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Americans do take trains when they’re affordable and convenient. The NE corridor in Amtrak is heavily used even with all its problems. You don’t have to come u
by imgabe 3y ago
Americans do take trains when they’re affordable and convenient. The NE corridor in Amtrak is heavily used even with all its problems.
You don’t have to come up with some crazy new innovation for Mag-Lev, just make the trains reliable, affordable, and near major population centers.
- idontwantthis 3y agoSD <-> LA is also a lovely ride. Makes it feel like you're in one big city. Takes more than 2 hours, but it's city center to city center, and trains are so much more comfortable than any alternative.
- melling 3y agoThat’s 120 miles. Sometime in the future that’ll be commutable by maglev. Here are a few other commutable routes with maglev 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
- gaadd33 3y agoPeople already commute via trains from NYC to Philly, no need to maglev to make it reasonable. Some of the other ones (NYC to Pittsburgh for example) run into the same issues with maglev as normal rails do, namely geography. But it would be great if all of those were connected by regular 200mph rails, 300mph maglev would be even better. I don't think there's the appetite for the level of investment either one would take.
- ghaff 3y ago>near major population centers One of the advantages of trains is that there can be train stations convenient to where people go within the city whereas airports are often hell and gone. There are more light rails etc. than there used to be but Manhattan, for example, is terrible for getting into the city from any of the airports. Both Logan in Boston and National in DC are pretty good. LA is sort of a , sorry, train wreck (or at least very variable) for getting around without a car. SF is better the airport is actually at least as good (via BART) getting into the city as the Amtrak station in Emeryville is. People use commuter rail in Boston, NYC, etc. too but it's generally less useful (or not useful at all) outside of commuting.
- imgabe 3y agoDC also just extended the Metro to go out to Dulles, so that is massively more convenient too. It’s fine for the airport to be a bit out there if there is a good rail line going to it.
- Moldoteck 3y agoEven affordable is not that important if we look at Switzerland