It's strange (not at all funny) to me that a lot of countries a lot smaller than america have high speed rails that can go from 180-220 MPH (Sorry, metzis. Just increase those numbers by about 50% to get your precious KPH)

Given america's size it's obvious America needs this system more that countries that are a lot smaller, yet they have it and america doesn't.

We have a decrepit, pathetic joke called Amtrak that is an embarrassment to the US when compared to most other nations train systems. (Well, ok, we're better than india's) but we can 't seem to get any sort of high speed (Say above 150 mph) anywhere in america.

We do have a leader in america who has seriously proposed and advocated for a national HSR that would serve as an economical and ecologically viable alternative to a lot of air travel.

I'd like to ask non Americans if they have HSR in their countries and if so what do they think of them. I'd like to ask americans if they would favor and use HSR if we could get one in america.

I'm always in favor of trillion dollar boondoggles. Lets do this!

I don't think it's at all obvious that America needs this.

Flight time between New York to Los Angeles is what, eight or nine hours? What would it be via HSR, twice that? I'm not clear on the argument for spending an enormous outlay to build a train system that's going to be twice as slow, at best, as what we have now.



What are the exact arguments in favor of this?

I wouldn't see the idea of a transcontinental train taking off, but something interegional could work, moving up and down the east or west coasts.

Yes, that I could agree with.

 Ouze wrote:
I don't think it's at all obvious that America needs this.

Flight time between New York to Los Angeles is what, eight or nine hours? What would it be via HSR, twice that? I'm not clear on the argument for spending an enormous outlay to build a train system that's going to be twice as slow, at best, as what we have now.



What are the exact arguments in favor of this?

Mostly ecological, considering flying is one of the worst activities for transport, main issue i see though for america is the shere size which may or may not lead to issues supplying such trains with electricity.

Watched an excellent Wendover Productions video about why it's unlikely to happen (read: insanely expensive).

Honestly I'd like to have even non-high speed rail travel increased in the US, but that seems extremeley unlikely. I'd love to be able to take a train to see my buddy who lives 4 hours away.

If I drive it's 4 hours each way and a total of $50-60 in fuel.

If I try to take the cheapest train it's $130 one way and takes like 8 hours between stops/etc. Absolutely insane.

We have hundreds of airports and thousands and thousands of commuter planes. There is basically 0 argument for expanding rail in any capacity. What rail we have currently is acceptable for freight and people here have cars and if it is too far away you can take a plane. If your argument is environmental why exactly would you build a new rail system when you can design new planes with electric turbines and use our currently massive airport system. Also - you see what a few recreational drones can do to halt airports (im sure this will be remedied soon)...imagine how vulnerable trains are to domestic terrorism- do you really think it would be easy to secure hundreds of miles of rail? It's a lot easier to secure an airport I assure you.

The issue is that in the US, society is just set up to make driving so much easier for the average person, and the communities are so spread out, that rail is just never an option people want to think about. In other developed nations, driving is a lot more expensive and difficult to get a license for, cities and towns are built around rail lines, neighborhoods are often planned with access or proximity to rail of some sort. This hasn't been true of most places in the US for many decades.

We also have a not so small cross section of society that recoils at the thought of anything rail related at any scale and fights it tooth and nail as a matter of blind political faith. The mere mention of rail sends some into a tizzy.

In the US, industial conglomerates spent decades acquiring and actively dismantling the rail network in order to push automobiles and car accessible roads, intentionally pushing out streetcars, pedestrians, rail and other such things. That was an organized effort with gargantuan amounts of cash involved, and shifting away from that has little incentive at current costs for automobile transport.

Ultimately, It has been done in other nations effectively with fewer resources than the US has access to. They don't have issues with terrorists attacking rail lines, and freeways certainly arent any friendlier environmentally (dramatically less so in fact). However, the US would have to undergo a cultural change away from the automobile and spend decades rebuilding infrastructure for it to be widespread. The high upfront cost, and typically terrible location decisons for such projects, usually kills the idea if the frenzy of political chaos does not.

It is not possible to give a proper answer to this question because the underlying reasons as to why the U.S.A. does not have HSR are inextricably political.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
It's strange (not at all funny) to me that a lot of countries a lot smaller than america have high speed rails that can go from 180-220 MPH (Sorry, metzis. Just increase those numbers by about 50% to get your precious KPH)

Given america's size it's obvious America needs this system more that countries that are a lot smaller, yet they have it and america doesn't.

We have a decrepit, pathetic joke called Amtrak that is an embarrassment to the US when compared to most other nations train systems. (Well, ok, we're better than india's) but we can 't seem to get any sort of high speed (Say above 150 mph) anywhere in america.

We do have a leader in america who has seriously proposed and advocated for a national HSR that would serve as an economical and egologically viable alternative to a lot of air travel. She has bveen compared to stalin, mao, king jong un and, of course, hitler for her efforts.

I'd like to ask non Americans if they have HSR in their countries and if so what do they think of them. I'd like to ask americans if they would favor and use HSR if we could get one in america.

Keep in mind we had a great and vast rail system and ripped it out in favor of trucking (though also there was a giant pile of competing companies that slowly conglomerated and cannibalized each other in a free for all of naked capitalism that got pretty ugly).

But high speed rail has a major problem in the US- the rail lines that remain go through pretty much every small town and community and have lots of inconvenient crossings at minor and not so minor (but heavily locally travelled) roads. Converting those over into high-speed rail would be... pretty terrible, if even possible (there are a lot of towns built around/along the rail lines, more as you go west, so you'd basically have to rip up towns as you go, claim eminent domain and displace a ridiculous number of people.

And it would also be ridiculously expensive.

Its also a lot easier for smaller countries to have great infrastructure, and keep it modern. Ours is huge and expansive (and corrupt) to the point that the maintenance cycles overlap themselves. By the time one part of a system is done, another is due, even if it was done right in the first place.

----
That said, I've used Amtrak in the past (over flying home for holidays), and known a lot of people who use it to commute. Aside from far-too-regular delays, I like it more than flying even though it took more time. But I also spent less time waiting around an airport, and could move around more in transit. And my knees weren't up against the back of the seat in front of me, nor was I crowded in by people.

On the other hand, Amtrak is... bad. And the giant plaques they have in Union Station in Washington DC listing the engineers who have died on the job are both huge and troubling...

With any luck we will skip the high speed rail stage and move on to what ever comes next. Sort of how America skipped the minidisc player. However I didn't think we are that lucky.

In the US, High speed rail is a solution in search of a problem.

We don't currently have large quantities of people who are commuting over distances that would make a high speed rail system a desirable alternative to driving or taking an airplane. IE: There is no market to sustain this high speed rail system. In the North bay area the SMART train is finally up and running after years and years of trying, and it was still a struggle even when it had the advantage of actually having customers who wanted to move from point A to point B already. A high speed rail from LA to San Francisco would have no equivalent customer base of daily riders.

California high speed rail attempts are pretty much an unmitigated disaster. The tax payer money is getting swallowed up by mismanagement at every level and yet they keep throwing money at it. Really goes for everything in CA actually.

Its really a political stunt by its proponents and not in any way a practical idea.

 Insurgency Walker wrote:
With any luck we will skip the high speed rail stage and move on to what ever comes next. Sort of how America skipped the minidisc player. However I didn't think we are that lucky.

Truthfully, that isn't how things seem to work. If you want a fun sociological/historical theory that really sets people's teeth on edge, look into Technological Determinism. Available technologies dictate the shape of our societies far more than our societies dictate technologies.
People tend to adopt technologies that they have no use for, and let it's capabilities dictate how it gets used. Sometimes they fall off quickly, but in other cases we really end up with bizarre adaptations that aren't actually all that useful.

Its debatable how far the theory can be taken, but there are interesting examples (layouts of towns established after railroads and telegraph lines are very different from towns prior to those techs).

----

Plus, 'whatever comes next' is... dubious. There are limits on large scale, long distance transportation before it hits pure sci-fi. Speed and efficiency are a straight trade with safety and cost, and environmental damage is the main practical thing to mitigate. And that's more an issue of fuel technology than transportation technology. Safety-wise, I'm pretty sure planes still beat almost anything else, but people are bad at statistics, so a few high profile crashes warp perceptions periodically. A better fuel source solves most of the real issues with flight.

Yes I was concerned that "duh terrists" would be one issue people would have.

Still, japan was the first country to have a nerve gas attack on it's civil populace and has HSR.

I'd say that anywhere between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains is a total no-go zone for high speed rail. Cities there are too small, too far apart, and have too few commuters for it to be viable. Not to mention the total havoc a Midwest winter would have on any rail system, let alone something going that fast.

Existing rail lines can't really be used either, even if "upgraded". High speed rail lines need wider turns, so you are looking at rerouting thousands of turns in the track, which also means rerouting highways that tend to run parallel to them.


Now, I'm not saying some highspeed rail line couldn't be made. I could see something connecting the Albany, New York, Wachington DC, Pittsburg, Philadelphia area perhaps. Also Maybe the LA to Las Vegas route.

Yup. You could have a HSR line up the east coast, that's about it. As countries go, the USA is insanely big and spread out.

 John Prins wrote:
Yup. You could have a HSR line up the east coast, that's about it. As countries go, the USA is insanely big and spread out.

The best thing would probably bee a V line basically the eastcost down, (maybee up to Toronto) and then through Texas into Mexico and from there back to California.

But unlikely.

 John Prins wrote:
Yup. You could have a HSR line up the east coast, that's about it. As countries go, the USA is insanely big and spread out.

It's not even the biggest country in North America.

How much transcontinental passenger traffic actually is there, whether by road, rail or air?

There probably are opportunities to make regional networks as people have said above. The great thing about trains is they can take you from city centre to city centre (by way of an airport if you like.)

I don't think there's a lot of scope for a transcontinental high speed line. You would need two or three of them too.

I'm not sure how applicable it is, but wouldn't the situation with roads hold true here too? In that the counter-intuitive result of building more roads to ease congestion is actually more traffic and no decrease in congestion. In essence with transportation, creating the supply also tends to create the demand - I mean, it wasn't that long ago that flying was for rich people and no everyday person would even consider just hopping on a plane to travel across the country or go abroad, but the airline companies created the capacity and then they used marketing to convince people they wanted to use it.

I'm not seeing any fundamental, inherent reason the same thing couldn't happen with HSR in America, just folk arguing it doesn't exist, therefore it cannot exist. It doesn't seem like a trivial project by any means, but I find it endlessly amusing that you guys will light giant bonfires of money for the sake of your already bloated, already needlessly oversized and overequipped military, but the moment someone suggests spending a tiny fraction of those sums on public transport or infrastructure you turn into a nation of fiscal conservatives quicker than a TGV train

 Xenomancers wrote:
If your argument is environmental why exactly would you build a new rail system when you can design new planes with electric turbines and use our currently massive airport system.

The difference is that electric aircraft as practical long-distance travel vehicles are currently wishful thinking, while high speed rail is proven technology that just needs someone to allocate funding and start building the US version.

Also - you see what a few recreational drones can do to halt airports (im sure this will be remedied soon)...imagine how vulnerable trains are to domestic terrorism- do you really think it would be easy to secure hundreds of miles of rail? It's a lot easier to secure an airport I assure you.

Airports are also much more vulnerable to terrorism. An airport gets shut down if a drone is nearby because a drone going into an engine could be catastrophic (unlikely, but possible). A train hitting a drone just obliterates the drone and keeps going. Once you're talking about the level of organization and resources required to make a meaningful threat to the rail system it's almost certainly going to be more effective to get a bunch of AR-15s and start shooting into crowds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:
I don't think it's at all obvious that America needs this.

Flight time between New York to Los Angeles is what, eight or nine hours? What would it be via HSR, twice that? I'm not clear on the argument for spending an enormous outlay to build a train system that's going to be twice as slow, at best, as what we have now.

What are the exact arguments in favor of this?

The primary argument, from a customer point of view, is the increase in comfort. A train doesn't have the same weight and space constraints of a plane and therefore doesn't have the same pressure to pack in passengers as densely as possible. So the comparison might be 8-9 hours from NYC to LA by plane in a tiny seat with expensive "food", or 16-18 hours in a much more comfortable seat with real food, more ability to get up and walk around, no bag fees, etc. Or for more money, far less than the cost of the equivalent service on an airline flight (if it even exists on domestic routes), you can get a private cabin with a bed and treat the travel as an overnight hotel stay. Is this a viable business model? I don't know, the airline industry has pretty consistently demonstrated that passengers don't care about the quality of their travel experience as long as it means cheaper tickets. But there's definitely a potential advantage to high speed rail.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I don't think it's at all obvious that America needs this.

Flight time between New York to Los Angeles is what, eight or nine hours? What would it be via HSR, twice that? I'm not clear on the argument for spending an enormous outlay to build a train system that's going to be twice as slow, at best, as what we have now.

What are the exact arguments in favor of this?

The primary argument, from a customer point of view, is the increase in comfort. A train doesn't have the same weight and space constraints of a plane and therefore doesn't have the same pressure to pack in passengers as densely as possible. So the comparison might be 8-9 hours from NYC to LA by plane in a tiny seat with expensive "food", or 16-18 hours in a much more comfortable seat with real food, more ability to get up and walk around, no bag fees, etc. Or for more money, far less than the cost of the equivalent service on an airline flight (if it even exists on domestic routes), you can get a private cabin with a bed and treat the travel as an overnight hotel stay. Is this a viable business model? I don't know, the airline industry has pretty consistently demonstrated that passengers don't care about the quality of their travel experience as long as it means cheaper tickets. But there's definitely a potential advantage to high speed rail.

Yeah, I think that last part is the big takeaway. I wish I could pull the exact quote, but it was some airline CEO saying they had made capital investments in upholstery and so on, but none of that matters because the passengers will always pick the tickets that cost a buck less. It's a race to the bottom that apparently has no bottom, as Ryanair keeps showing.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Yes I was concerned that "duh terrists" would be one issue people would have.

Not even terrorists per se. If I recall on this very forum there was a thread about a month or so ago about thousands upon thousands of passengers stranded at an airport in England for days because maybe there was a drone spotted.

I think regional rail is a good idea and the conversation needs to shift to that a bit.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
Yup. You could have a HSR line up the east coast, that's about it. As countries go, the USA is insanely big and spread out.

It's not even the biggest country in North America.

Yeah but Canada is mostly uninhabited, relatively speaking. Most of the USA is reasonably inhabitable.

I do think there could be some use linking cities down the east coast. The big cites are spaced out where it’s a bit long to drive, but seems a waste to go through the hassle of flying. I know I’ve taken the train from Albany to New York City a few times. Lovely ride down the Hudson River, relaxing, nice view, much better than being groped by TSA, crammed in a tube and hurled through the air. And once you get to the city, you don’t need to deal with parking, traffic, etc. And if you factor in the cost of parking your car in the city, gas, etc, the price is quite reasonable.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Yes I was concerned that "duh terrists" would be one issue people would have.

Not meaningfully. Rail attacks would be less effective than intelligent attacks on airports (not airplanes, airports). They'd get less people and disrupt less.
We've been rather lucky so far, to be honest. I know my regional airport literally has a security hole you could drive a truck through. (Seriously, they left the back gate open all winter, anyone passing by could have driven in, loaded whatever on to a plane and gone before responders could get there, and then its a short flight to half-a-dozen major airports, where they could play out Die Hard 2)

Would there ever be room for a middle-ground type of train? Something that isn't necessarily the 200MPH high-speed train, but something that is faster than the 50mph passenger trains we currently have. Perhaps something that tops out around 110mph?

If we are talking about regional hubs on the east coast, I think something like that would make more sense. It would be significantly cheaper than a full-on high speed railway and more of the existing lines could be converted.

 Ouze wrote:
I don't think it's at all obvious that America needs this.

Flight time between New York to Los Angeles is what, eight or nine hours? What would it be via HSR, twice that? I'm not clear on the argument for spending an enormous outlay to build a train system that's going to be twice as slow, at best, as what we have now.



What are the exact arguments in favor of this?

Less oil consumption (HSR can be electrified and usually is to save weight) and less air pollution.

Avoiding Insecurity Drama Theater.

Being a good option for those afraid of flying.

Those are the big ones that come to mind.

If it's handled like Amtrak, being able to get your own little room and eat actual cooked food instead of bad TV dinners would also be nice. Even the basic seats on Amtrak give you more room to stretch out than anything short of First Class on an airliner. And you are allowed, nay, encouraged to get up and walk around periodically on a train.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Would there ever be room for a middle-ground type of train? Something that isn't necessarily the 200MPH high-speed train, but something that is faster than the 50mph passenger trains we currently have. Perhaps something that tops out around 110mph?

Something like the ICE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercity-Express)?

 Vulcan wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I don't think it's at all obvious that America needs this.

Flight time between New York to Los Angeles is what, eight or nine hours? What would it be via HSR, twice that? I'm not clear on the argument for spending an enormous outlay to build a train system that's going to be twice as slow, at best, as what we have now.



What are the exact arguments in favor of this?

Less oil consumption (HSR can be electrified and usually is to save weight) and less air pollution.

Avoiding Insecurity Drama Theater.

Being a good option for those afraid of flying.

Those are the big ones that come to mind.

If it's handled like Amtrak, being able to get your own little room and eat actual cooked food instead of bad TV dinners would also be nice. Even the basic seats on Amtrak give you more room to stretch out than anything short of First Class on an airliner. And you are allowed, nay, encouraged to get up and walk around periodically on a train.

Sure. Trains are more comfortable for the passengers than airplanes.

The problem is that the government would have to prop up the train's finances for years until it had enough of a customer base to sustain itself. And even then the ridership would probably tank as ticket prices soared due to walking back any subsidies. And this is after the government would have put trillions into actually building the railroad. CA has already spent $5.4 billion on high speed rail, with literally no progress at all.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Sure. Trains are more comfortable for the passengers than airplanes.

The problem is that the government would have to prop up the train's finances for years until it had enough of a customer base to sustain itself. And even then the ridership would probably tank as ticket prices soared due to walking back any subsidies. And this is after the government would have put trillions into actually building the railroad. CA has already spent $5.4 billion on high speed rail, with literally no progress at all.

You are operating under the assumption that high speed rail must be done as a for-profit business, not as government-funded infrastructure. Concerns about profitability disappear if you remove the assumption that the shareholders must be making a profit every quarter.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Sure. Trains are more comfortable for the passengers than airplanes.

The problem is that the government would have to prop up the train's finances for years until it had enough of a customer base to sustain itself. And even then the ridership would probably tank as ticket prices soared due to walking back any subsidies. And this is after the government would have put trillions into actually building the railroad. CA has already spent $5.4 billion on high speed rail, with literally no progress at all.

You are operating under the assumption that high speed rail must be done as a for-profit business, not as government-funded infrastructure. Concerns about profitability disappear if you remove the assumption that the shareholders must be making a profit every quarter.

One of the better ways to spend tax Dollars imo, supplies infrastructure and transportation for a cheaper price.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Sure. Trains are more comfortable for the passengers than airplanes.

The problem is that the government would have to prop up the train's finances for years until it had enough of a customer base to sustain itself. And even then the ridership would probably tank as ticket prices soared due to walking back any subsidies. And this is after the government would have put trillions into actually building the railroad. CA has already spent $5.4 billion on high speed rail, with literally no progress at all.

You are operating under the assumption that high speed rail must be done as a for-profit business, not as government-funded infrastructure. Concerns about profitability disappear if you remove the assumption that the shareholders must be making a profit every quarter.

I see no point in throwing my tax dollars at a project that the government would only mess up catastrophically, wasting more money than was actually necessary. The government has no incentive to be frugal with tax payer money. Thus they should be trusted with as little of it as possible.

The only High Speed Rail project in the US that is actually seeing some progress is a privately funded one in Texas. Largely because they have reason to be careful with the spending.

Mario wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Would there ever be room for a middle-ground type of train? Something that isn't necessarily the 200MPH high-speed train, but something that is faster than the 50mph passenger trains we currently have. Perhaps something that tops out around 110mph?

Something like the ICE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercity-Express)?

I would say not even that advanced or fast, but yes, the same basic concept. In my opinion Americans' priorities are: cost, speed, independence, easy of use, and comfort. It's basically in that order. So, if you could have a commuter train connecting areas with inner city mass transit that is marginally faster than driving, for about the same price, and is slightly more comfortable it could theoretically be a winner.


And this is exactly why long-haul trains don't really work in the US in most areas. While most major cities have buses and taxis, most don't have inner city trains or subways. If you take a train instead of driving you either have to pay a lot, or get dropped off a long way from where you actually want to be. Heaven forbid you get dropped off in a smaller city that only has 12 hours of bus service per day.


My biggest fear is a US train system will be like the Russian Concord. REALLY expensive, operating at a loss, and barely used.

Major cities are much further apart in the US which requires a lot more extensive construction and costs. We also have large wildlife in many areas that could contribute to a derailment at those speeds. Cattle, buffalo, horses, elk, beer, moose, any of those could cause massive damage on a high speed line. Might not be a common thing but all it takes is one derailment that kills little Timmy and the law suits would ruin any future for the line. We already encounter enough issues with slower speed commuter lines due to bad crossings or vehicles getting stuck on tracks and doing elevated tracks let alone high speed ones is beyond any feasible budget.

I do think they could improve rail lines around major cities and especially make use of subways to avoid conflicting with car and foot traffic. I love using the metro while I was in France and always wished we had more options like that in the US.

 Ouze wrote:
I don't think it's at all obvious that America needs this.

Flight time between New York to Los Angeles is what, eight or nine hours? What would it be via HSR, twice that? I'm not clear on the argument for spending an enormous outlay to build a train system that's going to be twice as slow, at best, as what we have now.



What are the exact arguments in favor of this?

"MAH CARBON EMISSIONS!!!!", basically.

 stanman wrote:
Major cities are much further apart in the US which requires a lot more extensive construction and costs. We also have large wildlife in many areas that could contribute to a derailment at those speeds. Cattle, buffalo, horses, elk, beer, moose, any of those could cause massive damage on a high speed line. Might not be a common thing but all it takes is one derailment that kills little Timmy and the law suits would ruin any future for the line.

Part of why dedicated high speed rail lines are so expensive to build is because they're completely fenced and have no level crossings.

A high speed train just can't stop when they something on the tracks (which is also why they don't use traditional signs but receive track signaling on the cabin.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Would there ever be room for a middle-ground type of train? Something that isn't necessarily the 200MPH high-speed train, but something that is faster than the 50mph passenger trains we currently have. Perhaps something that tops out around 110mph?

If we are talking about regional hubs on the east coast, I think something like that would make more sense. It would be significantly cheaper than a full-on high speed railway and more of the existing lines could be converted.

UK trains run at up to 125mph on long distance. Shorter journeys are done at between 30 and 85 depending on the type of journey, the number of stops, the distance between them and so on.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The problem is that the government would have to prop up the train's finances for years until it had enough of a customer base to sustain itself. And even then the ridership would probably tank as ticket prices soared due to walking back any subsidies. And this is after the government would have put trillions into actually building the railroad. CA has already spent $5.4 billion on high speed rail, with literally no progress at all.

True enough.

But how much do you think the Fed spends keeping the airlines in operation?

Trust me, Federal spending keeps the airlines going and their prices down no less than they would for a theoretical HSR network.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
I see no point in throwing my tax dollars at a project that the government would only mess up catastrophically, wasting more money than was actually necessary. The government has no incentive to be frugal with tax payer money. Thus they should be trusted with as little of it as possible.

The only High Speed Rail project in the US that is actually seeing some progress is a privately funded one in Texas. Largely because they have reason to be careful with the spending.

Because private industry is doing SUCH a good job with our power and telecommunications grids...

The reason the American government screws up so much is down to one thing and one thing only. WE LET THEM. They screw up, and we don't hold anyone accountable for it. If we'd vote out politicians who screw up instead of re-electing them because of tribal issues, America would be a whole lot better off.

So, small anecdote but relevant.
Me and my friends want to go to Socal open, we where talking about ways to get there. One said driving and that's ok, butt no one wants to drive, some said fly, but we didn't want to take our armies. I said train, it is 2 hours more than driving bit we can sit down and our armies are safe. All refused, when I asked why, the only answer is "I don't wanna take the train"
Trains have a stigma here for some reason.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
So, small anecdote but relevant.
Me and my friends want to go to Socal open, we where talking about ways to get there. One said driving and that's ok, butt no one wants to drive, some said fly, but we didn't want to take our armies. I said train, it is 2 hours more than driving bit we can sit down and our armies are safe. All refused, when I asked why, the only answer is "I don't wanna take the train"
Trains have a stigma here for some reason.

I think the stigma is that, in America, trains are seen as barely a step up from taking a bus. And busses (and trains) are seen as being for poor people who can't afford to fly or drive a car of their own.

Personally, I think high speed rail has great potential in serving as a commuter service connecting pairs, or a small series, of cities. Taking a weekend trip to Austin, San Antonio, or Houston is great, but when it's a four or more hour drive each way, that doesn't give you much time to enjoy the city you're going to. Admittedly, you get to enjoy the stuff along the way (kolaches in West, Woody's Smokehouse in Centerville) when you're driving.

The problem is, to do that you're talking $100BN or more in costs. Look at the California fiasco.

As Grey Templar said, I don't see the market for this in the US as it actually exists.

In an imaginary walkable US that isn't built around driving, doesn't have faster mass airline travel for longer distance trips, and doesn't already have slower but existing commuter train service (that has to be subsidized and constantly struggles for ridership) in its most densely-populated corridor...sure, I guess?

I would be pretty happy to have more public transportation. As somebody who has no car, having the ability to travel would be great.

 Frazzled wrote:
The problem is, to do that you're talking $100BN or more in costs. Look at the California fiasco.

How much did the highway system cost in 2018 dollars? How much does the Fed spend each year subsidizing the airlines? How much has government at all levels spent on building and maintaining airports the past century?

 Vulcan wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The problem is, to do that you're talking $100BN or more in costs. Look at the California fiasco.

How much did the highway system cost in 2018 dollars? How much does the Fed spend each year subsidizing the airlines? How much has government at all levels spent on building and maintaining airports the past century?

Are you going to stop those subsidies so you can pay for the new railway?

Are tax payers going to accept the fallout from those cuts in exchange for mere promises of high speed rail?

The answer is of course no to both of these.

And, for the most part, people in the most densely populated areas where rail MIGHT have a bit of potential, don't want it in their backyards. It sounds lovely as a theoretical, but it's all rainbows, unicorns, and fever dreams once you get to the practical.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The problem is, to do that you're talking $100BN or more in costs. Look at the California fiasco.

How much did the highway system cost in 2018 dollars? How much does the Fed spend each year subsidizing the airlines? How much has government at all levels spent on building and maintaining airports the past century?

Are you going to stop those subsidies so you can pay for the new railway?

Are tax payers going to accept the fallout from those cuts in exchange for mere promises of high speed rail?

The answer is of course no to both of these.

What was cut to start paying for those in the first place, hmm?

I'd bet we could make airlines pay for their own infrastructure, that would free up a ton of funds. Air travel would get a lot more expensive, of course, but that would help HSR be more competitive. Heck, it might even make Amtrak profitable all by itself.

But the main point I was making is that we have spent TONS of money on various transportation projects before. There's literally nothing except lack of political will keeping us from re-prioritizing spending to build HSR. It's not like it would require developing revolutionary new technology or anything. Heck, we could buy stuff off-the-shelf from other nations who have already done it instead of reinventing the wheel...

 totalfailure wrote:
And, for the most part, people in the most densely populated areas where rail MIGHT have a bit of potential, don't want it in their backyards. It sounds lovely as a theoretical, but it's all rainbows, unicorns, and fever dreams once you get to the practical.

The obvious solution to this is tunnels. This is an issue in California (earthquakes), but would work great on the East Coast.

They built part of HS-1 in the UK right underneath London- there are over 13 miles of tunnel there. London is one of the most densely-populated and expensive areas of real-estate on the planet, so no one was going to give up their backyard there!

The way to do this would be to link two cities to start with, using a future-proofed design with room to expand to higher speeds after rolling-stock and signal upgrades. Ideally, the initial cities would have developed metro/subway systems to connect to (and help overcome the train stigma). New York would be a great candidate. Don't forget that these lines can also run freight trains to increase efficiency, generally overnight during reduced demand. HS-1 does this.

From there, expanding would be relatively straightforward. The real key is to not do something bizarrely inefficient like HS-2.

The Bay Area is well served for public transportation. LA has some, but also Uner. Getting between the two is the issue. I have taken the train up and down the coast plenty of times, and it eats up a whole day each way, so I usually drive. If there were a train that took half the time, I would never have to make that horrible, horrible drive again.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The Bay Area is well served for public transportation. LA has some, but also Uner. Getting between the two is the issue. I have taken the train up and down the coast plenty of times, and it eats up a whole day each way, so I usually drive. If there were a train that took half the time, I would never have to make that horrible, horrible drive again.

Twice I had to go to California for training, both times to a base called Camp Parks on the other side of Oakland from SF. Both times I had to ride the BART to get to the base from the airport. Both times I felt like it was going to snap the rails. If THAT is the level of quality I can expect from public transit, I'll keep my car. I legitimately thought I was in more danger of dying there than in the plane getting there.

 Just Tony wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The Bay Area is well served for public transportation. LA has some, but also Uner. Getting between the two is the issue. I have taken the train up and down the coast plenty of times, and it eats up a whole day each way, so I usually drive. If there were a train that took half the time, I would never have to make that horrible, horrible drive again.

Twice I had to go to California for training, both times to a base called Camp Parks on the other side of Oakland from SF. Both times I had to ride the BART to get to the base from the airport. Both times I felt like it was going to snap the rails. If THAT is the level of quality I can expect from public transit, I'll keep my car. I legitimately thought I was in more danger of dying there than in the plane getting there.

I would be more concerned about the other passengers honestly.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The Bay Area is well served for public transportation. LA has some, but also Uner. Getting between the two is the issue. I have taken the train up and down the coast plenty of times, and it eats up a whole day each way, so I usually drive. If there were a train that took half the time, I would never have to make that horrible, horrible drive again.

Twice I had to go to California for training, both times to a base called Camp Parks on the other side of Oakland from SF. Both times I had to ride the BART to get to the base from the airport. Both times I felt like it was going to snap the rails. If THAT is the level of quality I can expect from public transit, I'll keep my car. I legitimately thought I was in more danger of dying there than in the plane getting there.

I would be more concerned about the other passengers honestly.

One night mass amounts of gunfire made it hard for me to sleep. When I got to the training that morning, I told the Master Sergeant that they need to index the night fire that late. He informed me that there were no ranges on Camp Parks. Puzzled, I asked where the automatic gunfire was coming from and he said with a smile "Oakland."


If I NEVER go back there, it'll be too soon.

Ah yes, the old "I had one bad experience therefore this proven and demonstrably valuable thing is garbage forever and ever". Did I tell you about the time I was spat on by someone driving a car? Or the time I was in a car and the brakes failed(luckily at a low enough speed that the "crash" was more of a gentle bump)? Obviously this means cars are a non-viable form of transportation and should be barred at once.

 Just Tony wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The Bay Area is well served for public transportation. LA has some, but also Uner. Getting between the two is the issue. I have taken the train up and down the coast plenty of times, and it eats up a whole day each way, so I usually drive. If there were a train that took half the time, I would never have to make that horrible, horrible drive again.

Twice I had to go to California for training, both times to a base called Camp Parks on the other side of Oakland from SF. Both times I had to ride the BART to get to the base from the airport. Both times I felt like it was going to snap the rails. If THAT is the level of quality I can expect from public transit, I'll keep my car. I legitimately thought I was in more danger of dying there than in the plane getting there.

You were more likely to die on the train than the plane there (slightly), but both are much safer than getting in a car (around ten times safer per mile travelled). Trains are actually remarkably safe overall, your perception of safety based on the smoothness of the ride is just stigma and not backed up by the actual safety records. Most train-related deaths are also suicides.

Roads are by far the most dangerous form of transport, but do you fear for your life just because you are on a stretch with a lot of potholes? That is the equivalent to fearing a section of line that is not totally smooth.


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 Yodhrin wrote:
Ah yes, the old "I had one bad experience therefore this proven and demonstrably valuable thing is garbage forever and ever". Did I tell you about the time I was spat on by someone driving a car? Or the time I was in a car and the brakes failed(luckily at a low enough speed that the "crash" was more of a gentle bump)? Obviously this means cars are a non-viable form of transportation and should be barred at once.

Ditto.

Yodhrin wrote:Ah yes, the old "I had one bad experience therefore this proven and demonstrably valuable thing is garbage forever and ever". Did I tell you about the time I was spat on by someone driving a car? Or the time I was in a car and the brakes failed(luckily at a low enough speed that the "crash" was more of a gentle bump)? Obviously this means cars are a non-viable form of transportation and should be barred at once.

Ah yes, the old "I'll assume you formed an opinion based on two (not one, learn to count) experiences and not base them off other people's experiences, correlated data, and the general knowledge of American work ethic of the underpaid along with those experience, all the while making myself look like a pretentious jerk." Did I tell you about how I rode the trains often in Germany and had no ill thoughts? Did I tell you about the rail I rode here in Indiana that was well kept and didn't have an issue? Did I tell you that you could clearly see the state of disrepair of the BART I rode on in the Bay Area along with the extremely shoddy ride I got ON the BART? No? I didn't think I needed to go into that level of detail with a footnote that wasn't a courtroom defense of my viewpoints. Now that I know how I need to deal with you, I'll itemize every response.

Just kidding, your in depth understanding of me is completely unnecessary and not something I want to waste effort with.

Haighus wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The Bay Area is well served for public transportation. LA has some, but also Uner. Getting between the two is the issue. I have taken the train up and down the coast plenty of times, and it eats up a whole day each way, so I usually drive. If there were a train that took half the time, I would never have to make that horrible, horrible drive again.

Twice I had to go to California for training, both times to a base called Camp Parks on the other side of Oakland from SF. Both times I had to ride the BART to get to the base from the airport. Both times I felt like it was going to snap the rails. If THAT is the level of quality I can expect from public transit, I'll keep my car. I legitimately thought I was in more danger of dying there than in the plane getting there.

You were more likely to die on the train than the plane there (slightly), but both are much safer than getting in a car (around ten times safer per mile travelled). Trains are actually remarkably safe overall, your perception of safety based on the smoothness of the ride is just stigma and not backed up by the actual safety records. Most train-related deaths are also suicides.

Roads are by far the most dangerous form of transport, but do you fear for your life just because you are on a stretch with a lot of potholes? That is the equivalent to fearing a section of line that is not totally smooth.


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 Yodhrin wrote:
Ah yes, the old "I had one bad experience therefore this proven and demonstrably valuable thing is garbage forever and ever". Did I tell you about the time I was spat on by someone driving a car? Or the time I was in a car and the brakes failed(luckily at a low enough speed that the "crash" was more of a gentle bump)? Obviously this means cars are a non-viable form of transportation and should be barred at once.

Ditto.

A little bit of hyperbole, but the system isn't all that well maintained.

The issue in the US is that you have very few people who throw their all into low paying jobs. Now, why not make the maintenance and operation of that one section of rail a high paying job, you ask? Because the level of pay to achieve that level of personal investment would make the ride either unaffordable at the toll point OR necessitate everyone in that area to pay 3-4% of their income to cover those expenditures whether they ride it or not.

Take that, and extrapolate it across the entire country. ESPECIALLY in rural areas where a train system like that makes no sense. THAT is why I don't have high hopes for HSR.



And to answer the car question: I've dodged several accidents in my time mainly because I was in control at the time. I don't have it in me to trust everyone to have that same capability, especially given that a random person caused the accident in the first place.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The problem is, to do that you're talking $100BN or more in costs. Look at the California fiasco.

How much did the highway system cost in 2018 dollars? How much does the Fed spend each year subsidizing the airlines? How much has government at all levels spent on building and maintaining airports the past century?

Are you going to stop those subsidies so you can pay for the new railway?

Are tax payers going to accept the fallout from those cuts in exchange for mere promises of high speed rail?

The answer is of course no to both of these.

Exactly.


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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The Bay Area is well served for public transportation. LA has some, but also Uner. Getting between the two is the issue. I have taken the train up and down the coast plenty of times, and it eats up a whole day each way, so I usually drive. If there were a train that took half the time, I would never have to make that horrible, horrible drive again.

"Here is your ticket sir. That will be $21,252,756.26 plus tax."


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 Just Tony wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The Bay Area is well served for public transportation. LA has some, but also Uner. Getting between the two is the issue. I have taken the train up and down the coast plenty of times, and it eats up a whole day each way, so I usually drive. If there were a train that took half the time, I would never have to make that horrible, horrible drive again.

Twice I had to go to California for training, both times to a base called Camp Parks on the other side of Oakland from SF. Both times I had to ride the BART to get to the base from the airport. Both times I felt like it was going to snap the rails. If THAT is the level of quality I can expect from public transit, I'll keep my car. I legitimately thought I was in more danger of dying there than in the plane getting there.

I would be more concerned about the other passengers honestly.

One night mass amounts of gunfire made it hard for me to sleep. When I got to the training that morning, I told the Master Sergeant that they need to index the night fire that late. He informed me that there were no ranges on Camp Parks. Puzzled, I asked where the automatic gunfire was coming from and he said with a smile "Oakland."


If I NEVER go back there, it'll be too soon.

Much of SoCo is the same. They just don't show it in Hollywood. My first weekend there, there were 16 murders on Saturday night. Later that month I found a 1911 trigger outside my door.

While I can't speak to the BART too much myself, I can speak to other light rail systems in other cities, and never found it particularly scary or dangerous, and the number of people hurt or killed on light rail per capita is practically nonexistent next to people who are hurt or die in auto accidents. I think we've had just over two dozen light rail related deaths here over the last thirty+ years, and almost all of those were pedestrians not riders. We had one incident where two people were killed on the light rail system here two years ago in a stabbing and that was big news that everyone freaked out about how unsafe it made them feel on the MAX, but along just that same stretch of road where the train runs parallel to the freeway where that stabbing occurred, we've had multiple fatal accidents, a high speed chase involving police from two states and two different cities trading gunfire with suspects on the highway and ending with a PIT after AR15 fire failed to stop the vehicle on the freeway, along with dozens of collisions and accidents since that stabbing.

So, in my experience at least, I can't say that I've been too shaken by experiences on light rail, I can however tell you that in the last couple weeks I've found 9mm and .38 special shell casings along the Columbia river literally a couple hundred feet directly under the landing lane for planes into PDX

At a slight tangent. I am always amused to read the UK HIghway Code advice to drivers approaching a level railway crossing.

This is a place where the railway crosses a road, and there are barriers and warning signals when a train is approaching.

If you are approaching the crossing and the warning signal begins to sound, stop, do not enter the crossing.

If you are in the crossing when the warning signal begins to sound, DO NOT STOP.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At a slight tangent. I am always amused to read the UK HIghway Code advice to drivers approaching a level railway crossing.

This is a place where the railway crosses a road, and there are barriers and warning signals when a train is approaching.

If you are approaching the crossing and the warning signal begins to sound, stop, do not enter the crossing.

If you are in the crossing when the warning signal begins to sound, DO NOT STOP.

In Texas, herding your cattle onto the rails to stop and then rob the train, is frowned upon.

Let's skip high-speed rail and just focus on self-driving vehicles instead.

These will revolutionize the way Americans function on so many levels.

Is it possible that public transportation is seen as for people barely able to pay for their food in the US?

When I was in Florida with some friends with an MV, we drove to Key West and looked for camping grounds. We finally found one that was a bit outside of the City. Ok, no problem, we thought.

We asked the propietor when the Bus will be driving. She was looking at us like "WTF are you serious" and said something like "--err - -You got to ask the housekeeping personnel about that"

The slogan of the camping ground was "Paradise ain't cheap"

So we took the bus, and it was, well, interesting. We were really standing out as tourists

Depends. A city bus or subway may be a very mixed crowd. Commuter trains may be filled with well-paid professionals.

Buses that service more spread-out, not-walkable suburban areas may have a lot of elderly and lower-income folks on board just because anyone who can drive and has a car is using it to get around those areas.

A somewhat tangential, though timely, article about the Amtrak experience.

I just looked it up. It takes 17 hours to go from Houston to Austin. Thats 165 miles, so a little more than effectively 10 miles an hour. Sailing ship speed! The MS150 bike run is literally faster.

 Ouze wrote:
A somewhat tangential, though timely, article about the Amtrak experience.

JHC, that writer sure was one miserable feth. I don't want to read anything by that guy ever again. It did at least illustrate what some of us have been saying about the economics and demand.

FYI, here's a different article about the same kind of travel from someone who doesn't see despair everywhere she looks.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/20/magazine/train-across-america-amtrak.html

 Peregrine wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
If your argument is environmental why exactly would you build a new rail system when you can design new planes with electric turbines and use our currently massive airport system.

The difference is that electric aircraft as practical long-distance travel vehicles are currently wishful thinking, while high speed rail is proven technology that just needs someone to allocate funding and start building the US version.

Also - you see what a few recreational drones can do to halt airports (im sure this will be remedied soon)...imagine how vulnerable trains are to domestic terrorism- do you really think it would be easy to secure hundreds of miles of rail? It's a lot easier to secure an airport I assure you.

Airports are also much more vulnerable to terrorism. An airport gets shut down if a drone is nearby because a drone going into an engine could be catastrophic (unlikely, but possible). A train hitting a drone just obliterates the drone and keeps going. Once you're talking about the level of organization and resources required to make a meaningful threat to the rail system it's almost certainly going to be more effective to get a bunch of AR-15s and start shooting into crowds.


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 Ouze wrote:
I don't think it's at all obvious that America needs this.

Flight time between New York to Los Angeles is what, eight or nine hours? What would it be via HSR, twice that? I'm not clear on the argument for spending an enormous outlay to build a train system that's going to be twice as slow, at best, as what we have now.

What are the exact arguments in favor of this?

The primary argument, from a customer point of view, is the increase in comfort. A train doesn't have the same weight and space constraints of a plane and therefore doesn't have the same pressure to pack in passengers as densely as possible. So the comparison might be 8-9 hours from NYC to LA by plane in a tiny seat with expensive "food", or 16-18 hours in a much more comfortable seat with real food, more ability to get up and walk around, no bag fees, etc. Or for more money, far less than the cost of the equivalent service on an airline flight (if it even exists on domestic routes), you can get a private cabin with a bed and treat the travel as an overnight hotel stay. Is this a viable business model? I don't know, the airline industry has pretty consistently demonstrated that passengers don't care about the quality of their travel experience as long as it means cheaper tickets. But there's definitely a potential advantage to high speed rail.

OFC I wasn't talking about a drone. Think about it. Drones are effective at shutting down airports because they have a large secure perimeter that if you breach it you'll be caught in minutes. A flying hindrance is the only way to get there short of a bull rush - and this crap is pretty much done. I have never seen a better use for falconry in my life but trained birds will destroy these drones. Not to mention drones of our own. Trains don't have a secure perimeter - at best they have some safety rails that a child can jump over. Plus all trains have some kind of rail system - if you damage it - the train goes off rail and you are going 200 MPH - every single passenger dies. You've got better chances of surviving a plane crash.


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 Easy E wrote:
Let's skip high-speed rail and just focus on self-driving vehicles instead.

These will revolutionize the way Americans function on so many levels.

Agreed - lets do it! THen - self flying cars!

 Frazzled wrote:
I just looked it up. It takes 17 hours to go from Houston to Austin. Thats 165 miles, so a little more than effectively 10 miles an hour. Sailing ship speed! The MS150 bike run is literally faster.

My daughter just did Exeter to Reading in 1 hour 55 minutes by train, including a 4 minute delay. It's about 130 miles. The fastest train on that route takes 1 hour 41 minutes.

 Easy E wrote:
Let's skip high-speed rail and just focus on self-driving vehicles instead.

These will revolutionize the way Americans function on so many levels.

That's depressingly inefficient. Improving US public transportation infrastructure (and maybe reconsider urban planning priorities) would revolutionise the way Americans function even more while also being better for the environment. Those are systems that would benefit the poor (who might not have the money to buy a car). It gives them flexibility and opportunities. And it benefits the rest of the population too. It would make things better on many more levels than just having cars that drive on their own.

And it would be better for the environment too: Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reducing the number of needed cars is better than reusing more cars. You also need to waste less pace on parking (self-driving cars would also help with that).

Then the people who actually need or have to use a cars would have less traffic to grumble about.

“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.”

― Gustavo Petro

 Ouze wrote:
A somewhat tangential, though timely, article about the Amtrak experience.

My wife took Amtrak from St. Louis to Alberqueque and had quite a different experience. She prefers it to flying now.

I prefer taking the train to flying, too, but it's not very convenient to arrive at your destination late at night, when everything is closed and the kid is cranky. If only there could be a train that was faster.

Mario wrote:
Those are systems that would benefit the poor (who might not have the money to buy a car). It gives them flexibility and opportunities. And it benefits the rest of the population too.

This point gets overlooked too often. When a person is too poor to own a car in most of America, they are completely shut down economically.

They can't have multiple jobs to try and earn extra money in most areas. There simply isn't time in the day for them to get from home, to job a, to job b, then back home for even a semi-decent sleep.

They spend so much time in transit between home and job that they often have no time to cook a healthy meal. Thus they either eat too much fast food or too much cheap box food... or both, leading to health issues making it hard for them to keep working.

They have a hard time reaching educational opportunities so they can better themselves as well. And getting a better job is probably right out; you ever try walking to an interview in summer heat? Nothing good comes of it.

Then there's shopping. You're not going to get the economy-size anything and save money over time. You buy what you can carry. This leads to making lots of little shopping trips, and the tendency to impulse-buy. And you'd better believe stores take full advantage of this.

For that matter, there may not BE a large grocery store in walking distance. You might be doing your shopping at 7-11 or the equivalent because it's the only thing close enough. So you pay twice as much for your groceries as someone next door with a car.

And so they wind up on welfare, food stamps, and getting rent assistance and whatever else the government will give them... at our expense.

On the other hand, if there is reliable mass transit...

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
If your argument is environmental why exactly would you build a new rail system when you can design new planes with electric turbines and use our currently massive airport system.

The difference is that electric aircraft as practical long-distance travel vehicles are currently wishful thinking, while high speed rail is proven technology that just needs someone to allocate funding and start building the US version.

Also - you see what a few recreational drones can do to halt airports (im sure this will be remedied soon)...imagine how vulnerable trains are to domestic terrorism- do you really think it would be easy to secure hundreds of miles of rail? It's a lot easier to secure an airport I assure you.

Airports are also much more vulnerable to terrorism. An airport gets shut down if a drone is nearby because a drone going into an engine could be catastrophic (unlikely, but possible). A train hitting a drone just obliterates the drone and keeps going. Once you're talking about the level of organization and resources required to make a meaningful threat to the rail system it's almost certainly going to be more effective to get a bunch of AR-15s and start shooting into crowds.


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 Ouze wrote:
I don't think it's at all obvious that America needs this.

Flight time between New York to Los Angeles is what, eight or nine hours? What would it be via HSR, twice that? I'm not clear on the argument for spending an enormous outlay to build a train system that's going to be twice as slow, at best, as what we have now.

What are the exact arguments in favor of this?

The primary argument, from a customer point of view, is the increase in comfort. A train doesn't have the same weight and space constraints of a plane and therefore doesn't have the same pressure to pack in passengers as densely as possible. So the comparison might be 8-9 hours from NYC to LA by plane in a tiny seat with expensive "food", or 16-18 hours in a much more comfortable seat with real food, more ability to get up and walk around, no bag fees, etc. Or for more money, far less than the cost of the equivalent service on an airline flight (if it even exists on domestic routes), you can get a private cabin with a bed and treat the travel as an overnight hotel stay. Is this a viable business model? I don't know, the airline industry has pretty consistently demonstrated that passengers don't care about the quality of their travel experience as long as it means cheaper tickets. But there's definitely a potential advantage to high speed rail.

OFC I wasn't talking about a drone. Think about it. Drones are effective at shutting down airports because they have a large secure perimeter that if you breach it you'll be caught in minutes. A flying hindrance is the only way to get there short of a bull rush - and this crap is pretty much done. I have never seen a better use for falconry in my life but trained birds will destroy these drones. Not to mention drones of our own. Trains don't have a secure perimeter - at best they have some safety rails that a child can jump over. Plus all trains have some kind of rail system - if you damage it - the train goes off rail and you are going 200 MPH - every single passenger dies. You've got better chances of surviving a plane crash.

High-speed rail derailments can actually be remarkably survivable so long as nothing too solid is hit (like an oncoming train). Purpose-built high-speed tracks are fenced into obstruction-free channels. Oncoming trains are the only significant collision risk. The incident above had one fatality with a train derailing at 95mph and rolling down an embankment in a rural area away from significant emergency services- the death was a frail 84 year old.

Terrorism is already a threat to trains, but we don't see it happening outside inner-city metro attacks. Basically all of Western Europe has a similar terrorist threat level to the US at present with heavily used and developed rail networks, but the terror attacks are not targeting them. Clearly open tracks are not as vulnerable as they seem. Destroying railways was actually something that all sides found very difficult in WWII.

I think the scale will remain a massive problem for the US unfortunately. Railways require considerable maintenance and in comparison to a US wide interstate network, European railway systems are tiny with convenient depots an access points.

120nph rail needs very high standards of track maintenance, the sheer mileage of track will be prohibitive. Relatively short stretches on a Metro or Intercity scale might be practical though, but it's still expensive to construct and maintain .

 simonr1978 wrote:
I think the scale will remain a massive problem for the US unfortunately. Railways require considerable maintenance and in comparison to a US wide interstate network, European railway systems are tiny with convenient depots an access points.

120nph rail needs very high standards of track maintenance, the sheer mileage of track will be prohibitive. Relatively short stretches on a Metro or Intercity scale might be practical though, but it's still expensive to construct and maintain .

Except If you are the french or germans, then you either destroy any line except the tgv due to corruption and Maintenance ignorance or you just don't invest like the DB and watch as other countries pay the price for delays.

Yes i am salty about that, no, my position on the DB has further entrenched into screw them territory....

I've been on the German system around the Rein-Mainz area a bit on several occasions.

I was surprised how crappy it was, but on the plus side it was super cheap compared to the UK. We have some very nice trains which run unreliably and are very expensive.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
A somewhat tangential, though timely, article about the Amtrak experience.

My wife took Amtrak from St. Louis to Alberqueque and had quite a different experience. She prefers it to flying now.

Just to clarify, reading and posting that article (and reading the one Gorgon posted) is as much experience as I personally have with Amtrak. I've never taken it once - the only trains I have taken were the NYC subway a billion times, the Metro North quite a bit, and whatever the train is called in Chicago once.

I have no dog in that fight.

My feeling has always been that rail is really running against culture in the US. There's such an emotive freedom and liberty associated with roads relative to most of the rest of the world. No one else has an entire, and massively popular, sub genre of films dedicated to just driving somewhere (or indeed just riding somewhere).

I'm a numbers guy so some numbers that must be kept in mind in this discussion. Population densities of some of the countries discussed so far: Japan 865/sqm, Germany 600.9/sqm, UK, 700.1/sqm, US 85/sqm. So no a national HSR isnt efficient. Now the top 7 most population dense states are all along the east coast and have numbers at least in the realm, maybe that at least could be efficient from that stand point.

Jerram wrote:
I'm a numbers guy so some numbers that must be kept in mind in this discussion. Population densities of some of the countries discussed so far: Japan 865/sqm, Germany 600.9/sqm, UK, 700.1/sqm, US 85/sqm. So no a national HSR isnt efficient. Now the top 7 most population dense states are all along the east coast and have numbers at least in the realm, maybe that at least could be efficient from that stand point.

Just a little bit of difference, right?

Regarding the NE, Amtrak's northeast corridor line is both the heaviest used and most profitable part of the system...but it also already has higher-speed Acela service.

So exactly where is this high-speed rail going to be built, and exactly whom is it going to serve? It's a solution without a problem other than "driving bad, mass transport good".


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nfe wrote:
My feeling has always been that rail is really running against culture in the US. There's such an emotive freedom and liberty associated with roads relative to most of the rest of the world. No one else has an entire, and massively popular, sub genre of films dedicated to just driving somewhere (or indeed just riding somewhere).

I'd argue that driving culture flourished here because driving is so necessary for so many.

Lots of Americans living in inner/downtown sections of big cities don't own cars, you know. They use public transportation, or rideshare, etc. when they need to. But outside of those areas, much of this country is structured for driving. You just can't cover everything adequately with public transportation.

 simonr1978 wrote:
I think the scale will remain a massive problem for the US unfortunately. Railways require considerable maintenance and in comparison to a US wide interstate network, European railway systems are tiny with convenient depots an access points.

120nph rail needs very high standards of track maintenance, the sheer mileage of track will be prohibitive. Relatively short stretches on a Metro or Intercity scale might be practical though, but it's still expensive to construct and maintain .

In the states I could see this on the Northeast Coast and Parts of the Pacific Coast.


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 gorgon wrote:

Jerram wrote:
I'm a numbers guy so some numbers that must be kept in mind in this discussion. Population densities of some of the countries discussed so far: Japan 865/sqm, Germany 600.9/sqm, UK, 700.1/sqm, US 85/sqm. So no a national HSR isnt efficient. Now the top 7 most population dense states are all along the east coast and have numbers at least in the realm, maybe that at least could be efficient from that stand point.

Just a little bit of difference, right?

Regarding the NE, Amtrak's northeast corridor line is both the heaviest used and most profitable part of the system...but it also already has higher-speed Acela service.

So exactly where is this high-speed rail going to be built, and exactly whom is it going to serve? It's a solution without a problem other than "driving bad, mass transport good".


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nfe wrote:
My feeling has always been that rail is really running against culture in the US. There's such an emotive freedom and liberty associated with roads relative to most of the rest of the world. No one else has an entire, and massively popular, sub genre of films dedicated to just driving somewhere (or indeed just riding somewhere).

I'd argue that driving culture flourished here because driving is so necessary for so many.

Lots of Americans living in inner/downtown sections of big cities don't own cars, you know. They use public transportation, or rideshare, etc. when they need to. But outside of those areas, much of this country is structured for driving. You just can't cover everything adequately with public transportation.

I would rather a focus on good urban/suburban public transportation. I am not convinced a big part of long distance transit will decline over time due to technology.

There's a similar thing in the UK, where a vast amount of money is being spent on the HST2 (High Speed Train 2) line from London to Birmingham.

This will bring the journey time down from 1 hour 20 minutes to 50 minutes, which is nice, but not a major benefit and only helps a few passengers.

The same amount of money would bring much greater benefits by being spread around the network to do maintenance and upgrades resulting in many more small improvements in journey times for a much larger number of passengers..

 stanman wrote:
Major cities are much further apart in the US which requires a lot more extensive construction and costs. We also have large wildlife in many areas that could contribute to a derailment at those speeds. Cattle, buffalo, horses, elk, beer, moose, any of those could cause massive damage on a high speed line. Might not be a common thing but all it takes is one derailment that kills little Timmy and the law suits would ruin any future for the line. We already encounter enough issues with slower speed commuter lines due to bad crossings or vehicles getting stuck on tracks and doing elevated tracks let alone high speed ones is beyond any feasible budget.

Animals don't derail trains. I was once in a train that hit a pretty big animal (don't know the species, the conductor wasn't specific), and no one felt a thing. It's still an issue though, because in such instance the conductor has to stop the train and check that the impact didn't cause any damage, which takes some time. Worst case scenario the train can't go further, but passenger safety is never compromised. Even hitting a car doesn't derail the train or hurt the passengers. Train is by far the safest way to move around.


About costs and implementation in the US, I actually know someone who worked at the French embassy in Canada in the 80s, and part of his job was trying to sell high speed trains: France is a major constructor, and selling just a single line with a few trains would already represent billions in contracts, so obviously France tries to push trains pretty much everywhere. The idea at the time was to create a line between Quebec and Detroit, and potentially a second one between Washington DC and Montreal (through Boston).
One of the main issue (and it's even worse now) is the current state of the railroad. High speed trains require very smooth, flat and straight rails, laid on stable ground, as well as good power supply. Currently, most of the US's railroads are old, and a good portion aren't even electrified. So you basically need to create everything from the ground up, including the strain stations/facilites to maintain the trains.
In France (and I suspect most of Europe/Japan), the infrastructure slowly developed over time, going continuously from coal trains to the modern electric ones. So it was build in small increments, and never required such a big investment (it's still pretty steep, but the risk is low because every investment is building upon something that already works). The US basically said "feth it" at some point, and is new decades behind in terms of equipment, technology and skill.
And that's something quite important. If the US were to build a good train system, they would have to buy it from another country. When a country invests billions in something, they want the money to be spent in their country, where it generates taxes and jobs. I guess it's possible to negotiate and have the foreign company manufacture some stuff in the buying country, but it's definitely not the same.

Europe also has the luxury of having the train stations right at the heart of the cities. That's also a huge boon compared to planes. If you fly from Paris to Marseille (basically across the country), it's probably like a 1h flight, but from the center of Paris you need to spend about an hour to reach the airport, and you must be there like an hour before the plane takes off (because of the stupid "security"). Then again when you land on the other side you have to travel to the city.
The train takes ~3h30, but from city center to city center. You can board the train 10mins before it leaves, and you can use your laptop/phone during the whole trip. So in the end it's not longer, and a lot more comfortable/practical.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There's a similar thing in the UK, where a vast amount of money is being spent on the HST2 (High Speed Train 2) line from London to Birmingham.

This will bring the journey time down from 1 hour 20 minutes to 50 minutes, which is nice, but not a major benefit and only helps a few passengers.

The same amount of money would bring much greater benefits by being spread around the network to do maintenance and upgrades resulting in many more small improvements in journey times for a much larger number of passengers..

HS2 is also about creating extra capacity on the lines. Yes, you might only shave 15 minutes of the Birmingham-London high-speed route, but moving the non-stop services to a separate line means you've now got more capacity for slower stopping services without worrying that there's a fast intercity getting stuck behind them. It might have made more sense if the original plan for the Eurostar trains had come to fruition - there used to be an "international departure lounge" in Glasgow Central Station, in anticipation of non-stop trains from Glasgow to Paris, Berlin, heck, Glasgow - Vladivostok with no changes - why not. From there it's a single change to a ferry to get to Japan. Instead the train from Glasgow to London stops in the middle of nowhere on occasion to let some poky two-carriage commuter service trundle out the way.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I'd like to ask americans if they would favor and use HSR if we could get one in america.

If it's profitable for the investor who owns it, then yes.

fresus wrote:

 stanman wrote:
Major cities are much further apart in the US which requires a lot more extensive construction and costs. We also have large wildlife in many areas that could contribute to a derailment at those speeds. Cattle, buffalo, horses, elk, beer, moose, any of those could cause massive damage on a high speed line. Might not be a common thing but all it takes is one derailment that kills little Timmy and the law suits would ruin any future for the line. We already encounter enough issues with slower speed commuter lines due to bad crossings or vehicles getting stuck on tracks and doing elevated tracks let alone high speed ones is beyond any feasible budget.

Animals don't derail trains. I was once in a train that hit a pretty big animal (don't know the species, the conductor wasn't specific), and no one felt a thing. It's still an issue though, because in such instance the conductor has to stop the train and check that the impact didn't cause any damage, which takes some time. Worst case scenario the train can't go further, but passenger safety is never compromised. Even hitting a car doesn't derail the train or hurt the passengers. Train is by far the safest way to move around.

Aye. You see footage all the time of a train hitting a truck or other vehicle that stopped on a crossing. The train basically acts as if nothing happened.

Only cases where wildlife could actually derail a train were back when the great plains were covered in massive bison herds. A train hits a dozen or so of those guys and then it'll start having issues staying on the tracks, but that sort of thing is no longer possible today.

Is that passenger trains, though, or freight? As far as I can see, US fright trains are slow and massive. As an example of a high-speed passenger train colliding with a vehicle, there’s these:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Heck_rail_crash
Or this one in the USA:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Glendale_train_crash

In both cases, the fatalities were caused by subsequent collisions with nearby trains, but the original collision with the road vehicle did derail the train.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I see no point in throwing my tax dollars at a project that the government would only mess up catastrophically, wasting more money than was actually necessary. The government has no incentive to be frugal with tax payer money.

I always find this argument funny, especially when people use it to point out the virtue of private enterprise. A private contractor has even less incentive to be shy about taking taxpayer (or the customer's) money since his main function is to turn a profit. They'll suck as much as they can out of the government if it's possible to jump through some hoops to get subsdies, and pricing will certainly rise if customers have no choice. The result of privatizing essential services like transport or power grids is generally higher costs for the consumers, lower quality, worse working conditions - and more profit to some invisible guys behind a shady investment fund. There might be less waste but only the owners get to enjoy the savings.

I think you misunderstand me. I wasn’t suggesting we give tax payer money to high speed rail in the form of subsidies to whoever builds it. I am saying give it nothing at all.

If private funding wants to do it go ahead.

The government does in fact have an incentive to not waste money. You see, wasting money would be a waste of money. People who want to build good infrastructure don't want to waste money because that's money that could go towards the thing that they want to do.

Since there are many things that need to be done, and the people who do them are aware of the importance of their tasks and the tasks of their comrades, they desire to not waste money because it would be counterproductive to their goal.


Of course, if you staff governmental agencies with organisations that wish to sabotage public power and replace it with private power then a lot of money is going to be wasted. However, that's not inherent to the concept of government or the concept of doing things well.

And why are we assuming that private industry doesn't want to waste money? Sure, it may want the actual manufacturing process to be as efficient as possible, but it wants tons of waste in the form of obscene salaries for CEOs, shareholder payouts, etc. And there's lots of incentive to screw over the customers if it means the shareholders and upper management get paid.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think you misunderstand me. I wasn’t suggesting we give tax payer money to high speed rail in the form of subsidies to whoever builds it. I am saying give it nothing at all.

My apologies, seems I didn't get your point.

Still, some stuff should be publicly funded and owned IMO. Our government recently had the bright idea of selling off a national power grid company, for example, and they did get some quick cash for it. The end result was ofc exactly what one would expect - nasty price hikes, partly to invest in ground cables instead of poles to be fair, but that work is often shoddily handled and profits are up. Profits that almost completely bypass taxation thanks to (completely legal) internal corporate group loans at exorbitant rates. It's obvious to anyone that taking a "loan" from your head office at 20% interest is a tax ploy since you could get a normal bank loan for a tenth or less of that in interest...

 Peregrine wrote:
And why are we assuming that private industry doesn't want to waste money? Sure, it may want the actual manufacturing process to be as efficient as possible, but it wants tons of waste in the form of obscene salaries for CEOs, shareholder payouts, etc. And there's lots of incentive to screw over the customers if it means the shareholders and upper management get paid.

From the point of view of everyone who isn't a shareholder of a private company, profit is a waste of money.

 Peregrine wrote:
And why are we assuming that private industry doesn't want to waste money? Sure, it may want the actual manufacturing process to be as efficient as possible, but it wants tons of waste in the form of obscene salaries for CEOs, shareholder payouts, etc. And there's lots of incentive to screw over the customers if it means the shareholders and upper management get paid.

If the money is coming from an unlimited government pot, the private company has no incentive to minimise costs. If a private company was footing the entire bill, it'd be a different matter.


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 Frazzled wrote:


I would rather a focus on good urban/suburban public transportation. I am not convinced a big part of long distance transit will decline over time due to technology.

I agree, localish transport needs to be viable first, otherwise no-one will be able to get to an inter-city hub.

It'd likely take a cultural shift before it becomes viable but it's happening now, slowly - younger generations are likely a lot happier about public transport than older - my parents would never dream of taking a bus and would rather pay 4x as much for a taxi. You need to do something to curb pollution, and driving as seriously non-productive, nor necessarily faster.
Case in point; I can drive or get a train to work (~40 miles each way). Driving is slightly cheaper but can take from 50-120 minutes and I need to pay attention. Train costs more but takes 50 minutes unless something goes wrong, and I can connect to the wifi and get work done. So the train gives me about 1.5 hours less in the office time than driving.

Automated cars aren't the answer - it's hugely inefficient having hundreds of tiny powertrains moving individual pods around a freeform landscape. When you could have a massive powertrain take hundreds of humans in the same vehicle on tracks and split off later. It's very chicken and egg though - you need the investment to get the interest, and the interest to get the investment.

I've travelled in Japan and the train system there is incredible, there's really no need to drive almost anywhere, but it involves huge investment.


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
There's a similar thing in the UK, where a vast amount of money is being spent on the HST2 (High Speed Train 2) line from London to Birmingham.

I'm viewing it as a stepping stone though - you need to start somewhere, and with HS2 in place, we may eventually start on an HS3 and connect up to Glasgow. With no HS2 then HS3 can never happen.

We already have sleeper carriages which are pretty cool - get on board a train at 10pm in glasgow, sleep in a cramped wobbly cabin and wake up in the centre of London at 6:30am feeling rough. Do a days work/touristing and then head home the next night. It's a lot more convenient than flying, too.

You're right, however you are making the assumption that HST3 is worthwhile in the sense of being more beneficial to people and the economy overall, than the alternative of investing the same money in a lot more local schemes which provide benefits to local economies which link up to boost regional and national economies. E.g. a trans-Pennine line.

If HST3 isn't worthwhile, it undermines the case for HST2.

Actually the case for HST2 is already pretty weak, according to London School of Economics and lots of other people who ought to know.

It's a bit faster to fly from London to Glasgow than go by train. HST3 might make the train a bit faster than flying, depending where you start from. If I start from Oxford, where I am now, I can walk to Oxford Station and catch a train every two hours, which connects with a second train which goes on to Edinburgh with a total journey time of about 6 hours including the walk.

To catch a plane I need to go to Heathrow (an hour), get through security (an hour) then fliy for an hour, then get through arrivals and catch a train from the airport to the city centre. Total travel time about 4:30 to 5:00.

HST3 would improve the second part of my train journey by at least an hour, perhaps more. But it's not so slow as to be totally off-putting to me as it stands.

Oh, definitely HS3 would need to be worth it, and I'm not saying HS2 is the best spend of the money (I honestly doubt it), but we do need to keep up with infrastructure investment. Taking Japans bullet trains as reference, since it's about the same size as the UK, and we really should have something comparable.

The big selling point for trains is the security & baggage restrictions. If you can get it on the train you can take it with you - sandwiches, bikes and so on. For a comparable journey time I'd never take a plane if I could avoid it.

Herzlos wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There's a similar thing in the UK, where a vast amount of money is being spent on the HST2 (High Speed Train 2) line from London to Birmingham.

I'm viewing it as a stepping stone though - you need to start somewhere, and with HS2 in place, we may eventually start on an HS3 and connect up to Glasgow. With no HS2 then HS3 can never happen.

We already have sleeper carriages which are pretty cool - get on board a train at 10pm in glasgow, sleep in a cramped wobbly cabin and wake up in the centre of London at 6:30am feeling rough. Do a days work/touristing and then head home the next night. It's a lot more convenient than flying, too.

It'd be even more convenient if the original plan would have come through - Connecting London, Birmingham and Glasgow to the Eurostar line. Ah well, one can dream ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Eurostar

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think you misunderstand me. I wasn’t suggesting we give tax payer money to high speed rail in the form of subsidies to whoever builds it. I am saying give it nothing at all.

If private funding wants to do it go ahead.

Then we should treat the airlines the same way.

They may not be able to afford it without raising rates, though; the Fed alone spent $15 billion in 2017 (so this does not include state or local funding) to support airports, security, air traffic controllers, and etc. All the airlines in America only made $38 billion in profit combined...

Flying is the worst form of travel imo, noisy, can't get up and walk about, cant do anything, I honestly prefer trains

Herzlos wrote:
Oh, definitely HS3 would need to be worth it, and I'm not saying HS2 is the best spend of the money (I honestly doubt it), but we do need to keep up with infrastructure investment. Taking Japans bullet trains as reference, since it's about the same size as the UK, and we really should have something comparable.

The big selling point for trains is the security & baggage restrictions. If you can get it on the train you can take it with you - sandwiches, bikes and so on. For a comparable journey time I'd never take a plane if I could avoid it.

The Shinkansen makes sense partly because Japan's local rail network is extremely good.

Actually Japan is twice the land area of the UK, and it's in some sense a longer, thinner country. The bulk of the population is concentrated in large cities many of which front the Pacific coast. These factors mean a spinal HST line along the Pacific coast makes good sense.

This doesn't mean the UK couldn't use HST. I'm just worried that the UK's infrastructure spending is done not on the best grounds of efficiency and economic sense.

I dare say it didn't make economic sense for Brunel to put the first railway lines in either, but it must have paid off by now.

I'd rather we were spending the money on infrastructure which has some benefit than pointless projects like Trident or Brexit, but that's maybe a bit political.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
Oh, definitely HS3 would need to be worth it, and I'm not saying HS2 is the best spend of the money (I honestly doubt it), but we do need to keep up with infrastructure investment. Taking Japans bullet trains as reference, since it's about the same size as the UK, and we really should have something comparable.

The big selling point for trains is the security & baggage restrictions. If you can get it on the train you can take it with you - sandwiches, bikes and so on. For a comparable journey time I'd never take a plane if I could avoid it.

The Shinkansen makes sense partly because Japan's local rail network is extremely good.

Actually Japan is twice the land area of the UK, and it's in some sense a longer, thinner country. The bulk of the population is concentrated in large cities many of which front the Pacific coast. These factors mean a spinal HST line along the Pacific coast makes good sense.

This doesn't mean the UK couldn't use HST. I'm just worried that the UK's infrastructure spending is done not on the best grounds of efficiency and economic sense.

When the Shinkansen lines were built, the rights of landowners in Japan were much less than they are in the UK - it was easier for the government to acquire the land, bulldoze neighbourhoods and run a train line through them. Notably, the construction of new lines decreased when public complaints about environmental disturbance increased.


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Herzlos wrote:
I dare say it didn't make economic sense for Brunel to put the first railway lines in either, but it must have paid off by now.

I'd rather we were spending the money on infrastructure which has some benefit than pointless projects like Trident or Brexit, but that's maybe a bit political.

I don't think the subsidies for railways in the 18th and 19th centuries were anything like what they are now. Brunel's lines were all funded by private investors who absolutely expected a return on their money. They didn't always get one, right enough. Free market competition also resulted in quite significant waste, with different gauges being used and competing lines being built in parallel, and not allowing freight to be easily transferred from one line to another.

Herzlos wrote:
I dare say it didn't make economic sense for Brunel to put the first railway lines in either, but it must have paid off by now.

I'd rather we were spending the money on infrastructure which has some benefit than pointless projects like Trident or Brexit, but that's maybe a bit political.

Well, Trident especially is A strong argument could be made that Trident is more useful than the new naval ships we have built recently, for example.

I agree though, UK infrastructure investment is appalling. I still think HS-2 is the wrong way to do it, although the increased capacity angle someone mentioned a few days ago is a good point I had not considered before. However, we could've spent the funds on improving the rest of the network across the board (for example increasing the mainline speeds to 140mph from 125mph by improving the signalling, as was planned in the 90's prior to the privatisation of BR...).

Eh - we are probably talking about decades long multi billion dollar projects here. Lets get real. In 30 years - there is a good chance robots will be flying us around in flying cars. This debate is pointless. The future is flying cars....not trains.

What about...flying trains?

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eh - we are probably talking about decades long multi billion dollar projects here. Lets get real. In 30 years - there is a good chance robots will be flying us around in flying cars. This debate is pointless. The future is flying cars....not trains.

They said this 30 years ago.

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eh - we are probably talking about decades long multi billion dollar projects here. Lets get real. In 30 years - there is a good chance robots will be flying us around in flying cars. This debate is pointless. The future is flying cars....not trains.

They said this 30 years ago.

They barely knew what a computer was 30 years ago. We are experts with computers now. The tech is already there so it's only a mater of when it becomes efficient in cost. 30 years is a long time for this to develop. Just say it outloud in 30 years it's going to be 2050. 2050!

On the other hand, lots of people have put forth lots of really good arguments for why flying cars are an outright terrible idea. I doubt I'll see them in my lifetime. I think I'll be lucky to see self-driving vehicles, and those would pretty much be a prerequisite for flying cars being everywhere without the mortality rate going very up very fast.

 LordofHats wrote:
On the other hand, lots of people have put forth lots of really good arguments for why flying cars are an outright terrible idea. I doubt I'll see them in my lifetime. I think I'll be lucky to see self-driving vehicles, and those would pretty much be a prerequisite for flying cars being everywhere without the mortality rate going very up very fast.

Are you very old? Self driving cars are right around the cusp. Really they are already here. Standard issue within the decade. Flying cars will likely be integrated systems. As an integrated system mortality will be exceptionally low.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eh - we are probably talking about decades long multi billion dollar projects here. Lets get real. In 30 years - there is a good chance robots will be flying us around in flying cars. This debate is pointless. The future is flying cars....not trains.

They said this 30 years ago.

They barely knew what a computer was 30 years ago. We are experts with computers now. The tech is already there so it's only a mater of when it becomes efficient in cost. 30 years is a long time for this to develop. Just say it outloud in 30 years it's going to be 2050. 2050!

The tech isn't there and over 30 years ago we were on the moon. I'm not seeing a point.

Plus, as mentioned earlier in this very thread, lots of personal vehicles is just not going to be suitably efficient and sustainable for the future. Especially not flying cars with their likely massive fuel requirements.

Even from a purely economic perspective, fuel is not getting cheaper and congestion is a big issue, and then there are the environmental and renewability considerations. Urban areas will need to increasingly rely on efficient mass-transit public transport, like subway systems, as populations increase in size.

There is definitely a role for autonomous vehicles, but I think in 30 years most city dwellers will be getting on the driveless bus or autonomous train rather than into their driverless car.

Personal flying vehicles just aren't going to be viable - it takes a lot of energy to get them up and keep them up, with disasterous consequences if they fail.

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eh - we are probably talking about decades long multi billion dollar projects here. Lets get real. In 30 years - there is a good chance robots will be flying us around in flying cars. This debate is pointless. The future is flying cars....not trains.

They said this 30 years ago.

They barely knew what a computer was 30 years ago. We are experts with computers now. The tech is already there so it's only a mater of when it becomes efficient in cost. 30 years is a long time for this to develop. Just say it outloud in 30 years it's going to be 2050. 2050!

The tech isn't there and over 30 years ago we were on the moon. I'm not seeing a point.

Bladerunner 2049....




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 Haighus wrote:
Plus, as mentioned earlier in this very thread, lots of personal vehicles is just not going to be suitably efficient and sustainable for the future. Especially not flying cars with their likely massive fuel requirements.

Even from a purely economic perspective, fuel is not getting cheaper and congestion is a big issue, and then there are the environmental and renewability considerations. Urban areas will need to increasingly rely on efficient mass-transit public transport, like subway systems, as populations increase in size.

There is definitely a role for autonomous vehicles, but I think in 30 years most city dwellers will be getting on the driveless bus or autonomous train rather than into their driverless car.

Fuel is getting cheaper though - Solar is getting cheaper everyday.

Flying cars are probably not going to happen until some unknown technology appears. But I agree that cross-county high speed rail is much less likely then autonomously driven low power electric vehicles, perhaps even rentable, winnebago like vehicles that allow you to travel in much more comfort than current air travel.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Are you very old? Self driving cars are right around the cusp. Really they are already here. Standard issue within the decade.

There's a difference between technically feasible and socially acceptable. I think I'll likely see self-driving vehicles fighting a long battle for acceptability, even after the technology is worked out.

Flying cars already exist, they're called helicopters.

They're maintenance and fuel hungry, noisy and can't land most places you'd like to. You have to fix ALL of these problems to make them common personal transportation.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eh - we are probably talking about decades long multi billion dollar projects here. Lets get real. In 30 years - there is a good chance robots will be flying us around in flying cars. This debate is pointless. The future is flying cars....not trains.

Hackers, or the risk therof, might have something to say about that. If a hacker shuts off your engine on the highway you're stuck. If a hacker shuts off your engine at even 200 feet, you probably die.

You very well might die even on just a highway if a hacker takes control.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eh - we are probably talking about decades long multi billion dollar projects here. Lets get real. In 30 years - there is a good chance robots will be flying us around in flying cars. This debate is pointless. The future is flying cars....not trains.

Hackers, or the risk therof, might have something to say about that. If a hacker shuts off your engine on the highway you're stuck. If a hacker shuts off your engine at even 200 feet, you probably die.

Conveniently missing out on lights, lightsignals, warnshields, car manipulation, etc.
Except you have especially in the car hacking part no one that can supervise your movement unlike with trains.

 John Prins wrote:
Flying cars already exist, they're called helicopters.

They're maintenance and fuel hungry, noisy and can't land most places you'd like to. You have to fix ALL of these problems to make them common personal transportation.

And that's before you factor in congestion - helicopters can't get that close to each other because of the turbulence, and you've then got to deal with traffic in 3 dimensions.

Automated helicopters doing bus-like runs is about the best you're likely to see unless you're mega rich.

Trains or cars are a much better way of moving almost anything.

The future will be ride sharing self-driving, hybrids.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Plus, as mentioned earlier in this very thread, lots of personal vehicles is just not going to be suitably efficient and sustainable for the future. Especially not flying cars with their likely massive fuel requirements.

Even from a purely economic perspective, fuel is not getting cheaper and congestion is a big issue, and then there are the environmental and renewability considerations. Urban areas will need to increasingly rely on efficient mass-transit public transport, like subway systems, as populations increase in size.

There is definitely a role for autonomous vehicles, but I think in 30 years most city dwellers will be getting on the driveless bus or autonomous train rather than into their driverless car.

Fuel is getting cheaper though - Solar is getting cheaper everyday.

Electric vehicles have their own issues, which are exacerbated by the limitations of flying vehicles. Batteries are not very energy-dense compared to petroleum fuels, which means a much reduced range for the same weight. Lithium is also valuable and scarce on Earth.

Until humanity develops a better battery technology to power electric vehicles, electric flying cars will be very short ranged and impractical. A better, more sustainable battery is also a requirement for widespread ground electric vehicles too to be honest, because of the scarcity of lithium.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eh - we are probably talking about decades long multi billion dollar projects here. Lets get real. In 30 years - there is a good chance robots will be flying us around in flying cars. This debate is pointless. The future is flying cars....not trains.

They said this 30 years ago.

They barely knew what a computer was 30 years ago. We are experts with computers now. The tech is already there so it's only a mater of when it becomes efficient in cost. 30 years is a long time for this to develop. Just say it outloud in 30 years it's going to be 2050. 2050!

The tech isn't there and over 30 years ago we were on the moon. I'm not seeing a point.

Bladerunner 2049....

What is a Fictional Movie?

I'll take Realistic Futures for $1000.

 Ouze wrote:
Flying cars are probably not going to happen until some unknown technology appears. But I agree that cross-county high speed rail is much less likely then autonomously driven low power electric vehicles, perhaps even rentable, winnebago like vehicles that allow you to travel in much more comfort than current air travel.

Do you envisage something like a road train which travels relatively slowly but reliably and comfortably? I'm thinking highway speeds of 70 to 100 mph.

It's certainly technically feasible. A kind of upgrade of the current Greyhound Coach concept.

The thing is, I don't think people want to spend days being driven across the USA however comfortable the journey might be. Hence HST which could take you coast to coast in less than a day. (But this returns the argument to the beginning, and we will start to go around in circles.)

Greyhound is based on cheapness and accessibility rather than speed and comfort, and it's in decline.


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Here's an interesting infographic mapping feature from The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/apr/03/mapped-historic-public-transit-systems-v-their-modern-equivalents

It's a number of North American cities rail transport maps "then and now". You can pull the dividing line across to see how things have changed.

I know this isn't long distance HST, but it's relevant to the general topic of rail travel.

What the artist should do next is maps of Tokyo, London and Paris.

Taking time to travel isn't a problem if the journey is nice enough or productive enough, and cheap enough.

If I can sleep overnight and wake up in a different city that's fine. Ditto if I can get a days work done in comfort and end my shift at my destination, and so on.


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 Haighus wrote:

Until humanity develops a better battery technology to power electric vehicles, electric flying cars will be very short ranged and impractical. A better, more sustainable battery is also a requirement for widespread ground electric vehicles too to be honest, because of the scarcity of lithium.

I can see electric flight being great for short run, light payloads. Like drone based package delivery. But I don't think it'll extend to anything bigger than a pizza.

Norway is planning to go 100% short haul electrical by 2040, but they've got a special situation with their terrain -- lots of mountains, lots of islands, lots of snow and ice. This all makes flights of 15 to 30 minutes very useful. I think we're a long way off from longer distance electric flights.

Well, Germany has HSR since the 1990s.
The newest is between Munich and Berlin. It takes 4 h, before 6 h.
The trains (ICE) are usually 250 to 300 km/h.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, Germany has HSR since the 1990s.
The newest is between Munich and Berlin. It takes 4 h, before 6 h.
The trains (ICE) are usually 250 to 300 km/h.

Thats nothing. The Brits have had high speed rail since 1804!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Norway is planning to go 100% short haul electrical by 2040, but they've got a special situation with their terrain -- lots of mountains, lots of islands, lots of snow and ice. This all makes flights of 15 to 30 minutes very useful. I think we're a long way off from longer distance electric flights.

Back in March I was in Germany for a school trip and we visited an Airbus facility. We had a tour guide who was far, far more than "just" a tour guide however, and my classmates and I had a good 10 minute discussion with this bloke over their "prototype" electric passenger airliner.



We're a long way off from manned, commercial aviation flights of any kind. The problem so far has been battery size. It doesn't matter at this point how efficient/powerful/small the power plants are, the batteries take up about 80% of the fuselage right now. It is such that they have not begun building flying models or anything, they are still on the drawing board, because at basically no size, does a passenger carrying flight vehicle make economic sense to build (much less operate, which is partially why they aren't as actively developing this as they otherwise would be).

Per the person we were talking to at AB, full electric passenger carrying aviation is "probably 20-30 years" down the road yet.

Norway orders 60 electric 2-seater planes for use as trainers.

https://osmaviation.com/osm-aviation-aims-for-a-green-future/

Obviously 2-seater trainers are not proper passenger vehicles, but a twin-engine, 6-seater starts to look more useful for the kind of very short hop journeys common in Norway.

I agree this is a very different prospect to long-haul airliners.

I think you're going to see electric aircraft become common in civil aviation long before even short-haul airlines get in on the act.

Speaking as a pilot who has been casually following the subject, electric planes are not even close to practical reality. The battery weight is just too high and the power is too low, essentially what you're getting is a slow and efficient glider that uses all of its payload capacity for the batteries to support a small engine. That's fine if your goal is short training flights where you're never far from an airport, it's ok if you have to land and recharge after an hour, and you're never carrying anything besides a student and instructor. That's not so useful if you want to make long trips and carry passengers. Looking at the specs on this plane, which seem pretty optimistic at first glance, you're talking about $350,000 for a plane with similar cruise speed and ~150 miles less range compared to my 45 year old plane that cost $45,000 and it only gets there by giving up the back seats (and the useful load to fill them). And let's just say I am extremely skeptical of the performance they're claiming with only a 90hp engine and that weight.

What I expect to see much sooner than electric aircraft is alternative fuels such as the various plant-based ideas. That's a drop-in replacement for existing fuel in most engines and aircraft and the main limiting factor is conventional fuel prices reaching a point where investment in alternative fuel infrastructure becomes profitable. And because energy to weight ratio is such an overwhelmingly important concern for aircraft it's one of the few cases where alternative fuels really make sense.

The problem as always is the political corruption and boondoggle that accompanies such projects. The US likes to spend trillions of dollars on pointless wars, not infrastructure. China kind of figured out how to do large scale infrastructure, instead of pouring gobs of money into military adventurism. Mericans don't want "socialism" to build infrastructure....unless it to build a stupid wall.

Much of the United States has cities that are a few hundred miles away from each other, its not meant to replace coast to coast travel. Right now, if I want to go from Cleveland to Chicago I can drive 16 hours round trip, or spend hundreds of dollars and fly in an uncomfortable plane while wasting 4 hours at the airport, (got to get there early and go through security). Seriously you spend more time in the airport then in the air, (well thats if they don't somehow route me through TEXAS.....this has happened, I hate flying) If I could hop on a train comfortable train with WIFI and be in Chicago on a whim in an hour or 2 for a reasonable price. Yeah, I'm all in! I'd probably go to NYC more frequently too.

Its more likely that self driving cars will be the future though. Those long drives will be a breeze once I can get int the car and take a nap or get some work done.

 Andrew1975 wrote:
Its more likely that self driving cars will be the future though. Those long drives will be a breeze once I can get int the car and take a nap or get some work done.

Assuming America can get over it's fear of 'DA EBIL SOCIALIZM!!!!1!' long enough to keep the roads maintained and passable, anyway.