7 ms·

Map Shows Where 220mph Trains Would Go in the U.S.

31 points by rosser 14y ago

david_shaw 14y ago
I think that now, perhaps more than ever, America and Americans would benefit from domestic high-speed rail. As someone who travels occasionally--albeit somewhat infrequently--for both business and pleasure, I share the opinion that flying is not altogether pleasant. From arriving at the airport several hours early, to dealing with TSA, to sitting in the cramped aircraft seating, it's not a stretch to say that it's a somewhat miserable experience. For the amount of money one has to pay for a flight, especially if going to a less popular/metropolitan destination, the experience is very sub par. Trains, however, are a joy to ride. There is no TSA (or any other form of security theatre), no having to show up several hours early, and the journey itself is pleasant while watching the world pass by outside. Delays are very infrequent. I've personally done some of my best thinking, coding, and writing while on a train. There is, however, one major problem: trains in America are slow. Slow to the point that driving through Los Angeles (including traffic delays) is still about twice as fast as taking the Amtrak. There is probably some efficiency gain on longer trips, but who wants to sign up for a 72-hour train ride that could easily be a 36-hour drive or, more realistically, a two hour flight for the same cost? I would welcome a revitalization of the rail industry in this country with open arms, but only if they do it right; after all, as a project that would likely be subsidized with tax dollars, I'd rather not pay for something that one one would use.
- kylemhill 14y ago
  Do you not think that a major government initiative in HSR (which it would require, tax dollars or not) wouldn't come with the standard TSA security theater in tow?
  - betterunix 14y ago
    Probably not -- they know full well that people take trains to avoid the TSA and that they would have substantially reduced ticket revenue if they put people through that nonsense.
  - ScottWhigham 14y ago
    I think there will certainly be a measure of security with such a system, but it wouldn't need to be at the level of air travel. The danger of someone hijacking a train is finite - it has a definite path and that pathway can be planned to avoid Problem X or Problem Y. That's very unlike a commercial jet.
  - rtpg 14y ago
    hijacking a train is a lot less dangerous than a plane. We don't put the TSA at the entrance of public parks either
- derleth 14y ago
  > the journey itself is pleasant while watching the world pass by outside Unless high-speed rail becomes successful enough to become a real option, in which case they'll be economically forced to pack customers in like the economy class on modern airliners, if not tighter, to maximize revenue. > as a project that would likely be subsidized with tax dollars ... it's going to have to wait for enough of the Tea Party to die off before it's politically viable, and by 'Tea Party' I mean anyone who is primarily concerned whether every single cent the government spends can be justified through a purely Originalist reading of the Constitution unless the money is going to fund the military and/or the police.
  - tadfisher 14y ago
    > Unless high-speed rail becomes successful enough to become a real option, in which case they'll be economically forced to pack customers in like the economy class on modern airliners, if not tighter, to maximize revenue. I traveled extensively via Europe's high-speed rail network during the summer of 2012. If you didn't know already, rail service has been the primary mode of transport for long-distance trips in Europe for several decades. The coaches are still luxurious compared with airplane seating, and I could recline fully and get up to go purchase some snacks or a meal. The thing with trains is that they are not space- or weight-limited like airframes. It is much easier to tack on a couple of extra cars for heavily-trafficked lines than to pack people in like sardines, and it makes economic sense to keep train coaches comfortable if you are advertising yourself as the luxurious alternative to air travel. Given the European and Asian models, I don't see evidence that rail services will be forced to cut comfort like we have seen with the airlines.
- trevorstrohman 14y ago
  The new high speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles is projected to cost $68 billion. Atlanta built a new international airport terminal for $1.4 billion. I'd think at those prices we could fix the TSA delays between LAX and SFO for less money than building a high speed rail line to link them.
uvdiv 14y ago
In 2030-2050, passenger rail will be obsolete. Self-driving cars will surpass them on every metric. After AI* obsoletes physical safety as an engineering problem, cars will shrink to tiny, weightless pieces of plastic most closely approximating today's motorcycles. And following Jevon's paradox, the massive efficiency gains will push economic driving to extreme speeds. As fast as bullet trains, without the timetables. *AI from 2013's POV; in 2030 it will be just another dumb algorithm
- rayiner 14y ago
  The idea that in 20 years we'll have self-driving cars on any substantial scale is totally ridiculous. If I had to bet money, we won't even have a substantial electric car deployment by then, much less self-driving cars. Also: the physics of high-speed cars makes the concept of cars traveling as fast as bullet trains totally ridiculous. The fact that a car is self-driving doesn't change the physics of tire/road friction.
  - uvdiv 14y ago
    Also: the physics of high-speed cars makes the concept of cars traveling as fast as bullet trains totally ridiculous. The fact that a car is self-driving doesn't change the physics of tire/road friction. Friction losses aren't significant. These cars are limited by aerodynamic drag power -- this scales as speed^3, and dominates all other losses.
    - jellicle 14y ago
      Friction losses aren't significant. These cars are limited by aerodynamic drag power -- this scales as speed^3, and dominates all other losses. No. "Of the energy output of fuel in a car engine, 33% is spent in exhaust, 29% in cooling and 38% in mechanical energy, of which friction losses account for 33% and air resistance for 5%. By comparison, an electric car has only half the friction loss of that of a car with a conventional internal combustion engine." So, meh, even if magic self-driving cars had zero air resistance, they're only 5% more efficient than non-self-driving cars.
wtvanhest 14y ago
Historically I have been a big supporter of trains in the US. Recently, I have decided that the cost may not be worth the benefit if future technology is considered. The future is going to involve self driving busses, self driving cars, self driving trucks etc. The primary thing I enjoy about the train is the additional space. Fundmantally, that is the problem with trains too. If they jammed people on a train the way they jam them on a bus, it should drive the profits up. Amtrak sells out a lot of routes in the north east while competing with $20 bus tickets. In 20 years, self driving busses should replace trains as the up front cost is lower and the market is freer. I'd argue that any money considered spent on trains should be put to better use. (Added) I think it is safe to assume all vehicles will run on electric and batteries in the distant future, further reducing train advantages.
- oijaf888 14y ago
  Trains are substantially more efficient to move freight. I don't think that self driving trucks will be able to compete insofar as bulk movement of freight goes.
  - dyno12345 14y ago
    The freight rail system in the US is actually pretty good, and virtually all freight doesn't need bullet-train speed.
- sebbi 14y ago
  I don't think busses, self driving or not, could ever compete with high speed trains. I have yet to see a bus driving 220 mph on a street crowded with other cars, busses and trucks. And that will be even more true if the US decides that 220 mph is too slow (because it is just as fast as everyone else) and they might want to skip that milestone and go for 350 mph maglev trains ;-)
tunesmith 14y ago
So there's this puzzle that people enjoy thinking about regarding space travel. Say that it finally becomes possible to reach a planet of a nearby star. It's a new technology that enables it, and we can build a spaceship that will support several generations of people during the trip. Maybe it takes 500 years to get there. Well, 500 years is a long time. It's not as if our technological development will stop in the meantime. In fact, given 100 years of development, we might be able to construct a new ship that will only take 300 years to get to that planet. Which would mean it would overtake the first, and beat it by a hundred years. In which case, why build the first ship at all? That's the objection I've heard most recently against building high-speed rail in the united states. For instance, in the context of self-driving cars that might be able to organize themselves into "trains" on the road, or fit conditions where they would qualify for a higher speed limit, etc. While it may be true that we need high-speed rail now, is it going to be as true by the time they would actually get built?
- lutusp 14y ago
  But the argument for high-speed rail isn't that it will serve as a stopgap measure until we have self-driving cars, it is that a railroad train is vastly more efficient than any imaginable car technology. Railroad trains are very energy-efficient, compared to cars driving along a road, or even trucks driving along a road. And if we suddenly had self-driving cars, packed close together and safer than the existing system, trains would still be more efficient. The link below shows a table of transportation methods and efficiencies -- it shows railroad trains beating even motorcycles for efficiency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation#US_Passenger_transportation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transporta...
  - stock_toaster 14y ago
    In addition to your point, high speed rail can also carry cargo as well as passengers.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    The reality is not quite that simple, you need to consider the energy required by and environmental impact of building out and maintaining a high speed rail infrastructure. Rail efficiency is also highly sensitive to occupancy, a train carrying a small number of passengers could well be less efficient than transporting that number of people by auto. And cars are getting more fuel efficient as well And if the government is involved, forget about it. It will be a massive mess of cost overruns and other financial shenanigans. And Amtrak proves that the government can't even run a railroad, let alone build one.
pzaich 14y ago
It looks a lot like the Ticket to Ride board http://nightmaremode.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ticket1.jpg http://nightmaremode.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ticket1....
newbie12 14y ago
First we need to fix regular passenger rail in this country. As long as interstate passenger rail is controlled by the Amtrak monopoly, and its attendant unions, rail travel in America will continue to fall behind the rest of the world. There's not even regular rail service between most major US cities 3-8 hours apart, even though tracks exist and demand would exist if trains ran as fast as driving.
- jarcoal 14y ago
  Freight is a big problem. They own the rails; Amtrak is a guest.
  - newbie12 14y ago
    That's only partially true-- Amtrak owns the Northeast corridor. Amtrak's only innovation in forty years (!) on the NEC is Acela, a "high speed" offering that is marginally faster than regular service (shorter times mainly because Acela makes fewer stops) and is more expensive than private air shuttle travel along the same routes.
    - jarcoal 14y ago
      Ah yes, I've heard of that train. It doesn't go any faster than 100mph does it?
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        Acela goes up to 150mph. Even the Pittsburgh-Philly Keystone Line breaks 100mph.
        jarcoal 14y ago
        That's not too shabby at all.
- graycat 14y ago
  Speed is an issue: I live 70 miles north of Wall Street and for a while worked a block away from the actual Wall Street. I found that at any time except the worst of the rush hours, I could go door to door by car faster than by the Metro train. Net, the trains were not very fast. The main problem was, the trains have to stop and start so often.
smackfu 14y ago
This is from a few weeks ago and is basically one guy's fantasy based on not much facts. The real current plans are much more about small regional networks that connect places people want to go rather than rail geek porn that just connects everything because it looks nicer on the map.
skcin7 14y ago
I'm all for a HSR system and I think it sounds AWESOME, but I have doubts if it would ever catch on. HSR would have to compete with the current airline system. If it's cheaper, more convenient to ride, and the time required to travel is comparable to airline, it could catch on, but as it stands I'm unsure if there's enough room for it to survive while competing against the airline system. Commercial airlines travel at around 500-600 miles per hour, so if a HSR system is able to reach 220mph, then the plane will get you there about ~2.5x as fast. Of course. People consider their time to be valuable, so if you need to get somewhere quick, you'd likely just take the airplane, unless you're traveling somewhat nearby (like San Francisco to Los Angeles). It would appeal to most people not having to deal with the TSA, but there's no guarantee TSA wouldn't decide that it's their duty to "protect" (terrorize) the people in the HSR system as well. Somebody please write me a message to convince me my message is nonsense and that a HSR system is a great idea.
- krschultz 14y ago
  I agree with your reasoning but it's a bit deeper than "airplanes are 2x the speed of trains so therefore they are faster", and not just because airplanes fly a lot of extra distance for ATC reasons. At major city airports you easily lose 2 hours with security, taxing around the airport in the airplane doing 5 mph, and boarding/deplaning. Not to mention any weather delays, and good luck if you have luggage. Plus, most airports are not that close to the city center. Most train stations in the city center. I'm most familiar with NYC, but I can walk from my office to 3 train stations (Penn Station, PATH, Grand Central) in less than 15 minutes. The 3 airports are all an hour in a subway or 30 minutes in a $50 cab ride away. The airports are also more subject to traffic. The last time I flew to Florida from NYC, I spent more time on the ground getting to JFK, waiting to get on the plane, and waiting to take off to NYC than in the air. With all that said, 200-300 mile trips make a lot of sense by train. Boston->NYC, NYC->DC by train make a lot more sense than airplanes even in the best weather. When the planes get slowed down by bad weather, forget it. Even Boston->DC by train makes a lot of sense, even today with our relatively crappy high speed rail. I imagine a train up and down the east coast of florida, or the California coast with slightly better technology would do similiarly well. But a train from NYC to Chicago or Denver makes no sense. And definitely not for NYC to LA. As soon as the portion of the flight cruising increases beyond an hour or two, it just kills a train.
thrownaway2424 14y ago
Hilarious comparison with the self-driving cars. The whole POINT of a train is you arrive in an actual PLACE. Not some god-forshaken dump surrounded by parking lots. In 2011 I was in Zurich during "street parade" which is one of those crazy european things where lots of people gather to dance to awful music. Anyway, the attendance was nearly a million. Substantially all of these million people arrived by train in the six hours before noon on the day of the event. I was flabbergasted watching these people pour out of the rail station by the thousand. This is totally impossibile by road. The contest between trains and cars is not about the way people get around. It is about the way they live when they are not moving. Trains enable the kinds of cities people want to visit. Cars hollow out and destroy cities.
- jarcoal 14y ago
  I don't know if the self-driving car would survive your "street parade", but at least they can drop you off and then leave the city to park somewhere else until you need them again.
grandalf 14y ago
Making Chicago a hub would be a nightmare. The city is already home to the worst highway gridlock in the US. The hub should be shifted further west to help create another metro area, not to just add to an existing one that happens to also be very corrupt.
- hakaaaaak 14y ago
  Does anyone else see something wrong with Chicago being the central hub (specifically regarding our president's past history in Chicago)? Sure, it's not exactly like it would have been if Bush (W) proposed a large rail hub in Crawford, but Chicago isn't exactly the only choice for such a hub either. In fact, why not avoid a large hub?
  - mark-r 14y ago
    The best choice for a hub is someplace that large numbers of people would use as their destination. Chicago fits the bill much better than anywhere else in the middle of the country. There's a reason O'Hare is one of the busiest airports in the nation.
- smackfu 14y ago
  Isn't Chicago already the big rail hub for Amtrak? I think all the East to West traffic in the Northern half of the country goes through there.
nostromo 14y ago
It's fun to look at, but the trip from LA to New York would be about 13 hours -- and that's ignoring the time stopped at stations and assuming you can go 220mph the entire trip. New York to some other city would be even worse. For example, New York to Seattle and you're approaching something like 20 hours. I really love trains for short trips (NY to DC), but I just don't see the actual demand these long distance lines. Maybe we should just try and fix airport security and intra-urban mass transit instead.
- ronaldj 14y ago
  I'd take a high speed if it was cheaper than flying and didn't require all the security.
  - glenra 14y ago
    We could solve the security problem with the stroke of a pen - just abolish the TSA. It is a horrendous waste of money, a ludicrously expensive tax on our time that we choose to pay out of pure paranoia. Is it really worth building an entire hugely slower alternate infrastructure to avoid this tax, when we could just opt to stop paying it? Contrariwise, if we are that committed to TSA, whatever brain-dead political calculation forced us to waste an extra hour in the airport before every flight would almost certainly cause us to do the same before every train trip.
graycat 14y ago
At least in the US, the history of rail and high speed rail is clear: Even if you build it for free, during operations it fails (A) to show a profit or (B) to pass the laws on 'cost/benefit' analysis on the needed subsidies. So, in simple terms, in the US, passenger trains are non-starters. Or, at one time the US had one heck of a passenger train system: Could get a train from tiny town A and travel to tiny town B for nearly any two tiny towns A and B in the country. But as soon as the Model T came out, people rushed to buy them and use them in place of the trains, in spite of the fact that the roads were awful. Since then the cars and roads have gotten much better. For short trips, train technology is not much better than 100 years ago when it started losing out to the Model T and has no chance now. For long trips, we have airplanes. Look, we could have 'high speed' ships to cross the Atlantic, too. And the last of the great Atlantic ships were fantastic. Alas, people didn't like them, needed all the luxury just to put up with the uncomfortable aspects of travel by ship, and, really, were eager just to get where they were going. So, when Boeing sold their 707 jets for crossing the Atlantic, the 707 jets quickly 'sunk' essentially all the passenger ships. The Boeing 707 had some serious 'engineering-economic' advantages: (A) It was much lighter than a ship, no doubt much lighter per person carried so that are moving much less dead weight across the Atlantic. (B) It could make a round trip while a ship was at dock loading. (C) Net, per month, a Boeing 707 could carry enough passengers across the Atlantic to compete with a ship, for less money and much less time per passenger. That sank the ship. For another detail, look at the map in the OP: The trains go long distances, commonly across a whole state, without stopping. E.g., in Tennessee, the trains stop in Nashville and Memphis, but between Memphis and Kentucky is about 100 miles that the trains bypass. So, for all those people bypassed, how will the train serve them? Yes, I saw the plan of a 'tram' that catches up with the high speed, non-stop train, 'couples up' side by side, does a transfer of people and baggage, 'decouples', and slows down. Still I expect that mostly the plan would be that people in the 100 miles from Memphis to Kentucky would have to drive a car, ride a bus, or take a slow train to reach Memphis. Now we are back to the old problems of handling luggage and making connections: That's why the train terminals were so big -- to have space for people waiting for connecting trains. Besides, passenger trains are vulnerable to Big Sis at the DHS and her TSA gang. A lot of people would rather walk than face the TSA; to drive a car 1000 miles to avoid the TSA is a great pleasure. Net, for short to medium distances, say, 1000 miles or less, just drive a car and, then, have all the luggage in the car during the trip, all under own control for the whole trip, and have the car at the destination. For longer trips, take a plane as now. Heck, there's a chance that modern blimps -- lighter than air craft -- could beat passenger trains. Yes, I know: Maybe there are some lawyers who want to live in Manhattan, have their offices near Grand Central, take a fast moving train to DC, take a cab to Capitol Hill for the day, and reverse the process and be home for dinner early in the evening. Fine for people earning big bucks with an office near a train station and wanting to work at another office near another train station at most only a few hundred miles away. Sorry 'bout those people. For all the rest of us, we shouldn't pay subsidies for those few big bucks lawyers. Besides, have they heard of video conferencing? My main objection to passenger trains is that they want to use publicity efforts such as the OP to build political support to tax people to pay subsidies for the trains. That is, the effort is to get into my checkbook. No thanks. If they want to build the trains with capital raised privately, fine with me. If they wanted to proceed with private capital, then we wouldn't see publicity efforts such as the OP.

31 points by rosser 14y ago

I think that now, perhaps more than ever, America and Americans would benefit from domestic high-speed rail. As someone who travels occasionally--albeit somewhat infrequently--for both business and pleasure, I share the opinion that flying is not altogether pleasant. From arriving at the airport several hours early, to dealing with TSA, to sitting in the cramped aircraft seating, it's not a stretch to say that it's a somewhat miserable experience. For the amount of money one has to pay for a flight, especially if going to a less popular/metropolitan destination, the experience is very sub par. Trains, however, are a joy to ride. There is no TSA (or any other form of security theatre), no having to show up several hours early, and the journey itself is pleasant while watching the world pass by outside. Delays are very infrequent. I've personally done some of my best thinking, coding, and writing while on a train. There is, however, one major problem: trains in America are slow. Slow to the point that driving through Los Angeles (including traffic delays) is still about twice as fast as taking the Amtrak. There is probably some efficiency gain on longer trips, but who wants to sign up for a 72-hour train ride that could easily be a 36-hour drive or, more realistically, a two hour flight for the same cost? I would welcome a revitalization of the rail industry in this country with open arms, but only if they do it right; after all, as a project that would likely be subsidized with tax dollars, I'd rather not pay for something that one one would use.

kylemhill 14y ago
Do you not think that a major government initiative in HSR (which it would require, tax dollars or not) wouldn't come with the standard TSA security theater in tow?
- betterunix 14y ago
  Probably not -- they know full well that people take trains to avoid the TSA and that they would have substantially reduced ticket revenue if they put people through that nonsense.
- ScottWhigham 14y ago
  I think there will certainly be a measure of security with such a system, but it wouldn't need to be at the level of air travel. The danger of someone hijacking a train is finite - it has a definite path and that pathway can be planned to avoid Problem X or Problem Y. That's very unlike a commercial jet.
- rtpg 14y ago
  hijacking a train is a lot less dangerous than a plane. We don't put the TSA at the entrance of public parks either
derleth 14y ago
> the journey itself is pleasant while watching the world pass by outside Unless high-speed rail becomes successful enough to become a real option, in which case they'll be economically forced to pack customers in like the economy class on modern airliners, if not tighter, to maximize revenue. > as a project that would likely be subsidized with tax dollars ... it's going to have to wait for enough of the Tea Party to die off before it's politically viable, and by 'Tea Party' I mean anyone who is primarily concerned whether every single cent the government spends can be justified through a purely Originalist reading of the Constitution unless the money is going to fund the military and/or the police.
- tadfisher 14y ago
  > Unless high-speed rail becomes successful enough to become a real option, in which case they'll be economically forced to pack customers in like the economy class on modern airliners, if not tighter, to maximize revenue. I traveled extensively via Europe's high-speed rail network during the summer of 2012. If you didn't know already, rail service has been the primary mode of transport for long-distance trips in Europe for several decades. The coaches are still luxurious compared with airplane seating, and I could recline fully and get up to go purchase some snacks or a meal. The thing with trains is that they are not space- or weight-limited like airframes. It is much easier to tack on a couple of extra cars for heavily-trafficked lines than to pack people in like sardines, and it makes economic sense to keep train coaches comfortable if you are advertising yourself as the luxurious alternative to air travel. Given the European and Asian models, I don't see evidence that rail services will be forced to cut comfort like we have seen with the airlines.
trevorstrohman 14y ago
The new high speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles is projected to cost $68 billion. Atlanta built a new international airport terminal for $1.4 billion. I'd think at those prices we could fix the TSA delays between LAX and SFO for less money than building a high speed rail line to link them.

uvdiv 14y ago

In 2030-2050, passenger rail will be obsolete. Self-driving cars will surpass them on every metric. After AI* obsoletes physical safety as an engineering problem, cars will shrink to tiny, weightless pieces of plastic most closely approximating today's motorcycles. And following Jevon's paradox, the massive efficiency gains will push economic driving to extreme speeds. As fast as bullet trains, without the timetables. *AI from 2013's POV; in 2030 it will be just another dumb algorithm

rayiner 14y ago
The idea that in 20 years we'll have self-driving cars on any substantial scale is totally ridiculous. If I had to bet money, we won't even have a substantial electric car deployment by then, much less self-driving cars. Also: the physics of high-speed cars makes the concept of cars traveling as fast as bullet trains totally ridiculous. The fact that a car is self-driving doesn't change the physics of tire/road friction.
- uvdiv 14y ago
  Also: the physics of high-speed cars makes the concept of cars traveling as fast as bullet trains totally ridiculous. The fact that a car is self-driving doesn't change the physics of tire/road friction. Friction losses aren't significant. These cars are limited by aerodynamic drag power -- this scales as speed^3, and dominates all other losses.
  - jellicle 14y ago
    Friction losses aren't significant. These cars are limited by aerodynamic drag power -- this scales as speed^3, and dominates all other losses. No. "Of the energy output of fuel in a car engine, 33% is spent in exhaust, 29% in cooling and 38% in mechanical energy, of which friction losses account for 33% and air resistance for 5%. By comparison, an electric car has only half the friction loss of that of a car with a conventional internal combustion engine." So, meh, even if magic self-driving cars had zero air resistance, they're only 5% more efficient than non-self-driving cars.

wtvanhest 14y ago

Historically I have been a big supporter of trains in the US. Recently, I have decided that the cost may not be worth the benefit if future technology is considered. The future is going to involve self driving busses, self driving cars, self driving trucks etc. The primary thing I enjoy about the train is the additional space. Fundmantally, that is the problem with trains too. If they jammed people on a train the way they jam them on a bus, it should drive the profits up. Amtrak sells out a lot of routes in the north east while competing with $20 bus tickets. In 20 years, self driving busses should replace trains as the up front cost is lower and the market is freer. I'd argue that any money considered spent on trains should be put to better use. (Added) I think it is safe to assume all vehicles will run on electric and batteries in the distant future, further reducing train advantages.

oijaf888 14y ago
Trains are substantially more efficient to move freight. I don't think that self driving trucks will be able to compete insofar as bulk movement of freight goes.
- dyno12345 14y ago
  The freight rail system in the US is actually pretty good, and virtually all freight doesn't need bullet-train speed.
sebbi 14y ago
I don't think busses, self driving or not, could ever compete with high speed trains. I have yet to see a bus driving 220 mph on a street crowded with other cars, busses and trucks. And that will be even more true if the US decides that 220 mph is too slow (because it is just as fast as everyone else) and they might want to skip that milestone and go for 350 mph maglev trains ;-)

tunesmith 14y ago

So there's this puzzle that people enjoy thinking about regarding space travel. Say that it finally becomes possible to reach a planet of a nearby star. It's a new technology that enables it, and we can build a spaceship that will support several generations of people during the trip. Maybe it takes 500 years to get there. Well, 500 years is a long time. It's not as if our technological development will stop in the meantime. In fact, given 100 years of development, we might be able to construct a new ship that will only take 300 years to get to that planet. Which would mean it would overtake the first, and beat it by a hundred years. In which case, why build the first ship at all? That's the objection I've heard most recently against building high-speed rail in the united states. For instance, in the context of self-driving cars that might be able to organize themselves into "trains" on the road, or fit conditions where they would qualify for a higher speed limit, etc. While it may be true that we need high-speed rail now, is it going to be as true by the time they would actually get built?

lutusp 14y ago
But the argument for high-speed rail isn't that it will serve as a stopgap measure until we have self-driving cars, it is that a railroad train is vastly more efficient than any imaginable car technology. Railroad trains are very energy-efficient, compared to cars driving along a road, or even trucks driving along a road. And if we suddenly had self-driving cars, packed close together and safer than the existing system, trains would still be more efficient. The link below shows a table of transportation methods and efficiencies -- it shows railroad trains beating even motorcycles for efficiency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation#US_Passenger_transportation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transporta...
- stock_toaster 14y ago
  In addition to your point, high speed rail can also carry cargo as well as passengers.
- ams6110 14y ago
  The reality is not quite that simple, you need to consider the energy required by and environmental impact of building out and maintaining a high speed rail infrastructure. Rail efficiency is also highly sensitive to occupancy, a train carrying a small number of passengers could well be less efficient than transporting that number of people by auto. And cars are getting more fuel efficient as well And if the government is involved, forget about it. It will be a massive mess of cost overruns and other financial shenanigans. And Amtrak proves that the government can't even run a railroad, let alone build one.

pzaich 14y ago

It looks a lot like the Ticket to Ride board http://nightmaremode.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ticket1.jpg http://nightmaremode.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ticket1....

newbie12 14y ago

First we need to fix regular passenger rail in this country. As long as interstate passenger rail is controlled by the Amtrak monopoly, and its attendant unions, rail travel in America will continue to fall behind the rest of the world. There's not even regular rail service between most major US cities 3-8 hours apart, even though tracks exist and demand would exist if trains ran as fast as driving.

jarcoal 14y ago
Freight is a big problem. They own the rails; Amtrak is a guest.
- newbie12 14y ago
  That's only partially true-- Amtrak owns the Northeast corridor. Amtrak's only innovation in forty years (!) on the NEC is Acela, a "high speed" offering that is marginally faster than regular service (shorter times mainly because Acela makes fewer stops) and is more expensive than private air shuttle travel along the same routes.
  - jarcoal 14y ago
    Ah yes, I've heard of that train. It doesn't go any faster than 100mph does it?
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Acela goes up to 150mph. Even the Pittsburgh-Philly Keystone Line breaks 100mph.
      - jarcoal 14y ago
        That's not too shabby at all.
graycat 14y ago
Speed is an issue: I live 70 miles north of Wall Street and for a while worked a block away from the actual Wall Street. I found that at any time except the worst of the rush hours, I could go door to door by car faster than by the Metro train. Net, the trains were not very fast. The main problem was, the trains have to stop and start so often.

smackfu 14y ago

This is from a few weeks ago and is basically one guy's fantasy based on not much facts. The real current plans are much more about small regional networks that connect places people want to go rather than rail geek porn that just connects everything because it looks nicer on the map.

skcin7 14y ago

I'm all for a HSR system and I think it sounds AWESOME, but I have doubts if it would ever catch on. HSR would have to compete with the current airline system. If it's cheaper, more convenient to ride, and the time required to travel is comparable to airline, it could catch on, but as it stands I'm unsure if there's enough room for it to survive while competing against the airline system. Commercial airlines travel at around 500-600 miles per hour, so if a HSR system is able to reach 220mph, then the plane will get you there about ~2.5x as fast. Of course. People consider their time to be valuable, so if you need to get somewhere quick, you'd likely just take the airplane, unless you're traveling somewhat nearby (like San Francisco to Los Angeles). It would appeal to most people not having to deal with the TSA, but there's no guarantee TSA wouldn't decide that it's their duty to "protect" (terrorize) the people in the HSR system as well. Somebody please write me a message to convince me my message is nonsense and that a HSR system is a great idea.

krschultz 14y ago
I agree with your reasoning but it's a bit deeper than "airplanes are 2x the speed of trains so therefore they are faster", and not just because airplanes fly a lot of extra distance for ATC reasons. At major city airports you easily lose 2 hours with security, taxing around the airport in the airplane doing 5 mph, and boarding/deplaning. Not to mention any weather delays, and good luck if you have luggage. Plus, most airports are not that close to the city center. Most train stations in the city center. I'm most familiar with NYC, but I can walk from my office to 3 train stations (Penn Station, PATH, Grand Central) in less than 15 minutes. The 3 airports are all an hour in a subway or 30 minutes in a $50 cab ride away. The airports are also more subject to traffic. The last time I flew to Florida from NYC, I spent more time on the ground getting to JFK, waiting to get on the plane, and waiting to take off to NYC than in the air. With all that said, 200-300 mile trips make a lot of sense by train. Boston->NYC, NYC->DC by train make a lot more sense than airplanes even in the best weather. When the planes get slowed down by bad weather, forget it. Even Boston->DC by train makes a lot of sense, even today with our relatively crappy high speed rail. I imagine a train up and down the east coast of florida, or the California coast with slightly better technology would do similiarly well. But a train from NYC to Chicago or Denver makes no sense. And definitely not for NYC to LA. As soon as the portion of the flight cruising increases beyond an hour or two, it just kills a train.

thrownaway2424 14y ago

Hilarious comparison with the self-driving cars. The whole POINT of a train is you arrive in an actual PLACE. Not some god-forshaken dump surrounded by parking lots. In 2011 I was in Zurich during "street parade" which is one of those crazy european things where lots of people gather to dance to awful music. Anyway, the attendance was nearly a million. Substantially all of these million people arrived by train in the six hours before noon on the day of the event. I was flabbergasted watching these people pour out of the rail station by the thousand. This is totally impossibile by road. The contest between trains and cars is not about the way people get around. It is about the way they live when they are not moving. Trains enable the kinds of cities people want to visit. Cars hollow out and destroy cities.

jarcoal 14y ago
I don't know if the self-driving car would survive your "street parade", but at least they can drop you off and then leave the city to park somewhere else until you need them again.

grandalf 14y ago

Making Chicago a hub would be a nightmare. The city is already home to the worst highway gridlock in the US. The hub should be shifted further west to help create another metro area, not to just add to an existing one that happens to also be very corrupt.

hakaaaaak 14y ago
Does anyone else see something wrong with Chicago being the central hub (specifically regarding our president's past history in Chicago)? Sure, it's not exactly like it would have been if Bush (W) proposed a large rail hub in Crawford, but Chicago isn't exactly the only choice for such a hub either. In fact, why not avoid a large hub?
- mark-r 14y ago
  The best choice for a hub is someplace that large numbers of people would use as their destination. Chicago fits the bill much better than anywhere else in the middle of the country. There's a reason O'Hare is one of the busiest airports in the nation.
smackfu 14y ago
Isn't Chicago already the big rail hub for Amtrak? I think all the East to West traffic in the Northern half of the country goes through there.

nostromo 14y ago

It's fun to look at, but the trip from LA to New York would be about 13 hours -- and that's ignoring the time stopped at stations and assuming you can go 220mph the entire trip. New York to some other city would be even worse. For example, New York to Seattle and you're approaching something like 20 hours. I really love trains for short trips (NY to DC), but I just don't see the actual demand these long distance lines. Maybe we should just try and fix airport security and intra-urban mass transit instead.

ronaldj 14y ago
I'd take a high speed if it was cheaper than flying and didn't require all the security.
- glenra 14y ago
  We could solve the security problem with the stroke of a pen - just abolish the TSA. It is a horrendous waste of money, a ludicrously expensive tax on our time that we choose to pay out of pure paranoia. Is it really worth building an entire hugely slower alternate infrastructure to avoid this tax, when we could just opt to stop paying it? Contrariwise, if we are that committed to TSA, whatever brain-dead political calculation forced us to waste an extra hour in the airport before every flight would almost certainly cause us to do the same before every train trip.

graycat 14y ago

At least in the US, the history of rail and high speed rail is clear: Even if you build it for free, during operations it fails (A) to show a profit or (B) to pass the laws on 'cost/benefit' analysis on the needed subsidies. So, in simple terms, in the US, passenger trains are non-starters. Or, at one time the US had one heck of a passenger train system: Could get a train from tiny town A and travel to tiny town B for nearly any two tiny towns A and B in the country. But as soon as the Model T came out, people rushed to buy them and use them in place of the trains, in spite of the fact that the roads were awful. Since then the cars and roads have gotten much better. For short trips, train technology is not much better than 100 years ago when it started losing out to the Model T and has no chance now. For long trips, we have airplanes. Look, we could have 'high speed' ships to cross the Atlantic, too. And the last of the great Atlantic ships were fantastic. Alas, people didn't like them, needed all the luxury just to put up with the uncomfortable aspects of travel by ship, and, really, were eager just to get where they were going. So, when Boeing sold their 707 jets for crossing the Atlantic, the 707 jets quickly 'sunk' essentially all the passenger ships. The Boeing 707 had some serious 'engineering-economic' advantages: (A) It was much lighter than a ship, no doubt much lighter per person carried so that are moving much less dead weight across the Atlantic. (B) It could make a round trip while a ship was at dock loading. (C) Net, per month, a Boeing 707 could carry enough passengers across the Atlantic to compete with a ship, for less money and much less time per passenger. That sank the ship. For another detail, look at the map in the OP: The trains go long distances, commonly across a whole state, without stopping. E.g., in Tennessee, the trains stop in Nashville and Memphis, but between Memphis and Kentucky is about 100 miles that the trains bypass. So, for all those people bypassed, how will the train serve them? Yes, I saw the plan of a 'tram' that catches up with the high speed, non-stop train, 'couples up' side by side, does a transfer of people and baggage, 'decouples', and slows down. Still I expect that mostly the plan would be that people in the 100 miles from Memphis to Kentucky would have to drive a car, ride a bus, or take a slow train to reach Memphis. Now we are back to the old problems of handling luggage and making connections: That's why the train terminals were so big -- to have space for people waiting for connecting trains. Besides, passenger trains are vulnerable to Big Sis at the DHS and her TSA gang. A lot of people would rather walk than face the TSA; to drive a car 1000 miles to avoid the TSA is a great pleasure. Net, for short to medium distances, say, 1000 miles or less, just drive a car and, then, have all the luggage in the car during the trip, all under own control for the whole trip, and have the car at the destination. For longer trips, take a plane as now. Heck, there's a chance that modern blimps -- lighter than air craft -- could beat passenger trains. Yes, I know: Maybe there are some lawyers who want to live in Manhattan, have their offices near Grand Central, take a fast moving train to DC, take a cab to Capitol Hill for the day, and reverse the process and be home for dinner early in the evening. Fine for people earning big bucks with an office near a train station and wanting to work at another office near another train station at most only a few hundred miles away. Sorry 'bout those people. For all the rest of us, we shouldn't pay subsidies for those few big bucks lawyers. Besides, have they heard of video conferencing? My main objection to passenger trains is that they want to use publicity efforts such as the OP to build political support to tax people to pay subsidies for the trains. That is, the effort is to get into my checkbook. No thanks. If they want to build the trains with capital raised privately, fine with me. If they wanted to proceed with private capital, then we wouldn't see publicity efforts such as the OP.