselves to connect except for network completeness reasons. Also, railways in Sweden are more middle-speed trains these days, running 200km/h as far as I am aware. These people are proposing 300km/h+ which requires a significantly higher level of track investment - you can't just use standard sleepers and bolted rails.
- jaggederest 3y agoYes. I've ridden on many of them. I'm a huge HSR proponent. I just don't think it works for Eugene to Vancouver. If we had double the population it would be a no-brainer. The math is very clear. Below about 25,000 people per linear kilometer of lines, they require massive subsidies and never really pay off. Eugene to Vancouver BC is <12,000 people per linear kilometer. Honestly I would love to be wrong.
- NegativeLatency 3y agoWe massively subsidize highways, so I don’t really see a problem with having other options that aren’t “profitable”
- cyberax 3y agoThe whole WA is just around 7 million people. Portland area is around 2. Yet the distance between Seattle and Portland is the same as between Frankfurt and Munich. There's simply not enough traffic to justify a train. Another lane on I-5 would help a lot more.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago> Another lane on I-5 would help a lot more. That rarely works out how you would think: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
- jaggederest 3y agoTo play devil's advocate, induced demand is a good thing - more people getting to go where they want to go. I'm all in favor of HSR but you have to balance the viewpoint - roads are a good thing, in general, they just should be a (much smaller) part of the mix instead of the only answer. Most freight should move by boat and rail, most passengers should move by rail and bus, and roads should be mostly for adhoc trips and deliveries rather than daily commutes.
- cyberax 3y agoWhy should buses EVER be a part of any solution? They are terrible, and always will be. It's simple math: buses have to either have long intervals, or be horribly wasteful (and thus too expensive). At the moment, the most realistic solution is to just wait 10 years for the self-driving cars to mature and then build infrastructure around them.
- jaggederest 3y agoIs that the most realistic? Because I don't think they're ever going to get L5 automation to work.
- 3y ago
- kspacewalk2 3y agoNow compare to Spain.
- jaggederest 3y agoSpain has double the population density of OR/WA, much less if you include BC. What's your point?
- kspacewalk2 3y agoPopulation density of entire states/provinces is completely irrelevant. I trust you're aware that ~ 2/3rds of BC's population, for example, lives in a tiny strip of land (Lower Mainland). There are 10 million people in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver metro areas, and the distance between the three is about 500 km. That would be more than enough density for high speed train in any part of the world. Spain's major population centres are a lot more geographically spread out. I'm not sure I'd start with high speed rail in this corridor. The focus should be on high-frequency, high-reliability fast trains that may not hit the true HSR speeds, but at e.g. 200 kmh would be plenty fast enough for now. But the argument that "the population density isn't there" for HSR is absurd.
- bin_bash 3y agoand it looks like they have 7 high speed lines coming from Paris. Seems the PNW could afford 1.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoVancouver BC to maybe Salem is pretty densely populated. They won't get much density past that to get to SF.
- stuaxo 3y agoAnd before the 70s there were none.
- melling 3y agoYou probably don’t realize this, but you’re just perpetuating misinformation that’s been debunked repeatedly for decades.
- jcranmer 3y agoNormally, I'd agree with you, but the Portland-Seattle HSR corridor is around the low end of viable HSR corridors. You're connecting the 17th, 27th, and 28th largest cities in US+Canada, with no realistic prospects to connect anything else approaching a major city--the next largest city is Boise, but that's 350mi away as the crow flies (and mountains means it's quite further in practice), and smaller than even places like Fresno/Bakersfield, which people complain about CAHSR considering to visit. Oh, and one of those three cities is on the other side of an international border, which tends to dampen ridership a fair amount. By contrast, all the other standard HSR candidates anchor regions that involve at least one, and for all but the Midwest two, cities in the top 10, with many more in the top 50.
- jaggederest 3y agoI mean I've been doing the math and looking at ridership, transportation and population density mapping in hopes of justifying it for about two of those decades. Show me a similar area with fewer than 12,000 people per linear kilometer that has HSR and I will be impressed and take notes. I don't know of anywhere on earth that has fast trains and that few people.
- yurrzz 3y agoI'd say the vast majority of the population of Oregon and Washington is along the I-5 corridor.
- fisherjeff 3y agoYep. Half live in the Portland and Seattle metro areas alone.
- jaggederest 3y agoYes, that's why I said "a substantial portion". About 25% of OR/WA don't live within an hour of the corridor. I live in Oregon, along the I-5 corridor. I've been looking at the feasibility of HSR for years. The math does not yet make sense. If the population was doubled, it would be a no-brainer.
- lukas099 3y agoHow long until the population doubles? How much harder would it be to build HSR on a route with double the density?
- jaggederest 3y agoHopefully never, and not much more than currently