7 ms·

> In the US, trips that are 50-300 miles are almost all done by car because that distance is too short for commercial airlines and too far for public transporta

> In the US, trips that are 50-300 miles are almost all done by car because that distance is too short for commercial airlines and too far for public transportation. A bit off-topic but this is a political problem, not a technical one. Trips of 50-300 miles are certainly within the operating range of fast and efficient rail travel as demonstrated in multiple places around the world outside of the US.

n_ermosh 2y ago
100% agreed. I'd love a high speed rail system in the US. but we're engineers not politicians :)
- stetrain 2y ago
  Sending more travelers into the sky in personal aircraft will also be a political issue. I definitely applaud the goal of improving GA safety, there is certainly a lot to improve in that regard even if the end result isn't a huge increase in the number of family roadtrips taken in personal aircraft.
  - n_ermosh 2y ago
    > there is certainly a lot to improve in that regard even if the end result isn't a huge increase in the number of family roadtrips taken in personal aircraft. that's kind of how I see it too, the failed version of this is that GA is safer than it is today.
- rglullis 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - stetrain 2y ago
    Even just analyzing it on a person-mile-efficiency basis, moving from personal cars to personal aircraft is the wrong direction. Trains obviously do well at that metric, but I'm not opposed to exploring other options on that side of the spectrum. Pitching a market move towards smaller, less-efficient vehicles is anti-sustainable. The better pitch for this kind of technology is probably on the order of modernizing flight training to improve safety and relevance of the pipeline that creates commercial aircraft pilots, rather than significantly expanding personal travel by personal aircraft.
    - n_ermosh 2y ago
      Growing GA should also create a pipeline for commercial pilots which we desperately need. But let's be honest, flying commercial is a pretty poor experience. Getting to a major airport, getting through security, waiting to board, and then deplaning and waiting for bags at your destination adds hours to travel time. Door to door, I can get from LA to SF in the small plane faster than commercial even though I fly at ~1/3 the speed. We want our airplanes to be more efficient than cars, but to get there we need to first scale the market.
      - rglullis 2y ago
        > We want our airplanes to be more efficient than cars, but to get there we need to first scale the market. Why is it that you think it's feasible to put all this effort to "scale the market", but getting to something like "building efficient passenger rail" or even "offer a comfortable, fast intercity bus" is out of your reach? The US doesn't "need" flying. It needs a more efficient way to move passengers. To suggest that small planes are ever going to be more efficient than mass transit is delusional. The US needs to move away from "personal" transportation and invest in multi-modal, public mass-transit. And yes, there are still plenty of opportunities for engineers to do that.
        ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        > Why is it that you think it's feasible to put all this effort to "scale the market", but getting to something like "building efficient passenger rail" or even "offer a comfortable, fast intercity bus" is out of your reach? Because personal planes will get them the attention and support (and more importantly, money) of wealthy customers and investors, and building rail gets you none of that because you're just suggesting using known technology and resources to solve problems, and that's boooooooring. Why solve the actual transportation needs of a populace that cannot move efficiently when you can build yet another stupid toy for the rich?
  - lancesells 2y ago
    I don't think that's fair. While I don't think personal aircraft is a net good, both things can be worked on at the same time.
  - bigyikes 2y ago
    [flagged]
jeffreyrogers 2y ago
It's not just a political problem. It's also a legal one due to the property rights involved.
- yogurtboy 2y ago
  In this case, as in many others, political problems are just legal problems at scale.
- s1k3s 2y ago
  Can't the US govt buy back any land they want for infrastructure? I mean forcibly buy back.
  - jeffreyrogers 2y ago
    Yes, it's called eminent domain. But if the government attempts to do so you can file a lawsuit and argue that they don't have a right to purchase your property from you. These lawsuits are expensive and take a lot of time/effort, which makes building a railway impractical by this method. To "solve" this politically would require a constitutional amendment, which is obviously not going to happen for this issue.
    - stetrain 2y ago
      You can also try negotiating peacefully first: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/virginia-and-charlotte-n-c-officially-to-acquire-norfolk-southern-routes/ https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/virginia-a...
      - mattmaroon 2y ago
        Governments usually do try negotiating peacefully first. It’s better for everyone involved than the alternative.
    - chairmansteve 2y ago
      But, as a previous poster said, these problems always seem solveable when building a freeway.
CalRobert 2y ago
Interestingly I'm hosting my dad near Amsterdam for the week and to get from Sacramento to SFO (from where he flew to AMS) he... flew. Which I guess is logical, but seems insane to me when he lives close to Sacramento Amtrak which actually HAS good, regular service to SFO (via Bart, connecting at Richmond). Even if you build the train some people won't give it a try, sadly. A lot of carbon was spewed in to the air to fly him and his suitcase over the capitol corridor tracks.
- stetrain 2y ago
  > Even if you build the train some people won't give it a try, sadly. A lot of carbon was spewed in to the air to fly him and his suitcase over the capitol corridor tracks. They might be more willing to try if the service prices included the cost of the associated emissions.
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    Certainly! It would also help if there were integrated ticketing the way there is in, say, Germany. If you buy a plane and a train ticket and miss a connection then you eat the cost of the ticket. Even better would be if luggage were integrated, but that would be asking for a lot more annoying security on trains I think.
- sixothree 2y ago
  I bet if you and he were travelling together he would do it. I've gotten people to join me on train trips when the option was something different - flying or taking a one hour taxi ride.
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    Yeah, a lot of the issue is familiarity. He's a pretty standard suburbanite and the train confuses him.
- maples37 2y ago
  I really want to try Amtrak. I've looked at it a few times. But the only train line near me only has a train at it 2 or 3 times a week, at some crazy hour like 2:30am. If I'm taking a Monday-Thursday business trip, I'd have to arrive at my destination the Friday before and return home late night on Sunday. It's just not a realistic choice, unless you're really excited about trains. It doesn't help that the website is terrible at helping you plan a trip, if you say "I want to leave on Monday" but there are no trains at the station on Monday, it just takes you to a page saying "there are no routes, sorry" instead of suggesting the next day a train is available. I found a download link for the train schedule, and it took me a solid 10 minutes to figure out what I was looking at. (If you're following along at home: the big bold date at the top of the page is completely irrelevant. It's just today's date, so you know when you downloaded the PDF. Because of course that's why you downloaded the PDF in the first place.) I have a friend who is really excited about trains, and he wanted to take a weekend Amtrak trip. The only way he could make it work was to ride the train up and have someone at his destination who was willing to drive him back. And even then, most of the trip was plodding along in the darkness, because the train only stops at our city in the dead of night. They're supposed to be putting in some new lines in the coming years, one of which will stop by our city. I'm cautiously optimistic, though I'm not sure how useful those lines will be if there's no trains rolling on them at reasonable hours.
shafyy 2y ago
A million times this. Modern and efficient train networks are the best way to travel, even for longer distances of a few thousand kilometers (night trains). Sure, there are still use cases for flying, but the dismissiveness of people who have never experienced great train travel against it just shocks me.
- gizajob 2y ago
  Hmmm I just flew from Bergamo, Italy to Liverpool, UK and it was basically four hours door to door from where I was staying to where I was going in Liverpool, and for less than €100. The train can’t do this.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - 2143 2y ago
    Bergamo to Liverpool is over 1700 km by road as per Google Maps. The company is trying to solve transportation for the 50 to 300 mile range (around 80 to 500 km). Trains can easily do this. Anyway, in China the Beijing to Guangzhou high-speed rail covers the 2200 km distance in 8 hours. Costs $120. ----- Do note that — while I do understand there's an environmental impact (and I hope technology improves to eliminate this impact) — I'm not against flying. I love flying. In fact I wanted to become a commercial pilot myself.
    - gizajob 2y ago
      Yeah by the same token I love trains too. I’d happily get the train between Bergamo and Liverpool but as it stands we’d probably be talking €500 and 12-24 hours with multiple changes. Flights can be had from €20.
  - Aachen 2y ago
    Airplanes can't do this either. The reason you paid 100€ is that your ticket did not include paying for cleaning up the mess the plane has left behind I'm happy for everyone to fly to and from work if they'd also pay for cleaning up the pollution it causes. We have several options, carbfix and olivine weathering come to mind but there's also at least one company who turns atmospheric CO2 back into fuel, we just need to start doing it after realising that what we're doing is only possible because the climate hasn't caught up with current habits yet
lbrito 2y ago
Was about to post the same. Passing no judgement on this particular project, which must have been the result of honest hard work and dedication, but it's truly bizarre that people in the US would rather double down on the failed personal vehicle concept rather than embracing public transit, as more developed countries have.
- callalex 2y ago
  Most people in the USA are too shy/prudish to say it but I think this is a conversation that needs to be opened: Americans are so resistant to public transportation because the public seriously sucks to deal with. There will be no popular utilization of public transit until we implement strong economic safety nets and extensive support/mandatory detention of people that are mentally ill. Those problems are much harder to overcome while maintaining an American standard of personal liberty than even the complications surrounding building rail. As a native of San Francisco and the surrounding area I have tried for decades to utilize public transit. The infrastructure isn’t great, but it’s also not terrible or anything. But in years where my job/living situation have me using public transit every day, my rate of exposure to human excrement or someone who wouldn’t even be aware that they physically harmed me was greater than once a week. In phases of my life where I’m driving everywhere that rate is practically zero. That stress takes a toll on my health that I have a natural instinct to avoid.
  - stetrain 2y ago
    You aren't wrong, although your comfortable car ride also includes huge amounts of risk of personal injury, we just tend to not think about that until it happens. The lack of other places for people to go often leaves public transit facilities as a place for homeless people to congregate or seek shelter. The US also tends to treat public transit as welfare transit in general. A transportation option of last resort for those who can't afford a car, where the primary goal is being inexpensive, instead of being the best and most efficient way to move around a city for all citizens. Transit stations in the US also generally don't have revenue-generating amenities like food, coffee, or shopping. This makes them money sinks instead of revenue sources that pay for their own cleaning and security etc. “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.”
bigyikes 2y ago
I’m begging for trains in the Texas triangle. It’s such a perfect use case. It’s ~3 hours between any of San Antonio-Austin, Houston, and Dallas-Fort Worth. Long enough to be a horrible drive, short enough to be a waste of a flight. There’s also not much density in between to contend with.

n_ermosh 2y ago

100% agreed. I'd love a high speed rail system in the US. but we're engineers not politicians :)

stetrain 2y ago
Sending more travelers into the sky in personal aircraft will also be a political issue. I definitely applaud the goal of improving GA safety, there is certainly a lot to improve in that regard even if the end result isn't a huge increase in the number of family roadtrips taken in personal aircraft.
- n_ermosh 2y ago
  > there is certainly a lot to improve in that regard even if the end result isn't a huge increase in the number of family roadtrips taken in personal aircraft. that's kind of how I see it too, the failed version of this is that GA is safer than it is today.
rglullis 2y ago
[flagged]
- stetrain 2y ago
  Even just analyzing it on a person-mile-efficiency basis, moving from personal cars to personal aircraft is the wrong direction. Trains obviously do well at that metric, but I'm not opposed to exploring other options on that side of the spectrum. Pitching a market move towards smaller, less-efficient vehicles is anti-sustainable. The better pitch for this kind of technology is probably on the order of modernizing flight training to improve safety and relevance of the pipeline that creates commercial aircraft pilots, rather than significantly expanding personal travel by personal aircraft.
  - n_ermosh 2y ago
    Growing GA should also create a pipeline for commercial pilots which we desperately need. But let's be honest, flying commercial is a pretty poor experience. Getting to a major airport, getting through security, waiting to board, and then deplaning and waiting for bags at your destination adds hours to travel time. Door to door, I can get from LA to SF in the small plane faster than commercial even though I fly at ~1/3 the speed. We want our airplanes to be more efficient than cars, but to get there we need to first scale the market.
    - rglullis 2y ago
      > We want our airplanes to be more efficient than cars, but to get there we need to first scale the market. Why is it that you think it's feasible to put all this effort to "scale the market", but getting to something like "building efficient passenger rail" or even "offer a comfortable, fast intercity bus" is out of your reach? The US doesn't "need" flying. It needs a more efficient way to move passengers. To suggest that small planes are ever going to be more efficient than mass transit is delusional. The US needs to move away from "personal" transportation and invest in multi-modal, public mass-transit. And yes, there are still plenty of opportunities for engineers to do that.
      - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        > Why is it that you think it's feasible to put all this effort to "scale the market", but getting to something like "building efficient passenger rail" or even "offer a comfortable, fast intercity bus" is out of your reach? Because personal planes will get them the attention and support (and more importantly, money) of wealthy customers and investors, and building rail gets you none of that because you're just suggesting using known technology and resources to solve problems, and that's boooooooring. Why solve the actual transportation needs of a populace that cannot move efficiently when you can build yet another stupid toy for the rich?
- lancesells 2y ago
  I don't think that's fair. While I don't think personal aircraft is a net good, both things can be worked on at the same time.
- bigyikes 2y ago
  [flagged]

jeffreyrogers 2y ago

It's not just a political problem. It's also a legal one due to the property rights involved.

yogurtboy 2y ago
In this case, as in many others, political problems are just legal problems at scale.
s1k3s 2y ago
Can't the US govt buy back any land they want for infrastructure? I mean forcibly buy back.
- jeffreyrogers 2y ago
  Yes, it's called eminent domain. But if the government attempts to do so you can file a lawsuit and argue that they don't have a right to purchase your property from you. These lawsuits are expensive and take a lot of time/effort, which makes building a railway impractical by this method. To "solve" this politically would require a constitutional amendment, which is obviously not going to happen for this issue.
  - stetrain 2y ago
    You can also try negotiating peacefully first: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/virginia-and-charlotte-n-c-officially-to-acquire-norfolk-southern-routes/ https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/virginia-a...
    - mattmaroon 2y ago
      Governments usually do try negotiating peacefully first. It’s better for everyone involved than the alternative.
  - chairmansteve 2y ago
    But, as a previous poster said, these problems always seem solveable when building a freeway.

CalRobert 2y ago

Interestingly I'm hosting my dad near Amsterdam for the week and to get from Sacramento to SFO (from where he flew to AMS) he... flew. Which I guess is logical, but seems insane to me when he lives close to Sacramento Amtrak which actually HAS good, regular service to SFO (via Bart, connecting at Richmond). Even if you build the train some people won't give it a try, sadly. A lot of carbon was spewed in to the air to fly him and his suitcase over the capitol corridor tracks.

stetrain 2y ago
> Even if you build the train some people won't give it a try, sadly. A lot of carbon was spewed in to the air to fly him and his suitcase over the capitol corridor tracks. They might be more willing to try if the service prices included the cost of the associated emissions.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  Certainly! It would also help if there were integrated ticketing the way there is in, say, Germany. If you buy a plane and a train ticket and miss a connection then you eat the cost of the ticket. Even better would be if luggage were integrated, but that would be asking for a lot more annoying security on trains I think.
sixothree 2y ago
I bet if you and he were travelling together he would do it. I've gotten people to join me on train trips when the option was something different - flying or taking a one hour taxi ride.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  Yeah, a lot of the issue is familiarity. He's a pretty standard suburbanite and the train confuses him.
maples37 2y ago
I really want to try Amtrak. I've looked at it a few times. But the only train line near me only has a train at it 2 or 3 times a week, at some crazy hour like 2:30am. If I'm taking a Monday-Thursday business trip, I'd have to arrive at my destination the Friday before and return home late night on Sunday. It's just not a realistic choice, unless you're really excited about trains. It doesn't help that the website is terrible at helping you plan a trip, if you say "I want to leave on Monday" but there are no trains at the station on Monday, it just takes you to a page saying "there are no routes, sorry" instead of suggesting the next day a train is available. I found a download link for the train schedule, and it took me a solid 10 minutes to figure out what I was looking at. (If you're following along at home: the big bold date at the top of the page is completely irrelevant. It's just today's date, so you know when you downloaded the PDF. Because of course that's why you downloaded the PDF in the first place.) I have a friend who is really excited about trains, and he wanted to take a weekend Amtrak trip. The only way he could make it work was to ride the train up and have someone at his destination who was willing to drive him back. And even then, most of the trip was plodding along in the darkness, because the train only stops at our city in the dead of night. They're supposed to be putting in some new lines in the coming years, one of which will stop by our city. I'm cautiously optimistic, though I'm not sure how useful those lines will be if there's no trains rolling on them at reasonable hours.

shafyy 2y ago

A million times this. Modern and efficient train networks are the best way to travel, even for longer distances of a few thousand kilometers (night trains). Sure, there are still use cases for flying, but the dismissiveness of people who have never experienced great train travel against it just shocks me.

gizajob 2y ago
Hmmm I just flew from Bergamo, Italy to Liverpool, UK and it was basically four hours door to door from where I was staying to where I was going in Liverpool, and for less than €100. The train can’t do this.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 2143 2y ago
  Bergamo to Liverpool is over 1700 km by road as per Google Maps. The company is trying to solve transportation for the 50 to 300 mile range (around 80 to 500 km). Trains can easily do this. Anyway, in China the Beijing to Guangzhou high-speed rail covers the 2200 km distance in 8 hours. Costs $120. ----- Do note that — while I do understand there's an environmental impact (and I hope technology improves to eliminate this impact) — I'm not against flying. I love flying. In fact I wanted to become a commercial pilot myself.
  - gizajob 2y ago
    Yeah by the same token I love trains too. I’d happily get the train between Bergamo and Liverpool but as it stands we’d probably be talking €500 and 12-24 hours with multiple changes. Flights can be had from €20.
- Aachen 2y ago
  Airplanes can't do this either. The reason you paid 100€ is that your ticket did not include paying for cleaning up the mess the plane has left behind I'm happy for everyone to fly to and from work if they'd also pay for cleaning up the pollution it causes. We have several options, carbfix and olivine weathering come to mind but there's also at least one company who turns atmospheric CO2 back into fuel, we just need to start doing it after realising that what we're doing is only possible because the climate hasn't caught up with current habits yet

lbrito 2y ago

Was about to post the same. Passing no judgement on this particular project, which must have been the result of honest hard work and dedication, but it's truly bizarre that people in the US would rather double down on the failed personal vehicle concept rather than embracing public transit, as more developed countries have.

callalex 2y ago
Most people in the USA are too shy/prudish to say it but I think this is a conversation that needs to be opened: Americans are so resistant to public transportation because the public seriously sucks to deal with. There will be no popular utilization of public transit until we implement strong economic safety nets and extensive support/mandatory detention of people that are mentally ill. Those problems are much harder to overcome while maintaining an American standard of personal liberty than even the complications surrounding building rail. As a native of San Francisco and the surrounding area I have tried for decades to utilize public transit. The infrastructure isn’t great, but it’s also not terrible or anything. But in years where my job/living situation have me using public transit every day, my rate of exposure to human excrement or someone who wouldn’t even be aware that they physically harmed me was greater than once a week. In phases of my life where I’m driving everywhere that rate is practically zero. That stress takes a toll on my health that I have a natural instinct to avoid.
- stetrain 2y ago
  You aren't wrong, although your comfortable car ride also includes huge amounts of risk of personal injury, we just tend to not think about that until it happens. The lack of other places for people to go often leaves public transit facilities as a place for homeless people to congregate or seek shelter. The US also tends to treat public transit as welfare transit in general. A transportation option of last resort for those who can't afford a car, where the primary goal is being inexpensive, instead of being the best and most efficient way to move around a city for all citizens. Transit stations in the US also generally don't have revenue-generating amenities like food, coffee, or shopping. This makes them money sinks instead of revenue sources that pay for their own cleaning and security etc. “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.”

bigyikes 2y ago

I’m begging for trains in the Texas triangle. It’s such a perfect use case. It’s ~3 hours between any of San Antonio-Austin, Houston, and Dallas-Fort Worth. Long enough to be a horrible drive, short enough to be a waste of a flight. There’s also not much density in between to contend with.