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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.