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The Shinkansen has had one fatality in its entire existence. Domestic air travel is insanity, and I say this as a pilot and a flight instructor.
by _moof 2y ago
The Shinkansen has had one fatality in its entire existence. Domestic air travel is insanity, and I say this as a pilot and a flight instructor.
- seszett 2y agoAnd the TGV has only had deaths once during a test run.
- crazygringo 2y agoThat's cherry-picking to the extreme. Not only are most trains not Shinkansen, not even most trains in Japan are Shinkansen.
- seszett 2y agoOnly the Shinkansen (and TGV on my sibling post) can be compared to planes though. Local or IC trains might be compared to cars in the US.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoDoesn’t the Shinkansen and other HSR systems get rid of at grade road crossings? Yes, without people actually crossing in the tracks, you’ll get less deaths that way.
- xyzzy_plugh 2y agoSounds like getting rid of at-grade road crossings is a good thing, who've thought? Sounds like a good investment to me regardless of rail speed.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoYa, the only cost is money and space, but you can make your own space if you don’t mind viaducts everywhere.
- tonfa 2y agoDon't know how it is in the US, but it's similar for cars, highways don't cross small routes either there's typically a (small) bridge involve (no need for viaduct).
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoLimited access, freeways in crowded areas take space, hence my point about viaducting (or tunneling) to create more space. But ya, if you pay for the spaces of the bridges over the freeway through your downtown urban area, you can also do that with a train if you have more space for it (or tunnel the train under). China just doesn’t have that kind of space, which is why you see viaducts everywhere in cities like Shanghai or Beijing.
- brailsafe 2y agoThis seems like an awfully fanciful idea for anywhere but places with the most dense rail networks per sq km, at least if we're talking a full-scale refactor of existing infrastructure, in terms of financial, physical, logistics. Is it not somewhat true that rail/freight companies have more authority over the land that their lines run through than the regions do? I may be talking out of my ass here, but I feel cities and provinces in Canada pretty much have to yield to CN or BNSF in some form or another; they operate their own police afaik. Railyards seem to be regarded as defacto permanent fixtures in terms of urban infrastructure.
- fc417fc802 2y agoIn what way is it fanciful? There's an extensive network of interstates in the US with nearly zero intersections. If it's viable for I-90 why isn't it viable for the equivalent rail line?
- brailsafe 2y agoWell, if all the interstates did have plenty of intersections, and someone proposed removing them all retroactively, would that not be an absolutely gargantuan undertaking at present, to the point where justifying it would seem fanciful?
- fc417fc802 2y agoGiven the current state of US passenger rail I suppose such a proposal is closer to building out the interstate system from scratch. Which is indeed a bit on the fanciful side. On the other hand, who says you have to do the entire country at once? Perfect is the enemy of good and all that.
- zmgsabst 2y agoJapan has an average density of 338 people per sqkm. There’s only 3 US states with a density higher than that (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey) and an additional 2 US states of at least 220 people per sqkm (Maryland and Connecticut). The US isn’t population dense enough for such transportation to make sense.
- crazygringo 2y ago> Only the Shinkansen (and TGV on my sibling post) can be compared to planes though. Says who? Right now, in reality, the only thing that makes sense is comparing existing flights with existing train routes.
- magicstefanos 2y agoI'm interested to hear more on why domestic air travel is insanity.